For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

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For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Nishanth Selvalingam

337 episodes

1 week ago

It's that time of the year again, gang! You know what's up. Here's the document we were presenting in this talk: it walks you through a Navarātri sādhanā (spiritual practice) that you can do over the course of the 9 nights of the Goddess. Remember that Navarātri happens 4 times a year (and in some traditions, 8 times) and so this sādhanā can be done at least that many times but it is also a sādhanā that you can do anytime, for as long as you like. It is a profound sādhanā because it uses ...

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Alternative Health

Health & Fitness

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It's that time of the year again, gang! You know what's up. Here's the document we were presenting in this talk: it walks you through a Navarātri sādhanā (spiritual practice) that you can do over the course of the 9 nights of the Goddess. Remember that Navarātri happens 4 times a year (and in some traditions, 8 times) and so this sādhanā can be done at least that many times but it is also a sādhanā that you can do anytime, for as long as you like. It is a profound sādhanā because it uses ...

Show more...

Alternative Health

Health & Fitness

Episodes (20/337)

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

5 Practices for Śiva | How To Celebrate Śrāvaṇa

We suggest about 5 different practices you can do to celebrate Śrāvaṇa, the month of Śiva: 1. Vratam. Many people will observing vows like abstaining from a particular kind of food (salt, sugar, pickles etc.) or observing sunrise-sunset fasts or keeping vigils etc. Generally, these vows are observed on all the Mondays of this śrāvana period and so it is often called the Śrāvaṇa Somavara Vrātam (The Monday Observance of Śrāvaṇa) since Mondays are sacred to Lord Śiva. You can decide just what ...

23 hours ago

1 hour 29 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

How To Give & Receive Spiritual Power

Back in the day, the guru was very necessary because without one, we could not access the Tantras at all (that is, the ritual manuals in which we encounter the practices and philosophies of the tradition) because they were all physical manuscripts that were actually kept in the Guru's abode or even as part of the Guru's memory. As such, without dīkshā (spiritual initiation), it would be nearly impossible to get access to the tradition! Now, many of these texts are available online, in many ...

1 day ago

1 hour 58 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Guru as Transmission of Power

Because last week's Capricorn Full Moon was the celebration of the Guru (it was actually the birthday of Veda Vyāsa, the OG Guru), in our Friday evening restorative yoga class (which you can watch here), we explored the idea of "Guru as Consciousness", as a principle rather than a person which seems to be the emphasis of so many texts and verses describing the Guru! This conception identifies the Guru with Śiva or rather, Brahman which is Pure Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, the One Reality an...

2 days ago

39 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

The Most Important Spiritual Idea

Recently, we've been giving a series of talks on our values and ideals, based on what Swami Vivekananda said about his Master, Sri Ramakrishna. Having discussed our heritage in Where Did Kālī Come From? | A Brief Herstory we express how wonderful what we inherited is and how important it is for us to aspire to the very highest of ideals in order to maintain and transmit that heritage for future generations. In articulating those values, we first took up the subject in Advice to Spiritual Te...

1 week ago

50 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Our Mission | A Manifesto

In our recent lectures like Advice to Spiritual Teachers & Aspirants & Sex, Drugs & Choosing A Guru | Q&A we've been going over our ideals and values as a community, using Swami Vivekananda's reflections on Sri Ramakrishna as our guiding principles. Recently also we took a look at our lineage and heritage to see where we've been! Now, we can look into the future and ask, "well, where are we going?" I want to discuss "our mission" as per Myra Mā's excellent inquiry ...

3 weeks ago

2 hours 33 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Sex, Drugs & Choosing A Guru | Q&A

Recently, we as a community have been having some very important discussions around integrity and our values so that we may be a genuine place of spiritual learning and a safe and inclusive space for practitioners of all sorts, with all types of dispositions who belong to all sorts of spiritual traditions and backgrounds! Naturally, we need to talk about issues of sex, money and power which are most often the downfall of spiritual leaders and spiritual communities. Having clear ideals a...

1 month ago

2 hours 3 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

3 Forms of Śiva: Sadā-śiva, Bhairava & Śava-śiva

In one sense, Śiva means the impersonal absolute Consciousness which is the very essence of the Self (as we pointed out in this video What Is "Shiva"? and also in The Secret Teaching of Bhairava) but in another sense, that which is the formless impersonal Godhead is also, by virtue of His vimarśa-śakti (i.e God's reflexive ability), the personal God who creates, maintains and destroys the universe and who can, at will, manifest as many different forms to suit different occasions and bhāvas (m...

1 month ago

1 hour 11 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Friday the 13th | According to Tantra

To celebrate today's occasion, we took the opportunity to look at the importance of divine immanence as well as the power and pervasiveness and superstition: first, we discussed the Norse and Biblical origins of the Western fear of the number 13, and the fear of Friday as being Venus' day, a day of decadence, sense indulgence and beauty, which are things that all feared and avoided by transcendelist "father sky only" type traditions. We discuss the two types of reclamation: first, by practiti...

1 month ago

1 hour 30 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Jagannātha, Bhairava & The Harmony of All Religions

Today is a very auspicious day for us since this full moon in the month of Jyeshta is the Snāna Yatra, the day when Lord Jagannath in Puri is brought out for a bath: on this occassion, in 1855, Mā Bhavatārinī Kālī (Jagadishwari Thakur Rani) was ritually awakened through prāna-pratishta! at the Dakshineshwar temple, where Sri Ramakrishna lived and taught. Like the Phalahārinī Kālī Pūjā when Sri Ramakrishna worshipped Ma Sarada, this event too is a singularity in the ministry of the Motherhood ...

1 month ago

32 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Advice to Spiritual Teachers & Aspirants

These past few weeks, we've been reflecting a lot on where we've been as a lineage, on our roots and origins. We discussed all of this in talks like Where Did Kālī Come From? | A Brief Herstory, What's Our Lineage? and Our Tantrik Lineage. And of course, while it is important to discuss where we're going (which we'll cover in the next talk), it is equally important to ask where we are now! As such, I want to reflect a little bit on our ideals and values as a spiritual community. To do...

1 month ago

3 hours 45 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Free Will vs. Determinism/Self Effort vs. Grace in Tantra

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 t...

1 month ago

1 hour 48 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Why You Should Worship Mā Dhūmāvatī

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 fa...

1 month ago

53 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Swami Vivekananda's Song to Shiva | & A Daily Chanting Practice

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 pr...

1 month ago

1 hour

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

How To Really Worship Kālī | Free Will vs Determinism

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 import...

1 month ago

2 hours 15 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Is There Free Will?

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 eac...

1 month ago

2 hours 25 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

How To Realize God

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)...

1 month ago

1 hour 35 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Everyone is Religious, Non-Duality vs Solipsism & My Tantrik Mission | Q&A

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 th...

1 month ago

1 hour 20 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

What is God in Tantra?

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 (o...

1 month ago

2 hours 12 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Who is Gaṇeśa?

As part our How To Do Tantrik Pūjā, we now start discussing the next moment in our puja-krama, sequence of worship: Gaṇeśa puja! This a bit like a talk we gave some time back called We'll go over the necessary nyāsa, dhyāna, pūjā and pranāmah mantras in the next class for a more detailed worship but in this talk, I just wanted to say a few things about Pauranic vs Vedic Gaṇeśa and discuss Tantrik Gaṇeśawith reference to Mūlādhāra Chakra and our embodied being to contextualize why its so impo...

1 month ago

1 hour 15 minutes

For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Who is Bhadrakālī?

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 grou...

1 month ago

1 hour 33 minutes