A Heart of Wisdom: Religion and Human Wholeness (S U N Y Series in Religious Studies)

Drawing on almost half a century of immersion in the world's great religions, Friedman takes a dialogical approach through which religious reality is not seen as external creed and form or as subjective inspiration, but as the meeting in openness, presentness, immediacy, and mutuality with ultimate reality. Religion has to do with the wholeness of human life. Drawing on almost half a century of immersion in the world's great religions, coupled with an ever-deepening understanding of the philosophy and phenomenology of religion, the author takes a dialogical approach through which religious reality is not seen as external creed and form or as subjective inspiration, but as the meeting in openness, presentness, immediacy, and mutuality with ultimate reality. Religion has to do with the wholeness of human life. The absolute is found, not just in the universal, but in the particular and the unique. When it promotes a dualism in which the spirit has no binding claim upon life and life falls apart into unhallowed fragments, religion becomes the great enemy of humankind.Maurice Friedman is Professor of Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University and is Co-Director of the Institute for Dialogical Psychotherapy in San Diego. He is the author of over twenty books, including, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue; Martin Buber's Life and Work (3 volumes); Martin Buber and the Eternal; Abraham Joshua Heschel and Elie Wiesel: “You Are My Witnesses”; and Religion and Psychology: A Dialogical Approach. Annotation Describes religion not as an external creed and form, or as a subjective inspiration, but as a conscious and immediate meeting with ultimate reality. Religion, then, becomes involved with the wholeness of human life; truth appears in the particular and unique as well as in the universal; and duality promotes a separation between spirit and life that neither can survive. Oriented towards Judaism and Christianity. Paper edition (unseen), $16.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR Maurice Friedman. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 231-240) And Index.