Provides an accessible introduction to the Vedic religious world by focusing on the role of divine and human imagination in sacred texts.The Artful Universe introduces the Vedic religion, a rich and densely textured tradition that has influenced the religious sensibilities of India for 3500 years or more. Engagingly written and based on traditional as well as modern Vedic scholarship, the book introduces Vedic ideas regarding the nature of divinity, the structure of the sacred universe, the process of revelation, the function of ritual as hallowed activity, and the realizations lying behind the practice of meditation. As a way to link these diverse aspects of Vedic religion, Mahony identifies and highlights the important role of the divine and human imagination in the formation, revelation, and reformation of a meaningful world.

The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination (Suny Hindu Studies)

Religion & Spirituality

Mahony, William K.

Hinduism

State University of New York Press

Provides an accessible introduction to the Vedic religious world by focusing on the role of divine and human imagination in sacred texts. "The Artful Universe provides a gentle tour through formative passages from the Rgveda and Upanisads that explicate the creative ritual/philosophical process. I particularly enjoyed the passages selected by the author, and his competent translation of them. He has captured and summarized the philosophical intent of the Vedic hymns, and thematized key concepts." -- Christopher Key Chapple, Loyola Marymount University "This is a very important contribution to our understanding of early Indian religious imagination and to the field of religious studies broadly construed. Basically, the book develops an angle of interpretation that tracks on what the Vedic poets were constructing in the way of a universe in which imagination, language, and nature intersected one another. Using philological and literary-critical approaches to Vedic texts, Mahony sorts through a great many of the one thousand and eight hymns of the Rgveda in an effort to reconstruct and present the unfolding of a world view which sees the cosmos as an elaborate, interconnected, and paradoxical artistic reality." -- Paul B. Courtright, Emory University The Artful Universe introduces the Vedic religion, a rich and densely textured tradition that has influenced the religious sensibilities of India for 3500 years or more. Engagingly written and based on traditional as well as modern Vedic scholarship, the book introduces Vedic ideas regarding the nature of divinity, the structure of the sacred universe, the process of revelation, the function of ritual as hallowed activity, and the realizations lying behind the practice of meditation. As a way to link these diverse aspects of Vedic religion, Mahony identifies and highlights the important role of the divine and human imagination in the formation, revelation, and reformation of a meaningful world. "I found Mahony's translations of the Vedas to be stunning. He has treated the text carefully, even reverentially. After reading these texts anew, some of which I had read many times before in mechanical translations, I was able to viscerally understand how and why the Vedas are revelatory, shining, holy." -- Joanne Punzo Waghorne, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination (S U N Y Series in Hindu Studies)

Meditation revolution: A history and theology of the Siddha Yoga lineage

This groundbreaking collection of essays explores the origin, development, teachings, and practices of a contemporary spiritual movement. The subject is Siddha Yoga, a path of meditation rooted in the Indian philosophical tradition that has had tremendous impact on contemporary students of spirituality since the 1970s. This book centers around the work of two teachers: Swami Muktananda, who introduced Siddha Yoga and its teachings to the West, inspiring what he termed a "meditation revolution," and Gurumayi Chidvilasanada, who has brought Siddha Yoga Meditation to maturity as a global spiritual movement. This book examines one particular tradition in its historical and theological context, illuminating issues that will be of interest to serious students of religion and spirituality. From the Foreword: Paul Muller-Ortega, Douglas Renfrew Brooks, William K. Mahony, Swami Durgananda a.k.a. Sally Kempton, et. al., offer herein a rich feast of historical and theological reflection that is sympathetic to Siddha Yoga but at the same time is fully faithful to the canons of critical inquiry characteristic of serious history of religions work... One very much hopes that this collection may be the first of many other collections that dare to move away from purely descriptive scholarship in order to address some of the great spiritual issues of our time. This book's publisher, Muktabodha Indological Research Institute, is dedicated to the study, preservation, and dissemination of endangered elements of the ancient scriptural wisdom of India. The mission is propelled by a belief that the philosophical and spiritual heritage of classical India is a precious resource and a recognition of this wisdom as vital for the well-being of the human spirit. Please visit us as muktabodha.org to learn more about our programs and publications.

Meditation Revolution: A History and Theology of the Siddha Yoga Lineage

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Bendet, Peggy

Bailly, Constantina Rhodes

Douglas Brooks, S.P. Sabharathnam

Sabharathnam, S.P.

Muller-Ortega, Paul E.

Durgananda, Swami

Exercise & Fitness

Agama Pr

The Bhakti Sutra attributed to Narada is a collection of 84 aphoristic statements in Sanskrit, dating to the tenth to eleventh centuries in India, on the nature of love for Divinity, which the text describes as the highest, most exquisite form of love. Translating, explaining and interpreting 21 of those statements, William K. Mahony brings these teachings into our contemporary world through his thoughtful and articulate extended reflections on the qualities of this love and on the contours of a life oriented toward strengthening, refining and elevating it. The book also includes Mahony’s translation of Narada’s Bhakti Sutra in its entirety. Basing his reflections on the understanding that God is absolute Love, Mahony speaks of a divine Heart present in our own human sentiments and expressions of love in all its modes, directions and degrees of intensity. He offers readers guidance into ways a Heart-centered spiritual life can open them ever more fully to the reality of Love itself.

Exquisite Love: Reflections on the spiritual life based on Narada’s Bhakti Sutra

Sarvabhava Press

An important and strikingly beautiful book about the sacred Hindu practice of threshold drawing! In the Hindu world-view, threshold is a profoundly important concept that represents a passage between one space and place and another, creating a visual bridge between the secular and the sacred. Accordingly, the literal threshold a person crosses when entering and exiting a home or business symbolizes the threshold one crosses between the physical and spiritual realms of existence. Hindus have long believed it is possible to affect a person's well-being by using diagrams to sanctify the "threshold space." The diagrams do so by "trapping" ill will, evil, bad luck, or negative energy within their colorful and elaborate configurations, thereby cleansing those who traverse the space and sending them on their way with renewed spirit, positive energy, and good luck and fortune. The creation of the threshold diagrams is steeped in Indian history and culture going back thousands of years. Practiced by women, it was long considered a vernacular art. But, as this pioneering book reveals, the diagrams represent highly sophisticated mathematical and cosmological underpinnings that have been handed down from one generation of women to the next. As India has modernized and rapidly become more urban, however, more Indian women have acquired more complicated lives, allowing less time to continue the practice of threshold drawing and relying, increasingly, on homogenized pattern books. And so a long-standing and critically important expression of Indian life, religion, and culture is becoming less common to the point the tradition is threatened. Across the Threshold of India reveals, the story of the threshold drawings for the first time, history of how the threshold drawings evolved, what they have meant and represent in Indian and Hindu culture, and how the practice became a high form of vernacular art for religious and everyday life. By combining her unforgettable photographs—most of which are in the permanent collection of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, the nation's foremost research center for Indian culture and art—with the most recent scholarship on the history and art of the threshold drawings, Martha A. Strawn has given the world a unique and enduring gift. Her book is a work of visual ecology that perceptively portrays one of India's and the world's longest and least-known religious practices—the art of sanctifying space through the creation of threshold diagrams. By presenting the most recent scholarship on the history and art of the threshold drawings and combining that engaging tale with her wonderful fine-art and documentary photographs, Martha Strawn has given the world a unique and enduring gift: a work of visual ecology that perceptively portrays one of India's and the world's longest and least-known religious practices: the art of sanctifying space through threshold drawings.

Across the Threshold of India: Art, Women, and Culture

Arts & Photography

Strawn, Martha A.

Photography & Video

George F. Thompson Publishing

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Books by Mahony, William K.