Refiguring the Body provides a sustained interrogation of categories and models of the body grounded in the distinctive idioms of South Asian religions, particularly Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The contributors engage prevailing theories of the body in the Western academy that derive from philosophy, social theory, and feminist and gender studies. At the same time, they recognize the limitations of applying Western theoretical models as the default epistemological framework for understanding notions of embodiment that derive from non-Western cultures. Divided into three sections, this collection of essays explores material bodies, embodied selves, and perfected forms of embodiment; divine bodies and devotional bodies; and gendered logics defining male and female bodies. The contributors seek to establish theory parity in scholarly investigations and to re-figure body theories by taking seriously the contributions of South Asian discourses to theorizing the body.

One thousand years ago, in the valley of Kashmir, a great Tantric master named Kshemaraja wrote his masterpiece: the Pratyabhijnahrdayam, which means "The Essence of the Recognition Philosophy". This text was a concise primer, written to introduce spiritual seekers to the Recognition philosophy in less formally philosophical, more approachable language. What Kshemaraja created turned out to be one of the world's great spiritual masterpieces, breathtaking in its brevity but stunning in its power. It came to be considered equivalent to scripture itself by later generations, because of its undeniable inspiration. This book expounds the subtleties of this spiritual and philosophical classic. One of the most powerful and revelatory spiritual masterpieces of world history, the Pratyabhijnahrdayam is one of the primary sources for the study and practice of nondual Tantrik Yoga, and it has never been accurately translated or fully explained until now.

Book I Samadhi Pada This book is a Study Guide for the first of the four books of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. It contains the original Sanskrit text with transliteration, English translation, and a word by word breakdown of the translation. There is a thorough commentary on each sutra, which is based firmly in classical yoga, yet written with the Western student in mind. There is an introduction and a comprehensive glossary of the Sanskrit terms used in the text.

In this benchmark five-volume study, originally published between 1922 and 1955, Surendranath Dasgupta examines the principal schools of thought that define Indian philosophy. A unifying force greater than art, literature, religion, or science, Professor Dasgupta describes philosophy as the most important achievement of Indian thought, arguing that an understanding of its history is necessary to appreciate the significance and potentialities of India's complex culture. Volume III offers an examination of the Bhaskara school of philosophy, the Pancaratra, the Arvars, the Visistadvaita school of thought, the philosophy of Yamunacarya, the Ramanuja school of thought, Nimbarka's philosophy, the philosophy of Vijnana Bhiksu, and the philosophical speculations of some of the selected Puranas.

This volume presents waried essays exploring women's voices, agencies and aesthetics in the traditional handling of chilbearing. Ayurveda as it comprehends reproduction, sohars (birth songs), birth narratives cord-cutters, dais' knowledge and compensation systems, as well as analyses of biomedical dominance and erasure of indigenous knowledge all provide a peek bechind the purdah in this critical reclamation of tradition.

The Truth of The Matter is an oracle of soul wisdom that reinterprets the power of living your best life yet by invoking courage to move beyond the illusion of death. In 2009 my brother committed suicide. My life was broken into a million shards and I struggled to find anything that would help me get through it. I looked everywhere for guidance but nothing seemed to get the to Truth of The Matter; that even though it hurt beyond words, deep down somewhere, I kept hearing this reassuring very subtle voice that whispered everything is going to be ok. Six years later I decided to take matters into my own hands and write about my personal experience of losing a sibling to suicide. A journey that surprised me, beyond belief, of the spiritual guidance and help that is infinitely available to us all, when we just listen. Drawing on my Ayurvedic training further assisted in gaining a deeply peaceful and restorative understanding of our collective existence as Creation itself as we are continuously unfolding within a realm where life and death are brother and sister and are united forever as one within each of us.

In ancient India, when people wanted to teach spiritual lessons, they did so through symbolic stories. The Bhagavad Gītā is one such story. Gītā refers to poems that are sung and Bhagavad means God or Divine Presence. So the Bhagavad Gītā is known as the Song of God. The full e-publication of the Bhagavad Gītā has been divided into three separate e-books mirroring the three volumes of the original print version. Volume 2, Chapters VII-XII, focuses on Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of devotion.

The present work is a defense of the Tantra, of which Sastra the author is an adherent and a polemic, undertaken in the interests of Hindu orthodoxy in its Sakta and Tantrika form against secularism on the one hand, and on the other the religious eclecticism and various reforming movements, of which, when the book was first written, the Brahmasamaj was a leading type. In fact, in parts the book reads like an orthodox Catholic protest against modernism and is thus interesting as showing how many fundamental principles are common to all orthdox forms of belief, whether of West or of East. The author of the Tantratattva (on which this translation is based)is a well-known Tantrik Pandit, preacher, and secretary of the Sarvamgalasabha of Benares, who knew no English. His work, which is written in Bengali, may therefore be taken to be an accurate popular statement of modern orthodox views on the subject treated by him. The word Tattva is a very comprehensive one, which is by no means always easy to translate. The author has rendered the title of the book as Principles of Tantra, though, may be, it should be Subjects of Tantra. The work deals with chosen topics of Tantra. This, however, also involves a statement of certain fundamental principles which govern Sastrik teaching on the subjects dealt with, and this as well as the contents of possible future volumes must be the justification for giving the book ambitious title.

This exceptional work is a study of the interreligious views of Raja Rammohun Roy - the 19th century's premier Hindu reformer, theologian, and polemicist – whose many initiatives heralded a rebirth of Hindu identity, both in India and abroad. The momentum of Roy's initiatives continued thereafter in all of India's efforts in religious, social and political transformation. His works and ideas awakened a self-awareness to discover the past, making it relevant to the present and visualizing a promising future. Herein is discussed Roy's meeting with both Islam and Christianity, an encounter that sharpened the Hindu mind to come to terms with these two vigorous Abrahamic faiths - one of which held a long and checkered history in India and the other, the faith of colonial domination.