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Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
Kashmir Shaivism (and Ecstatic Fatalism)
I have been told more than once that one cannot technically be a true practitioner/believer in the tenets of Kashmir Shaivism without believing in some form of Godhead. As a nontheist who still finds the teachings and practices informative and useful for how best to live, I ask consistently whether that is really true. I’m…
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Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos | Poetry
Pratyabijna
Seeking Illumination In the depths, I catch mySelf In the mystery Of reflection. I invite you to ponder, dear yogins, why I have titled this “pratyabijna” and not “vimarsa.” Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
My Own Personal Cloud (and the Malas)
Last night another storm front passed us by with only a trace of rain, leaving us deeper in drought. The wind picked up, the temperature dropped, and the clouds scattered, leaving the sky scrubbed bright blue and the air fresh. Though this morning on my walk to work there was hardly a cloud in the…
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A Senate Majority with 41 Out of 100 (and Maya)
In classical yoga, the term maya, one of the meanings of which is “illusion,” refers to all of our embodied being — the physical, mental, and emotional. The perceptible world is not real; only spirit is real. In the tantric philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism, maya tattva means something different. Kashmir Shaivism does not hold that…
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Taking Woodstock (and spanda)
Kashmir shaivism, using the term spanda, talks of the ultimate pulsation of life itself, all being a vibration, everything a play of opposites, a constant dance of concealment and revelation. Yesterday I when I went to see Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, I thought about about what a dance of moments, desires, emotions, motivations, opportunities, and…
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On Reading Patanjali (to help get ready for work)
This morning my sit was full of lots of random thought waves. This was no doubt, in part, due to my having four meetings, a call, and a lunch scheduled. When I was finished, I went into the library, picked up the Christopher Isherwood/Swami Prabhavandananda version How to Know God and opened it randomly to…
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Shiva-Shakti Tattvas
The shiva-shakti tattvas, the two highest tattvas, are completely subjective. The shiva tattva is, according to the philosophy, the ultimate reality, the pure “I,” undiminished and undifferentiated consciousness. As something purely subjective, it is both everywhere and nowhere, in every being and simultaneously beyond them. It is not dissimilar to Hegel’s Absolute (though I believe…