Winner of the 2010 Bakeless Prize for Poetry, the debut collection by Dilruba Ahmed Can’t occupy the same space at the same time unless, of course,... you land in Dhaka                                          —from “Dhaka Dust” Ranging across Europe and America to the streets of Bangladesh, the sharp-edged poems in Dhaka Dust are culled from a rich mélange of languages, people, and poetic attitudes. Through lyric and narrative poems, Dilruba Ahmed’s keen observations on birth, motherhood, and death offer a unique way into the beckoning world. Voices of villagers resonate alongside those of global travelers, each searching for an elusive homeland in small towns and cities alike. Vendors hawk their wares at a bazaar in Dhaka. Gyms in Ohio double as mosques for uprooted immigrants. In Ahmed’s skillful hands, these disparate subjects adroitly capture the textures of life in this new century.

In Dhalgren, perhaps one of the most profound and bestselling science fiction novels of all time, Samuel R. Delany has produced a novel "to stand with... the best American fiction of the 1970s" (Jonathan Lethem).Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there…. The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. And into this disaster zone comes a young man–poet, lover, and adventurer–known only as the Kid. Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism.

Ancient words of the Buddha ("awakened one") that can become a companion for your own spiritual journey. The Dhammapada ("Path of the Buddha's... Teachings") is a daily inspiration for millions of Buddhists all over the world and for people of all spiritual traditions who have been impressed by its beauty and power. These words—believed to have been spoken by the Buddha himself over 2,500 years ago—contain most of Buddhism's central teachings. Originally composed in the ancient language of Pali, this timeless text concisely and inspirationally portrays the route a person travels as he or she advances toward enlightenment. With poetic sequence and rhythm, the Dhammapada describes the fundamental role of mental conditioning in making us who we are. It paints contrasting portraits of three levels of our human existence—the fool, the wise one, and the enlightened one—and addresses specific aspects of experience, conduct, and belief that characterize our transformation from one of these modes of being to another. Now you can experience the Dhammapada with understanding even if you have no previous knowledge of Buddhism. This SkyLight Illuminations edition offers insightful yet unobtrusive commentary that explains references and philosophical terms, shares the inspiring interpretations of famous spiritual teachers, and gives you deeper insight into the text.

The Dhammapada is one of the most popular and accessible books in all of Buddhist literature. In it are the words of the Buddha, teaching that all... suffering stems from desire and that the way to attain freedom is to purify the heart and follow the way of truth. Thomas Byrom's verse rendering of the Dhammapada uniquely captures the Buddha's original teachings with simplicity and lyricism.

The predecessor to Buddhism at Work, this book concretely describes how a village movement in Sri Lanka draws on indigenous cultural and religious... values to redefine the nature and purpose of development. It mobilizes and encourages popular participation, and mounts distinctive organizing strategies. It illustrates the relevance of religious traditions for any alternative development efforts in the developing and industrialized worlds.

In Indic religious traditions, a number of rituals and myths exist in which the environment is revered. Despite this nature worship in India, its... natural resources are under heavy pressure with its growing economy and exploding population. This has led several scholars to raise questions about the role religious communities can play in environmentalism. Does nature worship inspire Hindus to act in an environmentally conscious way? This book explores the above questions with three communities, the Swadhyaya movement, the Bishnoi, and the Bhil communities. Presenting the texts of Bishnois, their environmental history, and their contemporary activism; investigating the Swadhyaya movement from an ecological perspective; and, exploring the Bhil communities and their Sacred Groves, this book applies a non-Western hermeneutical model to interpret the religious traditions of Indic communities. It includes a foreword by Roger S Gottlieb.

This introductory work proposes a fresh take on the ancient Indian concept dharma. By unfolding how, even in its developments as law and custom, dharma... participates in nuanced and multifarious understandings of the term that play out in India s great spiritual traditions, the book offers insights into the innovative character of both Hindu and Buddhist usages of the concept. Alf Hiltebeitel, in an original approach to early Buddhist usages, explores how the Buddhist canon brought out different meanings of dharma. This is followed by an exposition of the hypothesis that most, if not all, of the Hindu law books flowered after the third-century BC emperor Asoka, a Buddhist, made dharma the guiding principle of an entire realm and culture. A discussion built around the author s expertise on the Sanskrit epics shows how their narratives amplified the new Brahmanical norms and brought out the ethical dilemmas and spiritual teachings that arose from inquiry into dharma.A chapter on the tale of the Life of the Buddha considers the relation between dharma, moksa/nirvana (salvation), and bhakti (devotion). Here, Hiltebeitel ties together a thread that runs through the entire story, which is the Buddha s tendency to present dharma as a kind of civil discourse. In this sense, dharma challenges people to think critically or at least more creatively about their ethical principles and the foundations of their own spiritual values. A closing chapter on dharma in the twenty-first century explores its new cachet in an era of globalization, its diasporic implications, its openings into American popular culture, some implications for women, and the questions it is still raising for modern India.

A comprehensive collection of classic texts, contemporary interpretations, guidelines for activists, issue-specific information, and materials for... environmentally-oriented religious practice. Sources and contributors include Basho, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Gary Snyder, Chögyam Trungpa, Gretel Ehrlich, Peter Mathiessen, Helen Tworkov (editor of Tricycle), and Philip Glass.