Dharma Studies

When we do yoga, we move our bodies around, so are working with gesture, tone, and posture, to embed in the bones the understanding that we are one with the underlying principle of Universal Being – Consciousness, (Sat-Chit-Ananda), which yogic sages sometimes call the deathless Self.

Avidya—ignorance—is a deep habit of consciousness, but its one we can shift with intention, practice, and a lot of help from the universe.

Out of Śiva’s Self-awareness and His joy in that experience, manifestation is created—including us as individuals. The power that Śiva uses to do so, kuṇḍalinī śakti, is the descent of the highest pure Consciousness into form. The practice of Kuṇḍalinī Sādhana is our pathway back to that primordial experience of non-separation. In Tantric practice and tradition, the liberation of kuṇḍalinī is the pathway not only to knowing God but to recognizing that we are God. There are three phases of that realization. The progression of Kuṇḍalinī Sādhana entails the arousal, awakening, and liberating of kuṇḍalinī śakti from our limited capacity and identity in order to realize our highest Self.

Ayurveda takes the philosophical outline of Sankhya and applies it to the art of living, stretching its reaches beyond the confines of ascetic practice to the real world of relationship, career, conflict and even technology.

Rare is the yogic text or scripture that does not extoll Om as a method of Self realization. You will find there that Om is sometimes referred to with synonyms, such as “Pranava” – sound of the prana; “Udgita” – uprising song; “Shabda” – primordial word; or “Nada” – subtle sound. These readings indicate that Om itself is a universal teacher of the enlightened state.

The core View of both Trika Shaivism and Dzogchen is that the natural, unconditioned state of alive awareness is available to be directly known and more consciously embodied. This alive awareness has many names: God, Shiva Nature, flowing presence, instant presence, and so on. All of these names are pointing to the the fundament of our existence: omnipresent awareness and energy.

If the grand story of the Mahabharata is the Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet, then the Bhagavad Gita is “Street Fighting Man.” It gets all the ubiquitous radio play; maybe you’ve even heard it in a commercial, definitely in a Martin Scorsese movie. You likely know the words, even the harmonies, without having had to try at all to memorize them.

Buddhism is a vast, sprawling heterogeneous and internally inconsistent tradition dying and flowering over and over in various times and places over around 2500 years. Anyone who tells you its “core” teachings or practices is ignorant or lying. This is okay; as long as you know it is so.