Vaiṣṇava Practice

This chapter attempts to offer not a historical overview of Vaiṣṇava practice, but an overview of the ways Vaiṣṇavas have viewed their own practice. Given the enormous variety of Vaiṣṇava traditions and their very regional nature, any overview of Vaiṣṇava practice is necessarily selective. The chapter draws upon the writings of Vaiṣṇavas from most major traditions, and on a wide range of scriptural texts. After an analysis of the Vaiṣṇava understanding of bhakti, I discuss just four distinct Vaiṣṇava practices, which Vaiṣṇava Purāṇas proclaim to be the principal practices for the four cosmic ages (yuga): Vedic ritual, image worship, praising God, and meditation. Examining the various practices indicated by just these four, while not exhaustive, does demonstrate the great diversity of Vaiṣṇava practice, and also brings to light how these practices, despite their apparent differences, are all interconnected and, in the Vaiṣṇava mind, all have the same aim: constant remembrance of God.

The Metaphysics of Polis Community

By way of illustration, Part Three (“Life in a Cosmic Ecology”) revisits the primary case study, showing how the proposed paradigm shift can help us to produce an entirely new, more historically meaningful account of the Athenian politeia. The chapter introduces this alternative account by reconstructing the a priori template of social being upon which demokratia was premised. This model seems to have taken the form of a kind of cosmic ecology of gods, land, and demos (“people”) in Attica, an a priori symbiosis between the human and non-human constituents of the polis, whereby the former subsisted as a kind of human superorganism, not as an aggregate of modern-style individuals. In the chapters that follow, the principal practices and mechanisms of the Athenian politeia are then duly re-examined in this original metaphysical conjuncture, thereby demonstrating the profound differences which separate an ancient demokratia from a modern democracy.

Leading school for learning: principal practices in Taiwan

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss how principals in Taiwan lead student and teacher learning at a time of leadership and learning paradigm shifts and the imminent implementation of the curriculum guideline for 12-year basic education. Design/methodology/approach This study interviewed 32 elementary and junior high school principals purposively sampled based on reputation and recommendation from senior principals and government officials. Findings As a society which values credentialism, principals in Taiwan face challenges in executing the vision of educating student as a whole person. The authors discuss how principals are solidifying whole person education as the espoused value, how they are enforcing school-based curriculum and effective instruction, and encouraging teacher professional learning. Principals are sharing power by recruiting stakeholders’ participation in guiding school development and enacting distributed leadership, while also building relationship as social capital and soliciting support from the community to establish the conditions to improve teaching and learning. Research limitations/implications This paper highlights how principal practices are evolving in a time of changing conception of learning from academic achievement to multiple competencies and the shifting paradigm of power from participatory decision making to distributed leadership. This paper ends with a discussion on how leadership for learning (LfL) as a community engagement has emerged. Practical implications With the shifting of the concept and paradigm of learning, principals in a high power distance society like Taiwan are now facing opportunities as well as challenges to lead teachers to engaging students in inquiry and collaboration. Originality/value This paper highlights the indigenous practices of principal LfL in a high-performing East Asian education system in a time of changing notions of learning and leadership.

The religious adequacy of free-will theism

In this paper I question the claim that the increasingly popular position known as ‘free-will theism’ or ‘the open view of God’ supports a rich religious life. To do this I advance a notion of ‘religious adequacy’, and then argue that free-will theism fails to be religiously adequate with respect to one of the principal practices of the religious life – petitionary prayer. Drawing on current work in libertarian free-will theory, I consider what are likely the only two lines of defence free-will theists might use in response to my argument. I argue that these defences either fail or have features that make them unacceptable to free-will theists. I then suggest that this failure with petitionary prayer is an instance of a larger problem for free-will theism, that the position's distinctive views often differ more dramatically from the common beliefs and practices of most believers than is usually recognized or acknowledged. I conclude that free-will theism can support a rich religious life only for those who make the requisite changes in belief and practice, including changing their expectations about petitionary prayer.