The Zen tradition has just two main meditative practices: shikantaza, or "e;just sitting"e;; and introspection guided by the powerful Zen teaching stories called koans.
Associated with the promotion of world peace, the Kalachakra - or Wheel of Time - tantra is one of the most detailed and encompassing systems of theory and practice within Tibetan Buddhism.
Not only was Lama Yeshe one of the most beloved Tibetan Buddhist masters of the late twentieth century, he was also a remarkably effective teacher and communicator.
Basándose en recursos sin explotar, entrevistas exclusivas y nueva investigación de archivos, La última cruzada del Papa por Peter Eisner es un emocionante relato que trae a la luz el valiente esfuerzo del Papa Pío XI para condenar el nazismo y la política del Tercer Reich —una cruzada que podría haber cambiado el curso de la segunda guerra mundial.
This book analyzes Spanish rule and Catholic practice from the consolidation of Spanish control in the Americas in the sixteenth century to the loss of these colonies in the nineteenth century by following the life and afterlife of an accidental martyr, San Felipe de Jsus.
Nuns Navigating the Spanish Empire tells the remarkable story of a group of nuns who traveled halfway around the globe in the seventeenth century to establish the first female Franciscan convent in the Far East.
Following Cardinal Basil Hume's death on 17 June 1999, The Times concluded his obituary with a remarkable accolade: 'Few churchman in this century, inside or outside the Catholic Church, have died more deeply loved.
Taking the most famous 'prophet' of recent times, David Koresh, as a starting point, this is an analytical look at the troubled history of charlatan messiahs around the world.
For centuries, faithful followers of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have looked to their holy texts for spiritual guidance, social and political mandates, and answers to man's burning questions about the workings of the universe.
This short book by one of France's leading historians deals with a big question: how was it that Christianity, that masterpiece of religious invention, managed, between 300 and 400 AD, to impose itself upon the whole of the Western world?
In this groundbreaking book, Akbar Ahmed, one of the world's leading authorities on Islam, who has worked in the Muslim world but lives in the West, explains what is going wrong in his society by referring to Islamic history and beliefs.
How the medieval church drove state formation in EuropeSacred Foundations argues that the medieval church was a fundamental force in European state formation.
An illuminating look at the transformative role that rituals play in our political livesThe Politics of Ritual is a major new account of the political power of rituals.
How the medieval church drove state formation in EuropeSacred Foundations argues that the medieval church was a fundamental force in European state formation.
First published in English in 1954, this founding work of the history of religions secured the North American reputation of the Romanian emigre-scholar Mircea Eliade.
The most comprehensive and up-to-date exploration of one of the most important religious orders in the modern worldSince its founding by Ignatius of Loyola in 1540, the Society of Jesus-more commonly known as the Jesuits-has played a critical role in the events of modern history.
A groundbreaking history of how the Christian "e;West"e; emerged from the ancient Mediterranean worldIn this acclaimed history of Early Christendom, Judith Herrin shows how-from the sack of Rome in 410 to the coronation of Charlemagne in 800-the Christian "e;West"e; grew out of an ancient Mediterranean world divided between the Roman west, the Byzantine east, and the Muslim south.
Tracing devotion to Mary to psychological and historical processes that began in the fifth century, Michael Carroll answers intriguing questions: What explains the many reports of Marian apparitions over the centuries?
Celebrated as a visionary chronicler of spirituality, Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) suffered persecution by the Counter-Reformation clergy in Spain, who denounced her for her "e;diabolical illusions"e; and "e;dangerous propaganda.
The forgotten story of the nineteenth-century freethinkers and twentieth-century humanists who tried to build their own secular religionIn The Church of Saint Thomas Paine, Leigh Eric Schmidt tells the surprising story of how freethinking liberals in nineteenth-century America promoted a secular religion of humanity centered on the deistic revolutionary Thomas Paine (1737-1809) and how their descendants eventually became embroiled in the culture wars of the late twentieth century.
This exploration of cultural resilience examines the complex fate of classical Egyptian religion during the centuries from the period when Christianity first made its appearance in Egypt to when it became the region's dominant religion (roughly 100 to 600 C.
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is widely recognized as one of the greatest philosopher-theologians America has ever produced, and recent years have seen a remarkable increase in research on his writings.
An intimate and moving portrait of daily life in New York's oldest institution of traditional rabbinic learningNew York City's Lower East Side has witnessed a severe decline in its Jewish population in recent decades, yet every morning in the big room of the city's oldest yeshiva, students still gather to study the Talmud beneath the great arched windows facing out onto East Broadway.
How nineteenth-century Protestant evangelicals used print and visual media to shape American cultureIn nineteenth-century America, "e;apocalypse"e; referred not to the end of the world but to sacred revelation, and "e;geography"e; meant both the physical landscape and its representation in printed maps, atlases, and pictures.
How religious ritual united a growing and diversifying Roman RepublicMany narrative histories of Rome's transformation from an Italian city-state to a Mediterranean superpower focus on political and military conflicts as the primary agents of social change.
With the publication of The Origins of the Kabbalah in 1950, one of the most important scholars of our century brought the obscure world of Jewish mysticism to a wider audience for the first time.
A look at the developing conflicts in Christian-Muslim relations during late antiquity and the early Islamic eraHow did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process?
A bold new religious history of the late antique and medieval Middle East that places ordinary Christians at the center of the storyIn the second half of the first millennium CE, the Christian Middle East fractured irreparably into competing churches and Arabs conquered the region, setting in motion a process that would lead to its eventual conversion to Islam.
