For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

As part our our How To Do Tāntrik Pūjā lecture series, we've recently been exploring the topic of mānasa pūjā, or Mental Worship vs External Worship by looking at the Mantra for Mental Worship | Mānasa Pūjā which if you recall, is the mantra we used in this talk How To Worship Mā Kālī Mentally (Mānasa Pūjā) ! Now, I often argue that cultivating of our inner world through techniques such as mā...

Almost all of us have so man hang-ups lurking in our psyche. Whether through religious indoctrination or societal conditioning of any sort, most of us carry around a strong sense of duality that distinguishes between pure & impure, holy & unholy, right & wrong, good & bad etc. Often we feel like we are dirty or sinful or broken and in need of growth, healing and liberation which we...

The one indubitable fact about my life is that I AM. Or rather, I am essentially consciousness because to be is to be aware and to be aware is to be. But what is the nature of that Consciousness? We argue in our tradition that this Conscious Self which I feel myself to be is really one and the same with God, Śiva and that I am not at all merely localized to this contraction of limited body-mind-pe...

Who or What is Kali? According to Abhinava Gupta , Kālī is:  क्षेपो ज्ञानं च संख्यां गतिनाद इति क्रमात्।  कल्लनां कुर्वती काली कर्षिणीत्यभिधीयते।  She who projects, She who knows, She who delimits, She who vibrates, She who is resonance and She who is process She who imagines, She who acts, She who devours (i.e reabsorbs)....this is verily Kālī  In other words, Kālī is that resonant, dynamic One f...

Last week, on the first Monday of Śrāvana, the sacred month of Lord Śiva, we gave this exhaustive account of Śaiva Tantra in both theory and practice.  It was indeed an exceedingly auspicious day for the worship and contemplation of that Absolute Consciousness which is our very own essence nature in which all things shine forth blissfully! As such, I present you with this discussion on c 3 Ways to...

As you approach Mā Kālī, you will likely encounter many transgressive (and for some people of a certain temperament, even disturbing) practices. Things like animal sacrifice (Bali) and offerings of meat, fish, liquor, intoxicants and sex (pañca-makāras) are featured quite strongly in some of the primary sources on Mā Kālī & Her worship and this has created a mixture of fascination and aversion...

Right now in our How To Do Tāntrik Pūjā lecture series, we're exploring the topic of Mānasa-pūjā, mental worship, the process of internalizing everything that we would otherwise be doing outwardly. This approach is of course very, very helpful when it comes to things like pañca-makāras or even bali (animal sacrifice) because although these things are very much part of Kālī pūjā, the external...

Today on the very sacred and auspicious day of Nāga Pañcami, the day when we honor serpents in the holy month of śrāvana, the sacred month of Lord Śiva, I felt it would be wonderful to contemplate Mā (śakti) as the all-pervasive enlivening/animating energy that is in all things and IS all things.  This energy or life-force is inseparable from Consciousness, the all-pervasive reality that in this t...

What is the most important spiritual resource? Since spirituality is the process of going inward, of checking the natural inclination towards externalization, naturally, the most important thing we can learn how to do is to take responsibility for our inner world! This is essentially what spirituality is. When our inner world is taken care of, when our mental state is cultivated and established in...

In this talk, we continue to unpack the Somānanda's Radical Non-Dual Revelation to show how Consciousness, the Absolute Reality which you yourself are is endowed desire, innately creative and always active. Also, we discover the profound implications of such a view on our spiritual lives and on our day to day interactions with the world! You'll recall that in  our last conversation we co...

Non-duality is the profound view that only one Reality exists and that you are essentially That! This unitive vision of one-ness, this harmony of all things resonates so deeply in the human psyche, perhaps because we all of us sense the underlying unity beneath and beyond all seeming diversity!  But as you know, there are many different kinds of Non-Dual traditions all around the world, each artic...

And now, our main project is to study Somānanda's radical non-dual philosophy, which is the foundation for Shākta non-duality. Somānanda might be one of the most radical and God-intoxicated of the Shaiva Non-Dual masters. He is Abhinava Gupta's guru's guru's guru. Essentially, the idea here is that nothing is insentient: every thing, even seemingly inanimate objects, are actual...

Naturally, naturalists and physicalists (i.e materialists) are exceedingly challenged by the "hard problem of Consciousness" as David Chalmers put it which is the challenge to explain, in physical terms, this somewhat transcendent reality called Consciousness which cannot at all be said to be caused by any brain activity.  One solution then is to posit "panpsychism", which is m...

As you know, over the past few months we've been trying to articulate our ideals and values as a community so that we can maintain the highest degree of integrity as possible, according to the ideals of our lineage, as exemplified by our Parameshti Guru, Paramahansa Sri Ramakrishna. As such, we've been using Swami Vivekananda's 1896 "My Master" (a compilation of two lectur...

On the very auspicious day for Guru Purnima this year, we reflected on the role of the Guru and the process of approaching one in humility and surrender. We reflect upon the opening scene of the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna and we offer a running commentary on these profound and moving verses of the Guru Gītā, the Song of the Teacher: oṁ brahmānandaṁ paramasukhadaṁ kevalaṁ jñānamūrtiṁ dvandvātītaṁ ga...

We suggest about 5 different practices you can do to celebrate Śrāvaṇa , the month of Śiva: 1. Vratam . Many people will observing vows like abstaining from a particular kind of food (salt, sugar, pickles etc.) or observing sunrise-sunset fasts or keeping vigils etc. Generally, these vows are observed on all the Mondays of this śrāvana period and so it is often called the Śrāvaṇa Somavara Vrātam (...

Back in the day, the guru was very necessary because without one, we could not access the Tantras at all (that is, the ritual manuals in which we encounter the practices and philosophies of the tradition) because they were all physical manuscripts that were actually kept in the Guru's abode or even as part of the Guru's memory. As such, without dīkshā (spiritual initiation), it would be...

Because last week's Capricorn Full Moon was the celebration of the Guru (it was actually the birthday of Veda Vyāsa, the OG Guru), in our Friday evening restorative yoga class (which you can watch here ), we explored the idea of "Guru as Consciousness", as a principle rather than a person which seems to be the emphasis of so many texts and verses describing the Guru! This conception...

Recently, we've been giving a series of talks on our values and ideals, based on what Swami Vivekananda said about his Master, Sri Ramakrishna. Having discussed our heritage in Where Did Kālī Come From? | A Brief Herstory we express how wonderful what we inherited is and how important it is for us to aspire to the very highest of ideals in order to maintain and transmit that heritage for futu...

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...

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 m...

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 destr...

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 tr...

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 Ram...

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 as...