The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1696 page)

(Skt., ‘contemplate’). Third and culminating component of meditation in
Ved
nta
, leading to spiritual knowledge. The first is
rava
a
, hearing and reading scripture; second is
manana
, reflection and assimilation of the first; third is the integration of both through meditation.

 
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(1892–1971)
. Christian theologian, reflecting especially on social and political issues. After twenty-three years in a Detroit working-class church, he moved to Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he became professor of Christian ethics, remaining there until his retirement.
Moral Man and Immoral Society
(1932) already anticipated his Gifford Lectures,
The Nature and Destiny of Man
(1941–3). What he looked for was ‘a combination of moral resoluteness about the immediate issues with a religious awareness of another dimension of meaning and judgement’, thereby grounding politics in realism about human frailty.

 
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Nieh-pan
.

Chin. for
nirv
na
.

 
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(1892–1984)
. German pastor and
Confessing Church
leader. He was a submarine commander in the First World War, and later a pastor in Dahlem, a suburb of Berlin. He formed the Pastors' Emergency League to resist the Nazi takeover of church life, and this formed one basis for the Confessing Church. As an outspoken preacher against the regime, Niemöller was arrested by the Gestapo in 1937 and only freed from concentration camps in 1945. Into his 80s he remained an active leader of the Christian peace movement.

 
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(Chin.; Jap.,
nembutsu
). The foremost religious practice in the
Pure Land schools
of Buddhism: see
NEMBUTSU
.

 
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