Signs From The Unseen Realm

Signs From The Unseen Realm Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Signs From The Unseen Realm book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

Signs from the Unseen Realm

Author : Robert Ford Campany
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2012-05-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9780824865719

Get Book

Signs from the Unseen Realm by Robert Ford Campany Pdf

In early medieval China hundreds of Buddhist miracle texts were circulated, inaugurating a trend that would continue for centuries. Each tale recounted extraordinary events involving Chinese persons and places—events seen as verifying claims made in Buddhist scriptures, demonstrating the reality of karmic retribution, or confirming the efficacy of Buddhist devotional practices. Robert Ford Campany, one of North America’s preeminent scholars of Chinese religion, presents in this volume the first complete, annotated translation, with in-depth commentary, of the largest extant collection of miracle tales from the early medieval period, Wang Yan’s Records of Signs from the Unseen Realm, compiled around 490 C.E. In addition to the translation, Campany provides a substantial study of the text and its author in their historical and religious settings. He shows how these lively tales helped integrate Buddhism into Chinese society at the same time that they served as platforms for religious contestation and persuasion. Campany offers a nuanced, clear methodological discussion of how such narratives, being products of social memory, may be read as valuable evidence for the history of religion and culture. Readers interested in Buddhism; historians of Chinese religions, culture, society, and literature; scholars of comparative religion: All will find Signs from the Unseen Realm a stimulating and rich contribution to scholarship.

Signs from the Unseen Realm

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Buddhist legends
ISBN : 0824869605

Get Book

Signs from the Unseen Realm by Anonim Pdf

In medieval China hundreds of Buddhist miracle texts were circulated. Robert Ford Campany, one of North America's pre-eminent scholars of Chinese religion, here presents an annotated translation of the largest extant collection of miracle tales from the medieval period.

Signs from the Unseen Realm

Author : Robert Ford Campany
Publisher : Kuroda Classics in East Asian
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2012-05-17
Category : History
ISBN : UCBK:C110235741

Get Book

Signs from the Unseen Realm by Robert Ford Campany Pdf

This book contains an annotated translation of the largest existing collection of Buddhist miracle texts from China's early medieval period, Wang Yan's Records of Signs from the Unseen Realm, which were compiled around 490 CE.

An Introduction to the Sufi Path

Author : Anab Whitehouse
Publisher : Bilquees Press
Page : 422 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2018-11-06
Category : Religion
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

Get Book

An Introduction to the Sufi Path by Anab Whitehouse Pdf

By the Grace of God, my spiritual guide knew far, far more than what I have heard him say on any given occasion. Unfortunately, I have forgotten far, far more than what I remember of what has been related to me by him. Moreover, I have written far less than what I remember of what he taught me. The result of this funneling process is the present book – An Introduction to the Sufi Path. Everything that is good and correct in this book comes, by the Grace of God, through my shaykh or spiritual teacher who was willing to accept me as a reclamation project. Everything that is incorrect in An Introduction to the Sufi Path comes from my own shortcomings and ignorance. The material contained within An Introduction to the Sufi Path is intended to stimulate reflection concerning a variety of themes that are important to spiritual life in the midst of everyday life. God willing, the content given expression through the different chapters constitutes -- both individually as well as collectively -- a Sufi perspective. However, one does not have to be on the Sufi path or inclined to that path in order to engage the material in this book. Anyone with an interest in spirituality and mysticism will find, God willing, an abundance of themes within the boundaries of this work that are able to form the seeds of contemplative reflection for any faith background.

Weird Confucius

Author : Zhao Lu
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2024-03-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9781350327573

Get Book

Weird Confucius by Zhao Lu Pdf

Spanning antiquity until the present, Zhao Lu analyses the eclectic and fictitious representations of Confucius that have been widely celebrated by communities of people throughout history. While mainstream scholarship mostly considers Confucius in terms of his role as a celebrated man of wisdom and as a teacher with a humanistic worldview, Zhao addresses the weirder representations. He considers depictions of Confucius as a prophet, a fortune-teller, a powerful demon hunter, a shrewd villain of 19th century American newspapers, an embodiment of feudal evils in the Cultural Revolution, and as a cute friend. Zhao asks why some groups would risk contradicting the well-accepted image of Confucius with such representations and shows how these illustrations reflect the specific anxieties of these communities. He reveals not only how people across history perceived Confucius in diverse ways, but more importantly how they used Confucius in daily life, ranging from calming their anxiety about the future, to legitimizing a dynasty, stereotyping Chinese people, and even to forging a new sense of history.

Visions of the Rapture and Unseen Realm

Author : Glenda Dumas
Publisher : Balboa Press
Page : 164 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2016-11-30
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781504368063

Get Book

Visions of the Rapture and Unseen Realm by Glenda Dumas Pdf

The Lord shall descend from heaven with the voice of the archangel. The angel that I saw may be Michael. Michael and Gabriel are the only archangels that are mentioned in the Bible. Michael appears to have a key role in the end-time plan of God. Therefore, it may be a strong guess that Michael is the angel that I saw and communicated with about the Rapture. I also have a special message for gang members, drug abusers, adults, teenagers, and the youth. I wrote my visions down for you to know what is out there waiting for you on the other side of the veil. I peeped over and saw some things that were good and witnessed a horror that was beyond my wildest dreams. Most of you have not read the Bible, and a number of you who have, act as though you have forgotten what is in it. I often encounter people, old and young, who say that they cant understand the Bible. Therefore, I use a number of verses that are taken directly from the Bible to support the visions that I have seen. I am doing this purposely to acquaint you with a book that you all know but very seldom pick up to read. Hopefully, it will be a reminder that the Bible is inclusive of everything from the beginning of time to the end. Most of these Bible verses are self-explanatory.

Buddhism and the Body

Author : Anonim
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2023-08-28
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789004544925

Get Book

Buddhism and the Body by Anonim Pdf

Mahayana, Theravada, ancient, modern? Even at the most basic level, the diversity of Buddhism makes a comprehensive approach daunting. This book is a first step in solving the problem. In foregrounding the bodies of practitioners, a solid platform for analysing the philosophy of Buddhism begins to become apparent. Building upon somaesthetics Buddhism is seen for its ameliorative effect, which spans the range of how the mind integrates with the body. This exploration of positive effect spans from dreams to medicine. Beyond the historical side of these questions, a contemporary analysis includes its intersection with art, philosophy, and ethnography.

A Garden of Marvels

Author : Robert Ford Campany
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2015-07-31
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780824853501

Get Book

A Garden of Marvels by Robert Ford Campany Pdf

Between 300 and 600 C.E., Chinese writers compiled thousands of accounts of the strange and the extraordinary. Some described weird spirits, customs, and flora and fauna in distant lands. Some depicted individuals of unusual spiritual or moral achievement. But most told of ordinary people’s encounters with ghosts, demons, or gods; sojourns in the land of the dead; eerily significant dreams; and uncannily accurate premonitions. The selection of such stories presented here provides an alluring introduction to early medieval Chinese storytelling and opens a doorway to the enchanted world of thought, culture, and religious belief of that era. Known as zhiguai, or “accounts of anomalies,” they convey a great deal about how people saw the cosmos and their place in it. The tales were circulated because they were entertaining but also because their compilers meant to document the mysterious workings of spirits, the wonders of exotic places, and the nature of the afterlife. A collection of more than two hundred tales, A Garden of Marvels offers an authoritative yet accessible introduction to zhiguai writings, particularly those never before translated or adequately researched. This volume will likely find its way to bedside tables as well as into classrooms and libraries, just as collections of zhiguai did in early medieval times.

The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History

Author : Andrew Chittick
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 431 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : History
ISBN : 9780190937546

Get Book

The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History by Andrew Chittick Pdf

This work offers a sweeping re-assessment of the Jiankang Empire (3rd-6th centuries CE), known as the Chinese "Southern Dynasties." It shows how, although one of the medieval world's largest empires, Jiankang has been rendered politically invisible by the standard narrative of Chinese nationalist history, and proposes a new framework and terminology for writing about medieval East Asia. The book pays particular attention to the problem of ethnic identification, rejecting the idea of "ethnic Chinese," and delineating several other, more useful ethnographic categories, using case studies in agriculture/foodways and vernacular languages. The most important, the Wuren of the lower Yangzi region, were believed to be inherently different from the peoples of the Central Plains, and the rest of the book addresses the extent of their ethnogenesis in the medieval era. It assesses the political culture of the Jiankang Empire, emphasizing military strategy, institutional cultures, and political economy, showing how it differed from Central Plains-based empires, while having significant similarities to Southeast Asian regimes. It then explores how the Jiankang monarchs deployed three distinct repertoires of political legitimation (vernacular, Sinitic universalist, and Buddhist), arguing that the Sinitic repertoire was largely eclipsed in the sixth century, rendering the regime yet more similar to neighboring South Seas states. The conclusion points out how the research re-orients our understanding of acculturation and ethnic identification in medieval East Asia, generates new insights into the Tang-Song transition period, and offers new avenues of comparison with Southeast Asian and medieval European history.

The Chinese Dreamscape, 300 BCE - 800 CE

Author : Robert Ford Campany
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2022-03-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781684176427

Get Book

The Chinese Dreamscape, 300 BCE - 800 CE by Robert Ford Campany Pdf

Dreaming is a near-universal human experience, but there is no consensus on why we dream or what dreams should be taken to mean. In this book, Robert Ford Campany investigates what people in late classical and early medieval China thought of dreams. He maps a common dreamscape—an array of ideas about what dreams are and what responses they should provoke—that underlies texts of diverse persuasions and genres over several centuries. These writings include manuals of dream interpretation, scriptural instructions, essays, treatises, poems, recovered manuscripts, histories, and anecdotes of successful dream-based predictions. In these many sources, we find culturally distinctive answers to questions peoples the world over have asked for millennia: What happens when we dream? Do dreams foretell future events? If so, how might their imagistic code be unlocked to yield predictions? Could dreams enable direct communication between the living and the dead, or between humans and nonhuman animals? The Chinese Dreamscape, 300 BCE – 800 CE sheds light on how people in a distant age negotiated these mysteries and brings Chinese notions of dreaming into conversation with studies of dreams in other cultures, ancient and contemporary. Taking stock of how Chinese people wrestled with—and celebrated—the strangeness of dreams, Campany asks us to reflect on how we might reconsider our own notions of dreaming.

Icons - Imaging the Unseen

Author : Dani‰l J. Louw
Publisher : AFRICAN SUN MeDIA
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2014-11-01
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781920689124

Get Book

Icons - Imaging the Unseen by Dani‰l J. Louw Pdf

ÿ The experience of the divine has been referred to by many artists over the centuries, whether their subject was the human figure, landscape, still life or indeed religious or biblical themes. Art therefore requires a kind of openness; a willingness to mediate rather than to control. This sensitivity can best be described as humility, an obeisance to something we are part of. Therefore, to 'see' the 'unseen' in visual arts brings about awe and requires 'iconic viewing'. The spiritual realm, as portrayed by icons, has a healing quality in a world where the news and the arts are so full of tragedy and where the church's message so often sounds escapist or na‹ve.

Women in Early Medieval China

Author : Bret Hinsch
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2018-10-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9781538117972

Get Book

Women in Early Medieval China by Bret Hinsch Pdf

This important study provides the only comprehensive survey of Chinese women during the early medieval period of disunion known as the Six Dynasties, which lasted from the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty in AD 220 to the reunification of China by the Sui dynasty in AD 581.

Poet-Monks

Author : Thomas J. Mazanec
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2024-02-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781501773846

Get Book

Poet-Monks by Thomas J. Mazanec Pdf

Poet-Monks focuses on the literary and religious practices of Buddhist poet-monks in Tang-dynasty China to propose an alternative historical arc of medieval Chinese poetry. Combining large-scale quantitative analysis with close readings of important literary texts, Thomas J. Mazanec describes how Buddhist poet-monks, who first appeared in the latter half of Tang-dynasty China, asserted a bold new vision of poetry that proclaimed the union of classical verse with Buddhist practices of repetition, incantation, and meditation. Mazanec traces the historical development of the poet-monk as a distinct actor in the Chinese literary world, arguing for the importance of religious practice in medieval literature. As they witnessed the collapse of the world around them, these monks wove together the frayed threads of their traditions to establish an elite-style Chinese Buddhist poetry. Poet-Monks shows that during the transformative period of the Tang-Song transition, Buddhist monks were at the forefront of poetic innovation.

Chan Before Chan

Author : Eric M. Greene
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2021-01-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780824884437

Get Book

Chan Before Chan by Eric M. Greene Pdf

What is Buddhist meditation? What is going on—and what should be going on—behind the closed or lowered eyelids of the Buddha or Buddhist adept seated in meditation? And in what ways and to what ends have the answers to these questions mattered for Buddhists themselves? Focusing on early medieval China, this book takes up these questions through a cultural history of the earliest traditions of Buddhist meditation (chan), before the rise of the Chan (Zen) School in the eighth century. In sharp contrast to what would become typical in the later Chan School, early Chinese Buddhists approached the ancient Buddhist practice of meditation primarily as a way of gaining access to a world of enigmatic but potentially meaningful visionary experiences. In Chan Before Chan, Eric Greene brings this approach to meditation to life with a focus on how medieval Chinese Buddhists interpreted their own and others’ visionary experiences and the nature of the authority they ascribed to them. Drawing from hagiography, ritual manuals, material culture, and the many hitherto rarely studied meditation manuals translated from Indic sources into Chinese or composed in China in the 400s, Greene argues that during this era meditation and the mastery of meditation came for the first time to occupy a real place in the Chinese Buddhist social world. Heirs to wider traditions that had been shared across India and Central Asia, early medieval Chinese Buddhists conceived of “chan” as something that would produce a special state of visionary sensitivity. The concrete visionary experiences that resulted from meditation were understood as things that could then be interpreted, by a qualified master, as indicative of the mediator’s purity or impurity. Buddhist meditation, though an elite discipline that only a small number of Chinese Buddhists themselves undertook, was thus in practice and in theory constitutively integrated into the cultic worlds of divination and “repentance” (chanhui) that were so important within the medieval Chinese religious world as a whole.

Imperiled Destinies

Author : Franciscus Verellen
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2020-10-26
Category : History
ISBN : 9781684171026

Get Book

Imperiled Destinies by Franciscus Verellen Pdf

"Imperiled Destinies" examines the evolution of Daoist beliefs about human liability and redemption over eight centuries and outlines ritual procedures for rescuing an ill‐starred destiny. From the second through the tenth century CE, Daoism emerged as a liturgical organization that engaged vigorously with Buddhism and transformed Chinese thinking about suffering, the nature of evil, and the aims of liberation. In the fifth century, elements of classical Daoism combined with Indian yogic practices to interiorize the quest for deliverance. The medieval record portrays a world engulfed by evil, where human existence was mortgaged from birth and burdened by increasing debts and obligations in this world and the next. Against this gloomy outlook, Daoism offered ritual and sacramental instruments capable of acting on the unseen world, providing therapeutic relief and ecstatic release from apprehensions of death, disease, war, spoilt harvests, and loss. Drawing on prayer texts, liturgical sermons, and experiential narratives, Franciscus Verellen focuses on the Daoist vocabulary of bondage and redemption, the changing meanings of sacrifice, and metaphoric conceptualizations bridging the visible and invisible realms. The language of medieval supplicants envisaged the redemption of an imperiled destiny as debt forgiveness, and deliverance as healing, purification, release, or emergence from darkness into light.