Here is everything you ever wanted to know about community service. Ronald W. Poplau explores the major shortcomings of today's education and introduces community service as a viable means to correct them. The book is based on 11 years of a program that the State of Kansas enacted into law. The U.S. State Department later sent Poplau to Russia to share this program with Russian schools, and at any one time, one-fourth of the author's school, Shawnee Mission Northwest High School, is enrolled in the program. There is a waiting list to get in the class, and this book can show you how to create the same phenomenon in your school. This book: examines how community service affects a student's person, explores why community service is needed now in all of our schools, documents with student testimonials how service not only changes them but also the community. Poplau contends that while technology is isolating all of us, and especially young students, it cannot be forgotten that human beings were meant to bond with one another. Students need to become involved with their fellow man, and with this in mind, the mission statement and title of the book is a simple one: The Doer of Good Becomes Good. For teachers and student activity directors.

Spanning thirty years of intensive research, this book proves what many scholars could not explain: that today’s Western world must be considered the product of both Greek and Indian thought—Western and Eastern philosophies. Thomas McEvilley explores how trade, imperialism, and migration currents allowed cultural philosophies to intermingle freely throughout India, Egypt, Greece, and the ancient Near East. This groundbreaking reference will stir relentless debate among philosophers, art historians, and students.

Although the Great Anti-Cult Crusade links new religious movements to dangerous cults, brainwashing, and the need for deprogramming, Karla Poewe and Irving Hexham argue that many cults are the product of a dynamic interaction between folk religions and the teachings of traditional world religions. Drawing on examples from Africa, the United States, Asia, and Europe, they suggest that few new religions are really new. Most draw on rich, if localized, cultural traditions that are shaped anew by the influence of technological change and international linkages. With the widespread loss of belief in biblical mythology in the nineteenth century, new mythologies based on science and elements derived from various non-Western religious traditions emerged, leading to the growth and popularity of new religions and cults.

This clearly written text considers the breadth and depth of Buddhist philosophy and its applications to one's mind and life.

This book, through extensive textual study, explores the Buddha's and Buddhism's uncompromising and unflinching emphasis on the centrality of ethics as against any pernicious dogmas and metaphysical beliefs, and their attempts to causally relate moral perfection to soteriological or eschatological goal. What is most admirable about Buddhism is that it integrates the vertical development of human consciousness, for which the other is the necessary condition, with the gradual development of morality. It was this emphasis which separated Siddhartha, before he attained the Awakened Wisdom (bodhi), from his teachers - Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta - and it is for this reason that the Buddha calls himself and his Dhamma Patisotagami, i.e. going against the currents of the prevailing dogmas and pernicious beliefs. In brief, Buddhism is about overcoming of suffering, the greatest evil, through ethicization of human consciousness and conduct, which also takes care of the ethicization of the society and the universe. Besides, some of the essays of this book explore many other themes like Buddhist epistemology, nature of self, time, and intercultural.

An 'Upanisad' is a teaching session with a guru, and these thirteen texts, the 'Principal Upanisads', form a series of philosophical discourses between teacher and student that question the inner meaning of the world. Composed from around the eighth century BCE, the Upanisads have been central to the development of Hinduism, and explore the central doctrines of rebirth, karma, overcoming death, and achieving detachment, equilibrium and spiritual bliss. Speaking to the reader in direct, unadorned prose or lucid verse, they embody humanity's perennial search for truth and knowledge.

This book is a critique of western systematic theology. It borrows insights from India and other traditions; it is not a synthesis of religious traditions. The book includes two parts, method and systematics. It examines the traditional topics of systematic theology '- topics such as the existence and nature of God, revelation and reason, religious ethics and human practice, the relation of God to the world, Christology, and eschatology - and allows these topics to grow in conversation with India and to change according to dialogical insights. The book is prompted by a perceived need to cross the boundaries between western and Indian worldviews in a systematic and comprehensive way. The purpose of the book is to enable scholars worldwide to extend their theological resources and to look anew at the problems and prospects of a comparative, systematic theology.

The Svetasvataropanisad is considered to be the most beautiful of all the Upanisads, the philosophical texts of the Hindu religion. In this new translation, Devadatta Kali takes a fresh look, and works from a new premise that the Svetasvatara represents a Saivite (one of the Hindu sects) point of view. This he claims, allows its intended meaning to shine forth. The translation and commentary brings to life the seer Svetasvatara, who from time to time delights in provocation and word play, allowing the reader to share the joy of his liberated vision that all this world is an expression of the Divine. This translation aims to capture the seer's ecstatic response to the wonders of creation while pointing the reader towards the even greater wonder of its source. Devadata Kali's purpose in his translation and the commentary is to convey the vibrant immediacy of the Sanskrit original and strip away many centuries of exegetical accretions in order to make Svetasvatara's message heard as he intended--as a statement of profound insight designed to guide, inspire, and enlighten. Features of the text: 13 pages of uninterrupted fl ow of the translation of the Upanisad.6 chapters of the Upanisad in original Sanskrit with English translation and commentary.Two appendixes giving the word-by-word analysis of the Sanskrit and a complete tabulation of the correspondences with other texts and internal corresponds within the Upanisad itself.Index including bilingual references and major themes by verse.

Karma is perhaps the most famous concept in Indian philosophy, but this is the first comprehensive study of its various meanings and philosophical implications. Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions offers a harmony of approach and an underlying set of methodological assumptions: a corpus of definitions of karma, a dialectic between abstract theory and historical explanation, and an awareness of logical oppositions in theories of karma. No “solution” to the paradox of karma is offered, but the volume as a whole presents a consistent and encompassing approach to the many different, often conflicting, Indian statements of the problem. Broad in scope and richly detailed, this book demonstrates the impossibility of speaking of “the theory of karma” and supplies the basis for further study. Exploring methodological issues arising in the study of a non-Western system of soteriology and rebirth, the contributors question the interaction of medical and philosophical models of the human body, the incorporation of philosophical theories into practical religions with which they are logically incompatible, and the problem of historical reconstruction of a complex theory of human life. This title is part of UC Press’s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

Advaita Vedānta is the most important philosophical system in India. It involves a discipline of spiritual experience as well as a technical philosophy, and since the time of Samkara in the ninth century some of the greatest intellects in India have contributed to its development. In his reconstruction of Advaita Vedānta, Eliot Deutsch has lifted the system out of its historical/cultural context and has concentrated attention on those ideas which have enduring philosophical value. He has sought to formulate systematically one's understanding of what is of universal philosophical interest in Vedantic thought. Professor Deutsch's work covers the basic metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical ideas of Vedānta. Students and scholars of Western as well as of Indian philosophy will be interested in the lucid, organized manner in which the material is presented and in the fresh interpretations given. The book is written in a critical rather than simply "pious" spirit and should thus also be of interest to anyone interested in deepening his or her appreciation and understanding of the richness of Indian thought.