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This chapter defines two abstract systems of salvation called Karma and Grace. It then asks the question: On philosophical grounds alone, which is superior? Five criticisms that defenders of Karma might make against Grace are discussed, as well as five arguments that can be made against Karma. It is impossible to answer the question definitively without bringing in metaphysical questions like whether God exists, but the tentative conclusion is that Grace is superior.

This chapter was originally written as a guide for teachers in Britain responsible for teaching Philosophy of Religion to Advanced Level Students. The “A” Level examination is taken at age 18 in Britain and this chapter was first published in the journal Dialogue in November 2003. The chapter explores the wide range of beliefs held in contemporary society giving both the case for extinction on naturalistic grounds as well as spelling out the importance for world religion of belief in life after death. It explores the case for dualism in the writings of leading British philosophers. It looks at Resurrection in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as the importance of the law of Karma in the religions of the East. It outlines the philosophical arguments for life after death in Christian philosophy, and examines the empirical evidence for reincarnation with special to the Tibetan and Pure-land traditions of Buddhism. The chapter ends with an examination of Near-death experiences and their possible significance.

On her drive back to Washington from LA, the author stops at the University of California at Berkeley, her old alma mater. It was here that the low-grade anxiety she suffered from as a child first burst through to full-blown panic, terrifying her. One by one, she visits all the Buddhist centers that surround campus and absorbs what they have to teach her. She comes to understand that with a Buddhist perspective, her difficult college years have a much more complicated source than she ever imagined. What she learns dismantles everything she thought she knew about why and who she was, leaving an explanation both more vast and straightforward than she believed possible.

This chapter explores a selection of Johnnie To's works where the flaws qualify his auteur status and make him an uneven auteur. It specifically describes Needing You, Help!, Fulltime Killer, Running on Karma, and Throw Down, another group of five films which constitutes an “uneven pentad” from the point of view of genre and To's direction. Though the nucleus of this study is the gunplay action film with a concentration on the gangster film or the cops-and-robbers thrillers, it also reviews To's contribution to the Hong Kong genre cinema in toto as much as possible. All of these films contain unequal measures of excellence and flaws which result from the effort to integrate different qualities.

A number of literary and cultural scholars have recently turned to texts by or about women to uncover possible homoeroticism within the metaphoric structures of women's own writings or in the practices ascribed to women or female characters within male- and female-authored literary and religious documents. Karma Lochrie, for example, looks to a number of medieval devotional texts and images in which Christ's bloody side wound becomes a locus of desire. Lochrie argues that the complex interplay of gender and sexuality in medieval texts and images effectively queers simple identifications of sex, gender, and/or sexuality. Caroline Walker Bynum insists on the feminization of Christ, providing a locus for female identification with the divine as well as protecting the divine-human relationship from even metaphorical sexualization. This chapter explores the fascinatingly fluid, culturally transgressive erotic subjectivities emerging in the recorded visions of female medieval mystics Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hadewijch, and Marguerite Porete, who represent themselves, respectively, as a bride of Christ, a knight errant in love, and a female Soul seeking erotic union with a feminized divinity.

This chapter applies to Indian and Greek religion the typology of religious movements created by Roy Wallis: world-affirming, world-rejecting, and world accommodating religions. World-affirming religion is exemplifed in Greece by polis religion and the practice of magic, in India by karma (action), in which the world is controlled by ritual. World-rejecting religion is exemplified in both cultures by the attempt to find a supreme principle behind the world of appearances. World-accommodating religion is exemplified by the theurgy of Iamblichus and (much earlier) the individual religiosity of Socrates, and in India by bhakti: what is in the world is ussed for the service of a transcendent but personal deity.

This chapter focuses on Jawaharlal Nehru, the only son of Motilal Nehru. It states the importance of a male heir in a Hindu family and relates some of Jawaharlal’s early memories of his father’s displays of happiness and rage. It looks at Jawaharlal’s education, how he was taught at home by English tutors. It reveals that Jawaharlal was fascinated with the doctrines of theosophy, such as Karma and ‘reincarnation’, and was introduced to the cultural and religious heritage of India. The discussion also narrates the Nehrus’ travels in Europe, which ended when Jawaharlal was accepted into Harrow in England. It shows that Jawaharlal’s stay in Harrow proved to be his first long separation from his family. Finally, the chapter shows that Motilal was immediately faced with a large number of briefs upon his return to India.

This chapter examines the Buddhist teachings that have shaped Engaged Buddhism such as: Karma and The Four Noble Truths. Karma is part of the foundational Buddhist teaching of causality or conditionality, expressed in Buddhist thought as dependent origination. According to this teaching, all things come into being as a result of other things—that is, all things are interdependent. Meanwhile, The Four Noble Truths are the basic framework of the Buddha's spiritual teachings, which point the way to liberation by way of the radical transformation of the manner of human being, the way in which humans “are.” The remainder of this chapter discusses other Buddhist philosophy and ethics that serves as the foundation of the Engaged Buddhism.

This chapter analyzes the narrative of Karma Wangzin, who, like Lingza Chökyi a century before her, also had to endure the despair of domestic strife. In Karma Wangzin's account of her death we find a few references to more formal, sophisticated Buddhist ideas, particularly those concerning the dissolution stages of dying.

Chapter 3 analyzes the vernacular religious narratives of female sadhus and their telling of local and/or regional hagiographical tales, particularly those concerned with mythic female bhakti saints, like Mira Bai, Karma Bai, and Rupa Rani, to legitimate their role and the authority it engenders. This chapter shines light on the multiple value systems inherent in female sadhus’ narratives and how sharing those stories with their devotees in satsang makes it possible for them to reinterpret the Brahmanical renunciant values of suffering, sacrifice, and struggle in light of mixed (and competing) bhakti frameworks, gendered ideologies of female suffering and power, and martial (warrior) perspectives. Furthermore, the chapter discusses female sadhus’ use of narratives associated with Mira Bai to construct a gendered lineage and genealogy of vernacular asceticism in Rajasthan.

This chapter treats the Ṛgvedic conceptions of death and what happens after death. It is very striking that several of the crucial concepts found in Classical Hinduism—karma and rebirth—are entirely absent from the Ṛgveda. What little the Ṛgveda says about what happens after death suggests that there is a world of the dead, presided over by Yama, the first to die and therefore king of the dead, and populated by the ancestors. The journey there is difficult, but, at least for those who arrive there, the realm of Yama is paradisal. The principal way of disposing of the dead was cremation, though burial is also mentioned. The institution of satī (widow-burning) is also not found in the Ṛgveda; the Ṛgvedic widow may ritual mount the funeral pyre but is called to return to life and indeed to remarriage.

The Indian readiness to engage in prolonged negotiation derives at least partly from its bureaucratic and political culture. Interestingly, the willingness of Indian negotiators to bide their time in international bargaining predates India's rise to power, and is only partially driven by strategic considerations. Rather, speed is often regarded as haste and associated with a failure to follow due process. Both the existence of this long shadow of the future and the particular ways in which it is conceptualized and translated into the negotiation process need explaining. This chapter investigates how negotiators (in the Mahabharata and the present day) interpret the culture-specific notion of time, focusing on the extent to which references to the past are used and allowed to influence negotiations, and further the responsiveness of negotiators to time pressures and deadlines.

The explanation of human action must necessarily bring out the complex relation between causes, reasons, and reasons as causes. This chapter debates the various paradigms represented by philosophers like Hume, Mill, Wittgenstein, Davidson, and Von Wright. The basic tension between the regularity of natural causality and the irregularity of human conduct is analysed to reveal the necessary etiology of human nature. Nevertheless, it is ultimately the question of freedom and the irreducible structure of mind that forces us to include the interpretative ability of human beings as part of the explanatory apparatus. In this context the Indian framework offers an alternative perspective that treats action itself as a fundamental category that has causal as well as moral implications.