This book is a collection of lectures delivered in Bangalore and Philadelphia by Swami Yatiswarananda, a disciple of Swami Brahmananda and the Vice-president of the Ramakrishna Order. The lectures were published in the magazines The Vedanta Kesari, Prabuddha Bharata, Vedanta and the West, and Vedanta for East and West. The lectures extensively deal with pursuing religious life, overcoming obstacles in religious life, achieving inner peace and harmony, and attaining religious experience. Spiritual seekers can derive the much-needed inspiration and succour from these invaluable lectures.

In this discipleship classic, Jerry Sittser uses memorable stories to illustrate how a simple effort to understand discipleship as an adventure can create a paradigm shift in your understanding of the Christian life.

What are scientific theories? Do they provide knowledge of reality? What does it mean to call ourselves atheist, theist, or agnostic? Do these words describe the complexity of belief? In Adventure in Human Knowledges and Beliefs, readers are adjudicators who “measure” the acceptability of knowledges and beliefs. Andrew Ralls Woodward leads readers through an adventure which includes the philosophy of science, religious studies, and theology. Chapters are concise, but thorough, including introductions to the works of pertinent scholars. Woodward presents readers with philosophical and theological tools used to create a mental “knowledge bar,” a measuring bar for knowledge, as well as a science and religion compatibility system between knowledge and belief communities. The conflict of science and religion is approached in a neutral fashion from the “outside” making Adventure in Human Knowledges and Beliefs a valuable resource for teenagers, adults, and working professionals from diverse ages and career backgrounds.

Well-written and engaging, this volume explores the most important questions and issues that have absorbed philosophers over the past twenty-five centuries. The quest to define reality, the problem of the existence of God, the search for moral values, the problem of evil, the discovery of the self, and other philosophical issues are clearly outlined in six thematic chapters. The ideas of ancient, medieval, and modern philosophers are integrated into a reflective and compelling narrative, which aims at emphasizing the timeless relevance of these questions and concerns and at eliciting from the readers their own responses to the issues raised. The book includes a comprehensive bibliography and two extensive glossaries that outline the theories of all the philosophers mentioned and explain the main philosophical terms used in the text. Designed specifically for undergraduate students taking their first courses in philosophy and for anybody who wishes to gain acquaintance with the subject, this comprehensive volume sheds light on the significance of the philosophical adventure.

Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe with his Vision of the Angelick World, first published in 1720 and considered a sequel to The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, is a collection of essays written in the voice of the Crusoe character. Expressing Defoe’s thoughts about many moral questions of the day, the narrator takes up isolation, poverty, religious liberty, and epistemology. Defoe also used this volume to revive his interest in poetry, not the satiric poetry of the early eighteenth century, but the more inspirational verse that appeared in some of his later works. Serious Reflections also includes an imaginative flight in which Crusoe wanders among the planets, a return to the moon voyage impulse of Defoe’s 1705 work The Consolidator. Illuminating the ideas and philosophy of this most influential of English novelists, it is invaluable for any student of the period.

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 1955.

This textbook presents a comprehensive overview of the environmental impacts of various types of adventure tourism and how these can be best managed. This volume follows on from the authors previous textbook – ‘Outdoor Recreation: Environmental Impacts and Management’ and continues the aim of developing a deeper understanding of how tourist numbers impact the environment and to provide practical solutions to these problems. Combining their own first-hand experience and research with extensive literature review the authors' present several popular adventure tourism destinations from across the globe, including the Arctic, the Himalayas, Africa, Australia and Scotland as case studies. Chapters cover the particular challenges faced by each region: including impacts on animals and birds; the spread of invasive plant species and diseases; trail impacts on vegetation; impacts on geological, historical and archaeological sites and pollution and waste issues. A discussion and evaluation of the possible management actions for minimising these impacts and how outdoor recreation tourists can be regulated concludes each chapter. This practical and engaging textbook will be invaluable to students and scholars of adventure tourism and outdoor recreation as well as practitioners and managers working in the field.

In this important book, a leading authority on Japanese religions brings together for the first time in English his extensive work on the subject. The book is important both for what it reveals about Japanese religions, and also because it demonstrates for western readers the distinctive Japanese approaches to the study of the subject and the different Japanese intellectual traditions which inform it. The book includes historical, cultural, regional and social approaches, and explains historical changes and regional differences. It goes on to provide cultural and symbolic analyses of festivals to reveal their full meanings, and examines Japanese religions among Japanese and non-Japanese communities abroad, exploring the key role of religion in defining Japanese ethnic identity outside Japan.