An idealized view of the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk might be described according to the doctrinal demand for emotional detachment and, ultimately, the cessation of all desire. Yet monks are also enjoined to practice compassion, a powerful emotion and equally lofty ideal, and live with every other human feeling—love, hate, jealousy, ambition—while relating to other monks and the lay community. In this important ethnography of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Jeffrey Samuels takes an unprecedented look at how emotion determines and influences the commitments that laypeople and monastics make to each other and to the Buddhist religion in general. By focusing on "multimoment" histories, Samuels highlights specific junctures in which ideas about recruitment, vocation, patronage, and institution-building are dynamically negotiated and refined. Positing a nexus between aesthetics and affect, he illustrates not only how aesthetic responses trigger certain emotions, but also how personal and shared emotions, at the local level, shape notions of beauty. Samuels uses the voices of informants to reveal the delicately negotiated character of lay-monastic relations and temple management. In the fields of religion and Buddhist studies there has been a growing recognition of the need to examine affective dimensions of religion. His work breaks new ground in that it answers questions about Buddhist emotions and the constitutive roles they play in social life and religious practice through a close, poignant look at small-scale temple and social networks. Throughout, Samuels makes the case for the need to account for emotions in making intelligible the behavior of religious participants and practitioners. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork that includes numerous interviews as well as an examination of written and visual sources, Attracting the Heart conveys the manner in which Buddhists describe their own histories, experiences, and encounters as they relate to the formation and continuation of Buddhist monastic culture in contemporary Sri Lanka. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of religion, Buddhist studies, anthropology, and South and Southeast Asian studies.

James Carter, accessing previously untapped sources, tells the story of Tanxu's life and gives first-person immediacy to one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history.

Most people have the same fundamental yearnings and questions inside of them. Most of us agree, the most common desire by far is to love and to be loved. And yet for so many people, love - in its many forms - poses the most difficult challenge of all. Your Magnetic Heart reveals the nature of the mysterious force of charisma and attraction which is present in us all and which determines the course of our relationships and our lives. German seminar leader, life-coach and author Ruediger Schache introduces the spiritual and psychological concept of the "heart magnet" and how readers can attune themselves and get in touch with it to find their true life path. This important process is explained by revealing ten essential secrets which emphasize self-reflection. The description of each secret is accompanied by practical advice, a number of real-life case histories, and insights from age-old and new spiritual figures, seers and thinkers. Those who embrace these concepts can develop a new consciousness and improve their inner clarity, outer relationships, and fortune. By understanding the force of the heart magnet within them, readers can learn to attract precisely those people and events into their lives that they have been longing for.

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Shows readers how to prepare themselves emotionally and spiritually as a prerequisite to a fulfilling relationship, through cultivating four essential qualities of the soul--faith, intention, trust, and surrender. By the author of A Lifetime of Love. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.