Tag: Yoga Philosophy
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Siddhis and Why the Texts Warn Against Them
Yogic practice is said to produce genuine extraordinary powers along the way. Patanjali’s own text treats acquiring them as a hazard, not an achievement.
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Bhakti Yoga: Devotion as a Complete Path
Bhakti is not the beginner’s option for those unsuited to philosophy. The devotional traditions argued, at length, that it is the most direct route available.
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Karma Yoga: Action Without the Grip of Outcome
The Gita’s most quoted line is routinely read as a licence for detachment from results. Its actual argument is more demanding than that.
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Raja Yoga: The Royal Path of Mental Mastery
Raja yoga is the systematic training of attention set out in Patanjali’s Sutras. Its opening definition tells you the entire aim in four words.
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Nirvikalpa Samadhi: Absorption Without a Trace of Thought
Nirvikalpa samadhi is absorption in which no distinction between knower, knowing and known remains. The tradition describes it precisely and warns against chasing it.
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Why a Mantra Is Repeated 108 Times
The mala has 108 beads and the number appears everywhere in the tradition. There are several explanations, and the more interesting question is what repetition is doing at all.
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Nada Yoga: Liberation Through Inner Sound
Nada yoga is the practice of listening rather than producing. The tradition describes a sequence of internal sounds and treats following them inward as a complete path.
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Dharana: The Concentration That Comes Before Meditation
Dharana is holding attention on one point. It is the sixth limb of yoga, and confusing it with meditation is why a great deal of practice stalls.
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Kundalini: The Coiled Energy at the Base of the Spine
Kundalini is described as a dormant energy coiled at the base of the spine. The tradition is enthusiastic about what its rising achieves and unusually blunt about the risks of forcing it.
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The Seven Chakras: A Map, Not a Ladder
The chakras are centres in the subtle body, not organs and not levels of personal worth. Reading them as a ladder to climb misses what the map is for.
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Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna: The Three Rivers of the Subtle Body
Three channels run along the spine in the yogic map. Two of them alternate all day, and the whole point of practice is to open the third.
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The Five Pranas: How One Breath Becomes Five Functions
Prana is not simply breath. The tradition divides it into five distinct functions with different directions and different jobs, and the divisions are surprisingly practical.
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Hatha Yoga: The Body as the First Instrument
Hatha yoga was not designed as exercise. Its original texts treat the body as the instrument that has to be prepared before anything subtler becomes possible.
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The Eight Limbs of Patanjali’s Yoga, One by One
Ashtanga means eight limbs, and postures are the third of them. The order is deliberate and the first two are usually skipped.
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Yantra: The Geometry of the Divine
A yantra is a diagram used the way a mantra is used sound. The Sri Yantra’s nine interlocking triangles are the most studied example, and the construction is genuinely difficult.
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Vasana: Why Tendencies Outlive Their Causes
A vasana is a deep-seated tendency that persists long after the original experience that created it has been forgotten entirely. The persistence is the whole problem.
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Ramanuja and the Temple Doors: Philosophy as a Social Act
Ramanuja is remembered for a doctrine, and also for climbing a temple tower and shouting a secret mantra to whoever was standing below.
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The Six Darshanas: India’s Six Classical Philosophies, Mapped
Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa and Vedanta are the six orthodox systems. They are called darshanas, points of view, and the plural is deliberate.
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Shravana, Manana, Nididhyasana: The Three Movements of Study
Vedantic method breaks the path from hearing a teaching to living it into three distinct, necessary stages, none of which can substitute for the others.
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Vayu: The Breath That Moves the World
Vayu occupies a strange position among the Vedic deities: he is everywhere, constantly active, and almost never depicted. There is no famous Vayu temple to rival those of Shiva or Vishnu, no widely circulated image of his form, because the thing he governs resists being pinned into a shape. Wind cannot be drawn accurately; it…
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Why Mantras Are Said to Work Without Being Understood
Most mantras are given without translation, and many have no propositional meaning at all. The tradition’s account of why they still function is specific.
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The One That Breathed Without Air
Tad ekam, That One, breathed windlessly by its own power. The phrase is the hymn’s single positive statement, and every word of it is chosen to avoid saying too much.