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Topic Review
Bodhisattva Precepts
The Bodhisattva Precepts (traditional Chinese: 菩薩戒; ; pinyin: Púsà Jiè, Japanese: bosatsukai) are a set of moral codes used in Mahayana Buddhism to advance a practitioner along the path to becoming a Bodhisattva. Traditionally, monastics observed the basic moral code in Buddhism, the Prātimokṣa (such as that of the Dharmaguptaka), but in the Mahayana tradition, monks may observe the Bodhisattva Precepts as well.
  • 3.8K
  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Sexual Identity
Sexual identity is how one thinks of oneself in terms of to whom one is romantically or sexually attracted. Sexual identity may also refer to sexual orientation identity, which is when people identify or dis-identify with a sexual orientation or choose not to identify with a sexual orientation. Sexual identity and sexual behavior are closely related to sexual orientation, but they are distinguished, with identity referring to an individual's conception of themselves, behavior referring to actual sexual acts performed by the individual, and sexual orientation referring to romantic or sexual attractions toward persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, to both sexes or more than one gender, or to no one. Historical models of sexual identity have tended to view its formation as a process undergone only by sexual minorities, while more contemporary models view the process as far more universal and attempt to present sexual identity within the larger scope of other major identity theories and processes.
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  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Saṅkhāra
Saṅkhāra (Pali; सङ्खार; Sanskrit: संस्कार or saṃskāra) is a term figuring prominently in Buddhism. The word means 'formations' or 'that which has been put together' and 'that which puts together'. In the first (passive) sense, saṅkhāra refers to conditioned phenomena generally but specifically to all mental "dispositions". These are called 'volitional formations' both because they are formed as a result of volition and because they are causes for the arising of future volitional actions. English translations for saṅkhāra in the first sense of the word include 'conditioned things,' 'determinations,' 'fabrications' and 'formations' (or, particularly when referring to mental processes, 'volitional formations'). In the second (active) sense of the word, saṅkhāra refers to karma (sankhara-khandha) that leads to conditioned arising, dependent origination. According to the Vijnanavada school, there are 51 samskaras or mental factors.
  • 3.8K
  • 09 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Courage
Courage (also called bravery or valor) is the choice and willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. Valor is courage or bravery, especially in battle. Physical courage is bravery in the face of physical pain, hardship, even death, or threat of death; while moral courage is the ability to act rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal, discouragement, or personal loss. The classical virtue of fortitude (andreia, fortitudo) is also translated "courage", but includes the aspects of perseverance and patience. In the Western tradition, notable thoughts on courage have come from philosophers Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Kierkegaard, as well as Christian beliefs and texts. In the Hindu tradition, mythology has given many examples of bravery, valor and courage, with examples of both physical and moral courage exemplified. In the Eastern tradition, some thoughts on courage were offered by the Tao Te Ching.
  • 3.7K
  • 28 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Terma (Religion)
Terma (Tibetan: གཏེར་མ་, Wylie: gter ma; "hidden treasure") are various forms of hidden teachings that are key to Vajrayana or Tibetan Buddhist and Bon religious traditions. The belief is that these teachings were originally esoterically hidden by various adepts such as Padmasambhava and dakini such as Yeshe Tsogyal (consorts) during the 8th century, for future discovery at auspicious times by other adepts, who are known as tertöns. As such, terma represent a tradition of continuous revelation in Vajrayana or Tibetan Buddhism. Termas are a part of tantric literature.
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  • 26 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Zoroastrianism in India
Zoroastrianism in India has significant history within the country. The initial migration following the Muslim conquest of Persia has been canonized as a religious persecution by invading Muslims. Zoroastrianism meanwhile suffered a decline in Iran after the conquests. Subsequent migrations also took place after the attempts by Safavids to convert their subjects to Shiism. Due to persecution of Zoroastrians in other countries and the liberal atmosphere and patronisation of India, today the largest population of Zoroastrians resides in India, where Zoroastrians have been allowed to play a notable role in the Indian economy, entertainment, the armed forces, and the Indian freedom movement during British Raj. The Zoroastrian groups are regarded as either Parsi or Irani depending on the time of migration to India.
  • 3.7K
  • 09 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Usul Fiqh in Ja'fari School
Ja'fari principles (Persian: علم اصول در مکتب جعفری‎) refers to regulations, history and eminent persons and scholars during the development of Shia's Principles of Islamic jurisprudence.
  • 3.6K
  • 28 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Gopal Krishna Gokhale
Gopal Krishna Gokhale CIE pronunciation (help·info) (9 May 1866 – 19 February 1915) was one of the political leaders and a social reformer during the Indian Independence Movement against the British Empire in India. Gokhale was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and founder of the Servants of India Society. Through the Society as well as the Congress and other legislative bodies he served in, Gokhale campaigned for Indian self-rule and also social reform. He was the leader of the moderate faction of the Congress party that advocated reforms by working with existing government institutions.
  • 3.6K
  • 26 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Character Strengths and Virtues
The VIA Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS), formerly known as the "Values in Action Inventory," is a proprietary psychological assessment measure designed to identify an individual's profile of character strengths. It was created by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, well-known researchers in the field of positive psychology, in order to operationalize their Character Strengths and Virtues Handbook (CSV). The CSV is the positive psychology counterpart to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) used in traditional psychology. Unlike the DSM, which scientifically categorizes human deficits and disorders, the CSV classifies positive human strengths. Moreover, the CSV is centered on helping people recognize and build upon their strengths. This aligned with the overall goal of the positive psychology movement, which aims to make people's lives more fulfilling, rather than simply treating mental illness. Notably, the VIA-IS is the tool by which people can identify their own positive strengths and learn how to capitalize on them.
  • 3.6K
  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Hindu Eschatology
Hindu eschatology is linked in the Vaishnavite tradition to the figure of Kalki, or the tenth and last avatar of Vishnu names of the Supreme Being in Hinduism and before the age draws to a close, and Harihara simultaneously dissolves and regenerates the universe. The current period is Kali Yuga, the last of four Yuga that make up the current age. It started just after Krishna left the earth in human form, in almost 3102 BCE or 5123 years from 2021. Each period has seen a progressive decline in morality, to the point that in Kali Yuga quarrel and hypocrisy are norm. In Hinduism, time is cyclic, consisting of cycles or "kalpas". Each kalpa lasts for 4.32 billion years and is followed by a pralaya (dissolution) of equal length, which together make a period of one full day and night of Brahma's 100 360-day year lifespan, who lives for 311 trillion, 40 billion years. The cycle of birth, growth, decay, and renewal at the individual level finds its echo in the cosmic order, yet is affected by the vagaries of divine intervention in Vaishnavism. Some Shaivites hold the view that he is incessantly destroying and creating the world.
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  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Ontological Turn
The ontological turn broadly relates to a development in a number of philosophical and academic disciplines that led to an increased focus on being. The ontological turn in anthropology is not concerned with anthropological notions of culture, epistemology, nor world views. Instead, the ontological turn generates interest in being in the world and accepts that different world views are not simply different representations of the same world. Rather, people have different perspectives and people see the world in different ways, but the world is still the world. Therefore, the ontological turn refers to a change in perspective that suggests that difference can be understood, not in terms of a difference in world views, but a differences in worlds and all of these worlds are of equal validity.
  • 3.5K
  • 19 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Cultural Additivity
This entry provides the conceptual development of “cultural additivity.” It reviews the three most relevant concepts namely syncretism, cultural hybridity, and creolization, and then makes a case for the usefulness of “cultural additivity” in explaining the adoption and rejection of emerging cultural values. The newly introduced concept utilizes a well-developed theory called mindsponge theory.
  • 3.5K
  • 02 Sep 2022
Biography
Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar (born 13 May 1956) is an Indian yoga guru,[1] a spiritual leader. He is frequently referred to as "Sri Sri" (honorific), Guru ji, or Gurudev.[2] From around the mid 1970s, he worked as an apprentice under Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation. In 1981, he split from the Transcendental Meditation (TM) and founded the Art of Living Foundation.[3] Ravi Shankar was bo
  • 3.5K
  • 30 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Jewish Atheism
Jewish atheism refers to the atheism of people who are ethnically and (at least to some extent) culturally Jewish. Because Jewish identity is ethnoreligious (i.e., it encompasses ethnic as well as religious components), the term "Jewish atheism" does not inherently entail a contradiction. Based on Jewish law's emphasis on matrilineal descent, even religiously conservative Orthodox Jewish authorities would accept an atheist born to a Jewish mother as fully Jewish.
  • 3.4K
  • 11 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Imagined Interaction
Imagined interactions (IIs) are a type of social cognition and mental imagery grounded in symbolic interactionism in which individuals imagine conversations with significant others for a variety of purposes (Honeycutt, 2003; 2015). The research program was founded and created by James M. Honeycutt in 1987, who was designated an LSU Distinguished Professor in 2012. He provided a keynote address at the American Association for the Study of Mental Imagery at Yale University in 1987 discussing the functions of imagined interactions and mental imagery. In 2006, Honeycutt's book, "Imagined Interactions: Daydreaming about Communication" (2003), was awarded Distinguished Book of the Year by the National Communication Association for developing the original formulations and the II construct which has provided a beneficial mechanism for operationalizing the study of intrapersonal communication, social cognition, daydreaming, and mental imagery. Furthermore, imagined interactions can be used in sports imagery as athletes "imagine" positive outcomes of their executions on specific plays or formations (Keaton, Gearhart, & Honeycutt, 2014).
  • 3.4K
  • 15 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Aristotelian Physics
Aristotelian physics is the form of natural science described in the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–link BCE). In his work Physics, Aristotle intended to establish general principles of change that govern all natural bodies, both living and inanimate, celestial and terrestrial – including all motion (change with respect to place), quantitative change (change with respect to size or number), qualitative change, and substantial change ("coming to be" [coming into existence, 'generation'] or "passing away" [no longer existing, 'corruption']). To Aristotle, 'physics' was a broad field that included subjects that would now be called the philosophy of mind, sensory experience, memory, anatomy and biology. It constitutes the foundation of the thought underlying many of his works. Key concepts of Aristotelian physics include the structuring of the cosmos into concentric spheres, with the Earth at the centre and celestial spheres around it. The terrestrial sphere was made of four elements, namely earth, air, fire, and water, subject to change and decay. The celestial spheres were made of a fifth element, an unchangeable aether. Objects made of these elements have natural motions: those of earth and water tend to fall; those of air and fire, to rise. The speed of such motion depends on their weights and the density of the medium. Aristotle argued that a vacuum could not exist as speeds would become infinite. Aristotle described four causes or explanations of change as seen on earth: the material, formal, efficient, and final causes of things. As regards living things, Aristotle's biology relied on observation of natural kinds, both the basic kinds and the groups to which these belonged. He did not conduct experiments in the modern sense, but relied on amassing data, observational procedures such as dissection, and making hypotheses about relationships between measurable quantities such as body size and lifespan.
  • 3.4K
  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Learning to Read
Learning to read is the acquisition and practice of the skills necessary to understand the meaning behind printed words. For a fairly good reader, the skill of reading should feel simple, effortless, and automatic. However, the process of learning to read is complex and builds on cognitive, linguistic, and social skills developed from a very early age. As one of the four core language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking), reading is vital to gaining a command of the spoken language.
  • 3.4K
  • 03 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Christian Atheism
Christian atheism is a form of Christianity that rejects theistic claims of Christianity, but draws its beliefs and practices from Jesus' life and/or teachings as recorded in the New Testament Gospels and other sources. Christian atheism takes many forms:
  • 3.4K
  • 02 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Wild Animal Suffering
Wild animal suffering is the suffering experienced by nonhuman animals living outside of direct human control, due to harms such as disease, injury, parasitism, starvation and malnutrition, dehydration, weather conditions, natural disasters, and killings by other animals, as well as psychological stress. Some estimates indicate that the vast majority of individual animals in existence live in the wild. A vast amount of natural suffering has been described as an unavoidable consequence of Darwinian evolution and the pervasiveness of reproductive strategies which favor producing large numbers of offspring, with a low amount of parental care and of which only a small number survive to adulthood, the rest dying in painful ways, has led some to argue that suffering dominates happiness in nature. The topic has historically been discussed in the context of the philosophy of religion as an instance of the problem of evil. More recently, starting in the 19th-century, a number of writers have considered the suspected scope of the problem from a secular standpoint as a general moral issue, one that humans might be able to take actions toward preventing. There is considerable disagreement around this latter point as many believe that human interventions in nature, for this reason, should not take place because of practicality, valuing ecological preservation over the well-being and interests of individual animals, considering any obligation to reduce wild animal suffering implied by animal rights to be absurd, or viewing nature as an idyllic place where happiness is widespread. Some have argued that such interventions would be an example of human hubris, or playing God and use examples of how human interventions, for other reasons, have unintentionally caused harm. Others, including animal rights writers, have defended variants of a laissez-faire position, which argues that humans should not harm wild animals, but that humans should not intervene to reduce natural harms that they experience. Advocates of such interventions argue that animal rights and welfare positions imply an obligation to help animals suffering in the wild due to natural processes. Some have asserted that refusing to help animals in situations where humans would consider it wrong not to help humans is an example of speciesism. Others argue that humans intervene in nature constantly—sometimes in very substantial ways—for their own interests and to further environmentalist goals. Human responsibility for enhancing existing natural harms has also been cited as a reason for intervention. Some advocates argue that humans already successfully help animals in the wild, such as vaccinating and healing injured and sick animals, rescuing animals in fires and other natural disasters, feeding hungry animals, providing thirsty animals with water, and caring for orphaned animals. nThey also assert that although wide-scale interventions may not be possible with our current level of understanding, they could become feasible in the future with improved knowledge and technologies. For these reasons, they claim it is important to raise awareness about the issue of wild animal suffering, spread the idea that humans should help animals suffering in these situations and encourage research into effective measures which can be taken in the future to reduce the suffering of these individuals, without causing greater harms.
  • 3.4K
  • 29 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Bhikkhu
A bhikkhu (Pali: भिक्खु Sanskrit: भिक्षु , bhikṣu) is an ordained male monastic ("monk") in Buddhism. Male and female monastics ("nun", bhikkhunī, Sanskrit bhikṣuṇī) are members of the Buddhist community. The lives of all Buddhist monastics are governed by a set of rules called the prātimokṣa or pātimokkha. Their lifestyles are shaped to support their spiritual practice: to live a simple and meditative life and attain nirvana. A person under the age of 20 cannot be ordained as a bhikkhu or bhikkhuni but can be ordained as a śrāmaṇera or śrāmaṇērī.
  • 3.4K
  • 31 Oct 2022
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