Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Religion & Spirituality

"There are no unsacred places," the poet Wendell Berry has written. "There are only sacred places and desecrated places." What might it mean to behold the world with such depth and feeling that it is no longer possible to imagine it as something separate from ourselves, or to live without regard for its well-being? To understand the work of seeing things as an utterly involving moral and spiritual act? Such questions have long occupied the center of contemplative spiritual traditions.

Zen can only be understood through practice. Until you put your own body and breath into it, it doesn’t begin to take hold in your life. Wake Up is a deeply useful guide to Zen Buddhism, presenting the core teachings and simple practices that you can incorporate every day to engage your heart and mind. In Buddhism, Zen is an ancient tradition that focuses on discovering truth and being mindful through meditation. Living with greater awareness and reflection will help you remain happier and better-balanced in everything you do - and this book can show you the way.

In Hitler, God, and the Bible, international evangelist and bestselling author Ray Comfort exposes Adolf Hitler's theology and abuse of religion as a means to seize political power and ultimately instigate World War II and genocide.

This fascinating study mines the depths of Hitler's beliefs and convincingly argues that without Hitler's misuse of Christianity the Third Reich would not have had its legendary rise, resulting in the deaths of more than six million Jews.

Religion in India can appear to be a confusing tangle of myths, with many different gods and goddesses worshipped in countless forms.This complexity stems from a love of storytelling as much as anything else, but it is only the surface expression of Indian faith. Beneath can be found a system of unifying beliefs that have guided the lives of ordinary families for generations. Here, one of the most profound philosophers of India explains these and other related concepts intrinsic to the Hindu philosophy of life.

The setting is the beginning of an Amish settlement in colonial America in the forests of eastern Pennsylvania. There, a young Amish couple, Hans and Kate Zug, are in their ninth year of marriage, still waiting to have a child. Then, one April morning, Kate finds a Native infant, wrapped in deerskin and placed next to the spring where she went to fill her water bucket.

In these chapters, the Karmapa shares his vision for bringing social action into daily life, on a scale we can realistically manage through the choices we make every day - what to buy, what to eat, and how to relate honestly and bravely with our friends and family and coworkers. His fresh and encouraging perspective shows us that we have the strength to live with kindness in the midst of the many challenges we face as socially and environmentally conscious beings.

This book brings together 99 meditations to better understand the stories, symbols and rituals of that adorable elephant-headed Hindu god who removes hurdles and brings prosperity and peace. Known variously as Ganapati, Gajanana, Vinayaka or Pillayar, he can help all of us score a century in the game called life.

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, there has been an overwhelming demand for information about Islam, and recent events - the war in Iraq, terrorist attacks both failed and successful, debates throughout Europe over Islamic dress, and many others - have raised new questions in the minds of policymakers and the general public. This newly updated edition of What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam is the best single source for clearly presented, objective information about these new developments, and for answers to questions about the origin and traditions of Islam.

Thich Nhat Hanh illuminates the path to peace through practices of gratitude and daily affirmations, including a "peace treaty" and the "diet for a mindful society". Practical and highly accessible, Touching Peace: Practising the Art of Mindful Living is an essential guide for mindful living in today’s world.

Whenever you’re ready to take five - on your commute, between appointments, or after dinner - 5-Minute Daily Meditations offers quick and easy guidance for instant wisdom, clarity, and calm. These short and accessible daily meditations allow you to practice mindfulness any day, anytime, and anywhere. With 365 daily meditations on everything from emotions and fears to forgiveness and love, 5-Minute Daily Meditations is a go-to guide for mindful living when life gets busy.

A selection of beautiful and practical pieces of advice from the Quran, the Prophet PBUH, and Islam’s great scholars on repentance, guidance, and purification. This book is designed to serve as a source of hope and strength for those going through difficult times, while providing numerous important pieces of knowledge and guidance for all listeners and all times.

This incisive history upends the complacency that confines anti-Judaism to the ideological extremes in the Western tradition. With deep learning and elegance, David Nirenberg shows how foundational anti-Judaism is to the history of the West. Questions of how we are Jewish and, more critically, how and why we are not have been churning within the Western imagination throughout its history. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; Christians and Muslims of every period; even the secularists of modernity have used Judaism in constructing their visions of the world.

Cunning Plans collects several of NYT best-selling author Warren Ellis' lectures on the nature of the haunted future and the secrets of deep history, given in recent years at events in London, New York, Los Angeles, and Berlin.

Hindus regard Goddess Durga as the foremost and most revered primeval divine power of the entire cosmos. Goddess Durga eliminates the demons of darkness and ignorance. The Durga Chalisa is an excellent ode in forty verses describing the greatness of the goddess. It describes all the forms of the goddess and also her glories. It also tells about her elimination of asuras like Mahishasura, Shumbh and Nishumbh, Madhu-Kaitabh, and others and restoring peace in the world.

When conflicts become entrenched over generations, the language of war infiltrates everyday life, concealing destruction and hardening positions. Nowhere is this truer than in the Middle East. Award-winning author Raja Shehadeh explores the politics of language and the language of politics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reflecting on the walls that they create - legal and cultural - that confine today's Palestinians just like the borders, checkpoints and so-called "Separation Barrier".

Our lives have become so busy that we are living in a constant state of go, go, go. What did you do last Thursday? What about two weeks ago Monday? Our days are so consumed with emails, telephone calls, errands, status updates, texts, and tweets that entire days go by without one single moment of joy. And we wonder why we are stressed out, anxiety-ridden, tired, walking zombies.

Raised on Charles Baudelaire, A Clockwork Orange, and fine Bordeaux in 1970s Lebanon, Darina Al-Joundi was encouraged by her unconventional father to defy all taboos. As the bombs fell, she lived an adolescence of excess and transgression, defying death in nightclubs. The more oppressive the country became, the more drugs and anonymous sex she had, fueling the resentment by day of the same men who would spend the night with her. As the war dies down, she begins to incur the consequences of her lifestyle. On his deathbed, her father's last wish is for his favorite song, "Sinnerman" by Nina Simone, to be played at his funeral.

Shiva, ‘the destroyer’ among the Hindu trinity (of gods), is depicted in many contradictory manners. He is an ascetic who wears animal skin, his body smeared with ashes. Contradictory to his wild nature, he is also depicted as having a family, with a beautiful wife and two children. There are many more such varied representations of Shiva, the most prominent of these being the Linga and the Nataraja. The author, Devdutt Pattanaik, introduces listeners to these varied aspects and representations and then sets about interpreting them.

The world's three largest faiths all find a common root in one man: Abraham. Breaking new ground, David Rosenberg portrays Abraham as a man whose whole life, and therefore his legacy, is informed by the Sumerian culture that produced him. Abraham is a brilliant literary excavation of the ancient cultures from which our modern world has grown.

Drawing inspiration from philosophy, history, and literature, Martha C. Nussbaum takes us to task for our religious intolerance, identifies the fear behind it, and offers a way past fear toward a more equitable, imaginative, and free society, through the consistent application of universal principles of respect for conscience.