Eastern Religion

The Magus: Kundalini and the Golden Dawn is the culmination of my spiritual journey through the Western Mystery Tradition after experiencing a full and sustained Kundalini awakening. Once I joined a secret and esoteric school called the Golden Dawn, I was introduced to Ceremonial Magick—a Spiritual Alchemy practice geared towards Chakra tuning and cleansing—whose ultimate purpose is personal transformation and Enlightenment.

In this inspirational collection of stories, Swami Rama relates his experiences with the great teachers who guided his life, including Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, and Ramana Maharshi. It documents Swami Rama's spiritual quest, which showed him that direct experience is the source of real knowledge.

What do Chinese religions and Christianity have in common? More than you might think! For centuries, Chinese religions like Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism have been practiced alongside Christianity, each with their own unique beliefs and traditions. But despite their differences, these two ancient faiths share a surprising number of commonalities. In "The Tao of Christ", we embark on a fascinating journey to explore the unexpected similarities between Chinese religions and Christianity. From the concept of the Tao and the Logos to the importance of compassion and selflessness, we'll ...

Alan Watts examines the problem of humans in a seemingly hostile universe in ways that question the social norms and illusions that bind and constrict modern humans. Marking a groundbreaking synthesis, Watts asserts that the powerful insights of Freud and Jung, which had, indeed, brought psychiatry close to the edge of liberation, could, if melded with the hitherto secret wisdom of the Eastern traditions, free people from their battles with the self.

When Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Thuan met at an academic conference in the summer of 1997, they began discussing the many remarkable connections between the teachings of Buddhism and the findings of recent science. That conversation grew into an astonishing correspondence exploring a series of fascinating questions. Did the universe have a beginning? Might our perception of time in fact be an illusion, a phenomenon created in our brains that has no ultimate reality? What is consciousness and how did it evolve?

When Katie Davis Majors moved to Uganda, accidentally founded a booming organization, and later became the mother of 13 girls through the miracle of adoption, she determined to weave her life together with the people she desired to serve. But joy often gave way to sorrow as she invested her heart fully in walking alongside people in the grip of poverty, addiction, desperation, and disease.

We all carry burdens of guilt and shame. We're weighed down, constantly reminded of where we've fallen short. But the truth is we're carrying around something that isn't ours. Our sins and shortcomings belong to Jesus. He carried them to the cross. He paid our debt. And he wanted to make sure we knew it. In this book, listeners discover the seven last sayings of Christ from the cross - both what he said and what his words mean for our lives today - so that they can lay their burdens at the foot of the cross and receive God's unsurpassable grace.

The author of the "dazzling epic" (Lev Grossman, Time) Brilliant delivers an indelible view of the ways silence affects those who seek it and those who have it imposed upon them. Through her original, intertwined histories of the penitentiary and the monastery, Jane Brox illuminates the many ways silence is far more complex than any absolute; how it has influenced ideas of the self, soul, and society.

The Mengzi is one of the very greatest works of world literature and philosophy, and it is perhaps the single most influential Confucian text of all time. Of all the Confucian classics, it is also the one most likely to speak to a contemporary audience. The Mengzi contains the dialogues, debates and sayings of Mengzi, a Confucian sage of the fourth century BCE. (He is also known by the Latinization of his name, 'Mencius'.)

This rich, timely, and highly original portrait of the Buddha explores both the archetypal religious icon and Buddha the man. In lucid and compelling prose, Armstrong brings to life the Buddha's quest, from his renunciation of his privileged life to the discovery of a truth that he believed would utterly transform human beings and enable them to live at peace in the midst of life's suffering.

Traditional Eastern wisdom and real-life business experience come together in this brief and practical guide, which offers a step-by-step plan that will help readers adopt a more successful way of working and living. Karmic Management is a little book with a revolutionary message. It turns traditional business mentality on its head by stating simply that helping others become successful - suppliers, customers, even competitors - is the real key to success in life as well as in business.

Beginning with “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” and ending with “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” Meacham captures for the listener how these words epitomize Jesus’s message of love, not hate; grace, not rage; and, rather than vengeance, extraordinary mercy. For each saying, Meacham composes an essay on the origins of Christianity and how Jesus’s final words created a foundation for oral and written traditions that upended the very order of the world.

Jesus' final days were full of risk. Every move he made was filled with anticipation, danger, and the potential for great loss or great reward. Jesus risked his reputation when he entered Jerusalem in a victory parade. He risked his life when he dared to teach in the Temple. His followers risked everything when they left behind their homes or anointed him with costly perfume. We take risks as we read and reread these stories, finding new meanings and new challenges.

First published in 1957, The Secret Lore of Magic contains within it a series of major source books of magical arts. Many of them translated into English for the first time, these works are annotated. The book’s title in itself signaled the fact that the bulk of material in this bibliographical study had never been published openly before.

The Sufis, mystics of Islam, have been educators of the heart for some fourteen centuries. Their teachings and methods are designed to help us awaken and purify the heart, to learn to listen to our deepest knowing. In The Knowing Heart, Kabir Helminski presents the Sufi way as a practical spirituality suitable for all cultures and times—and offers insights that are especially valuable for our life in today's world. In cultivating a knowing heart, we learn to experience a new sense of self, transform our relationships, and enhance our creative capacities.

Welcome to the Orthodox Church - its history, theology, worship, spirituality, and daily life. This friendly guide provides a comprehensive introduction to Orthodoxy, but with a twist: listeners learn by making a series of visits to a fictitious church, and get to know the faith as new Christians did for most of history, by immersion. Mathews-Green provides commentary and explanations on everything from how to "venerate" an icon, the Orthodox understanding of the atonement, to the Lenten significance of tofu.

Prepare for a life-changing encounter with Jesus, seeing him afresh through the eyes of three women who worship and adore him. Mary of Bethany prepares the way for the lord's burial when she anoints his feet and fills the air with her perfume. His mother, Mary of Nazareth, stands by her son from his first breath to his last, her loyalty unwavering. Mary Magdalene, delivered of seven demons, bravely supports her teacher through his darkest hours, then proclaims the glorious news of his resurrection.

At a time when a lasting peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis seems unattainable, understanding the roots of their conflict is an essential step in restoring hope to the region. In The Iron Cage, Rashid Khalidi provides a lucid context for the realities on the ground today, a context that has been, until now, notably lacking in our discourse.

The lessons taught by ancient Chinese philosophers surprisingly still apply, and they challenge our fundamental assumptions about how to lead a fulfilled, happy, and successful life. Self-discovery, it turns out, comes through looking outward, not inward. Power comes from holding back. Good relationships come from small gestures. Spontaneity comes from practice. And excellence comes from what you choose to do, not your "natural" abilities.

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world - a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas.