Death and the Enlightenment

Death and the Enlightenment PDF Author: John McManners
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 619

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Book Description

Death and the Enlightenment

Death and the Enlightenment PDF Author: John McManners
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 619

Get Book Here

Book Description


A Death on Diamond Mountain

A Death on Diamond Mountain PDF Author: Scott Carney
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 069818629X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
An investigative reporter explores an infamous case where an obsessive and unorthodox search for enlightenment went terribly wrong. When thirty-eight-year-old Ian Thorson died from dehydration and dysentery on a remote Arizona mountaintop in 2012, The New York Times reported the story under the headline: "Mysterious Buddhist Retreat in the Desert Ends in a Grisly Death." Scott Carney, a journalist and anthropologist who lived in India for six years, was struck by how Thorson’s death echoed other incidents that reflected the little-talked-about connection between intensive meditation and mental instability. Using these tragedies as a springboard, Carney explores how those who go to extremes to achieve divine revelations—and undertake it in illusory ways—can tangle with madness. He also delves into the unorthodox interpretation of Tibetan Buddhism that attracted Thorson and the bizarre teachings of its chief evangelists: Thorson’s wife, Lama Christie McNally, and her previous husband, Geshe Michael Roach, the supreme spiritual leader of Diamond Mountain University, where Thorson died. Carney unravels how the cultlike practices of McNally and Roach and the questionable circumstances surrounding Thorson’s death illuminate a uniquely American tendency to mix and match eastern religious traditions like LEGO pieces in a quest to reach an enlightened, perfected state, no matter the cost. Aided by Thorson’s private papers, along with cutting-edge neurological research that reveals the profound impact of intensive meditation on the brain and stories of miracles and black magic, sexualized rituals, and tantric rites from former Diamond Mountain acolytes, A Death on Diamond Mountain is a gripping work of investigative journalism that reveals how the path to enlightenment can be riddled with danger.

Sex Death Enlightenment

Sex Death Enlightenment PDF Author: Mark Matousek
Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing
ISBN: 9781948626255
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
In this classic memoir, a gay man living a fast-track life in NYC (working for artist Andy Warhol), escapes to India, confronts his demons, and takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride to realize his dreams and discover the true meaning of life and holiness.

The Triumph and Tragedy of the Intellectuals

The Triumph and Tragedy of the Intellectuals PDF Author: Harry Redner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351472631
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This fourth instalment of Harry Redner's tetralogy on the history of civilization argues that intellectuals have a brilliant past, a dubious present, and possibly no future. He contends that the philosophers of the seventeenth century laid the ground for the intellectuals of the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment. They, in turn, promoted a fundamental transformation of human consciousness: they literally intellectualized the world. The outcome was the disenchantment of the world in all its cultural dimensions: in art, religion, ethics, politics, and philosophy.In this fascinating study, Redner demonstrates how secularization took the sting out of both the dread and promise of an afterlife and intellectuals learned to die without the hope of immortality popularized by philosophy and religion. Ultimately, they produced the ideologies that generated the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, which subsequently exterminated these intellectuals through mass murder on a scale never before experienced. The book traces the sources of this fatal entanglement and goes on to examine the contemporary condition of intellectuals in America and the world.Wherein lies the future of the intellectuals? Redner suggest that in the present state of globalization, dominated by technocrats, experts, and professionals, their fate remains uncertain.

Murder in the Age of Enlightenment

Murder in the Age of Enlightenment PDF Author: Ryonosuke Akutagawa
Publisher: Pushkin Press Classics
ISBN: 1805330292
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Madness, murder and obsession: a stylishly original and fantastical collection of stories from an iconic Japanese writer A collection of the 7 essential Akutagawa short stories, in a vivid and elegant translation – the perfect introduction to this master of prose “A born short-story writer. . . one never tires of reading and re-reading his best works” – Haruki Murukami From a nobleman's court, to the garden of paradise, to a lantern festival in Tokyo, these 7 shrot stories offer dazzling glimpses into moments of madness, murder and obsession. A talented yet spiteful painter is given over to depravity in pursuit of artistic brilliance. In the depth of hell, a robber spies a single spider's thread being lowered towards him. When a body is found in an isolated bamboo grove, a kaleidoscopic account of violence and desire begins to unfold. These are short stories from an unparalleled master of the form. Sublimely crafted and stylishly original, Akutagawa's writing is shot through with a fantastical sensibility. This collection, in a vivid translation by Bryan Karetnyk, brings together the most essential works from this iconic Japanese writer. Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: outstanding classic storytelling from around the world, in a stylishly original series design. From newly rediscovered gems to fresh translations of the world’s greatest authors, this series includes such authors as Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Gaito Gazdanov.

Culture and the Death of God

Culture and the Death of God PDF Author: Terry Eagleton
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300203993
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Offers new observations on the persistence of God in modern times, and considers how the war on terror and a post-9/11 society has impacted atheism.

Enlightenment Portraits

Enlightenment Portraits PDF Author: Michel Vovelle
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226865683
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
A subtle and complex study of the Enlightenment, this book allows us to reflect on how nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars have constructed our views on eighteenth-century people.

The French Enlightenment and the Emergence of Modern Cynicism

The French Enlightenment and the Emergence of Modern Cynicism PDF Author: Sharon A. Stanley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107014646
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Sharon A. Stanley chronicles the emergence of a recognizably modern form of cynicism during the French Enlightenment, by discussing the work of philosophers such as Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. While recent scholarly and popular commentary has depicted cynicism as a novel, contemporary phenomenon that threatens healthy democratic functioning, this book shows that cynicism has much earlier roots and may contribute to the health of democracies.

Fire and Light

Fire and Light PDF Author: James MacGregor Burns
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250024900
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explores history’s most daring and transformational intellectual movement, the European and American Enlightenment. In this engaging, provocative history, James MacGregor Burns illuminates the two-hundred-year conflagration of the Enlightenment, when audacious questions and astonishing ideas tore across Europe and the New World. They transformed thought, overturned governments, and inspired visionary political experiments. Fire and Light brings to life the revolutionary leaders who, armed with a new sense of human possibility, created the modern world. Burns traces the origins of a distinctive American Enlightenment to men like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and their early encounters with incendiary European ideas about liberty and equality. It was these thinker-activists who framed the United States as a grand and continuing experiment in Enlightenment principles. Today the same principles have taken on new urgency around the world: in the turmoil of the Arab world, in the former Soviet Union, and in China, as well as in the United States itself. What should a nation be? What should citizens expect from their government? Who should lead, and how can leadership be made both effective and accountable? What is happiness, and what can the state contribute to it? Burns’s exploration of the ideals and arguments that formed the bedrock of our modern world shines a new light on these ever-important questions. Praise for Fire and Light “With this profound and magnificent book, Burns takes us into the fire’s center. . . . Essential for deciphering the challenges of the world we will live in tomorrow.” —Michael Beschloss, New York Times–bestselling author of Presidential Courage “James MacGregor Burns is a national treasure, and Fire and Light is the elegiac capstone to a career devoted to understanding the seminal ideas that made America—for better and for worse—what it is.” —Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author of Revolutionary Summer “[A] captivating tale. . . . Briskly and beautifully told. . . . Superb.” —Publishers Weekly

The Power of Death

The Power of Death PDF Author: Gabriel Dee
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781515019916
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
The ONLY Book You Need for Lasting Motivation, Personal Transformation and Spiritual Growth Do you want to change your life, but constantly lose motivation? Are you trying to find or transform yourself? Are you seeking spiritual enlightenment? Stop the search, and get the book now! The Power of Death will show you a revolutionary method to reach all of the above and more. This technique was invented by the Buddha, but it has not been widely used, because it seems so contradictory and radical at first. However, the lives of millions of people is the proof that it works. Although it "happened" to them by accident, now you can learn to use it consciously at will. This is the secret of the greatest spiritual teachers that they hardly talk about, but that led to their own enlightenment. You probably didn't hear about this method before, and this information is not available elsewhere in such a comprehensive form. Steve Jobs said that this was his most important tool to help him make big choices in life. It is simple, and you can do it, too. You are about to discover: How to develop lasting motivation effortlessly without willpower? How to live an authentic and meaningful life instead of just surviving? How to eradicate all of your fears, and have the courage to be yourself? Why personal development is a trap, and radical transformation is the only way? Why belief is the greatest barrier in spiritual growth, and how to go beyond it? How to recognize the different games of the ego, and stop cheating yourself? How to develop real compassion without "trying" to be a good person? This is the Master Key That Will Unlock the 7 Doors to Spiritual Growth All at Once Even if you are not interested in spirituality, the Power of Death can make you take the first step. And if you are a spiritual seeker, this can be the last step on your path. It is guaranteed to change your life one way or another. In this book, you will find out: How to wake up from the illusion that you are living in? How to develop unconditional love and deep compassion? How to be in the here and now and live the present moment? How to be grateful for every moment without trying it too hard? How to drop your ego effortlessly and finally find yourself? How to develop real non-attachment and deep acceptance? How to face death and experience your immortality? I will not only tell you why this works, but also show you how to practice it in everyday life. During my travels, I have tried almost all of the spiritual techniques in the world, and this is the most powerful one that I know of. It also played an important part on my own spiritual path that ultimately led to enlightenment. Let me share it with you!