Mother Of Mayavati

This is the biography of Mrs. Charlotte Elizabeth Sevier, one of the foremost Western disciples of Swami Vivekananda. Obeying the command of her guru, she left her own home in England, and, along with her husband, devoted her life to establish and nurture the Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati in the lofty heights of Himalayas, dedicated to the practice of Advaita Vedanta. Published by Advaita Ashrama, a branch of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, India, this groundbreaking work is the first biography of Mrs. Sevier, and underscores the struggles, achievements, and convictions of this great woman, who was truly the 'Mother of Mayavati'.

From the Wolfson History Prize–winning author of The Man on Devil’s Island, the definitive biography of Vivekananda, the Indian monk who shaped the intellectual and spiritual history of both East and West. Few thinkers have had so enduring an impact on both Eastern and Western life as Swami Vivekananda, the Indian monk who inspired the likes of Freud, Gandhi, and Tagore. Blending science, religion, and politics, Vivekananda introduced Westerners to yoga and the universalist school of Hinduism called Vedanta. His teachings fostered a more tolerant form of mainstream spirituality in Europe and North America and forever changed the Western relationship to meditation and spirituality. Guru to the World traces Vivekananda’s transformation from son of a Calcutta-based attorney into saffron-robed ascetic. At the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, he fascinated audiences with teachings from Hinduism, Western esoteric spirituality, physics, and the sciences of the mind, in the process advocating a more inclusive conception of religion and expounding the evils of colonialism. Vivekananda won many disciples, most prominently the Irish activist Margaret Noble, who disseminated his ideas in the face of much disdain for the wisdom of a “subject race.” At home, he challenged the notion that religion was antithetical to nationalist goals, arguing that Hinduism was intimately connected with Indian identity. Ruth Harris offers an arresting biography, showing how Vivekananda’s thought spawned a global anticolonial movement and became a touchstone of Hindu nationalist politics a century after his death. The iconic monk emerges as a counterargument to Orientalist critiques, which interpret East-West interactions as primarily instances of Western borrowing. As Vivekananda demonstrates, we must not underestimate Eastern agency in the global circulation of ideas.

This book is a compilation of the teachings of Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi collected from various sources. The teachings, grouped under suitable headings, present a clear, detailed guidance for spiritual living leading to God-realisation. The teachings, issuing forth from her own holy life, will help the readers derive inspiration, guidance and solace and help them progress in their spiritual lives.

A keenly vibrant and grateful world of conscious living beings who revere religion, philosophy, and spirituality, and who count themselves as lovers of Divine Reality on earth, has recently completed celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of that incomparable soul, Swami Vivekananda. And by the looks of it, it will take much more than another 150 years for the world to awaken to just who it was who came amongst them in that august form. Was it Buddha? Was it Lord Siva? Was it Jesus come again? Or was it an integrated combination of these great souls, including others, who graced this material loka – an atmic amalgam of earth-shaking proportions and ramifications? To answer more fully these intriguing questions, inquiry into the lives of a few of the Western women who met him in his recent incarnation as the Divine Lord coming into human form, attended by powerful incarnations of Shakti bent upon lifting up the very physical level of existence itself into transcendent spiritual dimensions, can be made. And that is also what Nectar of Nondual Truth aspires to in this issue, replete with articles by some of today’s followers of this exceptional personage, many of them women. The early herald of this Western contingent of fearless and faithful female followers was Sister Nivedita, whose own 150 year Sesquicentennial is upon us this year. By her given family title, Margaret Noble, she was well-named even in English, being of noble bearing and qualities, both.

The spiritual career of the sixth president of the Ramakrishna Order, a monk initiated by the Holy Mother and given the ochre robe by Swami Vivekananda, throws a flood of light on the formative period of the Ramakrishna Movement.

Today’s globalized society faces some of humanity’s most unprecedented social and environmental challenges. Presenting new and insightful approaches to a range of these challenges, the timely volume before you draws upon individual cases of exemplary leadership from the world’s Dharma traditions—Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism. The volume's authors refer to such exemplary leaders as “beacons of Dharma,” highlighting the ways in which each figure, via their inspirational life work, provide us with illuminating perspectives as we continue to confront cases of grave injustice and needless suffering in the world. Taking on difficult contemporary issues such as climate change, racial and gender inequality, industrial agriculture and animal rights, fair access to healthcare and education, and other such pressing concerns, Beacons of Dharma offers a promising and much needed contribution to our global remedial discussions. Seeking to help solve and alleviate such social and environmental issues, each of the chapters in the volume invites contemplation, inspires action, and offers a freshly invigorating source of hope.

'How do gender constructions transform religious experiences?' 'What is the role of bodily materiality in ethics and epistemology?' 'How does rethinking gender and sexuality force us to reconceptualise settled ontological frameworks?' This collection provides the first research resource to Indian philosophical gender issues, exploring a variety of texts and traditions from Indian philosophy where the treatment of gender is dynamic and diverse. Organised around three central themes - the gender dynamics of enlightenment in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions; the simple binary opposition of genders in Indian traditions; the ways in which symbolic representations of gender differ from social realities in Hindu and Buddhist practice – a team of respected scholars discuss feminist readings, examinations of femininity and masculinity, as well as queer and trans identities, representations, and theories. Beginning with the Vedic tradition and ending with sections on Sri Ramakrishna and Gandhi, this wide-ranging handbook encourages fresh inquiry into classic philosophical questions. Offering critical analyses relevant to literary, cultural and religious studies, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy and Gender opens up new ways of understanding gender and South Asian philosophy.