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.
You can realize Truth in experience, but you cannot “think truth.” The best that thoughts can do is point you in the direction of that ultimate, essential truth.
If God is love, how could he ask anyone to sacrifice his only son? Isn’t it a sadistic God who would test his believer with such a torturous task, only to turn around last minute with a “just kidding”?
Standing at the edge of a dark void, the seeker peeks over the precipice. Nothing but the dark unknown before her, she momentarily stands paralyzed, wishing she could return to familiarity.
In a culture in which the imperative to do (to achieve, to be productive) is palpable to the point of driving daily life, we would do well to remember the other side of the practice.
They live in a world of shadows that they consider reality, and not surprisingly make assumptions and predictions based on the limited experience that is their only possibility.
When Hanuman was just a little monkey god, he was completely enamored by the sun, because he thought the sun was, in fact, a giant mango. He dreamed of his opportunity to suck the sweet juice out of that King of mangos.
Don’t let your toes curl. Tantra has had a bad wrap for centuries, too often reduced to that infamous text, the Kama Sutra, and its many contortionist prescriptions for sexual experimentation.
In our Western cultural climate, we are mythologically lost at sea. We pride ourselves on being a society without myth, as we consider ourselves grounded in reason, fact, and rationality.