Kurlansky quotes from Baraka's book "Blues People": "In language, the African tradition aims at circumlocution rather than an exact definition.
Spiritual teachings, regardless of tradition, aim at explaining big T truth and showing us things like how to comply with it or discover it within ourselves.
His latest novel, Big Ray, continues in this tradition, aiming an eye at a son dealing with the death of his abusive, super-obese father (a portion of which you might remember from this year's fiction issue).
Tradition, which is aimed at families, is trying to offer the best of both urban and suburban living: It's a New Urbanist development, with pedestrian-friendly streets and a community center, that's slated to have as many as 17,000 homes.
Thus, in general, 'mysticism' would best be thought of as a constellation of distinctive practices, discourses, texts, institutions, traditions, and experiences aimed at human transformation, variously defined in different traditions.
The boxy Cube, he said, comes from nonautomotive design traditions and is aimed at young people.
Gaullist conservatism emphasized tradition and order and aimed at a politically united Europe under French leadership.
Durban seemed a good place in 2001 to continue the 20-year-long tradition of UN conferences aimed at combating racism, intolerance and xenophobia.
Instead of bonding together in the face of war or of sporting rivalry, Mr Nolvak wants people to unite against the "common enemy" of garbage.Estonia has a tradition of volunteer efforts aimed at cleaning up the blight of illegal rubbish dumping in public spaces (part of a legacy of environmental abuse during the Soviet occupation era).
Indeed the whole tradition of yoga was aimed at perfecting and transforming the body, propelling it towards what the 11th-century philosopher Abhinavagupta described as "melting, expansion, radiance" with a view – among the higher adepts – to making it transcendent, omniscient, even godlike.
