Goddess Durga was created out of the combined power of all gods to destroy the evil demon Mahishasura who had overthrown the gods from their heavenly abode. This book details the several demons who posed a threat to the very existence of the race of the gods and man and how each one met a dastardly end at the hands of this supreme divine mother!

Parvati is an incarnation of the Divine Mother, Goddess Durga and wife of Lord Shiva. She is the gentler form of Goddess Durga and is a home-maker, with a husband and children. However, Goddess Parvati herself is very accomplished and skilled enough to fight the demons single-handedly. She too is considered to be a supreme goddess from whom other shaktis (divine energies) are derived. This book tells the tale of how Parvati won Lord Shiva as her husband and how she helped her husband during times of trouble. The book, apart from narrating wisdom tales from Indian mythology, introduces the child to the world of new words. The words have been carefully chosen by a panel of experts and are explained in detail at the end of the book in a glossary.

The Goddess of knowledge and learning, Saraswati is Lord Brahma s first and most perfect creation. She was the one who helped Lord Brahma create the universe. Saraswati is not a warrior goddess but she uses her wisdom and intellect to help the race of gods and her devotees during times of trouble sometimes by even taking on the form of a river!

Goddess Durga was created out of the combined power of all gods to destroy the evil demon Mahishasura who had overthrown the gods from their heavenly abode. This book details the several demons who posed a threat to the very existence of the race of the gods and man and how each one met a dastardly end at the hands of this supreme divine mother! The book, apart from narrating wisdom tales from Indian mythology, introduces the child to the world of new words. The words have been carefully chosen by a panel of experts and are explained in detail at the end of the book in a glossary.

A Spiritual Bloomsbury is an exploration of how three English writers—Edward Carpenter, E.M. Forster, and Christopher Isherwood—sought to come to terms with their homosexuality by engagement with Hinduism. Copley reveals how these writers came to terms with their inner conflicts and were led in the direction of Hinduism by friendship or the influence of gurus. Tackling the themes of the guru-disciple relationship, their quarrel with Christianity, relationships with their mothers and the problematic feminine, the tensions between sexuality and society, and the attraction of Hindu mysticism; this fascinating work seeks to reveal whether Hinduism offered the answers and fulfillment these writers ultimately sought. Also included is a diary narrating Copley's quest to track down Carpenter's and Isherwood's Vendantism and Forster's Krishna cult on a journey to India.

The memoirs of renowned Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard and his extraordinary journey toward inner freedom and compassion in action. Matthieu Ricard began his spiritual transformation at the age of twenty-one, in Darjeeling, India, when he met Tibetan teacher Kangyur Rinpoche, who deeply impressed the young man with his extraordinary quality of being. In Notebooks of a Wandering Monk, Ricard tells the simple yet extraordinary story of his journey and the remarkable men and women who inspired him along the way, including Kangyur Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and the fourteenth Dalai Lama, as well as great luminaries such as Desmond Tutu, Jane Goodall, and a number of leading scientists. Growing up, Ricard, the son of philosopher Jean-François Revel and artist Yahne Le Toumelin, regularly found himself in the company of intellectuals and artists such as Luis Buñuel, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Igor Stravinsky. Young Ricard loved nature, classical music, and science and dreamed of unlocking the mysteries of molecular biology. But, six years after meeting Kangyur Rinpoche, Ricard gave up a promising career in genetics to pursue a meditative life in the remote Himalayas. While spending half a century in India, Bhutan, and Nepal, he visited Tibet more than twenty times and spent years publishing rare Tibetan texts and photographing his spiritual teachers and the world in which they lived. Elegantly translated by Jesse Browner and accompanied by more than fifty full-color photographs, some of which are Ricard’s own, Notebooks of a Wandering Monk charts Ricard’s lifelong path to wisdom and compassion. This candid and reflective memoir will inspire all readers, wherever they may be on their own journey to a meaningful and well-lived life.

This is a compilation of 134 reminiscences of Swami Ranganathananda, presenting his multi-faceted personality in an inspiring as well as interesting manner. The Swami, in his long monastic career of about eight decades, had contributed in diverse fields, of which the most significant and notable one, for which he was reputed all over the world, was his contribution as the cultural and spiritual ambassador of India to the world. A very colourful picture of the Swami thus emerges out of the pages of this book. Published by Advaita Ashrama, a publication house of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, India.