To understand the word tarka or its importance, we must first retrace our steps to find the fundamental problem that we are trying to address through spiritual practice.
Within Hinduism, a traditional teaching regarding the bewildering diversity of divine forms is that the formless Supreme Being adopts many different guises as an act of compassion.
Devotion is the fuel for sādhana (spiritual practice), the sweet longing that inspires sitting for meditation, for ritual, for learning and teaching.
We all seek wholeness, to connect the wounded part of us with something completely beyond ourselves, and that is made possible through devotion.
Images and text from Ekabhumi Charles Ellik. Previously published by Sounds True in The Bhakti Coloring Book (2018) and The Shakti Coloring Book (2015)
For the Bhāgavata School of Vedānta, Bhagavān is the divine perception of Absolute Reality as the Supreme Person intrinsically endowed (van) with opulence (bhaga) or sentient and insentient energy (śakti).
It has been unfashionable for veterans returning home from war to talk about the effect their experiences during the war has had on them.
There is no longer a need for an external temple or sacrificial pyre, as the body of the haṭha yogin serves this function itself.