Traditions

Shambhavi Sarasvati is the spiritual director of Jaya Kula, a nonprofit community in Portland, Oregon. Her principle training is in the View and practices of Trika Shaivism—also called Kashmir Shaivism—and the Dzogchen tradition of Tibet. Shambhavi is known for her humor and for making complex teachings about the nature of the self and reality understandable, practical, and always relevant to our lived experience.

Athena Potari is a philosopher and advocate of Hellenic wisdom. She argues for a reclamation of Ancient Greek thought that gives voice to the spiritual elements of Ancient Greek Philosophy. She has a PhD in Political Theory from the University of Oxford, and teaches the philosophy and spirituality of Hellenism at her school in Athens, Greece, which models itself on the ancient Greek philosophical academies.

Jacob Kyle is a meditation teacher, writer, philosophy educator, and the Founding Director of Embodied Philosophy. He holds an MPhil in Classical Indian Religions from the University of Oxford, an MA in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research in New York City, and an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Jacob is a student of Kashmir Śaivism scholar-practitioner Paul Muller-Ortega and is a devoted practitioner of the Śaiva-Śākta Darśana.

Lucy Crisfield is founder of ‘Original Wisdom’, through which she shares the inner teachings of mantra and yoga philosophy with sound, meditation, and scholarly precision. 

Bihani Sarkar is a Calcutta-born, Oxford-educated, scholar of classical Sanskrit literature and pre-modern Indian history and religious traditions. Her most recent book is Classical Sanskrit Tragedy: The Concept of Suffering and Pathos in Medieval India.

Hari-kirtana das, Ken Rose, Trish Tillman & Stephanie Corigliano discuss the role of the guru in present-day spheres of yoga and academia.

The Oxford Dictionary defines passion as a strong and barely controllable emotion. Many so-called positive emotions fit that bill. So what happens if we experiment with touching sorrow in times when we feel the most euphoric of highs? Cultivating the opposite in all situations, even in times of elation, prepares us for the inevitability that we will at some point feel the lowest of lows. 

Edwin Bryant is the professor of Hinduism at Rutgers University. He has published eight books, and authored a number of articles on the earliest origins of the Vedic culture, yoga philosophy, and the Krishna tradition.