Psychology emerged as an independent field of naturalistic inquiry during an era of dawning Western scholarly and popular interest in Buddhism. Over the past century-and-a-half psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts have analysed, pathologized, misinterpreted, appreciated, assim...
Bhakti is a central concept in Hinduism that embodies a multifaceted approach to divine engagement that transcends simple definitions. At the heart of many forms of Hinduism is a multiple-layered vision of becoming concentred in the divine reality. Across three millennia of Hindu sociorelig...
In this entry, the Christian theology of prayer will be approached as a reflection on prayer practices. Prayer is a communicative act by which one or more human beings address themselves to God, in the awareness that God already has established the divine-human relationship. Christianity is a...
Yoga represents both a philosophy and a practice, with the goal of liberation. Although ascetic practices existed previously, and the word yoga appears in the Vedas, the first definition is in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, where it is described as ‘the steady restraint of the senses’, building on the...