An Area of Darkness: A Discovery of India

A classic of modern travel writing, An Area of Darkness is Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul’s profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India.

Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of humanity: browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man and a deluded American religious seeker. An Area of Darkness also abounds with Naipaul’s strikingly original responses to India’s paralyzing caste system, its apparently serene acceptance of poverty and squalor, and the conflict between its desire for self-determination and its nostalgia for the British raj. The result may be the most elegant and passionate book ever written about the subcontinent.

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The Tantric Body: The Secret Tradition of Hindu Religion

Is tantra just about exotic sexual practice or does it amount to something more? This lively and original book contributes to a more complete understanding of tantra. It argues that within the different Hindu traditions, it is ritual and ascetic practice which fully explains corporeality. Without minimizing its sexual dimensions, Flood argues that the tantric body is more than just a sexual entity, and cannot be understood apart from the religious traditions and texts that give it form. Through ritual and yogic practice the body is formed into a pattern determined by these traditions, and the practitioner thereby strives to mould his or her life into the shape of the tradition.

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Discourses By Meher Baba

Meher Baba's Discourses throw the light of true knowledge on many of life's most perplexing problems. Inspiring and practical, the Discourses provides an ever-fresh framework of spiritual perspective on the challenges of everyday life. As Meher Baba said, "Words that proceed from the Source of Truth have real meaning." Discourses bears eloquent testimony to that fact and after 50 years in print remains an incomparable companion for anyone seeking spiritual direction.

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Gandhi: Naked Ambition By Jad Adams

The pre-eminent political and spiritual leader of India's independence movement, pioneer of non-violent resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience (satyagraha), honoured in India as 'father of nation', Mohandas K. Gandhi has inspired movements for civil rights and political freedom across the world. Jad Adams offers a concise and elegant account of Gandhi's life: from his birth and upbringing in a small princely state in Gujarat during the high noon of the British Raj, to his assassination at the hands of a Hindu extremist in 1948 only months after the birth of the independent India which he himself he had done so much to bring about. He delineates the principal events of a career that may truly be said to have changed the world: his training as a barrister in late Victorian London; his civil rights work in Boer War-era South Africa; his leadership of the Indian National Congress; his focus on obtaining self-government and control of all Indian government institutions, and the campaigns of non-cooperation and non-violence against British rule in India whereby he sought to achieve that aim (including the famous 'Salt March' of March/April 1930); his passionate opposition to partition in 1947 and his fasts-unto-death in a bid to end the bitter and bloody sectarian violence that attended it. Jad Adams's accessible and thoughtful biography not only traces the outline of an extraordinary life with exemplary clarity, but also examines why Mahatma Gandhi and his teachings are still profoundly relevant today.

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The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana

The "Kama Sutra" is famous as an ancient Hindu sex manual. But its significance goes much deeper -- it is also a spiritual guide. In the Tantric sects, the union of the god Shiva and the goddess Shakti symbolizes the union of all opposites in the One, and also symbolizes the unity of the individual consciousness with the One. As the Upanishads put it, "In the embrace of his beloved, a man forgets the whole world, everything both within and without. In the same way, he who embraces the Self knows neither within nor without."

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The Taj Mahal is A Temple Palace - P. N. Oak

P N Oak is dead. His book is just "Trash Mahal." A bigoted Shiv Sena activist he put forward the absurd theory that Taj Mahal was a Shiva temple, now you know the biased angle. Tajmahal does have some/minor characterizations of Hindu architecture. This was due to some local synthesis and influence, but the major architecture is the Safavid Persian influence using local material ie Makrana Rajasthan marble and sandstone. Now please erect a samadhi for this liar PN Oake and call it TRASH MAHAL a perfect tribute. Book was thoghtfully banned in India. He even lost a Indian Supreme Court case in year 2000, about 400 years after Emperor Shahjehan's death who he was falsely accusing. Good riddance.

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Slow Death by Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things

Pollution is no longer just about belching smokestacks and ugly sewer pipes—now, it’s personal. The most dangerous pollution, it turns out, comes from commonplace items in our homes and workplaces. To prove this point, for one week authors Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie ingested and inhaled a host of things that surround all of us. Using their own bodies as the reference point to tell the story of pollution in our modern world, they expose the miscreant corporate giants who manufacture the toxins, the weak-kneed government officials who let it happen, and the effects on people and families across the globe. 

This book —the testimony of their experience —exposes the extent to which we are poisoned every day of our lives, from the simple household dust that is polluting our blood to the toxins in our urine that are created by run-of-the-mill shampoos and toothpaste. Ultimately hopeful, the book empowers readers with some simple ideas for protecting themselves and their families, and changing things for the better.

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