The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1779 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
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Pantheism
,
panentheism
.
A family of views dealing with the relation between God and the world. In contrast to
theism's
stress on the total transcendence of God, both terms reflect an emphasis on divine
immanence
. In pantheistic views, God and the world are essentially identical; the divine is totally immanent. In panentheistic views, the world exists in God (all reality is part of the being of God), but God is not exhausted by the world; the divine is both transcendent and immanent. Such views are often closely related to
mysticism
.
Pantisocracy
(egalitarian society):
P
pa
(Skt.). In Hinduism, evil,
sin
, misfortune. Like its synonym,
adharma
, p
pa includes both moral and natural evil, which are considered aspects of the same phenomenon. An absolute distinction between moral evil (or evil willed by humans) and natural evil (or an ‘act of God’), is not present in Hindu thought. One can sin unintentionally by unknowingly eating a prohibited food or making an error in ritual. One's sin, whether intentional or unintentional, may have consequences, not only for oneself, but for others, so that one must pray for deliverance from the sins of others as well as from one's own sins.
In Buddhism, the connotation of evil and immorality is applied particularly to states of mind and actions. P
pa is considered evil because it takes one away from the path of spiritual development, the path of
nirv
na
.
P
pa is what ensues from an
aku
ala
action.

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