The names solemnly displayed in Memorial Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy serve as a constant reminder of why Annapolis is different from Harvard, or Stanford, or Duke. No midshipman recognizes this more viscerally than Donald Durago, who knows all too well that some will die--heroically, tragically, slowly, or quickly--in the service of their country. Set at the U.S. Naval Academy in the 1990s, The Recipient's Son tells the story of a young man's struggle to come to terms with his legacy as the son of a war hero and with his doubts about his own courage. Durago's father was killed in the Vietnam War where his actions as a POW earned him the Medal of Honor. That honor provided Durago with an appointment to the Naval Academy, a benefit offered to all children of Medal of Honor recipients. During his plebe year, Durago struggles under the burden of being worthy of his father's memory. With the help of Master Chief Strong, he begins to identify with his father's sacrifice, his own naval heritage, and Academy life. When an incident during his senior year brings his character into question triggering terrifying nightmares Durago realizes he has not completely dealt with his father's death. Before he can graduate, he must defend himself at a board of inquiry and faces "separation," a fate worse than mere expulsion. However, with the support of his roommate and a pretty JAG officer he finds the confidence to pursue a military career. The Recipient's Son is a stirring tale of a young man coming to grips with the heroism of his father and overcoming his self-doubts to accept the challenge of serving his country on his own terms.
For serious yoga practitioners curious to know the ancient origins of the art, Stephen Phillips, a professional philosopher and sanskritist with a long-standing personal practice, lays out the philosophies of action, knowledge, and devotion as well as the processes of meditation, reasoning, and self-analysis that formed the basis of yoga in ancient and classical India and continue to shape it today. In discussing yoga's fundamental commitments, Phillips explores traditional teachings of hatha yoga, karma yoga, bhakti yoga, and tantra, and shows how such core concepts as self-monitoring consciousness, karma, nonharmfulness ( ahimsa), reincarnation, and the powers of consciousness relate to modern practice. He outlines values implicit in bhakti yoga and the tantric yoga of beauty and art and explains the occult psychologies of koshas, skandhas, and chakras. His book incorporates original translations from the early Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutra (the entire text), the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, and seminal tantric writings of the tenth-century Kashmiri Shaivite, Abhinava Gupta. A glossary defining more than three hundred technical terms and an extensive bibliography offer further help to nonscholars. A remarkable exploration of yoga's conceptual legacy, Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth crystallizes ideas about self and reality that unite the many incarnations of yoga.
In this book Stephen Phillips focuses on one of the most important poems about meditation in world literature, as understood by two of the greatest philosophers of India, one classical, one modern. Sankara's commentaries on the Upanisads are a core of the Vedanta tradition and Aurobindo is a towering figure of 20th-century Hindu thought. This is the first time their approaches have been studied together. The Isa (c. 500 BCE) an Upanisad belongs to a genre of adhyatmika learning-concerning self and consciousness-in early Indian literature. According to the Ancient Indian tradition of yoga, meditation is antithetical to willful bodily and mental action. Breathing is all you do. In the conception of the Isa Upanisad, we are told that the best that comes from meditation is because of what the Lord is. In Sankara's interpretation it comes to block out the little you, whereas according to Aurobindo it comes as a divine connection, an occult Conscious Force belonging to truer part of oneself, atman, and an opening to that self's native energy. Framed around Aurobindo's translation of each of the Isa's eighteen verses, along with a translation of each verse, Phillips follows a different reading of Sankara as laid out in his commentary. All this is done against the backdrop of modern scholarship. Convergences and divergences of these streams are the focus throughout. Appendix A presents the Upanisad with the two readings side by side. This book traces a worldview and consonant yoga teaching common to two authors who are typically taken to be oceans apart, not only chronologically but in intellectual stance. Addressing a huge gap in the contemporary literature on meditation in the Hindu traditions, Phillips presents a compelling new way of thinking about meditation in the Advaita Vedanta philosophy and Upanisad.
Rebecca Nairn, a tall dark-haired, hazel-eyed woman of about thirty, perhaps looked an unlikely person to offer a solution to what was becoming an increasingly vexatious challenge for the peoples of the world. Yet her air of quiet confidence and authority, as she took possession of the podium, had an electrifying effect on the gathered UN Representatives and press. It helped that she was strikingly attractive; the sort of woman who other women wanted to be - and men wanted to be with. Even her hair, swept back in a severe pony tail, did nothing to hide her beauty; perhaps even enhanced it, although nothing could have been further from the thoughts of this serious minded academic. Professor Sir Julian Crighton, Dr Nairn and a group of friends have a plan to take humanity beyond the confines of the solar system for the first time. But they will face an array of opponents, many of whom are not constrained by the rules that normally apply to civilised people. Ozymandias is the story of their quest to build a new, more equitable, society far from the malign influences of big business and politicians.
As Lizzie Windsor-Nairn turned a corner, she felt one hand at her waist and another over her face with a sweet smelling rag in it. She knew that someone was trying to subdue her with a chemical and hoped that it would leave no lasting damage. As the hand on her waist started to move upwards towards her chest, she executed the manoeuvre that she had practiced, dropping towards the ground in order to unbalance her attacker. At the same time she let off her rape alarm and jerked her head backwards so that it came into contact with the assailant's nose. That was all she could do. He was far too heavy, and intent on doing goodness knows what to her, to be fought off by a slim thirteen-year-old. After a voyage of 50 years, the group of settlers face unexpected challenges from within the community, as they seek to create an ideal community away from the confines of the solar system. Yet the planet itself is not hostile to them. Indeed, there is a secret hidden beneath its surface that will change humanity's perception of its past. Dr Rebecca Nairn and her family are destined to find far more than they bargained for, when starting their journey.
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