Teresa of Avila and Jonathan Edwards on Prayer and Spirituality

Contemplative prayer has been a major source of contention in evangelical spirituality. Contemplative prayer is frequently mentioned as one apparent spiritual activity that is foreign to the scripture and Christian worldview and more resembling the New Age Movement and pantheistic Eastern religion by people who are skeptical of the mystical Christian tradition. This article will examine Teresa of Avila’s thought on mystical prayer, which is sometimes misinterpreted as a notion incompatible with evangelical theology of prayer. Hence, Teresa’s ideas of mystical prayer will be examined and compared with Jonathan Edwards’ concepts of prayer, which is considered to reflect evangelical theology of prayer. The comparison suggests that the contemplative, mystical prayer of Teresa is compatible with evangelical theology of prayer in its progress and purpose. Teresa and Edwards both understood prayer as an experience and progress that leads to the complete union with God, mediated by Christ and his words in scripture. This spiritual union with God will transform the devoted one with tremendous passion and strength to love and help others in their struggle and suffering. This study of Teresa’s thought of mystical prayer is expected to reinvigorate evangelical theology and praxis of prayer by learning from the rich spirituality of the Christian mystical tradition.

The History and Current State of Japanese Zen Buddhism in Europe

This paper will shed light upon the history and current state of Japanese Zen Buddhism in Europe. Japanese Zen has mainly been transmitted in two ways among European countries: via the group founded by Deshimaru Taisen, and through Christian Zen. Deshimaru went to Europe and taught Zen. His teaching represented Zen as a wholistic, scientific, and peaceful Eastern religion. Though his group initially expanded greatly, it split into several subgroups following Deshimaru’s death. On the other hand, Sanbō Kyōdan promoted ecumenical integration between Christianity and Zen. The longstanding interest in Zen among Christians can be seen in the contemporary “spiritual exchange of the East-West.” Concerning the current state of Zen in Europe, data show that there are more than 270 Zen centers in Europe, located in 24 countries. An analysis of the contemporary situation thus demonstrates that European Zen is mobile, has various forms, and has influenced Japanese institutions.

Buddhism in the worldview of the characters in Gaito Gazdanov's works

In the historical context of the total disintegration that occurred in Europe between 1920 and 1940, the Russian community abroad was particularly interested in Buddhism and the Buddhist worldview. This is connected with the general pessimistic atmosphere among Russian emigrants. Because of their disillusionment with harsh reality, many of them find consolation in Eastern religion to escape from the whirlwind of earthly existence. Such an unusual phenomenon wasnoticed by the young writer Gaito Gazdanov. The writer described this psychological phenomenon in his fiction. The main purpose of this article is to discover in Gazdanov's characters a psychological mindset closely linked to Buddhism. Accordingly, the aim of the study is to highlight the main characteristics of the Buddhist worldview in Gazdanov's characters, analyse the writer's perception of some Buddhist concepts and examine Gazdanov's attitude to the Buddhist teaching on life and superrealism. The material for the study is the novels An Evening at Clare's and The Return of the Buddha, meaningful in the early and mature periods of the writer's work. The analysis of the «Buddhist text» in Gazdanov's novels reveals a number of psychological traits in the characters that are similar to the category of Buddhism, such as detachment from the major history, deliberate alienation from the real world and dreamlike meditation as the main way of perceiving the world. At the same time, a number of Buddhist concepts, such as metempsychosis and nirvana, become the theme of the writer's work as well. This shows the mystical side of Gazdanov's work. However, the article concludes that the writer also warns of the danger and harm of the nihilism and indifference to life inherent in this Eastern religion, which eventually leads to the disappearance of the personality

Nazism and Religion

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) always had a complicated relationship with religion, emblematic of the diverse völkisch movement out of which the NSDAP emerged. This relationship became even more complicated during the later years of the Weimar Republic as the party grew larger and attracted millions of new supporters from Protestant as well as Catholic regions. The NSDAP’s attitude toward the Christian churches was nonetheless ambivalent, swinging from co-optation to outright hostility. This ambivalence was founded in part on a pragmatic recognition of Church power and the influence of Christianity across the German population, but it simultaneously reflected an ideological rejection of Judeo-Christian values that a number of Nazi leaders saw as antithetical to National Socialism. Many Nazis therefore sought religious alternatives, from Nordic paganism and a “religion of nature” to a German Christianity led by a blond, blue-eyed Aryan Jesus. This complex mélange of Christian and alternative faiths included an abiding interest in “Indo-Aryan” (Eastern) religion, tied to broader ideological assumptions regarding the origins of the Aryan race in South Asia. Ultimately, there was no such thing as an official “Nazi religion.” To the contrary, the regime explored, embraced, and exploited diverse elements of (Germanic) Christianity, Ario-Germanic paganism, and Indo-Aryan religions endemic to the völkisch movement and broader supernatural imaginary of the Wilhelmine and Weimar period.

Vivekananda, Sarah Farmer, and global spiritual transformations in thefin de siècle

As Swami Vivekananda travelled West at the end of the nineteenth century to propagate what has become known as ‘Hindu Universalism’, the American Sarah Farmer travelled to Palestine to embrace the new Baha’i faith. This article will ask why both wished to create ‘universal’ religions, and why they found inspiration at Green Acre, Maine in 1894 in the wake of the Chicago World Parliament of Religions in 1893. Visitors to Green Acre discussed ‘divine femininity’, engaged with men such as Vivekananda and Abdu’l-Baha, and began to criticize colonial hierarchies in the search for spiritual reconciliation, all concerns which touched on questions of ‘Eastern’ religion. However, spirituality was not a mere epiphenomenon of larger historical developments. Rather, the ‘transformation’ discussed here drew on an essentialized notion of ‘Eastern wisdom’ that contrasted spirituality with materialism, tolerance with intolerance, transcendence with instrumentalism. Yet, such polarized characterizations misjudged the ways in which Baha’i and Hindu Universalism destabilized the very categories of East and West, while retaining a vision of ‘Eastern wisdom’ untouched by Western corruptions.

Supple bodies, healthy minds: yoga, psychedelics and American mental health

Much discussion about mental health has revolved around treatment models. As interdisciplinary scholarship has shown, mental health knowledge, far from being a neutral product detached from the society that generated it, was shaped by politics, economics and culture. By drawing on case studies of yoga, religion and fitness, this article will examine the ways in which mental health practices—sometimes scientific, sometimes spiritual—have been conceived, debated and applied by researchers and the public. More specifically, it will interrogate the relationship between yoga, psychedelics, South Asian and Eastern religion (as understood and practiced in the USA) and mental health.

Islam: The Unpillaged Eastern Religion

Understanding why Islam has contributed little to contemporary religious and spiritual innovations allows us to see the principles underlying cultural borrowing. With its creator God, authoritative text, religious dogmas, and defined ways of life, Islam is too much like Christianity for cultural appropriation, and there is a considerable Muslim presence in the West that constrains borrowing. Such appropriation is easiest when ideas are not embedded in a large faith community (feng shui is an example), when they are retrieved from an ancient and undocumented past (as with Celtic Christianity), or when they are entirely fictional (as with the supposed characteristics of Atlantis).