Zen And The Unspeakable God

Author : Jason N. Blum
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 027107471X
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Zen and the Unspeakable God written by Jason N. Blum and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-09-21 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zen and the Unspeakable God reevaluates how we study mystical experience. Forsaking the prescriptive epistemological box that has constrained the conversation for decades, ensuring that methodology has overshadowed subject matter, Jason Blum proposes a new interpretive approach—one that begins with a mystic’s own beliefs about the nature of mystical experience. Blum brings this approach to bear on the experiential accounts of three mystical exemplars: Meister Eckhart, Ibn al-ʿArabi, and Hui-neng. Through close readings of their texts, he uncovers the mystics’ own fundamental assumptions about transcendence and harnesses these as interpretive guides to their experiences. The predominant theory-first path to interpretation has led to the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of individual mystical experiences and fostered specious conclusions about cross-cultural comparability among them. Blum’s hermeneutic invites the scholarly community to begin thinking about mystical experience in a new way—through the mystics’ eyes. Zen and the Unspeakable God offers a sampling of the provocative results of this technique and an explanation of its implications for theories of consciousness and our contemporary understanding of the nature of mystical experience.

Author : F. Samuel Brainard
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 9780271041810
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reality and Mystical Experience written by F. Samuel Brainard and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Responding to our modern disillusionment with any claims to absolute truth regarding morality or reality, this book offers a conceptual approach for discussing absolutes without denying either the relevance of divergent religious and philosophical teachings or the evidence supporting postmodern and poststructuralist critiques. Case studies of mysticism within Advaita-Vedānta Hinduism, Mādhyamika Buddhism, and Nicene Christianity demonstrate the value of this approach and offer many fresh insights into the metaphysical presuppositions of these religions as well as into the nature and value of mystical experience. Like Douglas Hofstadter's Gōdel, Escher, Bach, this book finds ultimate reality to be rationally graspable only as an eternal fugue of pattern and paradox. Yet it does not so much counter other philosophical views as provide a conceptual tool for understanding and classifying incommensurable views.

Author : Carl Olson
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1538130246
Total Pages : 419 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Buddhism written by Carl Olson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving beyond the original bodhi tree where the historical Buddha attained enlightenment, Buddhism spread throughout Asia and in more recent history has become ubiquitous in America and other Western nations as it marches into the status of a major global religion. During its history westward, it has changed, adapted to new cultures, and offered spiritual help to those looking for answers to the problems of life. Buddhism is studied in institutions of higher education, practice by many people worldwide, and its literature is translated in numerous languages. Historical Dictionary of Buddhism, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 900 cross-referenced entries on important personalities as well as complex theological concepts, significant practices, and basic writings and texts. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Buddhism.

Author : Ruben L. F. Habito
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0861713834
Total Pages : 166 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Living Zen, Loving God written by Ruben L. F. Habito and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the state of Christ-consciouness and the experience of divine presence that can be awakened by Zen practice.

Author : Thomas Merton
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1429944005
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Mystics and Zen Masters written by Thomas Merton and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 1999-11-29 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Merton was recognized as one of those rare Western minds that are entirely at home with the Zen experience. In this collection, he discusses diverse religious concepts-early monasticism, Russian Orthodox spirituality, the Shakers, and Zen Buddhism-with characteristic Western directness. Merton not only studied these religions from the outside but grasped them by empathy and living participation from within. "All these studies," wrote Merton, "are united by one central concern: to understand various ways in which men of different traditions have conceived the meaning and method of the 'way' which leads to the highest levels of religious or of metaphysical awareness."

Author : Paul K. Moser
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108626734
Total Pages : 355 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Religious Experience written by Paul K. Moser and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-16 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, theologians and philosophers, among others, have examined the nature of religious experience. Students and scholars unfamiliar with the vast literature face a daunting task in grasping the main issues surrounding the topic of religious experience. The Cambridge Companion to Religious Experience offers an original introduction to its topic. Going beyond an introduction, it is a state-of-the-art overview of the topic, with critical analyses of and creative insights into its subject. Religious experience is discussed from various interdisciplinary perspectives, from religious perspectives inside and outside traditional monotheistic religions, and from various topical perspectives. Written by leading scholars in clear and accessible prose, this book is an ideal resource for undergraduate and graduate students, teachers, and scholars across many disciplines.

Author : Matthew A. Benton
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192589695
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religious Disagreement and Pluralism written by Matthew A. Benton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-25 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epistemological questions about the significance of disagreement have advanced alongside broader developments in social epistemology concerning testimony, the nature of expertise and epistemic authority, the role of institutions, group belief, and epistemic injustice, among others. During this period, related issues in the epistemology of religion have re-emerged as worthy of new consideration, and available to be situated with new conceptual tools. Does disagreement between, and within, religions challenge the rationality of religious commitment? How should religious adherents think about exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist frameworks as applied to religious truth, or to matters of salvation or redemption or liberation? This volume explores many of these issues at the intersection of the epistemology of disagreement and religious epistemology. It engages in careful reflection on religious diversity and disagreement, offering ways to balance epistemic humility with personal conviction. Recognizing the place of religious differences in our social lives, it provides renewed efforts at how best to think about truths concerning religion.

Author : James S. Anderson
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1532670575
Total Pages : 117 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Manifesting Peace written by James S. Anderson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "'Peace, peace' they say, but there is no peace!" Today, as in the days of the prophet Ezekiel, peace is elusive. Stress, strife, and worries drain our abilities when we need them most. Here are twelve principles to cultivate peace in your life. An essential ingredient of physical and mental health, peace does not fall from the sky. "Blessed are the peacemakers!" means that peace is made. Peace takes work and effort. Each chapter offers tangible ways to nurture peace in your everyday life. Inputs from psychology, counseling theory, and wisdom from world religions are followed by prayer and meditation exercises to come closer to God, forgive others, and discern what to do in a particular situation. Try them! Find out which ones work best for you. Peace brings healing, wholeness, and balance.

Author : Mark Wreford
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0567696669
Total Pages : 355 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religious Experience and the Creation of Scripture written by Mark Wreford and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the reasons that prompted the New Testament writers to create the texts which would become the formation of the Christian religion, exploring the possibility that certain religious experiences were understood as revelatory, and consequently inspired the writing of texts which were seen as special from their inception. Mark Wreford uses Luke-Acts and Galatians as test-cases within the New Testament, reflecting both on the stated importance of religious experiences – whether the author's own or others' – to the development of these texts, and the status the texts claim for themselves. Wreford suggests that Luke-Acts offers a helpful example of the relationship between religious experience and the creation of Scripture, as an extensive narrative which reflects on early Christian claims to Spirit-inspired witness and which begins with an explicit authorial statement of purpose. Similarly, in Galatians, Paul's autobiographical account of God's revelation of Christ to him is the foundation of a letter that is intended to play an authoritative role in shaping its addressees' own faith and practice. Wreford argues that religious experiences are presented as the driving force behind the creation of the texts, examining how such religious experience links with notions of scripture and canonicity. He then asserts that both Luke and Paul understood themselves to be creating new scriptural writings on the basis of their relationship to new religious experiences, citing the experience and speech at Pentecost, the inclusion of gentiles in the experience, and Paul's own conversion experience as key elements behind the self-understanding of these New Testament authors.

Author : William Johnston
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 9780823218011
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christian Zen written by William Johnston and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Christian Zen was first published in the early 1970's, it was reviewed enthusiastically in many parts of the world. A subsequent edition added new material from the author's experience. This latest edition, from Fordham University Press, includes a new Preface by the author and a letter to the author from the Christian mystic Thomas Merton, written shortly before Merton's untimely death. William Johnston presents a study of Zen meditation in the light of Christian mysticism.