August 6, 2024
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9:00 am
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August 15, 2024
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9:00 am
EDT
Join us LIVE for this 4-Module Course Starting August 6, 2024.
Wisdom School Members are automatically enrolled and will receive access information via email. Not a member? Enroll in the Śiva Sūtras Live Course →
The text that is broadly considered to be the founding text of Kashmir Shaivism is the incredibly timely text, the Śiva Sūtras (SS). The SS, which was composed by an author named Vasugupta, is considered by the tradition to be a “revealed” text, or āgama.
In the “Śiva Sūtras Summer School”, we will be engaging with this important work as a foundational text of yoga philosophy. The SS is fruitful text for modern yoga and meditation practitioners who are seeking a context of knowledge that helps to situate the experience of individuality within a broader picture of what reality is all about.
It provides an inspiring narrative of how one can cultivate meaning in this lifetime in a way that resists being reduced either to familiar modes of religious doctrine or to the assumptions of cosmic meaninglessness that are characteristic of a prevailing relativistic worldview.
Live sessions will take place Tuesdays and Thursdays – August 6th, 8th, 13th, and 15th at 9:00am ET. Each of the four modules will be around 2 hours in length, followed by a 30 minute Q&A. Recordings will be available the day following the live session.
Those who take this course will:
- Learn how the non-dual Tantric traditions are incredibly applicable to modern householder life,
- Study the way Reality organizes itself, according to the emanationist cosmology of Śaiva Tantra, and compare this view to other accounts of how reality functions,
- Discover why we should think about this text as the most central text of yoga philosophy,
- Engage with what the central yoga practices are that are connected to the tradition behind the Śiva Sūtras,
- Consider who some of the key non-dual philosophers are, and where their perspectives overlapped and diverged,
- Study the comprehensive philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism,
- Become educated on the relationship between the non-dual Tantric traditions more broadly and the philosophical tradition known as the pratjabhijñā,
- Incorporate a recitation of the SS into your practice over two weeks to help you begin memorizing these sūtras for your own reference and practice,
- Be able to name and describe what makes Kashmir Shaivism different from other yoga traditions, and
- Live the SS in your life and begin to align with the profound meanings communicated within it.
Your Course Instructor
Jacob Kyle is a yoga and meditation teacher, writer, philosophy educator and the Founder of Embodied Philosophy, an online educational platform for wisdom studies and contemplative practices. Jacob holds an MPhil in Sanskrit & Indian Philosophy and Religions from the University of Oxford (2023), an MA in the History of Philosophy from the New School for Social Research (2013), and an MSc in Political Philosophy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (2007). Jacob received dīkṣā into a Tantric form of meditation in 2015, and has since that time been studying and practicing with Kashmir Shaivism scholar-practitioner Paul Muller-Ortega. In 2020, he was initiated as an Acharya (authorized teacher) of Neelakantha meditation and continues to dedicate his life to studying deeply the texts and traditions of the Śaiva-Śākta Darśana, as well as making available through the Embodied Philosophy platform transformative wisdom teachings, practices and perspectives.