For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

We gave this talk on a special occasion: the amāvasyā (the new moon) that opens the gupta navarātrī period (the 9 nights of the summer goddess festival) and so to celebrate, we reflect upon dīkshā, spiritual initiation & the systems of accountability to ensure the credibility of Tāntrik lineages so that we can better contextualize our place as a community in the midst of all of that. 
Mainly, I want to revisit the validity of intrapersonal mystical experiences like dreams and intuitions as reliable metric for religious authenticity even beyond texts and institutions and to substantiate this claim, we consider 4 important cases: 
1. Vasugupta & the Śiva Sutra
2. Maheśvarānanda & the Mahartha Mañjarī, 
3. Rāni Rasmani & the Dakshineshwar Temple, 
4. Swami Ashokananda's "śaktopaya dīkshā" (to borrow Swami Turiyananda's phrase here) from Swami Vivekananda in meditation & dream experience 
Here is a playlist of talks on our guru-paramparā & thoughts on lineage. And here are some videos on our mission, ideals, manifesto etc. 
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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

To celebrate the Gupta Navarātrī (Summer Goddess Festival) this year, we got together in Portland and decided to take up a new text, the Saundarya Laharī, an exceedingly beautiful Śrī Vidyā primary source & primer attributed to Ādi Śankarācarya to study alongside the Yoginī Hṛdāya which we started studying together last week. 
In this first of many talks on the Saundarya Laharī (follow along with this lecture series here), after a little introduction & discussion featuring Mahadevaji (which you can watch here), I jump in to introduce some foundational & preliminary ideas about Tāntrik Goddess worship starting with the Aṣṭarasā (अष्टरसा) (the “8 flavors of consciousness”) model and the Aṣṭamātṛkās (the 8 fierce yoginīs that correspond to the 8 sets of the Sanskrit alphabet) to which these rasas are often mapped. 
Here are some citations & resources:
From Bhārati’s classical source:
शृङ्गारहास्यकरुणरौद्रवीरभयानकाः । बीभत्साद्भुतसंज्ञौ चेत्यष्टौ नाटये रसाः स्मृताः śṛṅgārahāsyakaruṇaraudravīrabhayānakāḥ | bībhatsādbhutasaṃjñau cetyaṣṭau nāṭaye rasāḥ smṛtāḥ || 
Śṛṅgāra (erotic love) Hāsya (comedy) Karuṇa (compassion/grief) Bhayānaka (terror) Bībhatsa (disgust) Vīra (heroic) Adbhuta (amazement) Raudra (anger)
And the bonus +1 from Abhinava: Śānta (quiescent/transcendent/spritiual)
note: Aṣṭarasā (8 flavors) is the classical list; Abhinava adds the 9th to make “navarasa” (9 flavors).
The source for these is Abhinava Bhārati, Abhinava’s commentary on the Nātya Śāshtra of Bharati but also for the “9th”, see Abhinava’s Dhvanyaloka Locana, his commentary on Anandavardhana’s “dhvani” idea (what makes poetry poetic)
Here are the 8 sets (mātrikā-Varga/Mātrika Kula) of Sanskrit letters:
स्वर (vowels)
अ (a), आ (ā), इ (i), ई (ī), उ (u), ऊ (ū), ऋ (ṛ), ॠ (ṝ), ऌ (ḷ), ॡ (ḹ), ए (e), ऐ (ai), ओ (o), औ (au), अं (aṃ), अः (aḥ)
कण्ठ्य (gutturals)
क (ka), ख (kha), ग (ga), घ (gha), ङ (ṅa).
तालव्य (palatals)
च (ca), छ (cha), ज (ja), झ (jha), ञ (ña).
मूर्धन्य (retroflex)
ट (ṭa), ठ (ṭha), ड (ḍa), ढ (ḍha), ण (ṇa).
दन्त्य (dentals)
त (ta), थ (tha), द (da), ध (dha), न (na).
ओष्ठ्य (labials)
प (pa), फ (pha), ब (ba), भ (bha), म (ma).
अन्तस्थ (semivowels/liquids)
य (ya), र (ra), ल (la), व (va)
ऊष्मन् (sibilants + aspirant)
श (śa), ष (ṣa), स (sa), ह (ha).
In the next class, we’ll look at another set of 8 (the 8 shadows/pāśās) to complete our understanding of today's material! 
Hit Me Up x
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Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

We ended our last conversation (What Is The Śrī Cakra? | Yoginī Hṛdāya, Verses 1-18) with an invitation to start chanting regularly the Devī Khaḍgamālā which you can learn more about here: A Simple Way To Worship The Srī Yantra | Khaḍgamālā Stotram if this text is new to you. It is perhaps the best introduction to the practice of Śrī Vidyā because until we understand the names of all the deities (emanations of the one deity, Tripurā), we will likely not be able to map them on to the cakra, which is just the sort of thing visualization and worship requires. So before we can start performing the daily pūjā or take up any practices, and to supplement our understanding of the philosophical principles of the cakra as the auto-erotic, blissful expansion of the ever-free, self-willed Goddess, we often recommend just chanting this hymn every day until you have it down by memory!

You'll find all our talks on Śrī Vidyā here.
Hit Me Up x
Support the show
Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Since we recently took up a concerted study of a rather high level text in the non-dual śākta tradition, the Yoginī Hṛdāya (the last 3 chapters of a much larger work in the Śrī Vidyā tradition, Vāmakeśvarīmatatantra in 8 chapters) at our weekly Thursday evening text study, I thought I'd share this little voice recording from the other night after our Kālāshtamī pūjā where we offer a brief run through of the first of three chapters of this text with some loose commentary. I'll drop the videos for this class moving forward in this playlist.
Hit Me Up x
Support the show
Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Tantra has often been considered a closed tradition because its texts and the teachings transmitted in them on maṇḍala/cakra (geometric diagrams representing the retinue of deities as emanations of the central deity/ a philosophical presentation of the Absolute nature of reality), mantra (a sacred sound formula which is synonymous with the Deity/Absolute Reality as a vibrational pattern) and pūjā (ritual procedures detailing the employment of mantras to contact and assimilate the energies of the maṇḍala)  have been given most often in the strictest secrecy and most reverent ritual settings.

We've often stressed that unless these things are received directly from the mouth of one to whom it was similarly given, even if we were to learn these things ourselves on the internet or from books, they might not work for us with the same power and aliveness compared to if we had received it from a living lineage.

Often, inspired by ideals of accessibility and out of an enthusiasm for this material, I've tended to ignore some of those disclaimers around who should be let in and let out, and I'm starting to understand more now why those disclaimers can be helpful and why in my zeal, my mass distribution of some of the more esoteric material might not always be as compassionate or as helpful as I had hoped.

Still, I can't help but to want to make as accessible as possible to all who are sincerely seeking these ideas and practices that have meant so much to me over the years. Perhaps the most responsible thing to do then is to really emphasize the traditional safeguards and disclaimers which are often presented in the beginning of any primary source in our tradition so that viewers can be maximally discerning about whether or not they want to opt in!

In this talk, as a sort of preamble to our class on the Yoginī Hṛdāya, one of the central texts of the Śrī Vidyā tradition, we take up the first 5 or so verses of the text which, like many texts in the Sanskritic spiritual tradition, carefully explains:
1. adhikari (the intended audience of the transmission, i.e who will benefit from hearing this)
2. prayojana (the goal that the text outlines for study and practice)
3. artha (the contents of the text, in this case as mentioned above cakra, mantra & pūja9)
4. prayojana-artha sambandha (the relationship between the content and the goal)
with an emphasis on the 1st of these 4 things.

We continue this discussion in the next video where we take up a study of the Yoginī Hṛdāya in a serious way, having established some of these disclaimers around adhikari, competency.

We'll drop all our classes on this text and other Śrī Vidyā adjacent material here. 
Hit Me Up x
Support the show
Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM