Geshe Michael Roach and Christie McNally have explored together the ancient cities, rare manuscripts, and oral traditions of India and Tibet which bear witness to teachings of Thomas - the disciple that Jesus sent to the east. The Eastern Path to Heaven presents the great ideas that came to those lands through Thomas, and describes how we can use authentic Christian teachings of ancient Asia to achieve six goals of life: physical health; financial security; love; happiness; freedom from aging and death; and fulfilment in the service of others. Brief, accessible, chapters each open with a quotation by Jesus from the New Testament that speaks to achieving the six goals according to the wisdom of the Eastern side of the Christian family. Brief historical summaries show how the teachings of Jesus entered India with Thomas, traveling along the routes pioneered by Alexander the Great, and then reached Tibet. These sketches utilize information from Syrian, Coptic, Greek, Tibetan, and Sanskrit manuscripts, often translated by the authors for the first time.

Tonghak, or Eastern Learning, was the first major new religion in modern Korean history. Founded in 1860, it combined aspects of a variety of Korean religious traditions. Because of its appeal to the poor and marginalized, it became best known for its prominent role in the largest peasant rebellion in Korean history in 1894, which set the stage for a wider regional conflict, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. Although the rebellion failed, it caused immense changes in Korean society and played a part in the war that ended in Japan's victory and its eventual rise as an imperial power. It was in this context of social change and an increasingly perilous international situation that Tonghak rebuilt itself, emerging as Ch’ŏndogyo (Teaching of the Heavenly Way) in 1906. During the years before Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910, Ch’ŏndogyo continued to evolve by engaging with new currents in social and political thought, strengthening its institutions, and using new communication technologies to spread its religious and political message. In spite of Korea’s loss of independence, Ch’ŏndogyo would endure and play a major role in Korean nationalist movements in the Japanese colonial period, most notably the March First independence demonstrations in 1919. It was only able to thrive thanks to the processes that had taken place in the twilight years of Korean independence. This book focuses on the internal developments in the Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo movements between 1895 and 1910. Drawing on a variety of sources in several languages such as religious histories, doctrinal works, newspapers, government reports, and foreign diplomatic reports, it explains how Tonghak survived the turmoil following the failed 1894 rebellion to set the foundations for Ch’ŏndogyo’s important role in the Japanese colonial period. The story of Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo not only is an example of how new religions interact with their surrounding societies and how they consolidate and institutionalize themselves as they become more established; it also reveals the processes by which Koreans coped and engaged with the challenges of social, political, and economic change and the looming darkness that would result in the extinguishing of national independence at the hands of Japan’s expanding empire.

In efforts to understand the human being, our history, and our future, the story takes the reader through three different continents, gleaning cultural well-being and malaise of different races. The book highlights the common bond between all human races, while exploring reasons for the perceived outer differences our modern world hurtles forward, driven as it is by powerful technological engines of change, characterized by an obsessive and often idolatrous worship of intelligence, ruminative men and women all around the world ponder in the silence of their soul the fate of humanity. In the West, depression, suicide, incomprehensible mass shootings and myriad psychological disorders litter our cultural landscape, while abject poverty ravage developing nations. We have become highly intelligent beings that cannot solve our problems, yet we inhabit a natural world created out of wisdom and much of that wisdom is not reflected in our thoughts and lifestyle Modern man's obsession with intelligence and the material world has left him a stranger to spiritual things and wisdom. Consequently, humanity is left vulnerable to inexplicable and undiagnosed suffering. in an attempt to diagnose what ails modern man, this book presents a convincing and thought-provoking argument that we have forgotten who we are, and in so doing, have built a world terribly out of order with our divine nature. By walking the reader through my Nigerian upbringing and subsequent arrival in the West, I reveal some timeless wisdom that I believe can serve as a cure for some of the things that trouble us today. This inimitable book lights a path directing us again to who we truly are. It is a timely and deft clarion call to all of us. Finding Your Way to Heaven Without a Smartphone is a mixture of autobiography, cultural inquiry and philosophy. Joseph Obidiegwu, an Igbo from Nigeria, has lived on three continents. He has the necessary perspective and wisdom to look at the world's masquerade from different angles. There is no romanticization of traditional African village life, nor is there blind acceptance of the hectic to and fro of modern life on planet Smartphone. Don Burness, Ph.D. Professor of Literature at Franklin Pierce College Author of Echoes of the Sunbird and Wanasema Keywords: Inimitable, Interesting, Insightful, Autobiographical, Philosophical, Spiritual, Cultural, Thought-Provoking, Inspiring, Life-Changing

This book sheds light on the structure of “a unity with diversity” developed in the Qing imperial formation (1636–1912) by a case study of the Qing-Tibetan encounters in the eighteenth century. By analyzing historical and ethnographical materials, the book investigates the translation of Chinese histories and stone inscriptions into Tibetan, the transformation of the landscapes at Mount Wutai and Lhasa, and the transplantation of Chinese deities and medical practices to Tibet. It demonstrates the processes in which the cosmopolitan interlocutors reified imperial integrity while expressing their diverse longings and belongings. It concludes that the Qing’s rule over its cultural others was neither simply Sinicizing nor colonizing, but a translational process in which multivocalic actors shared narratives, landscapes, and practices, while the emperor and tantric masters performed cosmic power over humans and metahumans. This book cuts across the fields of anthropology, history, Chinese Studies, and Tibetan Studies. It reflects on the concepts of sovereignty and ethnicity, and it also extends the methodological horizon of historical anthropology.

"F * ck, always going against laozi. If I say go east, you go west!" Lin Jun started swearing as he walked out of the subway. His girlfriend, the Mathematics faculty's Flower Flower Snow Wei, had always been against him. Originally, Tian Lin wanted to skip his lessons today and go climb the mountain, but Xue Wei had to go to school. This time, his plan had been completely ruined.

A riveting portrait of a rural Pennsylvania town at the center of the fracking controversy Shale gas extraction—commonly known as fracking—is often portrayed as an energy revolution that will transform the American economy and geopolitics. But in greater Williamsport, Pennsylvania, fracking is personal. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell is a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking account of what happens when one of the most momentous decisions about the well-being of our communities and our planet—whether or not to extract shale gas and oil from the very land beneath our feet—is largely a private choice that millions of ordinary people make without the public's consent. The United States is the only country in the world where property rights commonly extend "up to heaven and down to hell," which means that landowners have the exclusive right to lease their subsurface mineral estates to petroleum companies. Colin Jerolmack spent eight months living with rural communities outside of Williamsport as they confronted the tension between property rights and the commonwealth. In this deeply intimate book, he reveals how the decision to lease brings financial rewards but can also cause irreparable harm to neighbors, to communal resources like air and water, and even to oneself. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell casts America’s ideas about freedom and property rights in a troubling new light, revealing how your personal choices can undermine your neighbors’ liberty, and how the exercise of individual rights can bring unintended environmental consequences for us all.