In which yesterday was guru purnima. (I celebrated with a Lalita Sahasranama and some midnight meditation under the full moon.) “The great Adi Shankara (the first Shankaracharya) of the 8th century summarized the entirety of Advaita Vedanta (non-dualistic philosophy) in six stanzas. When a young boy of eight, wandering in the Himalayas seeking to find […]

In which I share with you some of my prized possessions. Part Two: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali This is a pocket-sized copy of Patanjali’s sutras: I bought it at Powell’s Books a long, long time ago. Sutra means suture or stitch. I’ve kept this book while letting go of hundreds of others because it […]

In which I finally get around to it. Sort of. Last summer I started writing a post about seeing Amma, my guru, and I promised to finish it and publish it. I never did. I think I still have a draft saved, but it’s one of those things that must be written immediately – before […]

In which I talk about seeing Amma this year. One of the swamis said in an evening satsang that various scriptures describe and define the state of being experienced by people such as Amma. A phrase used often, he said, was that these incarnations or avatars are ‘drunk on the Self.’ I tried to imagine […]