Pilgrims to Openness: Direct Realization Tantra in Everyday Life - Softcover

Shambhavi Sarasvati

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0984163409 ISBN 13: 9780984163403

Publisher: Jaya Kula Press, 2009

Synopsis

In nearly 70 heart- and mind-opening teachings, Pilgrims to Openness lays bare the compelling world view of Kashmir Shaivism (direct realization Tantra) and offers the reader direct and powerful guidance for embodying greater freedom and fulfillment in human life. Shambhavi Sarasvati is a gifted teacher who is deeply engaged in the practice and study of Indian Tantra and Dzogchen. With compassion, wry humor, and insight, she leads the reader to understand precisely how our everyday lives can function as spiritual practice-eating, sleeping, moving, working, and relating to other people. "We don't have to concoct, contrive or conceptualize a 'spiritual' life. The life-process is the process of awakening, and it is already underway." To read the book is to enter into a transformative conversation with wisdom, world, and Self.Shambhavi begins by presenting a fresh view of Tantra that is true to the classical tradition, but speaks powerfully to the lives of contemporary people. At the heart of this view is uncontrived naturalness: the profound relaxation of body, energy, self-concept, and mind. Such relaxation leads inevitably to a life filled with freshness and wonder. The book is alive with personal anecdotes and encounters. Along the way, no subject is off limits, from difficult emotions, such as loneliness, to love relationships, death, kundalini, chakras, boredom, and how to wake up in the morning and for all time. The final pages offer detailed instructions for three key practices aimed at beginners and more seasoned practitioners alike.

About this title

About the Author

Shambhavi Sarasvati has trained for more than twenty-five years in the view and practices of direct realization Tantra (Kashmir Shaivism). She has been fortunate to have studied with several great teachers in this tradition and in the tradition of Dzogchen from Tibet. She is the spiritual director of Jaya Kula, a nonprofit organization in Portland, Oregon. Shambhavi is a householder sannyasini, an initiate in the lineage of Paramahamsa Satyananda Saraswati of Rikhia, India and a devotee of the Bengali saint, Anandamayi Ma. She is the author of Tantra: the Play of Awakening (2012) and Pilgrims to Opennness: Direct Realization Tantra in Everyday Life (2009). In addition, she published an academic book, Avatar Bodies: a Tantra for Posthumanism. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Mills College and a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. Shambhavi left academia in 2004 in order to devote herself to practice, writing and teaching in the tradition of direct realization Tantra. "Tantra is a way to find out who you really are and to live in the fullness of Reality. This is Self-realization. Nothing more or less." --Shambhavi Sarasvati

From the Back Cover

The journey to spontaneity and naturalness is
made by approaching everyday activities and
experiences in new ways. Learning to directly
experience and embody life in its more subtle,
expansive and free expressions, right here and right
now, is one of the meanings of direct realization
Tantra. The greatest teaching Tantra has to offer
is that everything we need to Self-realize is already
present in each moment and every ordinary
breath.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jaya Kula Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0984163409
• ISBN 13: 9780984163403
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 198