For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Recently, we've been reflecting a lot on Is There Free Will? and also How To Really Worship Kālī | Free Will vs Determinism to explain Sri Ramakrishna's very subtle position on the issue: God alone is the Doer ("not even a leaf moves but by the will of God") and yet there arises in us by God's will the "feeling" of free will which makes our decisions meaningful! But ultimately, we realize (a) God only has been doing everything and playing all the roles (absolute determinism on the level of the individual) but also(b) you are God (absolute free-will and voluntarism on the level of the true identity) But while the "free will vs determinism" discussion is a supremely important theme in our personal spiritual lives, another equally important and very related theme is that of "self-effort vs grace"! In this talk, we explain why(a) grace is the only factor in spiritual life and (b) grace can never be caused by anything since that would contradict God's freedom of which grace is an expression and yet (c) we should still do intense spiritual practices anyway since c.i. the very fact that we want to do spiritual practices (and that we have a guru to show us how) is itself a function of grace andc.ii. spiritual practices are worth doing in and of themselves, just for fun and without any desire for outcome! Of course, since we gave this talk as part of our Paramārthasāra of Abhinava Gupta series (which meets on zoom every Friday at 11am PST via the house link here), we use three verses from our text to substantiate our claims on grace:आदर्शे मलरहिते यद्वद्वदनं विभाति तद्वदयम्।शिवशक्तिपातविमले धीतत्त्वे भाति भारूपः॥९॥Just like a face  shines in a mirror free of impurities, exactly like this, this Shining One (śiva/Self) shines resplendently in that intellect which has been made spotless by Lord Shiva’s grace.परमं यत् स्वातन्त्र्यं दुर्घटसम्पादनं महेशस्य।देवी मायाशक्तिः स्वात्मावरणं शिवस्यैतत्॥१५॥The Goddess Māyāśakti is the Supreme Freedom of the Great Lord  to accomplish (sampādanam) that which is impossible/inconceivable (durghata): the covering (āvarana) of his very own self (svātma).एकस्मिन्घटगगने रजसा व्याप्ते भवन्ति नान्यानि।मलिनानि तद्वदेते जीवाः सुखदुःखभेदजुषः॥३७॥If the space within one pot is filled with dust, the space within other pots is not stained. Just like that are these individual beings who experience the duality of pleasure and pain/happiness and sorrow.We also gave these two talks on grace some time ago:Śaktipāta & The Role of Grace In Tantra | Vijñāna-Bhairava Tantra and alsoHow To Receive God's Grace | Śaktipāta in Kashmir ShaivismSupport the showLectures 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/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Last year, on this auspicious occasion of Dhūmāvatī Devī Jayanti (which is the 8th day after the New Moon of Vaiśakh) we gave a series on talks on this very mysterious and often feared phase of Mā's personality (Who is Mā Dhūmāvatī? & Worshipping Mā Dhūmāvatī) where we explored Her origin story, Her symbology and Her significance in theory and practice. This year, we decided to go further and ask: "given that Dhūmāvatī Devī is associated to alaxmī, inauspiciousness and given that she favors widows, widowers, the lonely, outcastes, mendicants and those who live in cremation grounds, why would a householder in a happy marriage or a person interested in success and auspicious (which is arguably most of us) ever want to approach her?! Wouldn't doing so only invite calamity?! In response to this important question, we present about 4 reasons why everyone should consider worshipping this often misunderstood and under-represented form of Mā! You'll find a playlist of all our videos on the Mahāvidyās here. Here is the dhyāna-śloka (meditation mantra) we used in the talk: vivarṇā cañcalā ruṣṭā dirghā ca malināmbarā ।vivarṇakuntalā rūkṣā vidhavā viraladvijā ॥kākadhvajarathārūḍhā vilambitapayodharā।śūrpahastātirūkṣākṣī dhṛtahastā varānvitā॥pravṛddhaghoṇā tu bhṛśaṃ kuṭilā kuṭilekṣaṇā ।kṣutpipāsārditā nityaṃ bhayadā kalahapriyā ॥Pale and restless, irritable and oldClad in soiled garmentsPale-haired, dry-skinnedA widow with few teeth|Mounted atop a chariot whose flag is a crowWith drooping breasts and surpassingly cruel eyesWho holds a winnowing basketWho shows the boon bestowing gestureA crone with crooked nose and crooked eyesWho is always hungry and thirsty, quarrelsome and fearsome.Support the showLectures 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/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

First, we present a rendition of Swami Vivekananda's profound and stirring song in Sanskrit to Shiva, the Great God along with an English translation by Swami Prabhavananda. I am especially fond of this song! We then make a few comments about why the days of the week are so significant and how to do a daily chanting practice based on the deity that is exalted on each day. Then, after a brief commentary on the Shiva Stotram and its origins and meaning, I make a case for music as a spiritual practice!Here is a playlist of all the kirtanas, bhajanas and musical performances in our community over the years!Support the showLectures 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/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

In this talk, we develop some the ideas from the Is There Free Will? lecture: if there is no free will, then, what's the point exactly? Isn't spiritual life all about freedom? If freedom is the goal, can such a freedom ever be articulated on the level of the embodied individual if after all, as we claimed last week, there is no freedom in a real sense for the embodied individual since Mother alone is doing everything? What then is "moksha", liberation, exactly? To answer all of these important questions, we take up Thakur Sri Ramakrishna's definition of jīvanmukti. embodied liberation while in the body and mind (i.e anytime we are not in nirvikalpa samādhi) and also consider what this mukti, liberation looks like in a "videha" sense, when we are fully identified with Mā who is not only Free but is Freedom Itself. In this talk, we especially focus on God's freedom and why it is an absolute given. We argue for how God's freedom implies Her absolute non-duality. And if I am God, (as indeed I must be since no second reality exists apart from that) then, am I not also free, as God? What then to make of the hard deterministic position we were arguing for in Is There Free Will?But mainly, this is a talk about surrendering totally to Kālī, having understood her Absolute Freedom. Mā always gets Her way, so like Shiva, one can only smile and watch Her dance!Support the showLectures 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/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

After giving two talks establishing God (Proof for God & What is God in Tantra?) a in response to various objections from non-theistic traditions like scientific materialism, Buddhism, Sāmkhya & Advaita Vedanta, we are now left with an interesting question: what about the Problem of Evil? The usual response to this dilemma from the theistic position is to assert free-will. God is indeed all-powerful and all-good and because of that goodness, God cannot be a tyrant and so affords each individual the dignity of free-will; the reason there is any evil in the world at all then is because individuals abuse this free will to harm one and another and God, tragically, will not intervene since to do so would be to rob each individual soul of its most basic dignity, its freedom to choose.  In his 1893 world-famous "Paper on Hinduism", which he delivered at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, Swami Vivekananda also points out that without the theory of karma, God would be quite despicable. Why are some people born cripples and others healthy? If there are no past lives, then God is the cause for one person being born poor and another rich. Would this not be a capricious God who arbitrarily decides what each embodied soul's starting point will be, putting some further ahead on the track and others further back? No, a better explanation is that God is not inflicting these things upon us but that we ourselves, with our actions good and bad in past lives have ourselves created the chain of cause and effect that have led to our current predicament, for better or for worse. It is up to us to take responsibility for our karmic predicament, without blaming the all-good, all-powerful God and to seize upon our free will to make better choices, in thought, word and deed that don't only create better karmic situations for us in the future but ideally, that take us beyond the wheel of karma entirely! However, here is a complexity: there is no free will (as I will try to show in the talk).Yes, there might be the illusory feeling of free will that God creates in the soul but ultimately, if God is to be all powerful then she is also Absolute, and absolutely non-dual. She it is who plays the role of the individual, she is the world in which the individual has its being, She it is who is pulling the strings the whole time! Not even a leaf moves but by the will of God! But philosophically, look what has happened! If we say ultimately souls don't have free will and that Mother is doing everything, then, free will is no longer available to us a defense against the problem of evil! Now, we have to accept that God is all-good but also...all-bad and somehow, beyond both good and bad! In short, we have to accept the theology of Kali, the Worship of the Terrible, the highest calling of the non-dual theist. Enter only those who dare misery love. TLDR: in this talk I present my favorite view which is Absolute Theism leading to determinism on the individual level to maintain Absolute Freedom on the Divine level which invites a whole new kind of challenging theodicy! Support the showLectures 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/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

In Verse 104, of the Vijñāna-Bhairava Tantra, we come across a profound teaching:विहाय निजदेहस्थं सर्वत्रास्मीति भावयन्।दृढेन मनसा दृष्ट्या नान्येक्षिण्या सुखी भवेत्॥ १०४॥vihāya nijadehasthaṁ sarvatrāsmīti bhāvayan |dṛḍhena manasā dṛṣṭyā nānyekṣiṇyā sukhī bhavet || 104 ||"By abandoning the sense that the self abides only in one’s own body, and by contemplating with a firm mind that “I am everywhere”, without any other kind of seeing (through a-paroksha-anubhūti, direct mystic experience), one becomes happy (i.e enlightened)!"I felt that this verse captured the very essence of spiritual life and spelled out the whole journey from start to finish which is a journey from limitation to absolute freedom, from jīva (limited individuality) to śīva (all inclusive one-ness), from selfishness to selflessness. We explore this idea using the Tantrik & Hatha Yoga languaging around Kula Kundalinī, our own power of identification and how she moves from the mūlādhāra (where she identifies only with the limited mind-body complex) to the sahasrāra (where she unites with śiva in super-sensuous bliss!) through the various chakras in the sushumnā nādi. I was especially moved by emphasis on direct, immediate spiritual experience (aparokshanubhūti) as the necessary condition of realization that appears in the second half of the verse! As Swami Vivekananda defined it, "religion is realization", not frothy talk or belief!This is indeed the goal, but how do we get there?This verse not only tells us the mechanism of spiritual life, and the final outcome but also presents the means: dṛḍhena manasā , through unrelenting, firm, consistent and constant practice! We talk about what practice really means and discuss the role of grace and make a case for the importance of prayer, which Sri Ramakrishna very much emphasized. This lecture is part of our weekly Vijñāna-Bhairava Tantra class series which meets live every Thursday at 7:30pm (ish) here. You'll find our lecture directory for the course here. Support the showLectures 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/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

When we say this Universe is internal to consciousness, as we do in Non-Dual Philosophy, are we making a solipsistic claim? In this Q&A discussion after our Friday morning discussion on Turning Non-Dual Teachings into Non-Dual Practices | Paramārthasāra, Verse 37 we discuss so many wonderful things!Sri Devi asks beautiful questions about idealism and in response, we show why Advaita, Non-Duality is not solipsism! From this, we come to understand the role of śakti on Non-Dual Tantra as the raw potential that actualizes all possibilities from moment to moment! We then present a yardstick for figuring out whether or not we've really understood Advaita, Non-Duality.Then Gretchen Devi tells us about the Holographic Universe and we present the non-dual claim that you are Shiva, Pure Consciousness and also Shakti, the dynamic dance of the Universe that shines in Consciousness as an expression of radical freedom and joy!Paola Devi makes a case for the dynamic aspect of Awareness, Shakti which is Becoming grounded in the static aspect, Shiva, which is Being. As such, we can say Shiva-Shakti is Being-Becoming! As an aside, I make a rebuttal to Buddhism to establish Time, Kālī as the Absolute Reality!Then, Jaimie Devi makes a defense of the new Matrix movie and opens up a beautiful discussion about the Problem of Evil and coming to terms with both macrocosmic and microcosmic suffering through the worship of Kālī!Finally, Allistairji shares his Mother's reflections on how Kālī worship is the panacea for the dualities of Good vs Evil/Spirit vs Matter which has haunted religion and the human psyche for far too long! Here is a playlist of our Q&A discussions over the years!Support the showLectures 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/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Perhaps one of the reasons all the various religions in the world are fighting and killing each other is because they never took the time to clarify to one another what, precisely, they meant by the term "God"? Often when atheists criticize religion, they only conceive of God along Abrahamic lines, and poorly at that. But the Abrahamic notions of God (while also being more diverse than many realize), are but a small part of the discourse. In India, during the course of our 9000 year (or so, by conservation estimates) civilization in which we have focused the main efforts of cultural life on spirituality, many very subtle and refined notions of God were realized! For example:1. Nirguna Nirākara, God who is Impersonal and Formless like what the Buddhist and the Advaita Vedantin proposes2. Saguna Nirākara, God who is Personal but Formless like we find in Abrahamic religion 3. Saguna Sākara, God who is both Personal and with Form (like Kālī, Krishna etc.) 4. The Avatāra, God as an incarnation on earth (Rāma, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Chaitanya, Ramakrishna)To name a few! Some traditions on the subcontinent favor one of these over the others. Some take an exclusive view, some prefer a more hierarchical, inclusive approach and yet others, like our tradition, maintain a pluralistic position: all these conceptions (and in fact all conceptions of God) are all equally valid since God, the Absolute Reality, can never be limited! There is no end to what we can discover in Her, no end to what She can reveal to us! Having said that, what is the Tāntrik view on God? Since Tantra is largely a theistic tradition (oriented around the idea of God), in this lecture, we track some of the various concepts of God that have emerged over the years. This is part of an introductory series of lectures on the foundational ideas of Tantra. You can watch the other videos in this series here.Support the showLectures 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/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Dive into the vibrant world of Gaṇeśa, exploring his crucial role in Tāntrik pūjā and the significance of worship before engaging with other deities. Discover the contrast between Vedic, Pauranic, and Tāntrik representations of Gaṇeśa, including his fierce Heramba form. Learn about the deep connection to the Mūlādhāra Chakra and how the body serves as a gateway to spiritual mastery. Uncover anecdotes of devotion, visualization techniques, and practical tips for worship, punctuated with insights on controlling the restless mind symbolized by Gaṇeśa's mouse.

The krishna-ekadaśi (11th day of the waning moon) right before Phalahārinī Pūjā is known as the Apara-ekadaśi and it coincides with Bhadrakālī Jayanti, the celebration of Mā in her "auspicious" form. While the word "Bhadra" (which can be both a noun and an adjective) means something like "auspicious", "noble", "protectress" etc. we have to ask: what does that really mean? Is this a gentle (saumya) form of Kālī as contrasted with how She is usually depicted in Her smaśāna/ghora (cremation ground/fierce) form? Or do we just have to update our understanding of the word "auspicious" to include even those aspects of life that the mind rejects? In this talk, we read excerpts from Swami Vivekananda's Bengali poem to Kālĩ "And Let Shyāma Dance There" we we learn about the Worship of the Terrible and Mā's Non-Dual, All-Inclusive Form which will radically change the way we understand "auspicious"-ness in the context of spiritual life. Also, we tell some stories from the Puranas to make the case that Vīra-bhadra, in the well-known immolation of Sati/destrcution of Daksha's sacrifice story can be seen as synonymous with Bhadrakālī. Of course, I make a case as to why the latter, female version is better, theologically. This will help us understand why Mā in many of her sahasranāmas stotravalis (thousand names hymns) is called "Daksha-yajña-vināśinī", the one who destroys Daksha's sacrifice. May this be an offering to Her, the auspicious one, who destroys all false ideas and tears down all pretense!PS: here is a playlist (our signature series, our flagship course), all of our talks on Mā.Support the showLectures 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/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM