Western Wisdom

Here is the remarkable story of how medieval Arab scholars made dazzling advances in science and philosophy, and of the itinerant Europeans who brought this knowledge back to the West. For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict. Meanwhile, Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to catch even a glimpse.

The realm of emotion is one of those areas where Buddhism and Western psychology are often thought to be at odds: Are emotions to be valued, examined, worked with as signs leading us to deeper self-knowledge? Or are they something to be ignored and avoided as soon as we recognize them?

Shamanic Wisdom Meets the Western Mind provides a synthesis of realms of knowledge that hitherto were either blinded out from human consciousness or that were seen from a disparaging perspective that is in turn the result of a fragmented perception.

The co-editors of Gnosis magazine explore the many esoteric traditions that Western culture has to offer. While terms from Eastern spiritual practices such as Zen, mantra, and karma have become part of our daily lexicon, the traditions of Western spirituality have been largely unexplored by people searching for non-mainstream routes to spiritual experience. But for those who identify with Western culture, Western religious traditions have their own wisdom teachings that are more suitable to their needs and expectations.

Most of us use the term sense of place often and rather carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature. Our senses of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences but also from our cultures. Wisdom Sits in Places, the first sustained study of places and place explores place, places, and what they mean to a particular group of people, the Western Apache in Arizona. For more than 30 years, Keith Basso has been doing fieldwork among the Western Apache, and now he shares with us what he has learned of Apache place-names.

This audiobook contains wisdom quotes from many renowned Western philosophers and leaders: Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Heraclitus, Marcus Aurelius, Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud, Michel De Montaigne, and Friedrich Nietzsche. These quotes cover many aspects of life, such as spirituality, motivation, happiness, health, and success.

La Saggezza Sciamanica Incontra la Mente Occidentale: Un’Indagine sulla Natura dello Sciamanesimo’ fornisce una sintesi di regni della conoscenza che finora sono stati accecati dalla coscienza umana o che sono stati visti da una prospettiva denigratoria che è a sua volta il risultato di una percezione frammentata. Lo sciamanesimo, le tradizioni scientifiche perenni e la scienza moderna sono state relegate in ambiti cognitivi ed esperienziali diversi; erano argomenti apparentemente diversi, mentre in realtà appartengono al sistema.