scholarly journals Jainism, Yoga, and Ecology: A Course in Contemplative Practice for a World in Pain

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Miller
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Contemplative Practice ◽  
Main Section ◽  
Pedagogical Approach ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Introductory Course

This article proposes an introductory course to Jainism vis-à-vis the categories of yoga and ecology. Following a short introduction, the main section of this paper introduces the contents of the syllabus for this upper division undergraduate theological studies course. Students will learn not only the history and philosophy of Jainism, but will also undertake basic Jain contemplative practices. Contemplative practice is used not merely as a technique of self-care, but rather, following some of Jainism’s foundational textual sources, first and foremost as a method for helping students to form a sense of ethical relationship and empathy with the world around them. Using such a pedagogical approach, which I situate as a specific form of “high-impact” learning, I suggest that at the completion of the course students will be better equipped to respond to our shared social and environmental crises. This article serves as both an introduction of this course to the academic community, as well as an invitation to scholars and professors of South Asian religious traditions to adopt the pedagogical approach proposed herein.

A Dictionary of Sikh Studies

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pashaura Singh
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
South Asian Studies ◽  
Northern India ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Over 350 entries This new dictionary provides accessible definitions of the terms that the growing number of students of Sikhism will encounter. It covers beliefs, practices, festivals, sacred sites, and principal languages, as well as the social and religious processes through which Sikhism has evolved. A major focus is the teachings of the founder of Sikhism, Gurū Nānak, and doctrinal developments under subsequent Gurūs. Incorporating the 500-year history of Sikhism, from its birth in northern India to its more recent spread around the world, it covers the interplay between the Sikh tradition and other religious traditions, including Hindu and Sufi. It is an invaluable first reference for students and teachers of Sikhism, religious studies, South Asian studies, philosophy, and the related disciplines of history, sociology, and anthropology, as well as for all practising Sikhs and anyone with an interest in Sikh religion and culture.

scholarly journals THORPEX Research and the Science of Prediction

2017 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 807-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. B. Parsons ◽  
M. Beland ◽  
D. Burridge ◽  
P. Bougeault ◽  
G. Brunet ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Research Program ◽  
Weather Prediction ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Predictive Skill ◽  
High Impact Weather

Abstract The Observing System Research and Predictability Experiment (THORPEX) was a 10-yr, international research program organized by the World Meteorological Organization’s World Weather Research Program. THORPEX was motivated by the need to accelerate the rate of improvement in the accuracy of 1-day to 2-week forecasts of high-impact weather for the benefit of society, the economy, and the environment. THORPEX, which took place from 2005 to 2014, was the first major international program focusing on the advancement of global numerical weather prediction systems since the Global Atmospheric Research Program, which took place almost 40 years earlier, from 1967 through 1982. The scientific achievements of THORPEX were accomplished through bringing together scientists from operational centers, research laboratories, and the academic community to collaborate on research that would ultimately advance operational predictive skill. THORPEX included an unprecedented effort to make operational products readily accessible to the broader academic research community, with community efforts focused on problems where challenging science intersected with the potential to accelerate improvements in predictive skill. THORPEX also collaborated with other major programs to identify research areas of mutual interest, such as topics at the intersection of weather and climate. THORPEX research has 1) increased our knowledge of the global-to-regional influences on the initiation, evolution, and predictability of high-impact weather; 2) provided insight into how predictive skill depends on observing strategies and observing systems; 3) improved data assimilation and ensemble forecast systems; 4) advanced knowledge of high-impact weather associated with tropical and polar circulations and their interactions with midlatitude flows; and 5) expanded society’s use of weather information through applied and social science research.

scholarly journals The Dynamics of Islamic Ideology with Regard to Gender and Women’s Education in South Asia

Asian Studies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-52
Author(s):  
Forkan ALI
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Women's Education ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Muslim Identity ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Asian Society ◽  
Historical Practices

The article presents an investigation on certain anthropological-social aspects and the social organization of women with a focus on female education and women’s rights in Islam in South Asia, and especially in the subcontinent. It starts with the Moghul period and then turns to the colonial era and contemporary developments. Through the movement for independence from colonial rule of Britain, the Muslim identity in the South Asian region rose in a state of transformation, reform and development. This occurred due to several factors that encouraged the regeneration and reviewing of Indian society in response to the condemnation, discrimination and chauvinism of their colonial rulers and their deep-seated legacy. Women of the society, who were censured to be subjugated by the native men as entitled by colonial rulers, empowered this transformation by taking direct and indirect participation in it even though patriarchal norms and mind-sets have been a durable feature of South Asian society, cutting across faith communities and social strata, including the Hindu, Buddhist and other non-Islamic traditions on the subcontinent. While religious arguments are generally used in efforts to preserve the asymmetrical status of men and women in economic, political, and social arenas, this investigation attempts to show that religious traditions in South Asia are not monolithic in their perceptions of gender and women’s education. The structure of gender roles in these traditions is a consequence of various historical practices and ideological influences. Today, there is a substantial variability within and between religious communities concerning the social status of women. At different times and in different milieus, religious points of view have been deployed to validate male authority over women and, in opposition, to call for more impartial gender relations. 

scholarly journals Mindfulness and Hasidic Modernism

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-62
Author(s):  
Don Seeman ◽  
Michael Karlin
Keyword(s):  
Contemplative Practice ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
Buddhist Modernism ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Mindfulness Practices

Amid growing interest in mindfulness studies focusing on Buddhist and Buddhism-derived practices, this article argues for a comparative and ethnographic approach to analogous practices in different religious traditions and to their vernacular significance in the everyday lives of practitioners. The Jewish contemplative tradition identified with Chabad Hasidism is worth consideration in this context because of its long-standing indigenous tradition of contemplative practice, the recent adoption of ‘mindfulness’ practices or terminology by some Hasidim, and its many intersections with so-called Buddhist modernism. These intersections include the personal trajectories of individuals who have engaged in both Buddhist and Hasidism-derived mindfulness practices, the shared invocation and adaptation of contemporary psychology, and the promotion of secularized forms of contemplative practice. We argue that ‘Hasidic modernism’ is a better frame than ‘neo-Hasidism’ for comparative purposes, and that Hasidic modernism complicates the taxonomies of secularity in comparable but distinctive ways to those that arise in Buddhist-modernism contexts.

scholarly journals A New Research Economy: Socio-technical framework to open up lines of credit in the academic community

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurel Haak ◽  
Sarah Greene ◽  
Kristen Ratan
Keyword(s):  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Professional Success ◽  
Lines Of Credit ◽  
Collaborative Innovation ◽  
New Research ◽  
Technical Framework ◽  
Fixed Standard

Journal articles have been the gold standard for research and scholarly communication. Specifically, measurements of publication and citation, particularly in high-impact journals, have long been the key means of accruing credit for researchers. In turn, these credits become the currency through which researchers acquire funding and achieve professional success. But, like global trade, tying in to a fixed standard limits wealth distribution and innovation. It is time for the research community to attribute credit for contributions that reflect and drive collaborative innovation, rewarding behaviors that produce better research outcomes.

scholarly journals Architecture and Living Traditions Reflected in Wooden Rafters of Śrīvilliputtūr Temple

1970 ◽  
Vol 78 ◽  
pp. 229-266
Author(s):  
Deepak John Mathew ◽  
Parthiban Rajukalidoss
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Architectural Drawings ◽  
Architectural Drawing ◽  
Doctoral Thesis ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
South Asian Art ◽  
The Temple

The present article cursorily examines the wooden images set in exterior hall of the Vaṭapatraśāyī complex. The temple priests told me these images were part of an old temple car, tēr that existed in the nineteenth century. A collection of 135 wooden sculptures is packed in this hall of which select specimens are reported. Each image is supposed to be housed in a vimāna. The unique features of the images vis-à-vis their architectural setting is investigated. It is understood the different Mūrtis appearing in the sculptural illustrations are likely to represent the presiding gods of Vaiṣṇava divyadeśas at Śrīvilliputtūr, Māliruñcōlai, Araṅkam/Śrīraṅgam, Vēṅkaṭam/Tirumala-Tirupati, Dvārakā, Śālagrāma and so on. The vimāna typologies seem to represent the models popular in South Asian art. Architectural drawing of the examined specimens is designed to facilitate better understanding of the religious traditions of the Indian subcontinent. Parthiban’s doctoral thesis on the architectural setting of the Śrīvilliputtūr includes a survey of the sculptural wealth of the Great Temple (Tamil peruṅkōyil) dedicated to Āṇṭāḷ and Vaṭapatraśāyī. A number of architectural drawings are presented to pinpoint the programme of images within the macro twin-temple and the micro maṇḍapas or other parts where icons are accommodated.

The Body–Mind Challenge: Theology and phenomenology in Bengal-Vaishnavisms

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (6) ◽  
pp. 2080-2108
Author(s):  
SUKANYA SARBADHIKARY
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Sexual Experience ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Asian Religions ◽  
Body Complex ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Hindu Deity

AbstractRecent studies of Asian religious traditions have critiqued Western philosophical understandings of mind–body dualism and furthered the productive notion of mind–body continuum. Based on intensive fieldwork among two kinds of devotional groups of Bengal—claimants to an orthodox Vaishnavism, who focus on participating in the erotic sports of the Hindu deity-consort Radha-Krishna in imagination and a quasi-tantric group, which claims to physically apprehend Radha-Krishna's erotic pleasures through direct sexual experience—I demonstrate that, although these devotional groups stress on combating theologies, with emphases respectively on the ‘mind’ and the ‘body’, in their narrations of religious experiences, however, both groups allude to rarefied phenomenological states of cognition and embodiment. So, while influenced by ideas of (mental) ‘purity’ and (bodily) ‘actuality’, respectively, practices of both groups rely on similar states of mind–body continuum. So I argue that the mind–body complex has intensely nuanced articulations in the discursive and experiential domains of these non-Western religious contexts. Through my analyses of the texts and embodiments of these opposed devotional groups, I show that theology gets both organically entangled with as well as challenged by phenomenological experiences. I further argue that explorations in the tenor of religious studies sharply enrich the anthropology of religiosities. Also, such engagements between theology and anthropology have been relatively lacking and need more emphasis in studies of contemporary South Asian religions.

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