Parabola Magazine

THE EIGHT LIMBS OF RAVI RAVINDRA
THE WISDOM OF PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS
By Ravi Ravindra, Morning Light Press (morninglightpress.com), 2009. PP. 221. $14.95

Compiled by the Indian sage Patanjali sometime between the third century BCE and the third century CE, the Yoga Sutras are the earliest known systematic expression of the philosophy and practice of yoga. Ravindra, the Indian-born author of The Spiritual Roots of Yoga: Royal Path to Freedom and many other books, explains that these sutras, which came from ancient tradition (sutra literally means "thread"), are densely abbreviated and mnemonic. He provides commentary and exercises meant to help readers crack the code by reflecting on what it might mean to live the truths they point towards with the body, heart, and mind.

Pantanjali advises adherence to eight limbs (the ashtanga yoga he is credited with founding means "eight-limbed") to achieve inner stillness and, ultimately, kaivalya or "freedom without measure." As one sutra translated by Ravindra explains: "The eight limbs of yoga are: yama (self restraint), niyama (right observance), asana (right alignment or posture), pranayama (regulation of breath), pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi (free attention)."

Ravindra, a professor emeritus at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, elaborates that the yamas and niyamas "are moral practices for the development of conscience," which he describes as the emotional counterpart and gateway to higher consciousness. Patanjali recommends that all people at all times practice restraint or ahimsa, which Ravindra interprets not in the typical way as non-violence but as "non-violation," "non-manipulation," "non-interference." Other forms of yama and niyama include truthfulness, non-grasping, non-stealing, and containment, which most people take to mean no misuse of sex but Ravindra expands to mean "dwelling in Brahman" or "Vastness"—the point is to avoid getting caught in the wasp's nest of reactivity that cuts us off from that spaciousness.

Ravindra draws on his wide reading in multiple traditions to illuminate the often cryptic sutras. Far from an exercise in multiculturalism, however, the work that results feels intimate, seemingly aimed at leading us into the depths of a practice that might otherwise remain closed to us. "Unconditioned by time, Ishvara (God) is also the teacher of earlier seers," reads another sutra.

"We find a similar situation in the gospels," writes Ravindra. "When Christ said, 'Before Abraham was, I AM,' it completely bewildered those who heard him," he adds. "Similarly, in the Bhagavad Gita, when Krishna said that he taught the same yoga in the beginning to the Sun God, Arjuna was puzzled. When we hear of something that is eternal, we mentally substitute the notion of everlasting for the eternal. Whatever is everlasting still remains in the dimension of time…."

In Ravindra's capable hands, seekers of all traditions can discover why Patanjali's Yoga Sutras are a perennial source of eternal truths. They may also enrich their understanding of their own and other traditions along the way.

Tracy Cochran and Jeff Zaleski spoke with Ravi Ravindra during a brief trip he took to New York in Spring 2009.

Parabola: How did this book come into being?

Ravi Ravindra: There are a couple of answers. One is that my teacher Madame de Salzmann [Gurdjieff's foremost pupil and successor] was very interested in yoga. Several times she asked me questions about yoga. I had been doing yoga half a century by the time I met her but I always had the impression that I didn't have anything very insightful to say.

When I was a young man, even more arrogant than now, my standard attitude to most things that I did not understand was that if I didn't understand it there must be something wrong with the text. But somehow about this book, I could not say that. Somehow I kept thinking there is something important here but I don't understand it. That is the background—that, and Madame de Salzmann asking me questions about yoga, and now a quarter of a century later, my response to her questions.

P: Do you see a correspondence between Madame de Salzmann's approach to the Gurdjieff Work and yoga?

RR: Yes and no. Yoga literally means integration. Yoga gets used—not only these days but classically also—as anything that would lead to that integration. For example in the very first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna has a great crisis and it's called "The Yoga of Arjuna's crisis." Yoga therefore becomes the path of integration itself or any opportunity that would engage one in a really serious search that may lead to integration.

Pantanjali had very little interest in any of the physical asanas [postures]. This book is primarily concerned with psychology. Pantajali's main interest is meditation—any movement of the mind leads to distortion of reality. His main concern is how to look with a still mind.

It's not that I was trying to find support for Madame de Salzmann's teachings from the Yoga Sutras. But I discovered a long time ago what Kipling meant when he wrote, "What do they know of England who only England know?" If I'm involved in the Gurdjieff Work and I just know the language of the Work, there is a kind of restriction. So to allow something else also, not to be squeezed into the same categories always but to have something that stands on its own integrity, can bring an insight. It can throw much light on what one is otherwise engaged in. Similarly, the Work can throw much light on the Yoga Sutras.

P: Madame de Salzmann emphasized the importance of being open, of questioning.

RR: Yes, inquiry is not possible if I already know, and not knowing is not a state of ignorance. It doesn't matter what teaching one is following. I'm convinced that unless one is on the verge of leaving it, one is not searching. Because search really means you are not satisfied with the status quo.

P: Clinging to the status quo is listed among the hindrances in the Yoga Sutras.

RR: The Sanskrit term is abhinivesha, which is almost always translated as "the wish to continue living." It is the automatic tendency for continuity, momentum. A body in motion tends to stay in motion.

P: Do you think all paths ultimately come from the same primordial source?

RR: We have in India the Rig Veda, the oldest text in any Indo-European language. In it there is a classical statement—there is one truth but sages speak about it in many different ways. There in fact cannot be one path. Mystical realization is a very subtle interplay between the oneness of all there is and the uniqueness of each blade of grass. Each person is completely unique and fundamentally related with a transcendental Oneness. Therefore the paths on this side of the divide—not transcendental—have to be different.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that at the end of many births, a wise person comes to me. All there is is Krishna. This has been the realization of the greatest mystics, Meister Eckhart, St. John of the Cross, Ramakrishna. In India, this is almost a cliché. However, even Krishna could not replace a single child.

P: You have spoken about Krishnamurti, who says that everything should be given up, yet it's very difficult to give up the process that leads to the understanding I have now.

RR: I once had a similar question. Krishnamurti said "Sir, you don't need to create the air, all you need to do is open the window." I said "Sir, some windows are painted shut, they need to be scraped."

You heat a metal. After a certain temperature is reached some electron will jump but you can't predict which one. Krishnamurti was more interested in that moment when the electron jumps that you cannot predict. He wasn't interested in the preparation.

I have a tape of a talk that Krishnamurti gave in San Francisco in 1968 or ‘69. It's clear that there must have been a bunch of hippies lolling around. This is how he begins: "What is the point of talking to you? You have no discipline."

In my judgment he was actually a consummate teacher and the only thing that interested him particularly were one-on-one encounters, which becomes a little diffused in public talks. The books of those public talks are edited by other people. He never even checked them—this I can guarantee. If you really want to be more connected to what he himself felt, there are two sources, his journal and his notebook. The rest is done by a bunch of editors. What really interested Krishnamurti was that moment of illumination. He assumes all this previous—he may not even call it preparation—but that a person is disciplined. All a person has to do is look at Krishnamurti's own life, his diet, his posture. I was once in India where Krishnamurti was going to speak, and the cook was quite excited. I asked him why, since Krishnamurti speaks in English and this cook didn't know a word of English. "Well just look at him," said the cook. "Look at how he sits. Look at the way he speaks."

You see what our problem is here. We do not see the completely disciplined life Krishnamurti lived.

P: But how can we find our way?

RR: Pantanjali—in fact most of Indian tradition—is actually quite consistent. Practice is required. From that point of view, Krishnamurti was a maverick but that is also typically Indian. All our great sages are mavericks. Whatever is in the confines of rationality doesn't interest them. To imagine that illumination will result because I breathe in a certain way—generally speaking it's the other way around, that those who are illuminated will breathe in a certain way, will stand in a certain way, will walk in a certain way. However, this is again putting it in a linear way. There is always a spiral quality in most of these processes—I know a little more and I have more love for what I know and because I have more love, more knowledge comes. Then we can take a statement like, "Only those who know me can love me" and "Only those who love me can know me" [Krishna]. In linear way, which do I choose? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Well a certain kind of chicken produces a certain kind of egg; that egg is already slightly different from the previous egg, then it produces another kind of chicken. This is how the process actually takes place.

P: Yet you write that the Yoga Sutras were collected from longstanding tradition.

RR: I was very struck once when Krishnmurti asked me what was wrong with Indian culture. He said "The problem is the Brahmans have forgotten the tradition." Here was his sadness about what is happening to Indian culture. On the other hand, he taught that tradition is the problem. It was "traitorship." He used to quote from this big Oxford dictionary. It was really one of the only books he consulted. He would say, look, it is the same root for "treason" as "tradition." When Christ was betrayed by Judas, in fact he was trying to hand over the tradition, which has the same root as betrayal, as treason. Krishnmurti was very fond of quoting that—tradition is a constant betrayal.

P: But a necessary betrayal?

RR: No, he was really saying to dismiss the traditions.

P: I just realized that I'm asking you what came first, the chicken of tradition or the egg of realization. I'm going to stop now.

CAN GOD BE TRUSTED?: Faith and the Challenge of Evil (Second Edition)
BY JOHN G. STACKHOUSE, JR. INTERVARSITY PRESS (WWW.IVPRESS.COM), 2009. PP. 219. $16.00 PAPER

John Stackhouse's Can God Be Trusted? isn't just another book on that well-worn theological subject, the problem of evil. It differs by going beyond the strictly theoretical question that has preoccupied philosophers of religion. That question was given canonical form by Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion when he placed a pointed query into the mouth of Philo the skeptic: "Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?" Stackhouse does wrestle with this conceptual issue at some length. But eventually he leaves behind the detached ambience of the philosopher's drawing room to confront the desperately practical question of whether we really can trust God with our whole life in a world marred by suffering and evil.

Stackhouse is one of the more prolific and accessible writers among the current crop of American Evangelical theologians. In the case of Can God Be Trusted? perhaps just a little too accessible—which helps to explain why this second and substantially unrevised edition has found a new home with InterVarsity Press. First published more than ten years ago by Oxford, the book never quite attracted the wider and non-academic readership that its ultimately pastoral intention demands. To be clear, Stackhouse's work is not a contribution to the technical philosophical discussion of the problem of evil carried forward in recent years by top-drawer thinkers like J. L. Mackie and Alvin Plantinga, whom he references. If one is looking for an unabashedly orthodox Christian perspective on this topic that is intellectually informed yet pitched to a more popular audience, then C. S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain (1940) remains the classic in modern English. If one seeks something similar that is philosophically and theologically more up-to-date and still very readable, if less engaging, then you might give Stackhouse a try.

One of the ways Stackhouse succeeds in framing the issue to suit the sensibilities of the contemporary audience is through the comparative religions dimension he brings to the subject. In the first place, he stresses that the problem of evil only arises as a religious and existential dilemma for those who take seriously the God of "classical theism" associated with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We are reminded that it is not only atheists who deny the existence of an omnipotent and good God; so do a number of major world religions.

In some forms of Hinduism, for instance, "the Supreme reality…is truly beyond personality," such that "it makes no sense to speak of God as having a moral nature, as being good or evil or both." Stackhouse acknowledges, moreover, that the adherents of non-Christian religions will also be rationally warranted in dealing with the pain of human life, including the problem of evil, in their own ways. Yet intellectual honesty drives him to the conclusion that belief in the truth of Christianity means one must engage in respectful dialogue with other religions without succumbing to relativism.

With respect to what he calls the "intellectual" aspect of the problem, Stackhouse concedes that the manifest presence of substantial evil in the world does count as prima facie evidence against God's existence. Nonetheless, he says the case is unproven. The backbone of Stackhouse's reply is the "free will defense," a perennial among theists, and the intellectual moves he makes in this section of the book will be familiar to many. An overarching principle is the idea that God allows certain evils to occur so that our own greater good and that of the whole world may be brought about. Chief among these permitted evils are the bad choices and their effects that are made possible because God has created humans with personal freedom so that they are able to love him and one another.

Stackhouse recognizes this indispensible line of argument doesn't address fully the problem of God's responsibility for naturally occurring evils, such as earthquakes and disease. With a nod to Plantinga, Lewis, and the Bible, he speculates that demonic forces may actually lie behind these cosmic disturbances. Much or all of what we call "natural evil" would then be attributable to creaturely wickedness after all. Doubtless many today would find such a resolution fanciful, and Stackhouse isn't willing to rest here either. Instead, he allows that there may well be a residual element of natural evil in the universe for which God bears direct responsibility. Here two further points are worth mentioning. First, a certain degree of pain may simply be built into creaturely life as a consequence of our need to mature by stages into virtue and happiness. Second, our intellectual limitations as humans probably make it inevitable that a partial theodicy is the most that can be hoped for, leaving some matters permanently unexplained. If we still believe our world is good when taken for all and all, that life is worth living, then it seems rash to conclude that even this nonideal universe is simply incompatible with divine power and benevolence.

These reflections are not meant to be probative, as Stackhouse wisely acknowledges, but for the sake of argument let's grant that they succeed in defusing Hume's objection. We are still a long way off from being able to believe any of this theology is true or that it would be wise for us to stake our life on it. At this point Can God Be Trusted? aspires to change "the basic question at the heart of the issue." Stackhouse wants to help us see this problem as being finally more about love than knowledge and to do so by "bringing Jesus squarely into the picture." Beyond the restricted discourse of the "problem of evil," Christ gives us a reason to place our trust in God.

In the last analysis, Stackhouse embraces the idea that, apart from our own decision to acquire an "ultimate relationship" to God in Christ, we will never fully appreciate the Christian response to the reality of evil. But the appeal to the experience of faith doesn't leave Stackhouse otherwise resourceless. He first has a good deal to say about why our best hope for participating in the world's transformation into a place of peace and love, which we long for precisely out of our sense of pain and alienation, lies in Jesus Christ. It is the old Christian story that makes the best sense of human suffering, indeed rescues it from senselessness. Consider the biblical account of the Fall, of the incarnation of a God who shares and ultimately absorbs our pain on the Cross, of the final triumph of a divine captain over sin and death in the Resurrection. To his credit, Stackhouse sees that some warrant must be given for this amazing answer if it is to be rationally believed, and necessity therefore justifies what could otherwise feel like a detour into apologetics. There is a lacuna at this juncture in the argument notwithstanding. Stackhouse proceeds to make the case for affirming the unique claims of Christianity, but he never offers a clear rationale for the belief in God it presupposes. Yet for some the implausibility of theism will be one of the biggest stumbling blocks on the path to accepting his proposal. Be that as it may, Stackhouse courageously takes upon himself the burden of making the historicity of Jesus' Resurrection credible, marshalling his arguments with some finesse. Broadening his scope, he recommends Christianity because it gives meaning and purpose to life, coheres with our moral instincts, really works to lift burdens and change lives, and fits with our experience of the world.

In just a couple hundred pages, Can God Be Trusted? covers a lot of ground with a richness that this condensed survey fails to capture. Its combination of strong answers and intellectual modesty makes it a model of what its own author once dubbed "humble apologetics."

Regardless of whether you can agree with all of Stackhouse's opinions, one feels invited to a spirited conversation.

JESUS IN THE LOTUS: The Mystical Doorway between Christianity and Yogic Spirituality
BY RUSSILL PAUL. NEW WORLD LIBRARY (WWW.NEWWORLDLIBRARY.COM), 2009. PP. 233. $14.95 PAPER

Russill Paul argues persuasively that Christianity and Hinduism each has something valuable to offer the other, despite centuries of misunderstanding and mistrust.

A native of India, Paul now resides in Texas. He was raised Roman Catholic, and at age nineteen decided to become a Catholic monk and yogi under the guidance of Bede Griffith, a widely admired Benedictine monk and mystic who founded a Hindu-Christian ashram in India.

Paul posits that all religious and spiritual traditions have a mystical core that seeks to connect humans "directly with the Divine presence and the vast mystery of the cosmos."

Although Christianity is the world's largest religion, with more than two billion adherents, many Christians today are looking to the East, particularly to Yoga, an offshoot of Hinduism, for spiritual fulfillment, Paul says. Living with Bede Griffiths for several years proved to be a profound, life-changing experience for Paul, who immersed himself in Christian and Hindu studies and meditated for long periods. Intense spiritual encounters, including an out-of-body experience, were mixed with dark nights of the soul. At one point Paul sat in a lotus position and pleaded with God to reveal himself, using "every psychological trick in the book to convince God that I wanted to see him, face-to-face, just once."

The next day he was overwhelmed by a powerful flow of energy. He could barely speak, and hardly slept or ate for weeks. Slowly, he resumed meditation and Yoga practice, but it was months before he returned to a normal routine. "Something had shifted deep within me," he writes, "and I continued to feel the effects, like the aftermath of a psychic earthquake or tsunami." Paul is better at recounting this intense experience than in telling us what it means. Did he interpret the energy field to be God speaking to him? He does not say, other than offering a vague acknowledgement of connecting with "a beingness that was definitely not human."

The author eventually decided he was not cut out to be a monk. He decided to marry and move to America, where he leads workshops and conducts three-week pilgrimages to the Indian ashram where he lived with Bede Griffiths, who died in 1993. The ashram houses a distinctive sculpture of four life-sized figures of Jesus sitting in meditative postures inside a lotus flower, an important Hindu symbol—hence the book's title.

Paul describes the similar mystical cores of Christianity and Hinduism, as well as their differences. He offers pointed criticisms of each tradition and argues that each can learn from the other.

He says that God's command to Adam to be fruitful and multiply and to fill and subdue the earth has led to the destruction of natural resources and intolerance toward indigenous spiritual practices. Negative concepts such as the anti-Christ, the devil, eternal punishment, and sinfulness offend many people, non-Christians and Christians alike. "The language of Christianity," Paul writes, "is often divisive and unhealthy, having been formulated from a position of superiority and prejudice toward other traditions."

Conversely, Paul often is struck by the anti-Christian prejudice he encounters as he travels and meets other Yoga practitioners.

Each religion must look deeper at what the other has to offer, Paul says. Eastern traditions can learn from Christians about the importance of loving one's neighbors, while Christians can benefit from the yogic practice of deep concentration as a way to draw closer to God.

Paul offers a balanced approach regarding mysticism vs. traditional religion. "On the one hand," he writes, "many today feel a desperate need to connect with the Divine essence that exists independently of religious and spiritual traditions. On the other hand, we cannot do away with established religion. Religious traditions, as forms, really do matter."

Paul is a sharp critic of Western materialism, which is based on the joy of having possessions, contrasted with yogic spirituality, which emphasizes the simple joy of being. Even when Indians are starving or living in poverty, they "have an unmistakable joy in their sense of being that is conspicuously absent in the West."

Ancient Indian yogis and Christian mystics had much in common. Both "rebelled against institutional religion and sought a direct personal experience of the Divine."

Paul praises the work of Wayne Teasdale, an American-born lay Catholic monk and Hindu practitioner who preached that religions could remain distinctive while celebrating their common eternal truths. Before his untimely death in 2004, Teasdale wrote several books, including The Mystic Heart: Finding a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions.

The accessible wisdom of Jesus in the Lotus is similar to that found in The Mystic Heart. One comes away from this new book believing that Paul is a worthy successor to Bede Griffiths and Wayne Teasdale—two mystics who had such a lasting influence on him.

Kyoto Journal
(www.kyotojournal.org), 2009, PP 96. $12 or $39 for four issues

Every issue of the Kyoto Journal is like a beautiful paperbound book, ninety-six pages of the most beautifully and straightforwardly designed magazine around. It is the unofficial English language rag of expatriate foreigners in Japan, though it tends to cover the whole of Asian culture from nation to nation. It has been around for about two decades, and no writers or artists are ever paid for their contributions, making it one of the most consistently high-quality "open source" publications anywhere, the recipient of countless awards for content and production.

Book-length poetry is a trademark of Anne Waldman's work, and Manatee/Humanity further develops this approach. Different from many conventional books of poetry, Manatee/Humanity is presented more as a piece of radical nonfiction than as a quaint collection of rhymed musings. The book contains six sections, and while in scope they seem to reflect traditional chapters in a book of nonfiction, in name they evoke something far less predictable. Listed collectively as:

{undercurrent}
~ outer ~ day 1
~ inner ~ day 2
~secret ~ day 3
{outercurrent}
bibliography

the Table of Contents calls into question equally the conventions of nonfiction and poetry alike.

We leap and hop from Sung Dynasty China to present day Hawaii, alighting on numerous and varied points between, as we travel through Robert Aitken's new collection, Miniatures of a Zen Master. The cover's doubled image is the Chinese starting point, a painting called "A Scholar in His Study" and chosen by Aitken himself. (This information comes from Counterpoint Press; the painting is not identified in the book.) At a glance, one might expect this to be a study of small paintings by a Chinese Zen master. Instead, Aitken's juxtaposition of title and image creates an elegant parallel: his short essays, anecdotes and parables are the miniatures. And he himself, retired Roshi (or priest or abbot, although he might disapprove of such translations) of Hawaii's Diamond Sangha, is the Zen Master.

Unbounded Wholeness: Dzogchen, Bon, and the Logic of the Nonconceptual
By Anne Carolyn Klein and Geshe Tenzin
Wangyal Rinpoche. Oxford University Press (www.oup.com), 2006. PP. 424. $85

It is a rare event when a book is able to uncover some aspect of ancient knowledge that has been hidden in the recesses of prehistory. Not since the publication of Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission Through Myth by Giorgio De Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend has a book reached back so far and revealed something so fundamental in the history of consciousness. Unbounded Wholeness translates a text that dates back in stages: first to its discovery in eleventh century Tibet and then, in another leap, to the pre-Buddhist eighth-century Himalayan kingdom of Zhang Zhung and, in yet another leap, back much deeper into a prehistoric strata of human culture and intellectual development.

Wild Birds of the American Wetlands
By Rosalie Winard
Welcome Books (www.welcomebooks.com), 2008. PP. 128. $39.95

Wild Birds of the American Wetlands is significant. It is a penetratingly beautiful book with black and white photographs by artist/activist Rosalie Winard with a moving introduction by Terry Tempest Williams. To look at any picture here is to remember birds and their role in our world. To linger with any image revives our innate capacity to know we are not separate from nature. To spend time viewing each page is to be penetrated by the terrible loss of a world without birds; hence, a world without the ability to see beyond our human-centered concerns.

Further Reading
A selected list of books referenced or cited in Vol. 34, Issue 2 of Parabola

The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years
Lee I. Levine
Yale University Press 2005

“In this comprehensive history of the synagogue from the Hellenistic period through Late Antiquity, Lee Levine traces the origins and development of this dynamic and revolutionary institution. He examines a wide spectrum of issues related to ancient synagogues in Israel and the Diaspora—their architecture, art, role in the community, leadership, and liturgy, as well as their integration of social and religious patterns from the surrounding non-Jewish society. This revised paperback edition reflects the latest information in the field, drawn from a wealth of recently published material, ranging from excavation reports and monographs to articles appearing in edited volumes and scholarly journals.” –Back cover

Attaining Unlimited Life: Teachings of Chuang Tzu
Hua Ching Ni
Seven Star Communications 1989

"Master Ni draws upon his extensive training to re-work the entire book of Chuang Tzu, which is the foundation of Taoist and Zen philosophies. Hidden meanings of this ancient treasure are finally presented to modern readers." --Publisher's product description

The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Anicent Celtic Europe & Early Ireland & Wales
John T. Koch and John Carey
Celtic Studies Pulications 2000

“A new edition of an invaluable collection of literary sources, all in translation, for Celtic Europe and early Ireland and Wales. The selections are divided into three sections: the first is classical authors on the ancient celts-a huge selection including both the well-known-Herodotos, Plato, Aristotle, Livy, Diogenes Laertius, and Cicero-and the obscure-Pseudo-Scymnus, Lampridius, Vopsicus, Clement of Alexandria and Ptolemy I. The second is early Irish and Hiberno-Latin sources including early Irish dynastic poetry and numerous tales from the Ulster cycle and the third consists of Brittonic sources, mostly Welsh.” –Publisher’s product description

Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Biblical Drama of Divine Omnipotence
Jon D. Levenson
Princeton University Press 1994

“This paperback edition of Creation and the Persistence of Evil brings to a wide audience one of the most innovative and meaningful models of God for this post-Auschwitz era. In a thought-provoking return to the original Hebrew conception of God, which question accepted conceptions of divine omnipotence, Jon Levenson defines God’s authorship of the world as a consequence of his victory in his struggle with evil. Classic doctrines of God’s creation of the universe from the void do not do justice to the complexity of that hard-fought battle, which is uncertain in its outcome. Levenson traces this more flexible conception of God to the earliest Hebrew sources. He argues that Genesis 1 does not describe the banishment of evil but the attempt to contain the menace of evil in the world, a struggle that continues today.” –Back cover

A Cycle Of Myths: Native Legends From Southeast Alaska
John E. Smelcer
Salmon Run Press 2006

“Folklore. Mythology. With an introduction by the editor and a map of Alaska Native Peoples. This "collection of twenty myths is an excellent introduction into the world of southeast Alaska Native cultures.’ (--Dr. Alexandr Vaschenko) John Smelcer has dedicated his professional life to recording the traditionally oral tales of Alaskan Native peoples; his latest book contains narrative myths and legends from the Eyak, Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian Peoples of Southeast Alaska. Thoroughly enchanting as literature and crucially important, along with The Raven and the Totem and Alaska Native Oral Narrative Literature by the same editor, as a reference resource, A Cycle of Myths "keenly captures the mystical world of Alaska Native legend and lore--a world in which the supernatural is natural.’ (--Tobin Morrison)” –Publisher’s product description

Divine Sparks: Collected Wisdom of the Heart
Karen Speerstra
Morning Light Press 2005

Quotations and sayings from all paths of spiritual wisdom. From "Abundance’ to "Zoroastrianism,’ the 509 topics are arranged alphabetically. What makes this collection unique is the author’s vision of a broadly-defined spiritual spectrum — covering all the familiar topics of spirituality, but wide enough to include topics such as ambiguity, bees, chaos, fractals, gambling, humor, identity, journey, knots, living systems, stones, whales and yew trees. Believing that spirituality and creativity are intricately linked, Speerstra includes many insights on such topics as: art and artists, beauty, color, dance, icons, imagination, music, painting, poetry, sculpture, storytelling and writing. Women will find here a ready affinity with such topics as: abuse, birth, blood, care-taking, circles, depression, dreams, feminine energy, friendship, goddess, healing, home, interconnectedness, moon, play, ritual, etc. Consultants and others in business and organizational development will find wise insights on such diverse topics as: achievement, balance, communication, community, complexity, control, creativity, dialogue, discovery, entropy, failure, future, goals, innovation, knowledge, language, leaders/leadership, listening, living systems, motivation, order/disorder, possibilities, potential, quantum theory, questions, relationships, responsibility, service, synchronicity, synergy, talent, technology, values, vocation, and, of course, work.” –Publisher’s product description

The Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade
Macmillan 2004

“Among Library Journal's picks of the most important reference works of the millennium -- with the Encyclopedia Judaica and the New Catholic Encyclopedia -- Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion won the American Library Associations' Dartmouth Medal in 1988 and is widely regarded as the standard reference work in the field.

This second edition, which is intended to reflect both changes in academia and in the world since 1987, includes almost all of the 2,750 original entries -- many heavily updated -- as well as approximately 600 entirely new articles. Preserving the best of Eliade's cross-cultural approach, while emphasizing religion's role within everyday life and as a unique experience from culture to culture, this new edition is the definitive work in the field for the 21st century. An international team of scholars and contributors have reviewed, revised and added to every word of the classic work, making it relevant to the questions and interests of all researchers. The result is an essential purchase for libraries of all kinds.” –Publisher’s product description

The Gospel of Buddha
Paul Carus
Open Court 2004

The Gospel of Buddha, the classic text on Buddhism that first introduced many Westerners to Buddha and his teachings, was first published in 1894 and immediately became a worldwide bestseller. Author Paul Carus (1852-1919) collected many accounts of Buddha's life, teachings, and death, and fashioned a coherent and gripping narrative. It was easily understood and popular with Americans because it resembled a Christian "gospel." Martin Verhoeven's detailed introduction describes the circumstances surrounding Carus's achievement, and the book's relation to other strands of Buddhist teaching. This edition also includes 25 newly rediscovered paintings by the renowned Buddhist artist Yamada.” –Publisher’s product description

This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue During the Greco-Roman Period
Steven Fine
University of Notre Dame Press 1999

This work describes in detail the long and creative process by which holiness became ascribed to synagogues. The author reaches back to the earliest history of the synagogue to explore the ideological development of the synagogue as well as important trends in the history of Judaism.” –Publisher’s product description

Immram Brain: Bran's Journey to the Land of the Women
Séamus Mac Mathúna
Tübingen 1985

An edition of the old Irish tale with linguistic analysis, notes and commentary.

The Inner Kingdom: Volume 1 of the Collected Works
Bishop Kallistos Ware
St. Vladimir's Seminary Press 2000

This is a revised and expanded version of a book that has appeared in French, Italian, and Greek. It focuses on themes central to Eastern Christian worship and spiritual life and serves as an introduction to the series of six volumes of Bishop Kallistos' collected works.

The opening chapter recounts the author's journey to Orthodoxy. The next two chapters provide profound and illuminating insights on death, bereavement and resurrection in Christ, and on repentance. Chapters four through seven invite us into the world of the desert ascetics and hesychast monks. Combining scholarly rigor with practical counsels on prayers, Bishop Kallistos makes the wealth of the Orthodox tradition accessible to today's Christians. The next three chapters concern personal vocation, martyrdom, spiritual guidance, and the strange path of the fool for Christ's sake. There follows a brief essay on time and eternity. The final chapter is a challenging discussion of Origen and Ss Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac the Syrian and Silouan the Athonite, and in conversation with them Bishop Kallistos asks, "Dare we hope for the salvation of all?’” –Publisher’s product description

Ireland and the Grail
John Carey
Celtic Studies Publications 2007

“This is the first book-length study of the origins of the Grail legend to have been undertaken by a specialist in medieval Irish literature. Drawing on a detailed reexamination of the relevant texts in Irish, Welsh, Latin and French, extensive sections of which are presented in new translations, the author argues that the roots of the Grail legend are to be sought in the lost Old Irish manuscript known as the Book of Druimm Snechtai.” --Publisher's product description

Jewish Mystical Testimonies
Louis Jacobs
Schocken 1997

“A unique and inspiring collection of accounts by people who have encountered God, from Biblical times to the present.

The Schocken Book of Jewish Mystical Testimonies brings together the few accounts we have by Jewish mystics of their encounters with the divine. The sources collected in this volume--spanning two thousand years and including material from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East--include depictions of peak religious experiences and visions, examples of ecstatic prayer, and counsel on how to keep company with the divine.

Supplemented with commentary by Louis Jacobs, one of the world's most knowledgeable scholars of Jewish mysticism, these accounts offer an exciting new window on Jewish religious experience and inspiration to spiritual seekers of all persuasions.” –Publisher’s product description

Judaism in Practice: From the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Period.
Lawrence Fine
Princeton University Press 2001

“This collection of original materials provides a sweeping view of medieval and early modern Jewish ritual and religious practice. Including such diverse texts as ritual manuals, legal codes, mystical books, autobiographical writings, folk literature, and liturgical poetry, it testifies to the enormous variety of practices that characterized Judaism in the twelve hundred years between 600 and 1800 C.E. Its focus on religious practice and experience--how Judaism was actually lived by people from day to day--makes this anthology unique among the few sourcebooks available.

The volume encompasses the broad scope and complex texture of Jewish religious practice, taking into account many aspects of Jewish culture that have hitherto been relatively neglected: the religious life of ordinary people, the role and status of women, art and aesthetics, and marginalized as well as remote Jewish communities. It introduces such remarkable personalities as Moses Maimonides, Leon Modena, and Gluckel of Hameln, and presents extraordinary texts on festival practice, Torah study, mystical communities, meditation, exorcism, the practice of charity, and folk rites marking birth and death.

Representing state-of-the-art scholarship by distinguished academics from around the world, the volume includes many materials never before translated into English. Each text is preceded by an accessible introduction, making this book suitable for college and university students as well as a general audience. Whether read as a deliberate course of study or dipped into selectively for a glimpse into fascinating Jewish lives and places, Judaism in Practice holds rich rewards for any reader.” –Publisher’s product description

The Magic Orange Tree and Other Haitian Folktales
Diane Wolkstein
Schocken 1997

“When Diane Wolkstein, herself a well-known storyteller, traveled throughout the Haitian countryside in search of stories, she harvested a rich collection of twenty-seven tales, each of which is illuminated by fascinating introductory notes. From orange trees growing at the command of a child to talking fish, these stories present us with a world of wonder, delight, and mystery.” –Back cover

The Mark
Maurice Nicoll
Shambhala 1985

“Essays discuss our spiritual existence, the nature of truth, the meaning of life, human will, and individual growth.” –Publisher’s product description