Chanting School – Mantra Study List
Every text studied here, gathered in one place. Each entry opens the full piece — Sanskrit in Devanāgarī, transliteration for the mouth, and a translation…
Category: HUB & INSTITUTE & Fellowship
The Living Mantra — Paramparā, and the Flame That Is Handed Mouth to Ear
In a dim room before dawn, a teacher whispers a handful of syllables into one ear — and hands over a flame that has never once gone out. Why a trans…
The Healing Fire — Havan, the Science of Sacred Smoke, and the Wheel That Feeds the World
Every Saturday a valley in New South Wales fills with Vedic mantra around a small fire. Havan looks like the oldest thing on earth — and the microsc…
Mother, Forgive Me — Ādi Śaṅkarācārya, the Crocodile, and the Fire He Promised
The greatest non-dualist who ever lived taught that the world is a dream — then crossed all of India to hold his dying mother, defied his own order …
The Science of Prāṇāyāma — Swami Sivananda Saraswati
Swami Sivananda Saraswati's systematic manual on prāṇāyāma — the eight traditional kumbhakas (Sūrya Bhedana, Ujjāyī, Sītkārī, Śītalī, …
Yoga Vāsiṣṭha — Advaita Vedānta and Liberation
An introduction to the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha — the vast Sanskrit dialogue between sage Vāsiṣṭha and Rāma on the nature of mind, the illusory worl…
The Science of Breath — Yogi Ramacharaka (William Walker Atkinson, 1904)
A Chicago lawyer, writing under the name Yogi Ramacharaka, laid down in 1904 the first plain-English manual of prāṇāyāma — the breath-disciplin…
Kāya Kalpa — The Siddhar Science of Body Transmutation
In the temple town of Palani in Tamil Nadu, on a hill above the Vaiyai River, there is a small black-stone deity of Murugan that the priests will tell…
Kāla Bhairava, the Black Dog, and the Child at the Gate — The Guardian of the Eternal City
Before you may meet Śiva at Kāśī, you must first seek the permission of the one who guards the gate — Kāla Bhairava, the Kotwāl of Vārāṇas…
Matri Books for the community
You are wholeheartedly invited into my world of writing. Yoga in simple language for all ages and genders. Enjoy reading THE SPINE, MYST MEGHA MYTH…
Shivambu Shastra — The Water of Śiva: An Ancient Practice
Śivāmbu — the water of Śiva — is the traditional name for amaroli, the tantric practice the Ḍāmara Tantra traces to Śiva himself. A window …
Siddhas in Malaysia — The Tamil Lineage That Crossed the Bay of Bengal
Climb the 272 steps at Batu Caves on Thaipusam morning, and you meet the Tamil Siddhar tradition still alive on the Malay peninsula — temple, vaidya…
Kāmadeva — The Hindu God of Desire, the Flower-Arrowed, the Bodiless
Kāmadeva — the god of desire incinerated by Śiva's third eye and restored as Anañga, the bodiless. His sugarcane bow and five flower arrows, the …
Yoga Darśana — Gaṅgānātha Jhā (1907)
Gaṅgānātha Jhā's 1907 English rendering of the Yoga Sūtras with Vyāsa's Bhāṣya — one of the earliest rigorous Sanskrit-to-English translat…
The Supreme Yoga (Yoga Vāsiṣṭha) — Vol. 1: Vasiṣṭha’s Counsel to a Disillusioned Prince
Prince Rāma returns from his travels and stops eating. The sage Vasiṣṭha is called to counsel him. From that hush rose the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha —…
The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali — An Interpretive Edition
One Sanskrit word — atha, 'now' — opens the most precise statement of the inner science of yoga ever written. A companion piece to Patañjali's 19…
A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga — Yogi Ramacharaka (1907)
An American autodidact in 1907, a forest dialogue three thousand years older, and the discipline both were trying to name: neti neti, the yoga of know…
The Great Night — Mahāśivarātri, and the Hour a Stone Was Given Its Breath
On 1 March 2022 a black stone at Middle Pocket was bathed at half past midnight and made a temple. The night it happened on is four thousand years old…
Tamil Studies — M. Srinivasa Aiyangar (1914)
M. Srinivasa Aiyangar's 1914 doorway into one of the oldest continuously spoken classical languages on earth — the Saṅgam academies, the five ti…
54 — 10 — ONE
A working record of what was built, by how many people, and in what order — from a payroll of fifty-four to five properties on three stacks, rebuilt…
The Citta Is Ours Together — Shared Memory, Collective Awakening, and the Door That Closes on No One
A bandit who could not say Rāma sat repeating marā, marā until the syllables turned holy and the anthill rose over him. The grooves of mind can be …
Every Village Is a Limb of the Mother — The Om Sakthi Song and the Landmarks as the Goddess’s Body
A song climbs a long ladder of names — Madurai's Mīnākṣī, Kāśī's Viśālākṣī, Mysore's Cāmuṇḍī — until the whole map of the coun…
The Fire That Was Brought — The Vedic Prometheus, and the One Flame Behind All Fires
Prometheus stole it in a fennel stalk; Mātariśvan bore it down on the wind to the Bhṛgus. Every tradition remembers the same astonishing fact: the…
Sri Guru Stotram — Salutations to the Teacher
The fifteen shlokas of the Sri Guru Stotram with IAST transliteration and English translation — for chanting on Guru Purnima and daily practice. Aud…
Kṛṇvanto Viśvam Āryam — The Soma Prayer of the Ṛg Veda
Three words from Ṛg Veda 9.63.5 — 'make the whole world noble' — as a window into the Vedic cosmology of Soma: the lunar-restorative principle t…
Karma Yoga — The Path of Union, and the Grip That Turns Work into Suffering
In a cold New York room in 1895, Vivekananda told an audience that the office, the kitchen, the street is the path — if you can learn the one nearly…
The Book of Books — Rāmacaritamānasa of Tulsīdās: A Living Text for a World in Exile
Two Rishis walked in one morning carrying something wrapped in red cloth. What they placed on our altar has been sitting in the yoga hall ever since …
The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde's 'The Nightingale and the Rose' — a complete and unreceived sacrifice. The full story, with ecological commentary on giving without con…
The Hindu Yogi Science of Breath – Ramamcharaka
An early 20th-century survey of yoga within the Hindu religious and philosophical framework — āsana, prāṇāyāma, mantra, and the classical dar…
Chandas — Basics of Veda Svaras and Vedic Recital
An 18-page introduction to Vedic chandas (metrical feet) and svara (pitch-accent system) — one of the six Vedāṅgas. Covers the major meters (gāy…