Shifting Stones, Shaping the Past PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Shifting Stones, Shaping the Past PDF full book. Access full book title Shifting Stones, Shaping the Past by Catherine Becker. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Catherine Becker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199359393
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Get Book Here
Book Description
In a wide-ranging exploration of the creation and use of Buddhist art in Andhra Pradesh, India, from the second and third centuries of the Common Era to the present, Catherine Becker shows how material remains and visual experiences shape and reveal essential human concerns. Shifting Stones, Shaping the Past begins with an analysis of the ornamentation of Andhra's ancient Buddhist sites, such as the lavish limestone reliefs depicting scenes of devotion and lively narratives on the main stupa at Amaravati. As many such monuments have fallen into disrepair, it is temping to view them as ruins; however, through an examination of recent state-sponsored tourism campaigns and new devotional activities at the sites, Becker shows that the monuments are in active use and even ascribed innate power and agency. Becker finds intriguing parallels between the significance of imagery in ancient times and the new social, political, and religious roles of these objects and spaces. While the precise functions expected of these monuments have shifted, the belief that they have the ability to effect spiritual and mental transformation has remained consistent. Becker argues that the efficacy of Buddhist art relies on the careful attention of its makers to the formal properties of art and to the harnessing of the imaginative potential of the human senses. In this respect, Buddhist art mirrors the teaching techniques attributed to the Buddha, who often engaged his pupils' desires and emotions as tools for spiritual progress.
Author: Catherine Becker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199359393
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Get Book Here
Book Description
In a wide-ranging exploration of the creation and use of Buddhist art in Andhra Pradesh, India, from the second and third centuries of the Common Era to the present, Catherine Becker shows how material remains and visual experiences shape and reveal essential human concerns. Shifting Stones, Shaping the Past begins with an analysis of the ornamentation of Andhra's ancient Buddhist sites, such as the lavish limestone reliefs depicting scenes of devotion and lively narratives on the main stupa at Amaravati. As many such monuments have fallen into disrepair, it is temping to view them as ruins; however, through an examination of recent state-sponsored tourism campaigns and new devotional activities at the sites, Becker shows that the monuments are in active use and even ascribed innate power and agency. Becker finds intriguing parallels between the significance of imagery in ancient times and the new social, political, and religious roles of these objects and spaces. While the precise functions expected of these monuments have shifted, the belief that they have the ability to effect spiritual and mental transformation has remained consistent. Becker argues that the efficacy of Buddhist art relies on the careful attention of its makers to the formal properties of art and to the harnessing of the imaginative potential of the human senses. In this respect, Buddhist art mirrors the teaching techniques attributed to the Buddha, who often engaged his pupils' desires and emotions as tools for spiritual progress.
Author: Alexander Berzin
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1559397381
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 200
Get Book Here
Book Description
Kalachakra is a system of highest tantra practice for overcoming the limitations imposed by historical, astrological, and biological cycles so as to become a Buddha for the benefit of all. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other great Tibetan teachers have been conferring the Kalachakra initiation in the West, empowering prepared practitioners to engage in its meditations. Large numbers of people also attend this initiation as interested observers and gain inspiration for their spiritual growth. Introduction to the Kalachakra Initiation explains on a practical level and in everyday language the theory of tantra, the vows, commitments, and their implications, the factors to consider in deciding if one is ready to attend a Kalachakra initiation as a participant, how to visualize during the initiation, and the most important thoughts and feelings for participants and observers at each step of the empowerment. In preparing this guidebook, Alexander Berzin has done a great service to everyone interested in the Kalachakra initiation. It will help people to prepare for the ceremony and understand the essential points of each step of the procedure.
Author: Daniel Pinchbeck
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0767907434
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Get Book Here
Book Description
A dazzling work of personal travelogue and cultural criticism that ranges from the primitive to the postmodern in a quest for the promise and meaning of the psychedelic experience. While psychedelics of all sorts are demonized in America today, the visionary compounds found in plants are the spiritual sacraments of tribal cultures around the world. From the iboga of the Bwiti in Gabon, to the Mazatecs of Mexico, these plants are sacred because they awaken the mind to other levels of awareness--to a holographic vision of the universe. Breaking Open the Head is a passionate, multilayered, and sometimes rashly personal inquiry into this deep division. On one level, Daniel Pinchbeck tells the story of the encounters between the modern consciousness of the West and these sacramental substances, including such thinkers as Allen Ginsberg, Antonin Artaud, Walter Benjamin, and Terence McKenna, and a new underground of present-day ethnobotanists, chemists, psychonauts, and philosophers. It is also a scrupulous recording of the author's wide-ranging investigation with these outlaw compounds, including a thirty-hour tribal initiation in West Africa; an all-night encounter with the master shamans of the South American rain forest; and a report from a psychedelic utopia in the Black Rock Desert that is the Burning Man Festival. Breaking Open the Head is brave participatory journalism at its best, a vivid account of psychic and intellectual experiences that opened doors in the wall of Western rationalism and completed Daniel Pinchbeck's personal transformation from a jaded Manhattan journalist to shamanic initiate and grateful citizen of the cosmos.
Author: Edward A. Arnold
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1559393300
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 498
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Kalacakra Tantra (Kalacakra means "wheel of time") is a tradition of Buddhist theory and practice whose root text treats a fantastic expanse of knowledge ranging from observations of the cosmos to investigations of meditative states and vital bodily energies. In the Tibetan-speaking world, a public Kalacakra initiation remains the most sought-after event in the life of a devout Buddhist. The Fourteenth Dalai Lama has long had a strong connection with the Kalacakra Tantra; he brought the initiation to the West in 1981, performing it in the United States, Switzerland, Spain, and Australia. This volume has been created to celebrate his long involvement with the Kalacakra teachings. The twenty-five contributors, scholars who have made tantric studies their specialty, have contributed translations of works by great Indian and Tibetan Kalacakra masters, analyses of historical figures, methods of practice, essays on medicine ritual expertise, and ethical discipline. The collection also includes practical advice for Western students and practitioners from contemporary Tibetan Kalacakra masters.
Author: Rnam-rgyal Grwa-tshang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Buddhism
Languages : en
Pages : 318
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Nichos Nunez
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135304947
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 169
Get Book Here
Book Description
First published in 1997. ‘Anthropocosmic Theater is a name which covers a deep theatrical proposition which gives back to dramatic space its participatory capacity. The research, design and production of participatory theatre offers the spectator a cultural dynamic which, with five minutes of instruction, trains him and sustains him so that he can have his own experience because at this stage of evolution we cannot ignore the fact that the vitality and internal spell of any artist manifestation is no longer the heritage of any particular group or clan, but rests beneath the skin of any human being. The participatory dynamics contained in this book are the fruit of fifteen years wok at the UNAM's Taller de Investigacion Teatral’- Nicolas Nunez. This text traces Nunez's research with Grotowski and Strasberg, at the Old Vic in London and in Nahuatlan and Tibetan theatre, to arrive at his design for a unique participatory theatre form. A textbook for students of theatre in Mexico, this volume provides a practical guide to Nunez's ritual/theatrical 'actions' as well as supplying a philosophical context for a work which has resounding implication for theatre in contemporary life.
Author: Pema Namdol Thaye
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781634527279
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 176
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Kurt Behrendt
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN: 1588397823
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Get Book Here
Book Description
A mandala is a diagram of the universe—a map of true reality intended to provide a focus for Buddhist religious practice and inspire the devout. This book highlights the distinctive Tibetan approach to creating mandalas, exploring how it crossed over from India into Tibet, and how continuous exchanges of art and ideas between the two cultures, led by monks and spiritual teachers, gave rise to a uniquely Tibetan style of Buddhist imagery. Featuring more than one hundred paintings, sculptures, and ritual objects, this superbly illustrated volume reflects the dazzling complexities of the Tibetan imagery that has provided a foundation for mandalas through the centuries. Most notably, a mesmerizing installation by the Tibetan American artist Tenzing Rigdol (b. 1982), specially created for the accompanying exhibition and published here for the first time, offers contemporary audiences a way of interrogating and understanding their world and underscores how this ancient tradition remains a vibrant living practice.
Author: Khedrup Norsang Gyatso
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861717422
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 733
Get Book Here
Book Description
The premiere volume of Thupten Jinpa's thirty-two-volume Library of Tibetan Classics series, inaugurated to coincide with the Dalai Lama's conferral of the initiation rite of Kalacakra in Toronto in April 2004. The Kalacakra, or "wheel of time," tantra likely entered Indian Mahayana Buddhism around the tenth century. In expounding the root tantra, the Indian master Pundarika, one of the legendary Kalki kings of the land of Shambhala, wrote his influential Stainless Light.Ornament of Stainless Light is an authoritative Tibetan exposition of this important text, composed in the fifteenth century by Khedrup Norsang Gyatso, tutor to the Second Dalai Lama. One of the central projects of Kalacakra literature is a detailed correlation between the human body and the external universe. In working out this complex correspondence, the Kalacakra texts present an amazingly detailed theory of cosmology and astronomy, especially about the movements of the various celestial bodies. The Kalacakra tantra is also a highly complex system of Buddhist theory and practice that employs vital bodily energies, deep meditative mental states, and a penetrative focus on subtle points within the body's key energy conduits known as channels. Ornament of Stainless Light addresses all these topics, elaborating on the external universe, the inner world of the individual, the Kalacakra initiation rites, and the tantric stages of generation and completion, all in a highly readable English translation.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Tibet Autonomous Region (China)
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Get Book Here
Book Description
