The Development of the Civilized Mind in the Ancient Civilizations

Philosophy ◽  
1942 ◽  
Vol 17 (67) ◽  
pp. 250-256
Author(s):  
John Murphy

The positions which are offered for consideration in this paper may be summarized in the following four points:First, there is a civilized type of mind which may be clearly distinguished from a primitive type.Second, the civilized mind developed from the primitive under certain economic and ethnological conditions which are to be described.Third, this emergence of the civilized mind from the primitive took place at a fairly definite period and reached its height in the remarkable efflorescence of genius between the ninth and fourth century b.c., over an area from Egypt to China. This was the appearance in that period of a mind essentially one in character, with natural variations, in the Greek thinkers, the Hebrew prophets, the early Hindu mystical philosophers and the Buddha in India, and the ethical teachers of China of the Confucian school.Fourth, this type of mind with its characteristic powers was achieved once for all and was never lost. In spite of the decay of most of the ancient civilizations, the civilized mind has been transmitted, chiefly through the survival of Greek and Graeco-Hebraic thought, into science, philosophy, and theology to become the modern mind for the world of culture of to-day.

Author(s):  
Kolarkar Rajesh Shivajirao ◽  
Kolarkar Rajashree Rajesh

The perfect balance of Mind and body is considered as complete health in Pāli literature as well as in Ayurveda. Pāli literature and Ayurveda have their own identity as most ancient and traditional system of medicine in India.The universal teachings of the Buddha are the most precious legacy ancient India gave to the world. The teachings are a practical code of conduct, a way of purity and of gracious living. There is a scientific study of the truth pertaining to mind and matter, and the ultimate truth beyond. In fact, the Buddha should be more appropriately known as a super-scientist who studied the entire laws of nature governing the Universe, by direct personal experience. The Buddha's rational teachings are clearly explained in the Eight-fold Noble Path, divided in three divisions of Sīla (morality), Samādhi (mastery over the mind), Paññā i.e. ‘Pragya' (purification of the mind, by developing insight). In Ayurveda Psychotherapy can be done by Satvavajaya Chikitsa and good conduct. Aim is to augment the Satva Guna in order to correct the imbalance in state of Rajas (Passion) and Tamas (Inertia). Sattvavajaya as psychotherapy, is the mental restraint, or a "mind control" as referred by Caraka, as well as Vagbhata is achieved Dnyan (education), Vidnyan (training in developing skill), Dhairya (development of coping mechanism), Smruti (memory enhancement), Samadhi (concentration of mind). According to WHO, Mental disorders are the common problem. The burden of mental disorders continues to grow with significant impacts on health and major social, human rights and economic consequences in all countries of the world.


1947 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-204
Author(s):  
Frank O'Malley

The question is: how can you put a prophet in his place when, by the very character of prophecy, he is eternally slipping out of place? William Blake was not an eighteenth century or nineteenth century mind or a typically modern mind at all. What I mean to say, right at the start, is that, although well aware of his time and of time altogether, he was not in tune with the main tendencies of his or our own time. Indeed time was a barrier he was forever crashing against. Blake's talent raved through the world into the fastnesses of die past and dramatically confronted the abysses of the future. His age did not confine him. As a poet he does not seem finally to have had real spiritual or artistic rinship with any of the rationalist or romantic writers of England. As a thinker he came to despise the inadequacy of the limited revolutionary effort of the political rebels of the Romantic Revolution. Blake's name is not to be seen mounted first with that of Paine or Godwin, of Rousseau or Voltaire, of Wordsworth or Shelley or Byron or Keats. With these he has, ultimately, little or nothing in common. At any rate, his voice and mood and impact are thoroughly different from the more publicly successful voices of the period of his life, older and younger generations alike.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Gombrich

The Buddha’s Path of Peace sets out the basic instructions for the life-changing way of the Buddha (the so-called “Noble Eightfold Path”) wholly in the context of contemporary and everyday life, personal experience, human relationships, work, environmental concern and the human wish for peace. In this book, the core of the Buddha’s teaching is comprehensively cast in modern models of thought—borrowed from science and philosophy—and informed by contemporary concerns. The reader, who may be completely new to Buddhism, is accompanied along the Path with practical exercises that are fully explained. The Path begins with an introductory overview and then proceeds through Right Speech, Right Acting, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Concentration, Right Mindfulness, Right Understanding and Right Resolve, and concludes with a short chapter on the relevance of the Path to the multiple crises facing the world today. The reader is mentored throughout by practical meditational and contemplative exercises, with tables, diagrams, analogies and stories. Gradually the reader who has followed this handbook with commitment will feel the benefits of growing peacefulness, wisdom and compassion.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Saman Saleh ◽  
Abdulkhaleq Nader Qader ◽  
Mosleh Zeebaree ◽  
Goran Yousif Ismael ◽  
Musbah Aqel

Time management is the ability to plan and control how a person spends his hours in order to achieve his goals effectively. This involves organizing time between different areas of life, from work, household tasks, social life, and hobbies. Time always passes and we cannot control it, but time management is by organizing events in your life in proportion to time. You may often want to get more time in your day, but you only have 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds each day. How long can someone invest Time has acquired its importance for a person, as it represents an important dynamic and mobile dimension in his life that he cannot control, and because it is the vessel that embraces all human interactions and products, and because it is life itself, and that life is the amount of time that a person lives from birth until his death. Therefore, many specialists consider time as the most important component of life, and the most important resource available to humans in life, due to its unique and distinctive features. Because of the importance of time for humans, the ancient civilizations and the various monotheistic religions varied in their interest in it, but during research findings that there are important to record a precedent in order to take advantage of each part of the time, its parts to implement the righteous and purposeful workers that benefit them with good and benefit in the world and the hereafter, and warned them against wasting it and this is clearly manifested in many of the evidence included in the recommendation and result in part.


Kairos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-27
Author(s):  
Eric Maroney

Leadership styles in southeast Europe tend to lie at the poles along a line stretched between passivity and authoritarianism. This is a universal problem in the global church, not one unique to southeast Europe. However, the fact remains that the mainstream leadership models in this part of the world need to be appraised and healthier models need to be developed. Unfortunately, the leadership models being imported from the West take as their cue business management, often times focusing on efficiency, productivity, and growth rather than focusing on Kingdom expansion and serving the Bride of Christ. However, a model does exist for servant leadership, a model that emerged from the Eastern Church 17 centuries ago. In this paper, I will examine Gregory Nazianzen’s Oration II which presents a spiritual model of leadership for the 21st century. While written many centuries ago, this text is still able to speak to the modern mind and remains relevant for several reasons. First, this is the first extant extra-Biblical account of an individual’s struggle with calling and obedience to Christian ministry. Second, Gregory’s model is saturated with Scripture, providing a sound though unique perspective from his brilliant and highly trained mind. Finally, as one of Gregory’s primary concerns is remaining faithful during a corrupt public form of Christianity, the context is appropriate to the traditional church contexts of southeast Europe. Following a brief historical background, this paper will look at three elements of Christian ministry and how Gregory addresses their spiritual components. First, the roles of a minister, under the titles of priest, king, and prophet. Second, the challenges that beset ministers who seek to serve. And third, the personal struggles that an individual must face and overcome to be obedient in this calling.


Adam alemi ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (86) ◽  
pp. 104-113
Author(s):  
K. Bagasharov ◽  
R. Shaikenova ◽  
G. Tabashev ◽  
N. Tutinova

The relevance of this study is related to the status of women in society in the pre-Islamic periiod. The introduction discusses the relevance of the work. This topic has been relevant since past times, and to this day it is just as relevant not only in individual regions, but throughout the world. Before writing the main part, a brief comparative analysis of the rights and position of women in ancient civilizations such as the Greek civilization, the kingdom of mana (Hinduism), Judaism and the Arab countries before the Islamic period was made. The main part was devoted to the consideration of women’s rights in marriage and family relations. In various social classes, the degree of women was low. The main goal is to reveal and not recognize the rights of women in society, marriage and family. In the pre-Islamic period, women had no rights in Arab society. In the period of ignorance of the Arabs, girls were buried alive. Islam also shows that women are also human and have the same rights as men. After analyzing the pre-Islamic period, in the final part, examples were given of immorality and ignorance towards a woman, and with the advent of true religions, all these actions were canceled, and the status of a woman was elevated.


1937 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-331
Author(s):  
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
Keyword(s):  
The Sun ◽  

In Bsos. viii, 781 ff., Mr. E. J. Thomas argues that “Tathagata” may have been taken over by the Buddhist from the Jain Tathāgaya, and that it may be an incorrect Sanskritization of some unknown non-Aryan and non-Dravidian word. This seems very far-fetched. Mr. Thomas does not take any account of possibly Vedic origins, common to Buddhism and Jainism. We have shown incidentally elsewhere that countless Buddhist terms, for example arkat and attā, are purely Vedic, and have argued that the Buddha legend is almost wholly made up of Vedic material with only such modifications as are inevitable when the eternal birth is to be retold in terms of a temporal narrative. We are convinced, in other words, that the Buddha, the “Kinsman of the Sun”, the “Eye of the World”, and “Great Person” of the Pali texts, the Buddha who may be represented in art by a pillar of fire, is an incarnation or descent (avatarana) of the Vedic Agni.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kidder Smith

In the thirteenth century Dogen brought Zen to Japan. His tradition flourishes there still today and now has taken root across the world. Abruptly Dogen presents some of his pith writings—startling, shifting, funny, spilling out in every direction. They come from all seventy-five chapters of his masterwork, the Eye of Real Dharma (Shōbōgenzō 正法眼藏), and roam through mountains, magic, everyday life, meditation, the nature of mind, and how the Buddha is always speaking from inside our heads. An excerpt from chapter 1, “A Case of Here We Are”: Human wisdom is like a moon roosting in water. No stain on the moon, nor does the water rip. However wide and grand the light, it still finds lodging in a puddle. The full moon, the spilling sky, all roosting in a single dewdrop on a single blade of grass. A man of wisdom is uncut, the way a moon doesn’t pierce water. Wisdom in a man is unobstructed, the way the sky’s full moon is unobstructed in a dewdrop. No doubt about it, the drop’s as deep as the moon is high. How long does this go on? How deep is the water, how high the moon?


Author(s):  
Jessica Marie Falcone

This ethnography explores the controversial plans and practices of the Maitreya Project, as they worked to build the “world's tallest statue” as a multi-million dollar “gift” to India. This effort entailed a plan to forcibly acquire hundreds of acres of occupied land for the statue park in the Kushinagar area of Uttar Pradesh. The Buddhist statue planners ran into obstacle after obstacle, including a full-scale grassroots resistance movement of Indian farmers working to “Save the Land.” In telling the “life story” of the proposed statue, the book sheds light on the aspirations, values and practices of both the Buddhists who worked to construct the statue, as well as the Indian farmer-activists who tirelessly protested against it. Since the majority of the supporters of the Maitreya Project statue are “non-heritage” practitioners to Tibetan Buddhism, the book narrates the spectacular collision of cultural values between small agriculturalists in rural India and transnational Buddhists from around the world. The book endeavors to show the cultural logics at work on both sides of the controversy. Thus, this ethnography of a future statue of the Maitreya Buddha—himself the “future Buddha”—is a story about divergent, competing visions of Kushinagar’s potential futures.


Author(s):  
Christopher Stead

Gnosticism comprises a loosely associated group of teachers, teachings and sects which professed to offer ‘gnosis’, saving knowledge or enlightenment, conveyed in various myths which sought to explain the origin of the world and of the human soul and the destiny of the latter. Everything originated from a transcendent spiritual power; but corruption set in and inferior powers emerged, resulting in the creation of the material world in which the human spirit is now imprisoned. Salvation is sought by cultivating the inner life while neglecting the body and social duties unconnected with the cult. The Gnostic movement emerged in the first and second centuries ad and was seen as a rival to orthodox Christianity, though in fact some Gnostic sects were more closely linked with Judaism or with Iranian religion. By the fourth century its influence was waning, but it persisted with sporadic revivals into the Middle Ages.


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