ISHAR Online

As part of its mission to provide open access to all scholarly aspects of the mind-body subject, ISHAR regularly makes full-text historical books available to our users.  We've uploaded another three books to our Tibetan books page, along with brief summaries of the texts and Tibetan literature in general, compiled by Dr. William Bushell.

Bardo Thodol or Tibetan Book of the Dead

The Bardo Thodol (Tibetan: བར་དོ་ཐོས་གྲོལ, Wylie: bar do thos grol), Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State, is a text from a larger corpus of teachings, the Profound Dharma of Self-Liberation through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones, revealed by Karma Lingpa (1326–1386). It is the best-known work of Nyingma literature, and is known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The Tibetan text describes, and is intended to guide one through, the experiences that the consciousness has after death, in the bardo, the interval between death and the next rebirth. The text also includes chapters on the signs of death and rituals to undertake when death is closing in or has taken place.

Illumination of the Path to Freedom

Illumination of the Path to Freedom by His Holiness the First Dalai Lama Gyalwa Gendun Drup (1391-1474), is a commentary to a much older Tibetan classic:  The Treasure House of Knowledge, written by the Master Vasubandhu (350 AD). Dalai Lama starts out with an entertaining discussion about Tibetan versus Sanskrit – Tibet versus India:

“If a commentary comes from India people will take the time to study and teach it. It’s just like the local merchants. If they hear some barley has come from the lowlands, right away they want to trade for it, because the source is a good one. A commentary may be excellent, but if you don’t put some Sanskrit in it nobody wants to work with it. They think it’s just Tibetan.”

Praises to the Twenty One Taras

Tara (Sanskrit: तारा, tārā; Tib. སྒྲོལ་མ, Dölma) or Ārya Tārā, also known as Jetsun Dölma (Tibetan language:rje btsun sgrol ma) in Tibetan Buddhism, is a female Bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism who appears as a female Buddha in Vajrayana Buddhism. She is known as the "mother of liberation", and represents the virtues of success in work and achievements. She is known as Tara Bosatsu (多羅菩薩) in Japan, and occasionally as Duōluó Púsà (多羅菩薩) in Chinese Buddhism. Tara is a tantric meditation deity whose practice is used by practitioners of the Tibetan branch of Vajrayana Buddhism to develop certain inner qualities and understand outer, inner and secret teachings about compassion and emptiness. Tara is actually the generic name for a set of Buddhas or bodhisattvas of similar aspect. These may more properly be understood as different aspects of the same quality, as bodhisattvas are often considered metaphors for Buddhist virtues.

   ISHAR is proud to launch the Integrative Scholar's Hub, an open-access platform for both researchers, practitioners, and volunteers to collaborate on projects across the spectrum of human knowledge.  In cooperation with numerous institutions who will be listing their projects within ISHAR, the Scholar's Hub offers users the ability to:

• Create a profile that showcases their own projects
• Add dozens of unique tags to your project description
• Search an index of other scholars' work from multiple disciplines
• Find out who else is working on a type of project
• Collaborate, avoid duplication of work, work interdisciplinarily
• Share full documents and messages
• List yourself as a volunteer to assist research

Example

Sign Up for ISHAR Scholar's Hub

ISHAR Online is in the midst of a significant and comprehensive expansion, and we ask you to please be patient as we implement these changes.  The core functions of ISHAR should not be affected, but our website's appearance may temporarily suffer as we overhaul our features.  The functions we're excited to be introducing include:

• An open-access interdisciplinary scholar's hub that will allow users to seek out other research relevent to their own projects and share data (NOW LIVE)

• Dynamic infographics showcasing the relative efficacy of different topics and approaches

• Easy toggle filters to explore the mind-body-cultural facets of our many different topics

The primary determining factor of whether something in included on ISHARonline.org is whether there is signficant evidence to present and discuss.  As a scholarly database, ISHAR is evidence-based and places a very high premium on being as objective as possible.  A common misconception is that Integrative Medicine is similar to Psuedoscience, and that both are outside the scope of science.  In fact, Integrative Medicine is a field of medical science, and the only scholarly difference between Orthodox Medicine and Integrative Medicine is that the former is supported by old evidence that is no longer debated, and the latter is supported by new evidence that is still being debated.  Pseudoscience, on the other hand, is made up of assertions with no supporting evidence.  

When a topic is researched, for example Ayurveda, we attempt to gather every reputable, peer-reviewed study that is publicly available about that topic, whether old or new.  ISHAR does not cherry pick or perform confirmation-biased searches, and our data crawling software is designed to automatically pick up any relevant studies.  This is because discussions about Integrative Medicine are too important to allow them to be dismissed as biased or lacking sound evidence.  ISHARonline.org is proof there are massive troves of evidence, and we include all of it; supporting, contradicting, and in between.  

In an instance where we would have been happy to be wrong, the British Medical Journal recently confirmed the risk that ISHAR highlighted over a year ago.  At that time ISHAR published an infographic comparing the relative risks of Integrative Medicine (CAM) and orthodox medical treatment.  After compiling a meta analysis of our own sources and other medical references, we were shocked to discover that orthodox medical treatment resulted in 272 times more avoidable deaths than the oft-maligned Integrative Medicine, even when adjusted per capita and using the most extreme claims against Integrative Medicine.

By Rikki Marquis

Selected for their exceptional work in the field of consciousness, several Directors from ISHAR have been invited to present their research at UC Berkeley’s upcoming conference, Foundations of Mind III: Science as if Being Mattered, May 18-20 2016.  FOM is one of the most important gatherings about consciousness theory in the world, and ISHAR is honored to be a part of the conference!