The Festive Sutras

How can we experience Jewish festivals & Shabbat through our body? The Festive Sutras contains a series of essays and practices to help get an experience of God within your body. Using the tools of torah wisdom and yoga postures, the reader is given very practical techniques to use physicality as a gateway to spirituality. The Festive Sutras is three-books-inone. The Festive Sutras, concerned with the Jewish festival cycle, The Shabbat Sutras - A Yogi's guide to the Jewish Sabbath, and Ethics of the Yogis - a Jewish commentary on the classic Yoga Sutras.

Largely unstudied until now, the religious festivals that attracted Chinese people from all walks of life provide the most instructive examples of the interaction between Chinese forms of social life and the Indian tradition of Buddhism. Stephen Teiser examines one of the most important of such annual celebrations. He provides a comprehensive interpretation of the festivities of the seventh lunar month, in which laypeople presented offerings to Buddhist monks to gain salvation for their ancestors. Teiser uncovers a wide range of sources, many translated or analyzed for the first time in any language, to demonstrate how the symbolism, rituals, and mythology of the ghost festival pervaded the social landscape of medieval China.

Most of the questions referring to the Grihya-sutra of svalyana will be treated of more conveniently in connection with the different subjects which we shall have to discuss in our General Introduction to the Grihya-sutras. Here I wish only to call attention to a well-known passage of Shadgurusishya, in which that commentator gives some statements on the works composed by svalyana and by his teacher Saunaka. As an important point in that passage has, as far as I can see, been misunderstood by several eminent scholars, I may perhaps be allowed here to try and correct that misunderstanding, though the point stands in a less direct connection with the Grihya-sutra than with another side of the literary activity of svalyana. Shadgurusishya, before speaking of svalyana, makes the following statements with regard to svalyana's teacher, Saunaka. 'There was,' he says, 'the Skala Samhit (of the Rig-veda), and the Bshkala Samhit; following these two Samhits and the twenty-one Brhmanas, adopting principally the Aitareyaka and supplementing it by the other texts, he who was revered by the whole number of great Rishis composed the first Kalpa-sutra.' He then goes on to speak of svalyana;'Saunaka's pupil was the venerable svalyana. He who knew everything he had learnt from that teacher, composed a Sutra and announced (to Saunaka that he had done so).' Saunaka then destroyed his own Sutra, and determined thatsvalyana's Sutra should be adopted by the students of that Vedic Skh. Thus, says Shadgurusishya, there were twelve works of Saunaka by which a correct knowledge of the Rig-veda was preserved, and three works of svalyana. Saunaka's dasa granths were, the five Anukramanis, the two Vidbnas, the Brhaddaivata, the Prtiskhya, and a Smrta work. svalyana, on the other hand, composed the Srauta-sutra in twelve Adhyyas, the Grihya in four Adhyyas, and the fourth ranyaka: this is svalyana's great Sutra composition.

Based on close readings of more than twenty Buddhist texts written in China from the 5th to the 13th century, this book demonstrates that Buddhist authors crafted new models for family reproduction based on a mother-son style of filial piety, in contrast to the traditional father-son model.--NAN NÜ

A Los Angeles Times Bestseller “Raises timely and important questions about what religious freedom in America truly means.” —Ruth Ozeki “A must-read for anyone interested in the implacable quest for civil liberties, social and racial justice, religious freedom, and American belonging.” —George Takei On December 7, 1941, as the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, the first person detained was the leader of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist sect in Hawai‘i. Nearly all Japanese Americans were subject to accusations of disloyalty, but Buddhists aroused particular suspicion. From the White House to the local town council, many believed that Buddhism was incompatible with American values. Intelligence agencies targeted the Buddhist community, and Buddhist priests were deemed a threat to national security. In this pathbreaking account, based on personal accounts and extensive research in untapped archives, Duncan Ryūken Williams reveals how, even as they were stripped of their homes and imprisoned in camps, Japanese American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in our nation’s history, insisting that they could be both Buddhist and American. “A searingly instructive story...from which all Americans might learn.” —Smithsonian “Williams’ moving account shows how Japanese Americans transformed Buddhism into an American religion, and, through that struggle, changed the United States for the better.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer “Reading this book, one cannot help but think of the current racial and religious tensions that have gripped this nation—and shudder.” —Reza Aslan, author of Zealot

Christmas Summary ClassicsThis series contains summary of Classic books such as Emma, Arne, Arabian Nights, Pride and prejudice, Tower of London, Wealth of Nations etc. Each book is specially crafted after reading complete book in less than 30 pages. One who wants to get joy of book reading especially in very less time can go for it. About The BookTHE BOOKS OF HINDUISMThe Vedanta SutrasHinduism, though usually understood to include Brahmanism (q.v.), is, in fact, a later development of it. Its central doctrine is the trinity, or Trimurti, which embraces the three-fold manifestation of the god-head as Brahma, the one supreme being, the Creator; Vishnu the Preserver; and Siva the Destroyer. The three principal books of Hinduism are the "Vedanta Sutras," the "Puranas," and the "Tantras," of which only the first is epitomised here. The "Sutras" are the earliest. The "Vedanta" (literally "goal" or "issue of the Veda") is a purely pantheistic and monastic philosophical system, and by far the most prevalent in Modern India. It is ascribed to Badarayana, sometimes called Vyasa, though this last is really a generic name denoting "a collector." The word "sutra" denotes literally "threads," and is used by Brahmanic writers for short, dry sentences, brief expositions. "Vedanta Sutras" means literally "compendious expressions of the Vedantic (not Vedic) doctrine." The second great division of Hindu sacred literature is the "Puranas," the last and most modern of the books of Hinduism. The word "Purana" means "old," and in ancient Sanscrit writings it has the same meaning as our "cosmology." The "Puranas," however, are ill-arranged collections of theological and philosophical reflections, myths and legends, ritual, and ascetic rules. They depend very much on the two great epics, especially the Mahabharata. The Sanscrit writings called "Tantras" are really manuals of religion, of magic, and of counter-charms, with songs in praise of Sakti, the female side of Siva.For more eBooks visit www.kartindo.com

A “beautifully written and self-revealing” memoir of motherhood—in all its messy glory—as a spiritual practice, by a longtime yoga and dharma teacher (Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance) Sutra is the Sanskrit name for a short spiritual teaching, and it comes from the same root as the English word suture, or stitch. This story of motherhood as a path to awakening is, says yoga and meditation teacher Anne Cushman, “an homage to the long threads that run through all human lives, stitching up what’s shredded in our hearts.” The Mama Sutra spans an eighteen-year journey through motherhood as a spiritual practice, chronicling Cushman’s first pregnancy, her daughter's tragic stillbirth, the joyful birth of her son, the “home retreat” of early motherhood, the challenges of parenthood, the diagnosis and gifts of her son’s developmental differences, the meltdown of her nuclear family and its reconfiguration into a new and joyful form, and more. This is a powerful story of the rawness and beauty of life.

With imaginative lushness and narrative elan, Mehta provides a novel that combines Indian storytelling with thoroughly modern perceptions into the nature of love--love both carnal and sublime, treacherous and redeeming. "Conveys a world that is spiritual, foreign, and entirely accessible."--Vanity Fair. Reading tour.