A guide to Buddhist ritual, drawing on research in cultural studies and psychology. Approaching Enlightenment uses the Sevenfold Puja as a basis for understanding ritual activities, symbols and implements. More than a book ‘about’ Buddhist ritual, this is a personal guide to assist the reader move more deeply ‘into’ its practice and benefit from its fruits.

This volume examines the historical basis of the debate over sudden versus gradual approaches to enlightenment in Chinese Buddhism seeing it as part of a recurrent polarity in Chinese history and thought. Sudden and Gradual includes essays by Luis O. Gomez on the philosophical implications of the debate in China and Tibet, Whalen Lai on Taodheng`s theory of sudden enlightenment, Neal Donner on Chih-i`s system of T`ien-t`ai, John R. McRae on Shen-Hui`s sudden enlgihtenment` and its precedents in Northern Ch`an, Peter N. Gregory on Tsung-.i`s theory of sudden enlightenment .

Debate over the meaning of 'Enlightenment' began in the eighteenth century and has continued unabated until our own times. This period saw the opening of arguments on the nature of man, truth, on the place of God, and the international circulation of ideas, people and gold. Did the Enlightenment mean the same for men and women, for rich and poor, for Europeans and non-Europeans? In the second edition of her book, Dorinda Outram addresses these, and other questions about the Enlightenment. She studies it as a global phenomenon, setting the period against broader social changes. This new edition offers a fresh introduction, a new chapter on slavery, and new material on the Enlightenment as a global phenomenon. The bibliography and short biographies have been extended. This accessible synthesis of scholarship will prove invaluable reading to students of eighteenth-century history, philosophy, and the history of ideas.

About 2500 years ago the Buddha realized a new technology for achieving enlightenment. This document reports on a major enhancement of his achievement. As the Buddha indicated, enlightenment is not achieved in one step - it is approached gradually. Based on the pioneering work of Dr. David R. Hawkins, we've found that the systematic daily practice of alignment with a higher power has brought much higher levels of consciousness to practitioners. These higher levels of consciousness have enhanced general happiness, equanimity, and raised the practitioners closer to enlightenment. The purpose of this book is to describe the daily practice and to encourage others to explore it.

James Melton examines the rise of the public in 18th-century Europe. A work of comparative synthesis focusing on England, France and the German-speaking territories, this a reassessment of what Habermas termed the bourgeois public sphere.

The Enlightenment, an eighteenth-century philosophical and cultural movement that swept through Western Europe, has often been characterized as a mostly secular phenomenon that ultimately undermined religious authority and belief, and eventually gave way to the secularization of Western society and to modernity. To whatever extent the Enlightenment can be credited with giving birth to modern Western culture, historians in more recent years have aptly demonstrated that the Enlightenment hardly singled the death knell of religion. Not only did religion continue to occupy a central pace in political, social, and private life throughout the eighteenth century, but it shaped the Enlightenment project itself in significant and meaningful ways. The thinkers and philosophers normally associated with the Enlightenment, to be sure, challenged state-sponsored church authority and what they perceived as superstitious forms of belief and practice, but they did not mount a campaign to undermine religion generally. A more productive approach to understanding religion in the age of Enlightenment, then, is to examine the ways the Enlightenment informed religious belief and practice during the period as well as the ways religion influenced the Enlightenment and to do so from a range of disciplinary perspectives, which is the goal of this collection. The chapters document the intersections of religious and Enlightenment ideas in such areas as theology, the natural sciences, politics, the law, art, philosophy, and literature.

“The revolutionary” book of “Western and Eastern approaches to psychological and spiritual development” is combined with a text on overcoming challenges (Yoga Journal). Essence, H. A. Almaas’s groundbreaking book weaving together modern psychology and ancient spiritual teaching is offered in this special edition with an introduction addressing contemporary obstacles on the journey to enlightenment. The Elixir of Enlightenment is directed toward students on the path who are frustrated by either the spiritual or psychological barriers that Western life can present. Almaasdiscusses the values and shortcomings of spiritual training, and explores why an impasse may occur. Then he reveals how a precise understanding of your own personality can free your inner resources so that your essential being can lead you toward enlightenment.