Diana L Eck – författare

Why Understanding America''s Religious Landscape Is the Most Important Challenge Facing Us Today

The 1990s saw the U.S. Navy commission its first Muslim chaplain and open its first mosque.There are presently more than three hundred temples in Los Angeles, home to the greatest variety of Buddhists in the world.There are more American Muslims than there are American Episcopalians, Jews, or Presbyterians.

The sacred city of Banāras on the River Ganges is one of the oldest living cities in the world—as old as Jerusalem, Athens, and Peking. It is the place where Shiva, the Lord of All, is said to have made his permanent home since the dawn of creation. There are few cities in India as traditionally Hindu and as symbolic of the whole of Hindu culture as Banāras. In this eloquent, finely observed study, Diana Eck shows how the city over the centuries has become a lens through which the Hindu vision of the world is precisely focused. She reveals the spiritual and historical resonance of this holy place where great sages such as the Buddha and Shankara were taught, where ashrams, palaces, and universities were built, where God has been imagined and imagined in a thousand ways. She describes the rites of its temples, the busy life of its riverfront, and the exuberance of its festivals. She tells how people travel from all over India to Banāras for the privilege of dying a good death here, for they believe that on the banks of the River Ganges where “the atmosphere of devotion is improbable in its strength,” it is possible to be released from the earthly round forever. In her account of the sacred history, geography, and art of the city, its elaborate and thriving rituals, its myths and literature, and its importance to pilgrims and seekers, Diana Eck uses her wealth of scholarship to make the Hindu tradition come powerfully alive so that we come to understand the meaning of this sacred city to the millions of believers who have been coming here for over 2,500 years.

In India: A Sacred Geography, renowned Harvard scholar Diana Eck offers an extraordinary spiritual journey through the pilgrimage places of the world''s most religiously vibrant culture and reveals that it is, in fact, through these sacred pilgrimages that India’s very sense of nation has emerged.   No matter where one goes in India, one will find a landscape in which mountains, rivers, forests, and villages are elaborately linked to the stories of the gods and heroes of Indian culture. Every place in this vast landscape has its story, and conversely, every story of Hindu myth and legend has its place. Likewise, these places are inextricably tied to one another—not simply in the past, but in the present—through the local, regional, and transregional practices of pilgrimage.   India: A Sacred Geography tells the story of the pilgrim’s India. In these pages, Diana Eck takes the reader on an extraordinary spiritual journey through the living landscape of this fascinating country –its mountains, rivers, and seacoasts, its ancient and powerful temples and shrines.  Seeking to fully understand the sacred places of pilgrimage from the ground up, with their stories, connections and layers of meaning, she acutely examines Hindu religious ideas and narratives and shows how they have been deeply inscribed in the land itself.  Ultimately, Eck shows us that from these networks of pilgrimage places, India’s very sense of region and nation has emerged. This is the astonishing and fascinating picture of a land linked for centuries not by the power of kings and governments, but by the footsteps of pilgrims.   India: A Sacred Geography offers a unique perspective on India, both as a complex religious culture and as a nation. Based on her extensive knowledge and her many decades of wide-ranging travel and research, Eck''s piercing insights and a sweeping grasp of history ensure that this work will be in demand for many years to come.

Religion scholar Diana Eck is director of the Pluralism Project, which seeks to map the new religious diversity of the United States, particularly the increasing presence of Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim communities. In this tenth-anniversary edition of Encountering God, Eck shows why dialogue with people of other faiths remains crucial in today''s interdependent world--globally, nationally, and even locally. She reveals how her own encounters with other religions have shaped and enlarged her Christian faith toward a bold new Christian pluralismFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

Diana Eck skildrar på ett både lättillgängligt, fördomsfritt och pregnant sätt en kultur som, trots att den lätt undandrar sig vår förståelse, alltjämt är tillgänglig för våra blickar. Författaren söker inringa en mångfasetterad religiös tradition, vars enhet består i ett gåtfullt omfattande av mångfalden, och en paradoxal förmåga att förena filosofiska abstraktioner med allt som vädjar till våra sinnen. Hon griper sig an denna uppgift genom att uppmärksamma "skådandets" och "seendets" betydande roll i hinduisk kult.