Pṛthivī Sūkta — Hymn to the Earth (Atharva Veda)
The foundational text of eco-yoga: 63 verses of the Atharva Veda addressed directly to Earth as living, conscious Mother. "I am the son of Earth, Eart…
Kashmir Shaivism — the 36 tattvas
Trika Shaivism's 36-tattva architecture, in unbroken lineage and brief touches on Chinese alchemy and physics, a note on the four-thousand-year westwa…
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 Trilogy (also available as one…
The Six Enemies of the Mind — Ariṣaḍvarga, and the Two Small Words They Grow From
Arjuna asks: by what force is a man driven to harm even against his will? Kṛṣṇa answers — it is desire, it is anger; know this to be the enemy…
The Five Prāṇas — The Breath in the Body Is the Breath of the World
Six seekers came to the sage Pippalāda, and one asked the question everything rests on: what powers hold this body together? The answer was the fivef…
Aparigraha — Enough, Held Well
A boy at the door of Death is offered everything, and refuses. Not because wealth is bad — because he has noticed the substitution. A person is not …
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 …
Asteya — The End of Skimming
Ninety minutes, six people, a decision that needed eleven. Nothing was taken in any sense a ledger would record — and nine hours of human life are g…
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…
Satya — The End of the Divided Life
A person can be scrupulously honest with everyone they meet and still be living inside a lie. Satya is not a rule about speech — it is a discipline …
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…
Brahmacarya Is Not What You Were Told — The Restraint That Was Never a Wall
Brahma means higher awareness; ācharya means to live in. The word is about where a person lives, not about what they may do in bed — and Patañjali…
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 —…
Ahiṃsā Faces Inward Too — The Harm Nobody Reports
The tradition had karuṇā and dayā available and named the restraint by negation anyway. Ahiṃsā does not ask you to add kindness. It asks you to…
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…
The Fence Before the Practice — The Five Restraints as One Thing
Patañjali calls the five restraints a single great vow, unqualified by birth, place, time or circumstance. Not five virtues — five places where a l…
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 Student Who Will Not Leave — Brahmacarya as a Season, and the Failure of Staying
Patañjali's four conditions for a practice that holds are all about time, not talent. The season built on them fails in one specific way — not thro…
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…
The Season That Was Taken — On Lives Lived Out of Sequence
A tidy diagram of four stages lands on a life with a hole in it like a bill that cannot be paid. What the tradition actually says is that circumstance…
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…