Mystery Of Life Research Articles

BUDDHISM IN MODERN INDIA: ASSERTION OF IDENTITY AND AUTHORITY FOR DALITS (SOCIAL CHANGES AND CULTURAL HISTORY)

In the Lotus Sutra (the first Sutra introduced into China and Vietnam from India), the Buddha is described as the most respected and loved creature who walked on two feet. This was precisely the reason why Dalits in India have started the Navayana Buddhism or the Neo- Buddhist movement which is a very socially and politically engaged form of Buddhism. For Dalits, whose material circumstances were very different from the ainstream upper castes, the motivation always remained: to learn about suffering and to reach its end, in each person‘s life and in society. Many of them have turned to Dhamma in response to the Buddha‘s central message about suffering and the end of suffering. Previously lower-caste Hindus, the Indian Buddhists in Nagpur converted under the olitical influence of Babasaheb Ambedkar, the author of India‘s constitution, to denounce caste oppression. They became Buddhist for political and spiritual reasons, and today, the implications of their actions continue to unfold in many ways. Their belief in the four seals of Buddhism – All compounded things are impermanent, All emotions are the pain, All things have no inherent existence and Nirvana is beyond concepts, have made them renounce the atrocities and injustice of Hindu savarnas which were carried on since last many centuries. It is well known that Buddha began his investigation into the mysteries of life by his acute awareness of the painful aspects of his immediate experiences. His encounter with the disease, old age, death, and its sorrowful effects were instrumental in developing a whole philosophy based on the fact of suffering (duḥkha).In his book The Buddha and His Dhamma, Dr. Ambedkar has proposed his concept of Navaya Buddhism which was not very similar to the mainstream traditional Buddhism. His idea was more to discard the practices of karma, rebirth in an afterlife, or related rituals and to use religion in terms of class struggle and social equality. He adopts science, activism, and social reform as a form of Engaged Buddhism. Many critics have identified this phenomenon as a synthesis of the ideas of modern Karl Marx into the structure of ideas by the ancient Buddha. ―Whenever the ethical or moral value of activities or conditions is questioned, the value of religion is involved; and all deep-stirring experiences invariably compel a reconsideration of the most fundamental ideas, whether they are explicitly religious or not.‖ (Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics). This paper tries to discuss the role of Buddhism in Modern Indian social problematic reference to context.

Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists

Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists

일본 전후(戰後) 여성시인과 성(性)

Sexual expressions in postwar Japanese women's poetry have manifested themselves in a multitude of various perspectives. These include the sexuality of the biological point of view as well as the sexuality and gender of physical attractiveness. This is especially shown in the case of sex represented by birth. The first-generation poets revealed passive perceptions that regarded this as the fate of women. The second-generation poets on the other hand, take an enterprising attitude against this, which they regard as a conventional object that needs to be overcome. While the first󰠏generation poets revealed their attitude toward a limited life for women due to biological handicaps. The second󰠏generation poets recognized their fate but had the will to ultimately overcome it. Extraordinary sexual vocabulary appeared in the works of the second generation poets, these include word like: spermatozoon, ovum, uterus, penis and other detailed sexual terminology. However, in previous poems these types of words were never directly addressed. This straightforward, free-spoken expression reached its pinnacle from Siraishi Kazuko through Sinkawa Kazue. They strongly denied the existing narrative structure that had created taboos for explicit sexual expression, while taking the mystery of life as their ultimate goal.

The Muse of Losing Mother

Mother comes alive in her death. She visits me in mother words, mother moods, in the physical memory of her passing. She floods me with images of her lively, funny, loving ways of being. Then she is gone. I am orphaned. Up against the black hole of not being. Mother’s death is a difficult muse. She insists I contemplate the mystery of life’s final passage. Mother herself has been an essential muse. I gather some of my many prose and poetic writings about her. I visit the long painful decade of her decline in poems, and remember a long-ago dream in which she is transformed into an earth goddess.

Narrating Resuscitation: Theory, Knowledge, and the Cultural Life of Eighteenth-Century Vitalism.

This paper considers the relationship between the practice of resuscitation in mid- to late eighteenth-century Britain, and vitalist physiology and medicine. It explores how the mix of mystery and fact presented in the scene of reanimation, and manifested in the resuscitated body as the site of such a compelling conjunction, is negotiated in contemporary vitalist theories of life and theoretical reflections on natural philosophical method. In this, it gives a particular prominence to the Scottish vitalists, especially William Cullen. It considers the attractions of resuscitation for addressing the particular epistemological predicament faced by vitalism: its combination of post-Newtonian empiricism and the inevitable conjecture-or "provisionally inexplicable explicative device"-necessary when faced with the mysteries of life. Finally, the cultural life of vitalism is considered in the work of William Hawes, Humane Society founder, and John Thelwall, radical journalist.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Mystery of Life and Work. Interview with N.Y. Samoylenko, Deputy Director General of the Russian State Library

In 2018, the 100th birth anniversary of A.I. Solzhenitsyn is celebrated. The article reveals the consistent work on the exhibition Project “Writer and Mystery: Alexander Solzhenitsyn”, carried out in the Museum-Reserve “Tsaritsyno” (December 15, 2017 — February 25, 2018), one of the co-organizers of which was the Russian State Library (RSL). The method of interview gives an opportunity to reveal the subjective vision, concepts and exhibition practices of the Head of Project, Deputy Director General of the RSL Natalya Y. Samoylenko, which she managed to use in its implementation. In fact, the interview is a masterclass in the preparation of such events; it reveals the professional creative approach and features of event management, forming the communications of different levels and contributing to the understanding of the place and role of all partners involved in the project. Peculiarity of this project is determined by the fact that A.I. Solzhenitsyn is our contemporary. The living and emotional perception of him by people is still prevailing in the mass consciousness; and the image of the classical writer, more refined and supported by scientific research of biographers, bibliographers, literary critics, which will be fixed by time and will become his hallmark, while still evolving. Therefore, each exhibition, where you can see objects and artefacts that reveal certain facets of the character and actions of the writer, is a unique construct and event. This is especially true for understanding the inner world and motivation of the writer's actions, which give the key to the formation of his relations to the world, society, power. The library, as the Keeper of the book cultural heritage and knowledge, can become an indispensable active participant in this process, not only accompanying the exhibition, but also revealing its collections, the atmosphere of book culture, the attitude towards book, publishing activity and its technologies, appropriate to the time of the exhibited space and communications. The event context of the libraries’ exhibition activities, their involvement in socio-cultural processes, contributing to the expansion of interests and spheres of participation, will stimulate the development of scientific activity of libraries in the framework of postnonclassical research practices.

In Situ Scatheless Cell Detachment Reveals Correlation between Adhesion Strength and Viability at Single-Cell Resolution.

Single-cell biology provides insights into some of the most fundamental processes in biology and promotes the understanding of life's mysteries. As the technologies to study single-cells expand, they will require sophisticated analytical tools to make sense of various behaviors and components of single-cells as well as their relations in the adherent tissue culture. In this paper, we revealed cell heterogeneity and uncovered the connections between cell adhesion strength and cell viability at single-cell resolution by extracting single adherent cells of interest from a standard tissue culture by using a microfluidic chip-based live single-cell extractor (LSCE). We believe that this method will provide a valuable new tool for single-cell biology.

In Situ Scatheless Cell Detachment Reveals Correlation between Adhesion Strength and Viability at Single‐Cell Resolution

AbstractSingle‐cell biology provides insights into some of the most fundamental processes in biology and promotes the understanding of life's mysteries. As the technologies to study single‐cells expand, they will require sophisticated analytical tools to make sense of various behaviors and components of single‐cells as well as their relations in the adherent tissue culture. In this paper, we revealed cell heterogeneity and uncovered the connections between cell adhesion strength and cell viability at single‐cell resolution by extracting single adherent cells of interest from a standard tissue culture by using a microfluidic chip‐based live single‐cell extractor (LSCE). We believe that this method will provide a valuable new tool for single‐cell biology.

Sacredness, dignity and mystery of human life: from the Bible to our times

The author discusses three issues: (1) daily approaches to the dignity and sacredness of human life and their consequences; (2) the sacredness of life to be rediscovered and mediated through the Bible; (3) “humanity/ādām created in God’s own image and likeness”: dynamic and canonical meaning. At the end he asks for route to be proposed to the sacredness and mystery of life in our days, news and current affairs.

Kurianti tėvystė - motinystė ir šiandienė bevaikystės kultūra

Klausimas „Ar verta turėti vaikų“, pasak prancūzų filosofo Gabrielio Marcelio, Vakarų visuomenėje yra naujas. Turėdamas laisvę paneigti prigimtinę gyvenimo duotybę – jungtuvinį žmogaus ir gyvenimo ryšį – individas ir visuomenė patiria nuobodulį – egzistencinę tuštumą. Ši problema tiksliau aprašoma kognityvaus, ne moralinio trūkumo terminu: gyvename gyvenimo vertės eklipsės laikais. Šis pasaulio spalvos pritemimas nulemtas daugelio priežasčių, tačiau viena iš svarbiausių yra savęs bei vyro ir moters santykio nuskurdinimas iki seksualumo – termino, kuriame vyrauja utilitarinė dimensija. Kad vyro ir moters galią pradėti gyvybę tiksliau yra vadinti „generatyvumu“ (arba „gimtiškumu“), sutaria tokios palyginti skirtingos pažiūrų sistemos, kaip antai klasikinė tomistinė antropologija, Rytų žmogaus supratimas (Vydūnas) ir psichoanalizė (Erikias Eriksonas). Kad tokia antropologija yra adekvati – Jono Pauliaus II – terminas, parodo ir skaitlingi pastarųjų dešimtmečių neurobiologiniai tyrimai, moters grožį aiškiai susiejantys su jos vaisingumu. Tačiau pastarojo vertės suvokimą apsunkina, pasak Dawsono, Vakarų moksle įsigalėjusi pozityvistinė tradicija; vaisingumą suvokiant remiantis biologijos žiniomis ir medicinos tyrimais, vyrauja „biologijos“ semantika, kuri „nebepamena“, kad moters grožis susijęs su jos potencialu atverti ar uždaryti gyvenimo vartus. Atvirumas vaikams praturtina pačius tėvus „ego ribų išplėtimu“, o vaikų ir, vadinasi, visos visuomenės vystymuisi pirmieji metai kuria emocinės sistemos pamatus, kuriuos vėliau galima sustiprinti tik investuojant daug lėšų į pedagogines, medicinos ir socialines paslaugas to pamato neturintiems. Suvokti ir paremti motinystę ir tėvystę per pirmąjį jaunos šeimos gyvenimo dešimtmetį yra vienintelė valstybės politika, kurią būtų galima pavadinti tikrai pragmatiška

MicroQuijotes 2 by Juan Armando Epple

Reviewed by: MicroQuijotes 2 by Juan Armando Epple Edward Friedman Epple, Juan Armando, ed. MicroQuijotes 2. New York: Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española, 2015. (Colección Pulso Herido, 7). Pp. 140. ISBN 978-0-99034-559-6. Don Quijote is clearly a gift that keeps on giving. Miguel de Cervantes’s narrative is inspirational, in multiple senses of the term. Consumers of many ilks take pleasure in the reading process itself, which, more likely than not, will lead one to ponder the literary, philosophical, socio-historical, and ideological strains of a text that seems to point in infinite directions. From the publication of the two parts in 1605 and 1615, respectively, Don Quijote has been a bestseller and a critical sensation. Part 2 acknowledges the impact of Part 1, which became popular throughout Europe and, as of around 1608, began to be circulated in the New World. In this case, success comes with a price, for an intruder who adopts the pseudonym of Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda writes a spurious and mean-spirited sequel, perhaps to avenge the eminent playwright Lope de Vega, maligned by the priest Pero Pérez and the canon from Toledo—probable mouthpieces of the frustrated dramatist Cervantes—in chapter 48 of Part 1. The mocking presence of the Avellaneda continuation in the “legitimate” Part 2 demonstrates Cervantes’s skill at dealing with adversity, something that marks his biography as well as his creative trajectory. The writers included in [End Page 159] this anthology of microtexts draw upon a broad array of motifs introduced in Don Quijote, and their re-creations—often of Cervantine re-creations—are entertaining, rich, and, appropriately, ingenious in their own right. MicroQuijotes 2 is a second and expanded version of a 2005 publication. The majority of the new entries are published here for the first time. The editor, Juan Armando Epple, opens the prologue with quotations by Alejo Carpentier, Juan Carlos Onetti, Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Vargas Llosa, in which the renowned authors render homage to Cervantes and to Don Quijote as stimuli of fiction-making in its most intricate and sophisticated forms. As a prelude to the anthology itself, Epple comments on suggested contacts and distinctions among the microtexto, the microcuento, and minificción as subgenres. Semantics aside, he emphasizes condensation, fragmentation, open structure, intertextuality, transgeneric qualities, irony, and parody as hallmarks of the various brands of short fiction. Cervantes is the guide, but the individual writers are motivated in diverse manners, and their products venerate Don Quijote as, simultaneously, the anxiety of influence—to use Harold Bloom’s familiar phrase—pushes them to seek unique signatures within the abbreviated models. The anthology showcases the works of 47 writers, who share the meta-label, a commitment to brevity, and an implicit, if not explicit, devotion to the original text and its author. Epple notes, in the content of the selections, a tendency of the writers to focus on secondary characters, a vindication of the Arab historian Cide Hamete Benengeli, an interest in the female characters (those who appear and those who do not), the theme of idealism, and readings of Cervantes based on the mediation of other towering figures, most prominently among them Jorge Luis Borges. One could add to the list the topics of identity, self-image, love, loyalty, dreams, realism and reality, the thoughts of the protagonists, alterity, truth, continuity, doublings, the power of words, the content of libraries, fame, attitudes on the mysteries of life and death, immortality, and so forth. The writings are proof that Cervantes, so brilliantly resourceful in integrating the intertext into Don Quijote, writes a narrative that never ceases to become the intertext for subsequent artistic enterprises. Reinscription represents a certain type of writing, and a certain type of reading, because the objective is not, à la “Pierre Menard,” an imitation, but rather an homage to—and a dialectical encounter with—the original. The primary example, Don Quijote, is and is not a romance of chivalry. As with poststructuralism versus structuralism, similitude is key, but difference wins out. The anthology accentuates the ways in which writers engage Don Quijote, but by its very nature Cervantes’s opus would seem to encourage...

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Even More Things That Nobody Knows: 501 Further Mysteries of Life, the Universe and Everything

Even More Things That Nobody Knows: 501 Further Mysteries of Life, the Universe and Everything

Rings of a Poem – Rings of Interpretation: The Cooper’s Daughter by Ludmiła Marjańska

Summary This article presents an interpretation of the title poem of The Cooper’s Daughter (2002), Ludmiła Marjańska’s penultimate volume of funeral, senile and feminist verse. ‘The cooper’s daughter’ stands out from Marjańska’s other lyrics by dint of its well-ordered rhythmic structure and its wealth of symbolic signs, placing it firmly in a broad anthropological and cultural context. It’s a dancing poem, re-enacting the mystery of life and death; its analysis opens a perspective on the whole of Marjańska’s work and provides the tools for a reconstruction of her truly original and disturbing ‘metaphysical project’.

The Prophet

In 2009, artist Enrique Martínez Celaya sounded a clarion call to artists in the lecture “The Prophet” to make work that aspires to more than entertainment, decoration, or activism. Years later, the situation is just as urgent and his argument just as timely. “What the age needs,” Martínez Celaya argues, “is a prophet” who is responsible to the world, who searches for what he calls “a whisper of the order of things,” who affirms the complexity and mystery of life and searches for understanding, clarity, even truth, which Martínez Celaya believes is the distinctive role and responsibility of art. Drawing on Pushkin's poem “The Prophet” (1826) and Kahil Gibran's book The Prophet (1923), Martínez Celaya explains that the prophet is no martyr or mystic who seeks transcendence from this world, a hero who triumphs over the world, or a saint who inspires through certainty, but one who turns humbly and curiously toward the world. For him, the artist-prophet's work is a search for “a whisper of the order of things” that lies just below the surface of appearances. Although his artist-prophet might be unattainable, Martínez Celaya offers an inspiring and hopeful declaration of faith in the practice of art through clarity of purpose, character, urgency, and desperation in an otherwise cynical and superficial culture.

How St. Francis Influenced Pope Francis’ Laudato Si

How St. Francis Influenced Pope Francis’ Laudato Si Xue Jiao Zhang In 2013, Pope Francis became the 266th successor of St. Peter in the Roman Catholic Church. He chose the name Francis as his papal name in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. It is more than a name he shares with St. Francis of Assisi. In Pope Francis’ encyclical letters and his speech, he uses the language of St. Francis and his early biographies to tie contemporary environmental theory to the Franciscan lineage. The mission and message of Pope Francis mirror those of the beloved saint who lived over 800 years ago. At that time, numerous saints emerged in Christian history. Grounding in the Gospel values and the spirit of Jesus’ teaching, these saints followed the footprints of Jesus and revealed God's Providence to all on earth through the way they lived and the commitment to God. One of them was St. Francis of Assisi, who was born in a merchant family in 1181 and died as God's servant in 1226. Mentioning about St. Francis, most people would connect him with the animals, the birds, and the entire creatures so often. Or, people would refer to his famous poem “The Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon.” However, these are just the tip of the iceberg of this saint's life. The core values of St. Francis’ lifelong journey are truly derived from his continuous conversion to God and his profound contemplation as entry into its deepest gift—the mystery of life, the presence of God in life, and mirrored by life (Dennis et al., 147). Through the various autobiographies and miracles of St. Francis of Assisi in the Church, it is not difficult to find that God's Providence has been unfolded through generations to generations, even today. Pope Francis, the current Pope of Roman Catholic Church, is the first Pope from the Americas, from the Jesuit order, and to choose the name Francis. Pope Francis was the rector of Buenos Aires's Jesuit Seminary in 1980. He was exiled by the Jesuits to Cordoba as confessor in 1990 because of his intolerance as a rector. Unexpectedly, the humiliation generated from this exile empowered him to be humble. It brought about an intense conversion in Pope Francis’ life. It was because of this experience that Pope Francis began to say, “Please pray for sinners!” After two years of his exile, he became the Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires. He totally remodeled his style of leadership from dictatorship to participative (Alff). Obviously, what Pope Francis has experienced in his life has an immense impact on how he lives out his papacy today as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. He is a contemporary model of St. Francis of Assisi. His Franciscanism is particularly embodied in the language he uses in his writing. Repairing and restoring are the keys in the conversion experience of St. Francis of Assisi. In the spirit of emulating what Francis did, Pope Francis applies these two keys to his papal encyclical on environment. Thomas of Celano, who was received into the Order by St. Francis himself, and was the first one to write a life of St. Francis, as well as the first to describe the earliest days of the life of St. Francis’ followers, wrote in his book The First Life of St. Francis: Now the first work which blessed Francis undertook after having been delivered from the hand of his carnal father was to build a house for God: but he did not try to build it anew, rather did he repair the old and restore the ancient; he pulled not up the foundation, but built upon it, ever (though unwittingly) respecting Christ's prerogative, for “other foundation, can no one lay than that which hath been laid, which is Christ Jesus.” And when he had returned to the place where (as has been said) a church of St. Damian had been built of yore, he zealously repaired it in a short time, the grace of the Most High being with him. (Chapter 8) Thomas of Celano tells us that St. Francis did not build San Damiano Church where he...

Reviews and Resources:The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution and the Origins of Complex Life

If I were a rich man, I would buy up the print run of this book and give a copy to every science undergraduate ahead of his or her first course in cell biology. It would serve nicely as an antidote to the standard textbooks, crammed to the gills with chewy factual detail, that have grown too heavy to carry, let alone read. Surely, what draws students into science is not an overmastering desire to add another pebble to that gigantic pile, but the prospect of touching the mystery of life the and perhaps making a contribution to understanding the universe!

The elements of humanity and Sufism in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden

Abstract It seems that the very important role of literature is its transcendental appeal. Literature knows no boundary and it ties whole nations even if they are politically segregated. The present paper tries to trace some of the salient features of humanism and Sufism, such as Absolute Unity, simplicity, selfknowing, purity, solitude, loving one another and some others in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. This American writer, as an ardent follower of the Transcendental Club in America and the holy scriptures of the East, was known as the hero of simplicity in the U.S.A. Being a protester against government and society, he dwelled for more than two years alone in Walden Pond to see the mysteries of life and to find Reality and the Almighty. He believed Nature to be the best teacher and opined that every parcel of nature is a sign of God. He came to know about the holy scriptures of the East, especially those of the Indians and strongly used them in his writings, especially in Walden and the Week. Therefore such a person who seeks God, indeed, can be familiar with elements of humanism and Sufism, and one can find such elements in Walden by pondering its text

Transparent soft PDMS eggshell

In vivo 3D fluorescent image remains a technological barrier for biologists and clinical scientists although green fluorescent protein (GFP) imaging has long been performed rather well at cellular level. Meanwhile, robust enough portable devices are also challenging lab-on-a-chip advocators who wish their designs to be nurtured by the end users. This work is dedicated to propose a conceptually innovated transparent soft PDMS avian eggshell to directly tackle the above two goals. Here, an “egg-on-a-chip” scheme is originally developed and demonstrated by a newly developed PDMS “soft” process method. Unlike its ancestor-the conventional “lab-on-a-chip” (LOC) which is basically chemically based, the current “egg-on-a-chip”, intrinsically inherited with biological natures, opens a way to integrate biological parts or whole system in a miniature sized device. Such biomimics system contains much condensed environmental evolutional tensor inside than those of the existing LOC compacted with artificial components which however are quite difficult to incorporate various life factors inside. Owning unique advantages, a series of transparent PDMS whole “eggshells” have been fabricated and applied to culture avian embryos up to 17.5 days and chimeric eggshells were engineered on normal eggs. In addition, X-stage embryos were successfully initiated in such system and pre-chorioallantoic membrane was observed. Further, limitation of the present process was interpreted and potential approach to improve it was suggested. With both high optical transparency and engineering subtlety fully integrated together, the present method not only provides an ideal transparent imaging platform for studying functional embryo development including life mystery, but also promises a future strategy for “lab-on-an-egg” technology which may be important in a wide variety of either fundamental or practical areas.

Global Peace: To Nurture a Healthy Mind & Shakyamuni the Buddha's Teachings

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/jpan.v3i3.11835