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Author: Sudhir Kakar
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9780140272499
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
The time is the fourth century AD, the golden age of Indian history. The locale: an ashram in the woods a little outside Varanasi. Every morning, Vatsyayana, author of the Kamasutra, recounts stories from his childhood and youth to a young pupil who plans to write the great sage's biography. Little is known of Vatsyayana's life, and the young scholar puts the pieces together in his mind along with relevant slokas of erotic wisdom from the Kamasutra, which he has learnt by heart. The story that unfolds is fascinating. Vatsyayana's mother Avantika and her sister Chandrika are famous courtesans in a brothel at Kausambi. From them and their various lovers Vatsyayana gains his first indelible impressions of sexual artifice. With characteristic insight, Kakar plumbs the psychological depths of a plethora of characters who are at various stages of discovering their sexual identities. What emerges is a powerful narrative of lust and sensuality imbued with an old-world charm and a surprising sense of irony.
Author: Sudhir Kakar
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9780140272499
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
The time is the fourth century AD, the golden age of Indian history. The locale: an ashram in the woods a little outside Varanasi. Every morning, Vatsyayana, author of the Kamasutra, recounts stories from his childhood and youth to a young pupil who plans to write the great sage's biography. Little is known of Vatsyayana's life, and the young scholar puts the pieces together in his mind along with relevant slokas of erotic wisdom from the Kamasutra, which he has learnt by heart. The story that unfolds is fascinating. Vatsyayana's mother Avantika and her sister Chandrika are famous courtesans in a brothel at Kausambi. From them and their various lovers Vatsyayana gains his first indelible impressions of sexual artifice. With characteristic insight, Kakar plumbs the psychological depths of a plethora of characters who are at various stages of discovering their sexual identities. What emerges is a powerful narrative of lust and sensuality imbued with an old-world charm and a surprising sense of irony.
Author: Raphael A. Cadenhead
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520297962
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
Although the reception of the Eastern Father Gregory of Nyssa has varied over the centuries, the past few decades have witnessed a profound awakening of interest in his thought. The Body and Desire sets out to retrieve the full range of Gregory’s thinking on the challenges of the ascetic life by examining within the context of his theological commitments his evolving attitudes on what we now call gender, sex, and sexuality. Exploring Gregory’s understanding of the importance of bodily and spiritual maturation for the practices of contemplation and virtue, Raphael A. Cadenhead recovers the vital relevance of this vision of transformation for contemporary ethical discourse.
Author: Sudhir Kakar
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1468307770
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 150
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Book Description
Ram Das Baba, as his devotees call him, is the son of a devout Brahmin family. He spends a lifetime seeking spiritual knowledge and his journey is filled with illuminating visions, severe tribulations, and an unwavering faith. His destiny as a highly evolved Sadhu is fulfilled through ordeals of monastic bliss, tantric awakening, madness, and transexuality. But as his life nears its end he meets a young man who belongs to a very different India and a profound relationship develops.
Author: Tito Colliander
Publisher: St Vladimir's Seminary Press
ISBN: 9780881410495
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
"Way of the Ascetics is a rich, compact introduction for modern readers to the Eastern Christian spiritual tradition that has been an inspiration to millions for centuries. These compassionate and insightful reflections on self-control and inner peace are meant to lead the readers to fuller union with God. The author makes a generous selection of succinct yet profound extracts from the spiritual Fathers and provides an illuminating commentary and practical applications for daily devotion. He tempers austerity with common sense, warmth, and even humor, as he urges us on our journey toward God. Written for lay persons living fully in the world as much as for clergy, Way of the Ascetics is an excellent resource for daily meditation, authentic spiritual guidance, and a revitalized religious life."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Author: Geoffrey Galt Harpham
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226316920
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
In this bold interdisciplinary work, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that asceticism has played a major role in shaping Western ideas of the body, writing, ethics, and aesthetics. He suggests that we consider the ascetic as "the 'cultural' element in culture," and presents a close analysis of works by Athanasius, Augustine, Matthias, Grünewald, Nietzsche, Foucault, and other thinkers as proof of the extent of asceticism's resources. Harpham demonstrates the usefulness of his findings by deriving from asceticism a "discourse of resistance," a code of interpretation ultimately more generous and humane than those currently available to us.
Author: Annalisa Boyd
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781936270958
Category : Mothers
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Book Description
Annalisa Boyd knows motherhood--its challenges, its joys, and its potential for spiritual growth. In this prayer book she offers a wide selection of prayers mothers can use to intercede for their families as well as to grow in virtue themselves.
Author: Gurcharan Das
Publisher: India Allen Lane
ISBN: 9780670087372
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A riveting account of love and desireIndia is the only civilization to elevate kama-desire and pleasure-to a goal of life. Kama is both cosmic and human energy, which animates life and holds it in place. Gurcharan Das weaves a compelling narrative soaked in philosophical, historical and literary ideas in the third volume of his trilogy on life's goals: India Unbound was the first, on artha, 'material well-being'; and The Difficulty of Being Good was the second, on dharma, 'moral well-being'. Here, in his magnificent prose, he examines how to cherish desire in order to live a rich, flourishing life, arguing that if dharma is a duty to another, kama is a duty to oneself. It sheds new light on love, marriage, family, adultery and jealousy as it wrestles with questions such as these: How to nurture desire without harming others or oneself? Are the erotic and the ascetic two aspects of our same human nature? What is the relationship between romantic love and bhakti, the love of god
Author: Catherine Benton
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791482618
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
God of Desire presents Sanskrit tales of the Indian deity Kāmadeva as he battles the ascetic god Śiva, assists the powerful goddess Devī, and incarnates as the charming son of Kṛṣṇa. Exploring the imagery and symbolism of the god of desire in art and ritual, Catherine Benton reflects on the connection of Kāmadeva to parrots, makaras (gharials), and apsarases (celestial nymphs), and to playful devotional rituals designed to win his favor. In addition to examining the Hindu literature, Benton also highlights two Buddhist forms of Kamadeva, the demonic Māra, who tries to persuade the Buddha to trade enlightenment for the delights of a woman, and the ever-youthful Mañjuśri, who cuts through ignorance with the bodhisattva sword of wisdom. Tales of Kāmadeva from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions present desire as a powerful force continually redefining the boundaries of chaos and order and gently pulling beyond the ephemeral lure of passionate longings.
Author: Madhavi Menon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789387693289
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
'Elegant, lucid and funny, this book will appeal to as many readers as there are desires.'--Shohini Ghosh 'The history of desire in India, ' writes Madhavi Menon in this splendid book, 'reveals not purity but impurity as a way of life. Not one answer, but many. Not a single history, but multiple tales cutting across laws and boundaries.' In Bhakti poetry, Radha and Krishna disregard marital fidelity, age, time and gender for erotic love. In Sufi dargahs, pirs (spiritual guides) who were married to women are buried alongside their male disciples, as lovers are. Vatsyayana, author of the world's most famous manual of sex, insists that he did not compose it 'for the sake of passion', and remained celibate through the writing of it. Long hair is widely seen as a symbol of sexuality; and yet, shaved off in a temple, it is a sacred offering. Even as the country has a draconian law to punish homosexuality, heterosexual men share the same bed without comment. Hijras are increasingly marginalized; yet gender has historically been understood as fluid rather than fixed. Menon navigates centuries, geographies, personal and public histories, schools of philosophy, literary and cinematic works, as she examines the many--and often surprising--faces of desire in the Indian subcontinent. Her study ranges from the erotic sculptures of Khajuraho to the shrine of the celibate god Ayyappan; from army barracks to public parks; from Empress Nur Jahan's paan to home-made kohl; from cross-dressing mystics to androgynous gods. It shows us the connections between grammar and sex, between hair and war, between abstinence and pleasure, between love and death. Gloriously subversive, full of extraordinary analyses and insights, this is a book you will read to be enlightened and entertained for years.
Author: Virginia Burrus
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812200721
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Has a repressive morality been the primary contribution of Christianity to the history of sexuality? The ascetic concerns that pervade ancient Christian texts would seem to support such a common assumption. Focusing on hagiographical literature, Virginia Burrus pursues a fresh path of interpretation, arguing that the early accounts of the lives of saints are not antierotic but rather convey a sublimely transgressive "countereroticism" that resists the marital, procreative ethic of sexuality found in other strands of Christian tradition. Without reducing the erotics of ancient hagiography to a single formula, The Sex Lives of Saints frames the broad historical, theological, and theoretical issues at stake in such a revisionist interpretation of ascetic eroticism, with particular reference to the work of Michel Foucault and Georges Bataille, David Halperin and Geoffrey Harpham, Leo Bersani and Jean Baudrillard. Burrus subsequently proceeds through close, performative readings of the earliest Lives of Saints, mostly dating to the late fourth and early fifth centuries—Jerome's Lives of Paul, Malchus, Hilarion, and Paula; Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Macrina; Augustine's portrait of Monica; Sulpicius Severus's Life of Martin; and the slightly later Lives of so-called harlot saints. Queer, s/m, and postcolonial theories are among the contemporary discourses that prove intriguingly resonant with an ancient art of "saintly" loving that remains, in Burrus's reading, promisingly mobile, diverse, and open-ended.
