Related Research Articles
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Hinduism:
Rajneesh, also known as Acharya Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and later as Osho, was an Indian godman, mystic, and founder of the Rajneesh movement. He was viewed as a controversial new religious movement leader during his life. He rejected institutional religions, insisting that spiritual experience could not be organized into any one system of religious dogma. As a guru, he taught a form of meditation called dynamic meditation and advocated that his followers live fully but without attachment, a rejection of traditional ascetic practices. In advocating a more progressive attitude to human sexuality he caused controversy in India during the late 1960s and became known as "the sex guru".
Ram Dass, also known as Baba Ram Dass, was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and author. His best-selling 1971 book Be Here Now, which has been described by multiple reviewers as "seminal", helped popularize Eastern spirituality and yoga in the West. He authored or co-authored twelve more books on spirituality over the next four decades, including Grist for the Mill (1977), How Can I Help? (1985), and Polishing the Mirror (2013).
Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa, born Krishna Rai, was a yoga guru, the founder of Siddha Yoga. He was a disciple of Bhagavan Nityananda. He wrote books on the subjects of Kundalini Shakti, Vedanta, and Kashmir Shaivism, including a spiritual autobiography entitled The Play of Consciousness. In honorific style, he is often referred to as Swami Muktananda, or Baba Muktananda, or in a familiar way just Baba.
Siddha Yoga is a spiritual path founded by Swami Muktananda (1908–1982). The organization states in its literature that the Siddha Yoga tradition is "based mainly on eastern philosophies". It also states that it "draws many of its teachings from the Indian yogic texts of Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism, the Bhagavad Gita and the poet-saints." The present head of Siddha Yoga is Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.
The Sri Aurobindo Ashram is a spiritual community (ashram) located in Pondicherry, in the Indian territory of Puducherry. The ashram grew out of a small community of disciples who had gathered around Sri Aurobindo after he retired from politics and settled in Pondicherry in 1910. On 24 November 1926, after a major spiritual realization, Sri Aurobindo withdrew from public view in order to continue his spiritual work. At this time he handed over the full responsibility for the inner and outer lives of the sadhaks and the ashram to his spiritual collaborator, "The Mother", earlier known as Mirra Alfassa. This date is therefore generally known as the founding-day of the ashram, though, as Sri Aurobindo himself wrote, it had "less been created than grown around him as its centre."
Yogoda Satsanga Society of India (YSS) is a non-profit, nonsectarian spiritual organization founded by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1917 and is a part of the Self-Realization Fellowship which was founded in 1920. The current president of the SRF/YSS is Brother Chidananda. Paramahansa Yogananda is most noted for his 1946 book Autobiography of a Yogi which became an international bestseller and featured in the 100 Most Important Spiritual Books of the 20th Century by HarperCollins.
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, born Malti Shetty on 24 June 1955, is the guru or spiritual head of the Siddha Yoga path, with ashrams in India at Ganeshpuri and the Western world, with the headquarters of the SYDA foundation in South Fallsburg, New York.
The Aghori are a monastic order of ascetic Shaivite sadhus based in Uttar Pradesh, India. They are the only surviving sect derived from the Kāpālika tradition, a Tantric, non-Puranic form of Shaivism which originated in Medieval India between the 7th and 8th century CE. Similarly to their predecessors, Aghoris usually engage in post-mortem rituals, often dwell in charnel grounds, smear cremation ashes on their bodies, and use bones from human corpses for crafting kapāla and jewellery.
Haidakhan Babaji, simply called Babaji by his students and devotees, was a religious teacher who appeared near the village of Haidakhan in northern India (Uttarakhand) and taught publicly from 1970 until his death in 1984. He has a following in the Western world, and two ashrams in India.
Bo Lozoff was an American writer and interfaith humanitarian. He co-founded several nonprofits, including the interfaith Human Kindness Foundation and its subsidiary Prison-Ashram Project, Carolina Biodiesel, and Kindness House. Many of Lozoff's nonprofit activities aim to improve the lives of prisoners and the previously incarcerated.
Inmates incarcerated in the United States penal system practice a variety of religions. Their basic constitutional right to worship has been reinforced by decades of court decisions and more recently by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. However, several of these court rulings have also set limitations on these rights when prisoner demands are seen to impede prison safety and function.
ascent was an independent, not-for-profit magazine published quarterly that explores the intersection of spiritual values with social and political issues, art, culture and contemporary thought. ascent also published a website, a blog, books, and held an annual retreat at Yasodhara Ashram. The tag line for the magazine was "Yoga for an inspired life". Its offices were based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Prison contemplative programs are classes or practices that are offered at correctional institutions for inmates and prison staff. There are measured or anecdotally reported benefits from studies of these programs such a stress relief for inmates and staff. These programs are gaining in acceptance in North America and Europe but are not mainstream.
Swami Maheshwarananda, born Mangilal Garg, known as Swamiji, is a yogi, guru.
The Prison Phoenix Trust (PPT) is a charity registered in England in 1988 that offers help to prisoners through the disciplines of meditation and yoga, working with silence and the breath. The PPT encourages prisoners – and prison staff – to take up a daily practice and supports them with classes, free books and CDs, and personal correspondence. It also sends out quarterly newsletters, written mostly by inmates. The PPT is non - denominational and works with those of any religion or none.
Aghor Yoga is a spiritual tradition that originated in Northern India around the 11th Century C.E. The word Aghor literally means "that which is not difficult or terrible"; according to its adherents, Aghor is a simple and natural state of consciousness, in which there is no experience of fear, hatred, disgust or discrimination. Accordingly, believers contend that any time that humans experience a state of discrimination, we limit our wholeness and fall prey to disruptive emotions such as anger, fear, jealousy, greed, and lust. The practices of Aghor Yoga today reflect reforms made in the 1960s, shifting the focus of Aghor to seeking a balanced life of selfless service and personal practice. Baba Bhagwan Ramji encouraged the practitioners of Aghor to follow the vamachara by embracing socially stigmatized and neglected people, such as street children and people with leprosy and other "untouchable" diseases. Today, the followers of Aghoreshwar Bhagwan Ramji have established a large network of schools, orphanages, medical clinics, or other social service projects.
The Jivamukti Yoga method is a proprietary style of yoga created by David Life and Sharon Gannon in 1984.
Sivananda Radha Saraswati, born Sylvia Demitz, was a German yogini who emigrated to Canada and founded Yasodhara Ashram in British Columbia. She established a Western-based lineage in the Sivananda tradition and published books on several branches of Yoga, including Kundalini Yoga for the West and Mantras; Words of Power. She was a member of the California Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and developed transpersonal psychology workshops to help students prepare for intense spiritual practice. Teachers trained at Yasodhara Ashram can now be found across North America and in Europe, the Caribbean, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
References
- ↑ Catalfo, Phil (December 2001). "2001 Karma Yoga Awards". Yoga Journal : 87. Retrieved July 23, 2014.
- ↑ "Turning Prisons into Ashrams". New Renaissance Magazine. 5 (3). Archived from the original on 2014-07-24. Retrieved July 23, 2014.
- ↑ "Human Kindness Foundation". Archived from the original on 2011-01-04. Retrieved 2011-01-11.
- ↑ Dougherty, Sarah Belle (June–July 2005). "Adventuring in Brotherhood: The Human Kindness Foundation". Sunrise magazine . Theosophical University Press. Retrieved July 23, 2014.
