Love In World Religions

Body in Islam

  Islamic law and practice define the human body as a symbol with which to display and communicate certain ideals and realities linked to the course of human history and the establishment of society. The body serves as a reminder of the fallen state of human nature, necessitating the existence of the state and authority […]

Body in Hinduism

  Among the diverse array of discourses of the body found in religious traditions throughout the world, Hindu traditions are of particular interest because they provide extensive, elaborate, and multiform discourses that can contribute in significant ways to scholarship on the body in the history of religions and the human sciences, generally. The body has […]

Body in Christianity

  The body of Christ is key to the Christian understanding of the body even though no New Testament texts explicitly speak about the human body of Jesus Christ. What the New Testament does say is that “the Word became flesh” (sarx, John 1:14), using a term that reflects the Hebrew basar, and suggesting the […]

Body in Buddhism

  Meditation, which the Buddha recommended as a daily practice, is both a physical (breathing) and a mental (visualization) process. Maintaining the health of the physical body is essential for mindful spiritual practice. According to Buddhist narratives, Sid-dhartha Gautama (b. 566 BCE), a prince living in the foothills of the Himalayas in what is now […]

Bodhisattva

  According to Buddhism, a bodhisattva (literally, “awakening being”) is a being who is on the path to the unsurpassed, complete, and perfect awakening of a buddha (a person who has achieved full enlightenment). And insofar as a buddha is understood to be characterized by unbounded compassion, a bodhisattva is one who is on the […]

Charity in Buddhism

  Charity is generosity and helpfulness, primarily for the needy and suffering. Such an action is realized through the adoption of four qualities: metta (Sanskrit, maitri), karuna, upekkha (Sanskrit, upeksha), and mudita. Cultivation of these four qualities allows a person to attain emancipation of the heart (cetovimutti). Metta denotes a heart full of love, one […]

Celibacy

  Celibacy, the renunciation of marriage and sexuality, has a place in many of the world’s religious traditions, and has often been understood as a voluntary renunciation of worldly pleasure in the service of God and one’s own spiritual advancement. Celibacy has also been an important means of resistance for women within patriarchal societies. While […]

Catholic Mysticism

  In Christianity, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Christian mysticism is an attempt to fathom and reciprocate that love through the doctrine of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the emotion of human desire. Trinitarian faith affirms that God is a single being or essence subsisting in three persons— an eternal community of love. Classical […]

Buddha

  According to Buddhism, a buddha is an “awakened one,” one who has attained unsurpassed, complete, and perfect awakening, or a full realization of the way things really are. Like other “worthy ones” (arhats), a buddha has fully eradicated the various forms of mental defilement, including passionate attachment, passionate aversion, and delusion, and is therefore […]

Charity in Judaism

  Charity in Judaism is the universal obligation— one of the very highest—to give to the poor and needy. It is not a synonym for love as in the Christian tradition, although it may be construed as a kind of applied virtue that unites the giver to God. Not content with abstract notions of generosity, […]

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