In this article, I examine two recent memoirs of Zen students that speak openly about the aberrant behavior of their teachers. These memoirs are Natalie Goldberg’s The Great Failure (2004) and Shozan Jack Haubner’s Single White Monk (2017). Both of these authors consider the scandals surrounding their teachers as an opportunity for spiritual gro…[Read more]

Persian literature used to be visibly worldly when Persian was a lingua franca in a vast space from Balkan to China. With the British colonialism in the India and the rise of nation states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Persian lost its status and became more national in various contexts. In Iran it only got worsened with sanctions,…[Read more]

This chapter analyses Global Byzantium by situating the medieval empire of New Rome in the history of statehood’s generalisation worldwide. Arguing that statehood remains the implicit mental furniture of History at a macro-civilizational scale, and so more or less at the micro too, the chapter proposes the dual concepts of hegemony and c…[Read more]

Catalogo realizzato in occasione della serie di mostre dedicate, tra il 2021 e il 2022, dalla Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi, dal Museo d’Arte Moderna e della Mail Art di Montecarotto (AN) e dal Museo Nori De’ Nobili di Trecastelli (AN), all’opera di Magdalo Mussio. Il testo prende in esame, in particolare, l’opera grafico-pittorica, oltre…[Read more]

Testo della mostra personale (a più voci), dell’artista Giovanni Gaggia, tenutasi a partire dal 27 dicembre 2020 presso il Museo Statale Tattile Omero di Ancona in cui è stato osteso uno splendido arazzo poi chiuso in tubo di metallo. La mostra e la conseguente performance hanno dato vita ad un archivio permanente ed in continua evoluzione che r…[Read more]

Illustrated script of a stage play created by the author, a peace dialogue among an American Christian, an Israeli Jew, a Saudi Arabian Muslim, and a Japanese Buddhist. It draws from the conflict resolution process pioneered by Johan Galtung and practiced in Peace Studies classes taught by the author and others at Osaka Jogakuin University. It…[Read more]

When Jesus humbly washes his disciples’ feet (John 13), he engages his friends up close using the sense of touch. This article explores how his touch conveys a quality of love that no other physical sense can capture. Sensory Anthropology reveals how touch is often overlooked and undervalued but is quite potent. We confronted these dynamics most r…[Read more]

This working paper presents in full translation four texts of the Uzbek early 20th-century jadid reformist Abdurrauf Fitrat. Identifying educational reform as the main key to progress, he advocated for the emancipation and nationalisation of the Chaghatay/Uzbek language as a tool to educate the masses rather than to serve the interests of a…[Read more]

[COMPLETE OPEN-ACCESS CURRICULUM INCLUDED] ReDesigning the Future is the second project in the ReImagining the Future series launched by Greenbacker Capital and Global Citizenship Experience Lab School. By asking “how can we design a sustainable future?,” the purpose of this project is to understand the grand challenges we must overcome to achieve…[Read more]

Al tratar de disolver la neta separación entre una mente racional y la materia inerte abogada por el dualismo Cartesiano, el monismo lucha por reunificar estas distintas realidades ontológicas. Tal como para Claude Lévi-Strauss y Baruch Spinoza, esa dicha unificación no puede prescindir de la trascendencia de la mente humana como locus del pen…[Read more]

The drama of the Niger Delta region has enjoyed robust scholarship. This essay interrogates J. P. Clark-Bekederemo’s drama against the cultural milieu of the region and tries to investigate the connections between the rich folklore of the area and the wealth of poetry and imagery contained in his drama. The essay investigates the terrain,…[Read more]

This 23-minute presentation at the University of Hyogo in Kobe goes more deeply into the biography of Steve McCarty than appears in his long chapter in the new book A Passion for Japan: A Collection of Personal Narratives. Formative influences discussed include Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, Tibetan yoga, and Zen. Places include Boston, the Taos P…[Read more]

Mahishasur was the mythological hero of the Bahujan communities of India. According to D.D. Kaushambi, Mahishasur’s realm was Mahoba in Bundelkhand. In connection with the research for my book, I reached Mahoba on 2 October 2015. Mahishasur’s memories still survive in the folk traditions of Mahoba. He is known as Maikasur, Kaaras Dev, Gwal Bab…[Read more]

Scientific diagrams could and did appear in unexpected places. This essay discusses such an example: the diagrams that the thirteenth- to fourteenth-century scholar George-Gregory Chioniades added to a manuscript of John of Damascus’s Fountain of Knowledge as part of his commentary on the text. I argue that the diagrams were a very important, if…[Read more]

We wrote this report in December 2015. In this report, we have tried to bring out the ideology of the organisers of Mahishasur Day, and their strategy for cultural-social change.
When, on 25 October 2011, a handful of students of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University celebrated Mahishasur Martyrdom Day for the first time, no one could have i…[Read more]

दिल्ली के जवाहरलाल नेहरू विश्वविद्यालय में मुट्ठी भर अन्य पिछड़ा वर्ग और दलित छात्रों ने जब 25 अक्टूबर, 2011 को पहली बार ‘महिषासुर शहादत दिवस’ मनाया था, तब शायद किसी ने सोचा भी नहीं होगा कि यह दावनल की आग सिद्ध होगा। 2015 तक, महज चार सालों में ही इन आयोजनों ने न सिर्फ देशव्यापी सामाजिक आलोडऩ पैदा कर दिया था, बल्कि ये आदिवासियों, अन्य पिछडा वर्ग…[Read more]

Purpose: This study aims at justifying the affiliation of the massive transformative purpose as an important item in the aggregate of the proclaimed corporate culture elements. For this reason the bundle of shades in the meaning for the massive transformative purpose will be explored, bearing in mind the main researcher’s interest in outlining t…[Read more]