For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

In our recent lectures like Advice to Spiritual Teachers & Aspirants & Sex, Drugs & Choosing A Guru | Q&A we've been going over our ideals and values as a community, using Swami Vivekananda's reflections on Sri Ramakrishna as our guiding principles. 

Recently also we took a look at our lineage and heritage to see where we've been! Now, we can look into the future and ask, "well, where are we going?" 

I want to discuss "our mission" as per Myra Mā's excellent inquiry in class the other day. What's our purpose? What's the manifesto? What's to be...

Recently, we as a community have been having some very important discussions around integrity and our values so that we may be a genuine place of spiritual learning and a safe and inclusive space for practitioners of all sorts, with all types of dispositions who belong to all sorts of spiritual traditions and backgrounds! 

Naturally, we need to talk about issues of sex, money and power which are most often the downfall of spiritual leaders and spiritual communities. Having clear ideals and having the courage to hold one another to them is perhaps the most important thing w...

In one sense, Śiva means the impersonal absolute Consciousness which is the very essence of the Self (as we pointed out in this video What Is "Shiva"? and also in The Secret Teaching of Bhairava) but in another sense, that which is the formless impersonal Godhead is also, by virtue of His vimarśa-śakti (i.e God's reflexive ability), the personal God who creates, maintains and destroys the universe and who can, at will, manifest as many different forms to suit different occasions and bhāvas (moods).

In other words, as the Personal God (Saguna Brahman), Shiv...

To celebrate today's occasion, we took the opportunity to look at the importance of divine immanence as well as the power and pervasiveness and superstition: first, we discussed the Norse and Biblical origins of the Western fear of the number 13, and the fear of Friday as being Venus' day, a day of decadence, sense indulgence and beauty, which are things that all feared and avoided by transcendelist "father sky only" type traditions.

We discuss the two types of reclamation: first, by practitioners in the Goddess tradition who are reframing this day at the celebration of the Divine...

Today is a very auspicious day for us since this full moon in the month of Jyeshta is the Snāna Yatra, the day when Lord Jagannath in Puri is brought out for a bath: on this occassion, in 1855, Mā Bhavatārinī Kālī (Jagadishwari Thakur Rani) was ritually awakened through prāna-pratishta! at the Dakshineshwar temple, where Sri Ramakrishna lived and taught.

Like the Phalahārinī Kālī Pūjā when Sri Ramakrishna worshipped Ma Sarada, this event too is a singularity in the ministry of the Motherhood of God. In one sense, all that is happe...

These past few weeks, we've been reflecting a lot on where we've been as a lineage, on our roots and origins. We discussed all of this in talks like Where Did Kālī Come From? | A Brief Herstory, What's Our Lineage? and Our Tantrik Lineage. And of course, while it is important to discuss where we're going (which we'll cover in the next talk), it is equally important to ask where we are now!

As such, I want to reflect a little bit on our ideals and values as a spiritual community. 

To do this, I t...

Recently, we've been reflecting a lot on Is There Free Will? and also How To Really Worship Kālī | Free Will vs Determinism to explain Sri Ramakrishna's very subtle position on the issue: God alone is the Doer ("not even a leaf moves but by the will of God") and yet there arises in us by God's will the "feeling" of free will which makes our decisions meaningful! But ultimately, we realize
(a) God only has been doing everything and playing all the roles (absolute determinism on the level of the individual) but also
(b) you are Go...

Last year, on this auspicious occasion of Dhūmāvatī Devī Jayanti (which is the 8th day after the New Moon of Vaiśakh) we gave a series on talks on this very mysterious and often feared phase of Mā's personality (Who is Mā Dhūmāvatī? & Worshipping Mā Dhūmāvatī) where we explored Her origin story, Her symbology and Her significance in theory and practice.

This year, we decided to go further and ask: "given that Dhūmāvatī Devī is associated to alaxmī, inauspiciousness and given that she favors widows, widowers, the lonely, outcast...

First, we present a rendition of Swami Vivekananda's profound and stirring song in Sanskrit to Shiva, the Great God along with an English translation by Swami Prabhavananda. I am especially fond of this song! We then make a few comments about why the days of the week are so significant and how to do a daily chanting practice based on the deity that is exalted on each day. Then, after a brief commentary on the Shiva Stotram and its origins and meaning, I make a case for music as a spiritual practice!

Here is a playlist of...

In this talk, we develop some the ideas from the Is There Free Will? lecture: if there is no free will, then, what's the point exactly? Isn't spiritual life all about freedom? If freedom is the goal, can such a freedom ever be articulated on the level of the embodied individual if after all, as we claimed last week, there is no freedom in a real sense for the embodied individual since Mother alone is doing everything? What then is "moksha", liberation, exactly?

To answer all of these important questions, we take up Thakur Sri Ramakrishna's definition...

After giving two talks establishing God (Proof for God & What is God in Tantra?) a in response to various objections from non-theistic traditions like scientific materialism, Buddhism, Sāmkhya & Advaita Vedanta, we are now left with an interesting question: what about the Problem of Evil?

The usual response to this dilemma from the theistic position is to assert free-will. God is indeed all-powerful and all-good and because of that goodness, God cannot be a tyrant and so affords each individual the dignity of free-will; the reason there is any evil in the world at all then is b...

In Verse 104, of the Vijñāna-Bhairava Tantra, we come across a profound teaching:

विहाय निजदेहस्थं सर्वत्रास्मीति भावयन्।

दृढेन मनसा दृष्ट्या नान्येक्षिण्या सुखी भवेत्॥ १०४॥

vihāya nijadehasthaṁ sarvatrāsmīti bhāvayan |

dṛḍhena manasā dṛṣṭyā nānyekṣiṇyā sukhī bhavet || 104 ||

"By abandoning the sense that the self abides only in one’s own body, and by contemplating with a firm mind that “I am everywhere”, without any other kind of seeing (through a-paroksha-anubhūti, direct mystic experience), one becomes happy (i.e enlightened)!"

I felt that this verse captured the very essence of spiritual life and spelled out the whole journey from start to finish which is a journey from limitation to absolute freedom, from jīva (limited individuality) to śīva (all inclusive one-ness), from selfishness...

When we say this Universe is internal to consciousness, as we do in Non-Dual Philosophy, are we making a solipsistic claim? In this Q&A discussion after our Friday morning discussion on Turning Non-Dual Teachings into Non-Dual Practices | Paramārthasāra, Verse 37 we discuss so many wonderful things!

Sri Devi asks beautiful questions about idealism and in response, we show why Advaita, Non-Duality is not solipsism! From this, we come to understand the role of śakti on Non-Dual Tantra as the raw potential that actualizes all possibilities from moment to moment! We then present a yardstick for fig...

Perhaps one of the reasons all the various religions in the world are fighting and killing each other is because they never took the time to clarify to one another what, precisely, they meant by the term "God"? 

Often when atheists criticize religion, they only conceive of God along Abrahamic lines, and poorly at that. But the Abrahamic notions of God (while also being more diverse than many realize), are but a small part of the discourse. In India, during the course of our 9000 year (or so, by conservation estimates) civilization in which we have focused the m...

As part our How To Do Tantrik Pūjā, we now start discussing the next moment in our puja-krama, sequence of worship: Gaṇeśa puja! This a bit like a talk we gave some time back called

We'll go over the necessary nyāsa, dhyāna, pūjā and pranāmah mantras in the next class for a more detailed worship but in this talk, I just wanted to say a few things about Pauranic vs Vedic Gaṇeśa and discuss Tantrik Gaṇeśawith reference to Mūlādhāra Chakra and our embodied being...

The krishna-ekadaśi (11th day of the waning moon) right before Phalahārinī Pūjā is known as the Apara-ekadaśi and it coincides with Bhadrakālī Jayanti, the celebration of Mā in her "auspicious" form. While the word "Bhadra" (which can be both a noun and an adjective) means something like "auspicious", "noble", "protectress" etc. we have to ask: what does that really mean? Is this a gentle (saumya) form of Kālī as contrasted with how She is usually depicted in Her smaśāna/ghora (cremation ground/fierce) form? Or do we just have to update our understanding...

I wanted to explore the relationship between spiritual wellbeing and physical health to make the somewhat surprising claim: intense spiritual practice can sometimes compromise health! This is because, in the course of intense sādhana, Kula Kundalinī, our personal

Shakti, progressively loosens its hold on the physical body. As such, in this talk I argue for the importance of Hatha Yoga practice to purify the prāna, to purify the blood and to fortify the nerves to account for this strain on the system sketched out above.

Many "spiritual emergencies" might come down to just thi...

This was a fire Questions & Answers discussion! 

After our Monday evening talk earlier this week, we explore some of the ecological, economical, political & sociological implications of Kālī sādhana. I make a case for overcoming all guilt and shame in the quest of personal self-expression, especially for women who are so often socialized to feel that their every impulse and desire is morally and culturally problematic. We discuss what it would be like to remove all barriers to a woman's being and, for lack of a better word, wild-ness and how Kālī sādhana demands just th...

Here is a brief and exultant sketch of Mā Kālī's journey from ancient pre-history into the most esoteric and elite Tantrik circles and into the mainstream Bhakti movement of Bengal and from there into the hearts and homes of people all over the world! 

Without all of those who have come before us (and I was only able to mention so few of them in this talk), who have each given their entire lives to the work of making Mā accessible to all sincere devotees, we quite literally would not be here all together, enjoying each...

Yesterday, on the new moon in the Vedic month of Vaishakh (Jyeshtha by Purnimanta calendar), we celebrated a most auspicious occasion: the Phalaharini Kali Puja. It is an especially significant day for our lineage and so in this short talk, we discuss why. 

We tell the story of Sri Ramakrishna's culminating puja which punctuates his 12-year period of intense of spiritual practice!

Here is a short pūjā that we did for the online community to mark the occasion! And here is a playlist on all of our talks on Mā. 

Support the show<...

We recorded this some time back and its not as comprehensive as I would have liked it to be (lineage is such a rich and sprawling conversation, after all) so I never posted it but inspired by the conversations in the Discord this morning, I felt that this reflection would be good to have!

There is some debate as to whether Macchanda, the founder of the Kaula lineage (who along with his consort and 12 children probably taught around 6-8th CE) is the same as the legendary Matsyendranatha who founded the Hatha Yoga tradition and who taught...

Last year we gave this talk on Mā Bagalā, on the auspicious occasion of her Jayanti: Bagalā and Black Magick in Tantra

and this year, we gave two talks to celebrate the same occasion. The first one is: How To Worship Mā Bagalāmukhī where we went over one of the tantras for Her worship (which you can find here. It's a work in progress!) and this is the second one, approaching Mā Bagalā in a slightly more oblique and thematic way, by discussing the nature of Absolute Silence. I make a claim that even in silence there is...

In this Q&A discussion right after our Buddha Purnima lecture, we first discuss the art of letting go with Rajeevji. What spiritual practices can I do to help let go of attachment and learn to surrender to the situation? Then we inquire the way spiritual practices can cheer us up and strengthen us with an appeal the the three gunas of Sāmkhya. Then, we compare Tantrik Buddhism to Tantrik Hinduism: can they both be practiced together? We discuss a syncretic approach to Buddhism and Hinduism with Adiji who was tuning in from Dharamsala. We discuss the Candi a...

Because Buddha Purnima (the full moon celebrating the birth, death and enlightenment of the Shakyamuni Buddha) is so close to Chinnamastā Jayanti, when we celebrate the self-decapitating form of Mā, this year I decided to combine the two themes into one lecture.

Having already explained the symbology of Mā Chinnamastā in last year's talk to some extent, this year I want to focus on the theme of "decapitation" that we often see with forms of Mā. What does it really mean to be "decapitated"? But first, to lead up into our idea of decapitation, we present a few r...

One of my favorite questions & answers discussions so far!

After our God, World and the Self | A Comparative Approach class, we pluge into this wonderful discussion! Carl opens our discussion with a profound inquiry into the true teaching of Buddhism and the value of philosophy in spiritual life. And then we think about wholesome philosophy vs unwholesome philosophical wrangling and what makes the difference between the two. Then, Carl asks and even more important question: what does it mean for God to accept "hate" and "evil" as a valid offering of devotion? Also, how do people overcome "...

Today, on the auspicious occasion of Swami Lakshman Joo's birth anniversary, we say a few things about why Kashmir and its philosophers are so important in the Non-Dual Tantrik tradition.

Here is a playlist of lectures on Abhinava Gupta's Paramārthasāra, which is a wonderful introduction to the metaphysical and theological system of Tantra known as "Kashmir Shaivism"

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and Friday 10am PST and again Friday at 6pm PST.
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

Fo...

Perhaps one of our finest discussions so far! We cover quite a lot of ground here: 

"If there is a God, I must see him. If I have a soul, I must feel myself as that." 
This was Swami Vivekananda's intuition about spirituality: it is about direct, personal experience and not belief! While tangible experience of God is the best proof for God, there are some other proofs offered by our Tantra to
(a) define God and 
(b) prove God's existence on logical grounds!

We take up some responses from the materialist an...

Recently we've been giving a series of talks on some foundational Tantrik concepts starting with the concept of the "self". Is there such a thing and if so, what is its nature? We asked What is the Self in Tantra? and then we looked at the The 6 Layers of the Self in Tantra of the virūpāska-pancāśika, a foundational Tantrik model for nested embodiment. Now, we continue the discussion, recapping some of the stuff we uncovered in those previous classes and concluding with a verse from the Vijñāna-Bhairava Tantra:

चिद्धर्मा सर्वदेहेषु विशेषो नास्ति कुत्रचित्।
अतश्च तन्मयं सर्वम् भावयन् भवजिज् जनः॥ १००॥

ciddharmā sarvadeheṣu viśeṣo nāsti kutracit|
ataśca tanmayaṁ sarvam bhāvayan bhavajij janaḥ || 100 ||

“There is [One Reality] whose essential nature is Consciousness and this...

Today is the holy day of Bagalāmukhī Jayanti, celebrating one of the fierce forms of Mā! We've been discussing the Mahāvidyās quite a lot over the years (here's a playlist of talks on them) but we haven't yet looked at the tantras together that prescribe their method of worship. As such, in this class, we look over the Bagalā Tantra from the Bengali compilation, Shaktapramodah (The Delight of Shaktas). But first, since this talk was given on May 1st, the anniversary day when Belur Math was founded at Balaram Bose's house in 1897, we first say a few th...

 On the fifth day of the waxing fortnight of the month Vaiśakh, we celebrated one of India's greatest and most celebrated philosopher-mystics of all time, Adi Shankaracharya. While many feel that Advaita Vedanta is juxtaposed to Tantrik philosophy since it features a "Brahman only without Shakti" model. However, there are at least 4 things that make Shankara an out and out Shakta Tantrika in my book. In this talk, as an offering at the lotus feet of the great master, we go over these four "Tantrik" elements in Sri Sri Shankaracharya's life and teaching!

May this be an...

In this talk, we discuss the Matangī meditation mantra and present a simple worship of Matangi since the day before yesterday was her Jayanti (birthday).

We were all of us recovering from our Atlanta adventure so I didn't get to write to you yesterday and wish you all a happy Akshaya Trititya; you were all in my heart!

Akshaya Trititya is such an auspicious day combining so many important events that I think I'll say a few things about it in class today also before our practice.

On this day:

1. The d...

Last week, to celebrate Easter, we gave a special talk on the Sermon of the Mount from a Tantrik point of view. Not only is the Sermon on the Mount an excellent piece of spiritual literature which like the Gītā essentializes and makes practical the highest spiritual teachings of all time but also, there is a beautiful book by a similar title: "The Sermon on the Mount according to Vedanta" by Swami Prabhavananda. 

As such, in this talk, we reference some profound insights from that book, give them a Tantrik spin and also make a few bro...

On behalf of this most auspicious occasion of Easter Sunday, celebrating the resurrection of Christ and the upsurge of spring-time energy in nature, we reflect a little bit on Christ as Solar Deity.

Importantly, I wanted to compare the Christ's resurrection to the resurrection of Osiris in Egyptian mythology and how that might mirror not only the Tantrik understanding of Shakta Peethas (i.e the natural world as a metaphor for spiritual themes in the soul's journey) but also the reverence for the Sun that we see in Vedic and Saurya-Tantrik context! This lecture follows closely on...

Today is Good Friday and since the Christ is a solar deity in a sense (the "sun" of God moving through the 12 disciples who are the 12 zodiac signs), I thought it would be nice to discuss the worship of the Sun of the Vedic and Tantrik context. In this class, which is part of our How To Do Tantrik Puja Series, we explore the sandhya vandana, the ancient practice of worshipping the sun with water at dawn/twilight and show how this ritual has been adapted into a Tantrik context. We discuss the significance of the sun as symbol...

In the profound Trika text virūpākṣapañcāśikā, we learn:

vimatipadamaṅga sarvaṃ mama caitanyamātmanaḥ śarīramidam |
śūnyapadādīlāvadhi dṛśyatvāt piṇḍavat siddham || 2 ||

O dear one, all this from the void state to the play of the Divine including even that which is heretical (i.e impure), since it appears in Consciousness, is verily established as my own body for I myself am Consciousness!

sampanno'smi kṛśo'smi snihyatkaraṇo'smi modamāno'smi |
prāṇimi śūnyo'smīti ca ṣaṭsu padeṣvasmitā dṛṣṭā || 3 ||

“I...

This is perhaps one of my favorite lectures yet and one of the most foundational.

In this talk, we track the idea of the "self", the most immediate reality through various different schools of philosophy: first we sketch out scientific materialism (physicalism) and use the ancient ideas of Sāmkhya philosophy to refute it. Then, we refute Sāmkhya before moving on to sketch out the Buddhist idea of no-self. Having refuted the Buddhists, we then sketch out the Shaiva Siddhānta (Tantrik Dualism) view on the Self which we then develop into the non-dual Tantrik view of...

Last year, on Hanuman Jayanti we gave the talk The Tantrik Hanuman exploring some of the Tantrik aspects of this fierce rudra, Mahavīra! This year on Hanuman Jayanti, we decided to talk a little about what makes Hanuman so powerful! 

First, we discuss the significance of Hanuman in our own lineage with a reference to Sri Ramakrishna's Hanuman sādhana and the parallels between Hanuman and Swami Vivekananda. 

Then, we analyze the secret sauce, the special something that makes Hanuman so unstoppable powerful. Its the Krabby Patty secret formula. 

Jai Hanuman Ji Ki Ja...

In the second to last chapter of Swami Vivekananda's Bhakti Yoga (or Volume III of the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda), Swamiji gives us a walkthrough of all the attitudes of supreme love, prema with which we can relate to God: God as quietistic ideal (shānta), God as master (dāsya), God as friend (sakya), God as child (vatśalya) and of course, God as lover (Madhura).

We explore the first three of these attitudes and discuss what makes seeing God as "master" so much more intense than a quietistic reverence and what seeing God as a "...

In our Friday morning zoom satsangh, we're studying the Paramārthasāra of Abhinava Gupta, a very profound and concise introductory text for Non-Dual Shaiva/Shakta Tantra. In Verses 2 & 3 of this text, we're given a hint as to what qualifies a person to become a Tantrik Guru and what qualities are required in the student for them to be ready receptacles for the Guru's transmission. We compare and contrast Abhinava Gupta's point in Verse 2 with Sri Ramakrishna's teachings on the Guru with a reference to Swami Vivekananda's Bhakti Yoga discussion on the qualifications of Guru and Disciple to triangulate on...

Because we've come to the end of Navaratri and because many are now finishing their mantra-repetition sādhana (puraścarana), I thought it would be nice to discuss the mantra for offering japa to the Divine Mother:

oṁ guhyātiguhyagoptrī tvaṁ gṛhāṇāsmatkṛtaṁ japam
siddhirbhavatu me devi tvatprasādān maheśvari

"O You who are the Protectress of the Secret of all Secrets (i.e the sacred, intimate mantra), accept this repetition of mantra done by us! Make me perfect (i.e help me accomplish the goal of this mantra repetition), which happens only by...