Nectar 29

With a reverence for the universality of all religions, SRV Associations, under the auspice of its Chosen Ideals, Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Sarada Devi, and Swami Vivekananda, offers its 29th issue of Nectar of Nondual Truth into the world-wide community of truth seekers everywhere. The purpose is twofold: first, that religion aligned with philosophy get disseminated and become available to humanity in this trouble-prone day and age; second, that through this divine dispensation, the principle of Universality — the truth of all religions — gets propagated as well. For, as we often say in SRV Loka, “There is no such thing as a foreign religion; all religions are indigenous to your soul.” To this fine end, then, we are to laud and applaud all Nectar contributors towards this singular principle, writers and spiritual leaders from both different walks of life, and from various traditions as well. They are fine examples of the potential of a people united in a world of beings and societies who only grant lip-service to such high-minded causes, but seldom follow through in action and in realization. As Swami Vivekananda has pleaded, “When will man finally be friend to man?”

In Anatomy of a Rose , Sharman Apt Russell eloquently unveils the "inner life" of flowers. From their diverse fragrances to their nasty deceptions, Russell proves that, where nature is concerned, "wonder is not only our starting point, it can also be our destination." Throughout this botanical journey, she reveals that the science behind these intelligent plants-how they evolved, how they survive, how they heal-is even more awe-inspiring than their fleeting beauty. Russell helps us imagine what a field of snapdragons looks like to a honeybee, and she introduces us to flowers that regulate their own temperature, attract pollinating bats, even smell like a rotting corpse. She also delves into cutting-edge research on everything from flower senses to their healing power. Long used to ease everything from depression to childbirth, flowers are now our main line of defense against childhood leukemia and the deadly Ebola virus. In this poetic rumination, which combines graceful writing with a scientist's clarity, Russell brings together the work of botanists around the globe, and illuminates a world at once familiar and exotic.

Mirabai, a sixteenth-century Indian princess, wrote passionate love songs to Lord Krishna. Hadewijch, a thirteenth-century European Beguine, wrote of her yearning to become Love itself, to be "God with God." Each woman practiced a full-bodied, sensuously-imaged longing for love; at the same time, each also practiced certain ascetic disciplines. Spanning centuries, continents, and religious traditions, this book juxtaposes Hadewijch's and Mirabai's inextricable energies of longing and letting go as resources for a comparative theology of passionate non-attachment. Within both Hinduism and Christianity, desire and renunciation are often presented as opposites; yet, both Mirabai and Hadewijch, in their own distinct ways, illuminate the integral, tensile relationship between these concepts. Rather than choosing one or the other, each woman's dual practices of longing and letting go not only take her on an inward spiritual journey but also deeply involve her in the beauty and suffering of the wider world. Drawing out crucial differences and intriguing resonances between these two women of faith, Hillgardner develops a Hindu-Christian comparative theology that argues for an interreligious ethic of passionate non-attachment, one capacious and brave enough to hold together our own longings with the desires of others in an interconnected, fragile world.

Food preferences and tastes are among the fundamentals affecting human existence; the sociocultural, physiological and neurological factors involved have therefore been widely researched and are well documented. However, information and debate on these factors are scattered across the academic literature of different disciplines. In this volume cross-disciplinary perspectives are brought together by an international team of contributors that includes socialand biological anthropologists, ethologists and ethnologists, psychologists, neurologists and zoologists in order to provide access to the different specialisms on the topic.