scholarly journals Spiritual Authenticity in a Secular Context: How Modern Postural Yoga is Searching for Legitimacy in All the Wrong Places

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-127
Author(s):  
Kelly Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
Western Society ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Yoga Practice ◽  
The West ◽  
Yogic Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spiritual Authenticity ◽  
Historical Origins ◽  
The Way

This paper examines the historical origins and spiritual context of contemporary yoga practice in the West. In an attempt to assess the spiritual significance of this somatic practice, this essay explores the way in which both critics and promoters of postural yoga frame their arguments for the value of contemporary yoga practice by showing either its disconnect from, or homogeneity with ancient Hindu traditions. By tracing the evolution of yogic practice from its scriptural origins to its contemporary manifestations, this paper argues that yoga has never been a static or perfectly defined entity. Rather, yogic practice has a long history of being re-interpreted to meet the specific spiritual needs of practitioners. Modern Postural Yoga (MPY) represents a continuation of this tradition of adaptation. Rather than being an inadequate replication of an ancient tradition, I argue that MPY is a distinctly modern practice that has been transformed to fit the contemporary spiritual needs of a secularizing and body-conscious Western society.

scholarly journals Religious Freedom Not For All: Homeland Approach

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (19) ◽  
pp. 185-188
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Zavaliy
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
State Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern History ◽  
The West ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Way

The modern history of Ukraine shows that the nation seeks to advance on the European path and meet the level of civilization development of the West. In this state of affairs, one can not ignore the rights of citizens, which are a state-building principle for European communities, namely, the primordial rights and freedoms of its citizens. The European face of Ukraine is formed from many components, including the importance of religious relations in the state, within which the freedom of citizens in general is determined. In 2015, Pope Francis recalled that religious freedom is "a fundamental right that forms the way by which we interact socially and personally with people who are around us, whose religious views may differ from ours."

Excavations in Caria

1887 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 64-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. R. Paton
Keyword(s):  
Great Part ◽  
The West ◽  
The Road ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Hill ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The Way

Mr. Newton in his History of Discoveries, p. 583, gives the following account of an excursion to the peninsula which lies to the west of Budrum (Halikarnassus) where he was then excavating:—We next proceeded to examine the hill with the level top. This hill is called Assarlik.Ascending from this gateway we passed several other lines of ancient walls, and on gaining the summit of the hill found a platform artificially levelled. There are not many traces of walls here. The sides of the hill are so steep on the north and east that they do not require walls. The platform terminates on the north-east in a rock rising vertically for many hundred feet from the valley below. The top of the rock is cut into beds to receive a tower. The view from this platform is magnificent.[After brief mention of several tombs passed in the way down, Mr. Newton proceeds:]The acropolis which anciently crowned the rock at Assarlik must have overlooked a great part of the peninsula and commanded the road from Halicarnassus to Myndus and Termera. From the number of tombs here, and their archaic character, it may be inferred that this was a fortress of some importance in very early times.

scholarly journals Meditative Revolutions? A Preliminary Approach to US Buddhist Anarchist Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-179
Author(s):  
Enrique Galvan-Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Zen Buddhism ◽  
The Self ◽  
The West ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
Buddhist Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Revolutionary Praxis ◽  
The Way

This article discusses the various shapes, inner structures and roles given to transformative and liberative practices in the work of US Buddhist anarchist authors (1960-2010). Unlike their Chinese and Japanese predecessors, who focused more on discursive parallelisms between Buddhism and anarchism or on historical instances of antiauthoritarianism within the Buddhist tradition(s), US Buddhist anarchists seem to favour practice and experience. This emphasis, characteristic of the way Buddhism has been introduced to the West,sometimes masks the way meditative techniques were used in traditional Buddhist contexts as oppressive technologies of the self. Whereas the emphasis on the inherently revolutionary nature of Buddhist practice represents a radical departure from the way those practices have been conceptualised throughout Buddhist history, it also involves the danger of considering Buddhist practice as an ahistorical sine qua non for social transformation. This is due to the fact that most early Buddhist anarchist writers based their ideas on a highly idealised, Orientalist imagination of Zen Buddhism(s). However, recent contributions based on other traditions have offered a more nuanced, albeit still developing picture. By assessing a number of instances from different US Buddhist anarchist writers, the article traces the brief history of the idea that meditation is revolutionary praxis, while also deconstructing and complicating it through historical and textual analysis.

scholarly journals Connected Material Histories: A response

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
CRAIG CLUNAS
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
First Year ◽  
The West ◽  
Hard Drive ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Act Up ◽  
The Way

In giving the very first lecture that first-year History of Art undergraduates at Oxford will hear, I usually employ the practice of giving them a sheet of paper with nothing on it but the outlines of the land masses of the globe, and ask them to draw a line round ‘the West’. The idea was inspired by a reading of Lewis and Wigen's 1997 bookThe Myth of Continents(‘justly celebrated’, as Sanjay Subrahmanyam says), and remains a useful pedagogic act, up to a point, for the reasons so clearly laid out in that book; also, it breaks the ice, it gets a buzz of conversation going in the room, it certainly foregrounds the topic, central now to art historical enquiry, of the way in which ‘representations are social facts’. But the reason I do not ask them to draw a map round ‘the East’ is that I suspect it would be too easy, or at least done too quickly, and indeed the boundaries of both ‘East’ and ‘Orient’, as ‘Europe's Other’, can be shown to have fluctuated much less than have the boundaries of what, for most Oxford students, is still, if somewhat tenuously, ‘us’ or ‘here’. Wherever ‘the East’ is, it all lies (as Subrahmanyam points out in his lecture) in that assuredly -etic part of the world called Asia. I might, in the privacy of my own hard drive, choose to categorize those European images which I need for teaching as ‘Non-Eastern’ (to balance the ‘Non-Western’ rubric on which my specialist options appear in the syllabus). But that is not a category widely used, or at least not in my own discipline of art history.

scholarly journals U-21 Concept of Fundamental Human Rights in Western and Islamic Society

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-334
Author(s):  
Rozena Hussain Shah ◽  
Mian Muhammad Ali Awais
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Principle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Islamic Society

"Human Rights are legal and social principle the society of human being. The concept of human rights is old as the history of mankind. Infact rights and obligations are compulsory for the balance of society. These reciprocal responsibilities give the strength of society. The west has no concept of human rights before the seventeenth century. In the 20th century the western society made a declaration of human rights. But in Islam human rights granted by Almighty Allah. This article aimed for the above discussion."

scholarly journals The History of the Normative Opposition of “Language versus Dialect”: From Its Graeco-Latin Origin to Central Europe’s Ethnolinguistic Nation-States

2016 ◽  
pp. 164-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Kamusella
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
A Value ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The History of the Normative Opposition of “Language versus Dialect”: From Its Graeco-Latin Origin to Central Europe’s Ethnolinguistic Nation-StatesThe concept of “a language” (Einzelsprache, that is, one of many extant languages) and its opposition to “dialect” (considered as a “non-language,” and thus subjugable to an already recognized language merely as “its” dialect) is the way people tend to think about languages in the West today. It appears to be a value-free, self-evident conception of the linguistic position. So much so that the concept of “language” was included neither in Immanuel Kant’s system of categories, nor in the authoritative Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. This paper sketches the rise of the “dialect vs language” opposition in classical Greek, its transposition onto classical Latin, and its transfer, through medieval and renaissance Latin, to the early modern period. On the way, the Greek and Latin terms for “language” (and also for “dialect”) sometimes functioned as synonyms for peoples (that is, ethnic groups), which – importantly – contributed to the rise of the normative equation of language with nation in the early nineteenth century. It was the beginning of the ethnolinguistic kind of nationalism that prevails to this day in Central Europe. Dzieje normatywnej dychotomii języka i dialektu: Od greko-łacińskich źródeł po państwa etnicznojęzykowe Europy ŚrodkowejPojęcie języka jako jednego z wielu (Einzelsprache) stawiane w diametralnej opozycji do „dialektu” (czyli „nie-języka”, który normatywnie musi zostać przyporządkowany jakiemuś już wcześniej uznanemu językowi jako jeden z jego dialektów) stanowi formę pojęciową, poprzez pryzmat której postrzega się języki i dyskutuje o nich we współczesnym świecie Zachodu. Z powodu powszechnego uznania owa forma pojęciowa wydaje się tak oczywista i wolna od nacechowania ideologicznego, że Immanuel Kant nie uwzględnił języka w zaproponowanym przez siebie systemie kategorii filozoficznych, podobnie jak i autorzy niezmiernie wpływowego dzieła z zakresu historiografii i socjologii politycznej o znamiennym tytule Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. W niniejszym artykule przedstawiam wyłonienie się opozycji języka wobec dialektu w starożytnej grece oraz jego recepcję na gruncie łaciny od starożytności rzymskiej po okres nowożytny. W ciągu wieków utarło się używanie greckich i łacińskich terminów w odniesieniu do „języka” jako synonimów na określenie ludów (czy też grup etnicznych), co we wczesnym XIX stuleciu silnie wpłynęło na wykształcenie się normatywnego zrównania języka z narodem. Stanowiło to początek fenomenu znanego pod nazwą „nacjonalizmu etnicznojęzykowego”, który na poziomie państw dominuje po dziś dzień w całej Europie Środkowej.

The Moral Crisis of the West: The Judaeo-Christian Response

2000 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
David Novak
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Moral Crisis ◽  
Western Civilisation ◽  
The Way

To speak of Jewish-Christian relations at the present time requires one to immediately recognise how different these relations are in this more secular period of the history of Western Civilisation than they were in earlier, more religious periods of that history. Jewish-Christian relations today are certainly different in character from the way they were during much of the past two millennia, when ‘Western Civilisation’ was very much a ‘Christian’ civilisation. Throughout this very long, earlier period of history, Jews related to Christians as the masters of the world in which we were continually struggling to survive and maintain our communal life.

Reception of ancient Egypt

2020 ◽  
pp. 78-96
Author(s):  
Florian Ebeling
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
The West ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The history of reception of ancient Egypt deals with the perceptions and images of ancient Egypt in the West that emerged without direct access to ancient Egyptian sources, especially without proper knowledge of the hieroglyphs. It deals with texts, images and art as part of the history of ideas and with material culture as well. It is not about the question of whether these images and concepts correspond to the historical realities in ancient Egypt, but about the question of the way in which ancient Egypt was referred to, and about the relevance of this concept in the history of the West.

Chinese Overlordship and Western Penetration in Maritime Asia: A Late Ch'ing Reappraisal of Chinese Maritime Relations

1972 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Kate Leonard
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
The West ◽  
Chinese Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Expansion ◽  
Source Materials ◽  
The Way ◽  
Wei Yuan

Historians have attached a great deal of importance to Wei Yüan's geopolitical work, the Hai-kuo t'u-chih (The illustrated treatise on the maritime kingdoms), because of its use of Western source materials and its treatment of the West. While its importance as the first major Chinese study of the West should not be minimized, this should not obscure the fact that the Treatise was primarily a reassessment of the history of China's relations with the Asian maritime world, particularly South-east Asia and India.It was as much a rediscovery of China'spast involvement in this tributary sphere as it was a discovery of the West. This paper will attempt to describe the way in which Wei Yuan became involved in the problem of the West and to analyze and describe his view of the traditional Asian maritime world and the implications of Western expansion into this sphere.

scholarly journals Rereading the History of Dargazin City in Nasuh Matrakçi Miniature Images

Asian Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-123
Author(s):  
Habib Sharafi Safa ◽  
Alireza Ali Soufi
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
The West ◽  
Traditional Architecture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

This article focuses on the miniature paintings of Nasuh Matrakçi who came to the west of Iran during the Safavid period. Matrakçi’s miniatures are among the oldest surviving images of Dargazin city, the like of which cannot be found in other travelogues and historians’ works. The surviving three images at two different settings can help us understand the urban and social status of Dargazin in the Safavid period. The findings indicate that, thanks to its Sunni residents and because of its geopolitical significance, Dargazin was of great interest to Ottoman and Safavid rulers who turned it to the governing base of the region. This played an important role in the city’s development in the way that in some areas, like the design of gardens, the traditional architecture of the Safavid period was mixed with original Persian style.

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