Practical Spirituality and Human Development

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxxiii

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2. Practical Spirituality and Human Development: An Introduction and an Invitation

   • Ananta Kumar Giri

   Pages 1-9

3. Practical Spirituality: Understanding New Modes of Thinking and Transformative Practice

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 11-11

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   2. The Calling of Practical Spirituality

      • Ananta Kumar Giri

      Pages 13-29

   3. What It Means to Be Religious?

      • Ashgar Ali Engineer

      Pages 31-33

   4. Practical Spirituality: Human Beings Evolving into a Higher Level of Communion and Ethical Relation with One Another

      • Janine Joyce

      Pages 35-51

   5. Critical Spirituality: Towards a Revitalised Humanity

      • Marcus Bussey

      Pages 53-61

   6. Practices of Nontheistic Spirituality

      • Peter Heehs

      Pages 63-80

   7. The Ashram as a Secular Place: An Understanding of the Human as a Spiritual Place

      • Jyoti Sahi

      Pages 81-96

   8. There Is No Path: And You Are on It—Searching for the Self in Starting from Zero

      • Hazen Robert Walker

      Pages 97-108

   9. Life Is Story: Tales and Journeys in Practical Spirituality in the Aesthetic Plasma of Story in the Lila

      • Barbara A. Amodio

      Pages 109-135

   10. Creative Nonfiction Is Everything: Postmodernism, Groundlessness, and the Dual Portrait

       • Elizabeth S. Gunn

       Pages 137-153

   11. Concrete and Abstract Realities

       • Henk de Weijer

       Pages 155-177

   12. Divine Path of Humanity: Co-creating “In the Image of God”

       • Nina Goncharova

       Pages 179-186

4. Practical Spirituality and Transformation of Religions and Societies

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 187-187

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   2. Brahman and Karman: The Theory of Institutional Action in the Bhagavadgītā

      • Binod Kumar Agarwala

      Pages 189-215

   3. Practical Spirituality: Judaic and Multi-faith Practices of Transformations

      • Rabbi Pamela Frydman

      Pages 217-235

   4. Practical Spirituality and the Desert Fathers

      • Shlomit C. Schuster

      Pages 237-256

   5. Mysticism, Sufism, and Practical Spirituality

      • Muhammad Maroof Shah

      Pages 257-276

   6. Quaker Process as Practical Spirituality for the Anthropocene Age

      • Sara J. Wolcott

      Pages 277-292

This book explores varieties of spiritual movements and alternative experiments for generation of beauty, dignity and dialogues, in a world where the rise of the religious in politics and the public sphere is often accompanied by violence. It examines how spirituality can contribute to human development, social transformations and planetary realizations, urging us to treat each other, and our planet, with evolutionary care and respect.  Trans-disciplinary and trans-paradigmatic to its very core, this text opens new pathways of practical spirituality and humanistic action for both scholarship and discourse and offers an invaluable companion for scholars across religious studies, cultural studies and development studies.

• Practical Spirituality and Human Development
• Social Transformations and Alternative Visions
• Planetary Realisation
• Religion in the Public Sphere
• Humanity and Philanthropy
• Contemporary Violence and Religious Fundamentalism
• The Post Secular World
• Movements of Practical Spirituality in the Modern World
• religion and society

• Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India

  Ananta Kumar Giri

Ananta Kumar Giri is Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India. He has taught and done research at universities in India and abroad, including Aalborg University (Denmark), Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris (France), the University of Kentucky (USA), University of Freiburg & Humboldt University (Germany). His research focuses on social movements and cultural change, contemporary dialectics of transformation, and creative streams in education, philosophy and literature.  

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