Quintessentially Pure

Guide to finding words when you do not know how to spell them. Users simply look up the word by its pronunciation (without the vowels).

This book examines how sacred meaning is created, reinforced, and maintained in Hardwar, an important Hindu pilgrimage site (tirtha). Hardwar's religious identity is inextricably tied to the river Ganges. Its sacred narratives present its identity as fixed and unchanging, ignoring mundane factors such as economic, social, or technological change.

Merton, one of the rare Western thinkers able to feel at home in the philosophies of the East, made the wisdom of Asia available to Westerners. "Zen enriches no one," Thomas Merton provocatively writes in his opening statement to Zen and the Birds of Appetite--one of the last books to be published before his death in 1968. "There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while... but they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the 'nothing,' the 'no-body' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey." This gets at the humor, paradox, and joy that one feels in Merton's discoveries of Zen during the last years of his life, a joy very much present in this collection of essays. Exploring the relationship between Christianity and Zen, especially through his dialogue with the great Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki, the book makes an excellent introduction to a comparative study of these two traditions, as well as giving the reader a strong taste of the mature Merton. Never does one feel him losing his own faith in these pages; rather one feels that faith getting deeply clarified and affirmed. Just as the body of "Zen" cannot be found by the scavengers, so too, Merton suggests, with the eternal truth of Christ.

Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki was a key figure in the introduction of Buddhism to the non-Asian world. Many outside Japan encountered Buddhism for the first time through his writings and teaching, and for nearly a century his work and legacy have contributed to the ongoing religious and cultural interchange between Japan and the rest of the world, particularly the United States and Europe. This third volume ofÊSelected Works of D. T. SuzukiÊbrings together a diverse collection of SuzukiÕs letters, essays, and lectures about non-Buddhist religions and his thoughts on their relation to Buddhism, as well as his reflections on the nature of religion itself. Some of these writings have been translated into English for the first time in this volume. As a long-term resident of the United States, a world traveler, and a voracious consumer of information about all forms of religion, Suzuki was one of the foremost Japanese mediators of Eastern and Western religious cultures for nearly seven decades. An introduction by Jeff Wilson and Tomoe Moriya analyzes SuzukiÕs frequent encounters with texts and practitioners of many religions, considers how events in SuzukiÕs lifetime affected his interpretations of Christianity, Shinto, and other traditions, and demonstrates that his legacy as a scholar extends well beyond Buddhism.

This volume provides a broad cross-section of Merton's work as an essayist, collecting pieces that are characteristic examples of his astonishing output and the fantastic breadth of his interests. The essays range from the wisdom of the desert fathers to the novels of Faulkner and Camus, from interreligious dialogue to racial justice.

"Branche examines a wide variety of Latin American literature and discourse to show the extent and range of racist sentiments throughout the culture. He argues that racism in the modern period (1415-1948) was a tool used to advance Spanish and Portuguese expansion, colonial enterprise, and the international development of capitalism"--Provided by publisher.