Safety, Doormats, and Ancestors

Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community gather for satsang and get real about all the questions we humans want answered. Intimate, courageous, heartfelt spiritual talk about pretty much everything. So happy you are here! A podcast from Satsang with...

Show Notes

Welcome to our weekly Satsang with Shambhavi podcast. Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community gather for intimate, courageous, heartfelt, and often humorous conversations about spirituality, politics, culture, and pretty much everything. Published each Wednesday here and wherever podcasts are found.

Our podcasts are recorded at live satsangs. They are delivered to you each week fresh and new.

You are also invited to join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community LIVE for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or email [e-mail] to request the Zoom link for satsang.

Shambhavi Sarasvati is the spiritual director of Jaya Kula, a nonprofit organization offering opportunities to practice in the traditions of Trika Shaivism and Dzogchen.

Visit https://jayakula.org/ to find out more.

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Thanks for listening! And much love to you, wherever and however you are.

What is Satsang with Shambhavi?

Join Shambhavi Sarasvati for a weekly exploration of self-realization, death, love, devotion, and waking up while living in a messy world. Satsang is an ancient spiritual practice from India. It means "being in reality together." During satsang, people gather with a teacher to learn, ask questions, find community, chant and sing. Shambhavi gives satsang in Portland, Oregon and elsewhere. The dharma talks offered here are recordings of the live satsang.

Shambhavi is the spiritual director of Jaya Kula, a nonprofit organization. Her training is in the View and practices of Trika Shaivism from Kashmir and the Dzogchen tradition of Tibet. She is a householder sannyasini and a devotee of Anandamayi Ma. Visit jayakula.org for her full teaching schedule and more information.

Shambhavi's books include Mother Poems and A Crack in Time (2025), The Reality Sutras: Seeking the Heart of Trika Shaivism (2018), Tantra: the Play of Awakening (2012), Pilgrims to Openness: Direct Realization Tantra in Everyday Life (2009), Returning (2015), and No Retreat: Poems on the Way to Waking Up (2016). All of Shambhavi's books are available on Bookshop.org and on Amazon.

Hi, this is Shambhavi.

Welcome to my weekly podcast about spirituality,
love, death, devotion, and waking
up while living in a messy world.

The Satsang with Shambhavi podcast is recorded
live each week with students of our
nonprofit community, Jaya Kula.

For more information and to find out
about attending a satsang, visit jayakula.org.

Thanks for listening.

Much love to you, wherever and however you are.

STUDENT: Do you think safety exists?

And if so, what is it to be safe?

I'm asking because I've spent many periods
of my life feeling unsafe,
and so I'm trying to understand what it would be

to feel safe, or if both are illusions,
the feeling of not being safe
and the feeling of being safe.

SHAMBHAVI: Well, I don't know what you mean by safety.

STUDENT: I think I don't know right now.

SHAMBHAVI: [laughs] Anything could happen,
and anything is happening basically everywhere.

So in that sense, we die, and we can be injured,
and we can be having unpleasant experiences.

So in that sense, no, I don't think
there's any safety in that ordinary sense.

Although we can attempt to live a life
where we're not unduly distracted
from our practice or from the things

that we really want our life to be about.

But that doesn't mean that we won't be distracted.

We don't have a lot of control over things,
but we can do our best to construct a life that is
nurturing to us and nurtures the things

that we want to spend our time doing.

But there's definitely no guarantees about that.

So I'm saying this because,
in saying there's no safety, I don't wanna
say that you should never protect yourself.

You should.
There's just no guarantees about that,
but you should do your best.

If by safety you mean never feeling afraid,
or never feeling discomfort,
or never feeling harmed,

or not being afraid of death or stuff like that,
that seems to be a waste of time if
that is someone's definition of safety.

For instance, in a tradition like this one,
the relationship with the teacher
is not really particularly safe.

The teacher's gonna do things and point
things out that are gonna be not comfortable.

And there have occasionally been people who've
wandered in who didn't know anything about these
traditions, who insisted that I should make them

feel safe, and I'm just like, that's kind of
the opposite of my job description.

But there's other traditions you
could go to that would feel less challenging.

Like, this is a pretty challenging tradition.

And then some people like that, like myself.

I like being challenged, so that's why I'm here.

But other people don't.

So there's like a vast universe
of what safety could mean to people.

From my perspective, the only safety is
recognizing your real nature and relaxing in that.

And that means what?

That means that you feel the eternal Self
and your fear of death goes way down
because you have the direct understanding that

death is an aspect of impermanence,
but that nothing actually dies.

So the fear of death becomes much less.

That doesn't mean that I'm blasé about
burning to death in a fire or something.

You know, there's ways that I
would prefer not to die.

[laughs] I'm just trying to be real.

But I don't have a big fear of death anymore
because I have a sense of the continuation of life
and where I come from and what I actually am.

And then resting in that, you also have much more
of a come-what-may attitude, that you're basically

in game mode, on infinite play mode, and
you're just responding as things are arising,

and there's much less fear
about things not going as planned,

`there's even enjoyment in things
not going as planned, where I'm concerned.

But there's also just the sense that you're being
in this call and response situation and anything
can happen,

and it has more of a game-like quality.
It's less threatening.

So if we wanna have safety here,
there's an ordinary version of safety, which means
I'm not gonna invite a mass murderer over for tea,

[laughs] something like that.

But then a mass murderer could
break into my house anyway.

Unlikely, but you know.

So I'm gonna take some measures,
but I also have in the back of my mind,
maybe my measures aren't gonna be enough.

So there's ordinary forms of safety that we can
try to arrange, but then there's also just taking
refuge in the natural state.

And then everything becomes much less scary,
impermanence included.

STUDENT: Yeah.
Thank you so much. That's helpful.

STUDENT: I feel like I've been a punching bag,
like, my whole life, and I'm sick of it,
and I would like some advice.

SHAMBHAVI: You stated that very simply,
but there's all different styles of punching bags.

Some of that can change because we mature,
and we get more clear vision,

and we're able to see that kind of behavior
faster, and we're more skillful
at stopping it or moving away from it.

Well, I think there already is more clear seeing
happening and more maturity happening,
and that will just keep going.

But there are other things that are bigger cycles
that are feeding into those kind
of patterns that may or may not end.

It's just that you'll get more skillful
in not getting caught up in them.

I mean, there's a sense in which certain people
in our culture are pretty much
punching bags for certain other people.

Name your oppressed person.

You're not gonna cure those things.

But then there are karmic patterns where we do
tend to get involved with similar characters, and

we don't know when that's gonna end or
if it's gonna end, but it will attenuate.

It will get less troublesome, for sure, over time.

And I don't know if this is true just because we
live in such a narcissistic culture,
but I've definitely just had some big narcissists

in my life since I was born, basically.

And not just your garden variety. [laughs]

At first, I didn't
even know it was happening.

I was so immersed in it.

Then it would take me eons to recognize it,
and then to become skillful in handling it.

And now, if a new person walks in the door
and that kind of high-level narcissism is
happening,

I actually know how to take care of it right away.

But I'm almost 70 years old, and that just
became my truth in the last couple of years.

I hope it's faster for you.
[laughs]

STUDENT: They have you as teacher.
SHAMBHAVI: Yeah.

Maybe a few steps ahead of you in that regard.

But we all have different kinds of patterns.

If we're practitioners, then hopefully
those things are relaxing and unwinding.

Some of them are much stronger,
some of them are weaker.

We're born with them, but they're very weak
when we're born anyway, and they just go away.

Other ones, we do mantra, we do this, we do that,
we go to therapy, we talk
to our friends, we suffer.

And when we're 70 years old, it's, like, weaker.

[laughs]

We all have that mix of patterns
that have more momentum or less momentum.

So some things that I've experienced in my life
have just gone, and other things are like,
oh my God, is that still happening?

Is that person still walking in the door?
But now I don't take the bait.

So all I can say is you're still very young,
and I know it's painful,
but it will at least get weaker.

It will at least get weaker,
and you will become more skillful in handling it.

And if I have anything to say about it,
you'll feel a lot more self-possessed.

I mean, this is inevitable as you get older.

So I don't know how much credit I'll be
able to take for it, but I really hope you feel
much more self-possessed at some point,

where you just feel like certain things are
not going to be happening in your field.

STUDENT: How do we approach seeking the wisdom
that's derived from the family lineages
that we're born into?

SHAMBHAVI: You mean like your ancestors?
STUDENT: Yeah.

SHAMBHAVI: Yeah, you don't mean, like,
a spiritual family lineage?

STUDENT: Exactly.
SHAMBHAVI: Right.

That really depends on how connected you feel.

But we can all increase our
level of connection to ancestors.

In this culture, there's...

Often people don't have a deeply felt sense
of their ancestors, and it feels a little
alienating to try to connect to them.

But the best way that I know of is
to make ancestor offerings every day.

Set up a little altar with some things on it
that remind you of your ancestors,

and make a little offering of water and incense
and flower, or whatever you think they would like.

Burn some resin, you know, do something like that.

And then take some time standing at the ancestor
altar just to reach out and see
what you can connect with.

And you can ask for support.

If I were to ask for support, I would say,
those ancestors that are capable of this,
I would love to have your support.

Or offer the benefit of your practice to your
ancestors if you're doing practice.

I usually say, I hope that you find teachers
and teachings wherever you are,
'cause I'm really into that.

Something that's kind and kind of reaching out
to them, and you can say things that you need
to say or want to say to particular ancestors,

but kindness is the most connecting thing.

In the tradition of divination I do, ancestors
were not really thought of as individuals.

It was more like a reservoir
of wisdom that we could connect to.

So you could try that too.

I mean, some people like to try
to connect to specific ancestors.

Some people have deep connections to a particular
ancestor that they get advice from.

This really, really depends on your capacity,
your desire, what your ancestral configuration is,
who you wanna connect with.

There's not really a single way.

But definitely making offerings and generating
and feeling a kindly attitude towards your
ancestors is a wonderful way to build

more of a connection with them.

And whatever cultures everybody comes from,
every culture has some kind
of ancestor thing that they do.

So I think it would also be worth researching,
if you don't already know, what your ancestors
did to make connections with their ancestors.

I only know the way from this tradition,
and that's from India, but every
single culture has forms of connection.

You can make up your own rituals too.

But again, the most important thing is to do
something regularly that expresses kindness.

If you have ancestors that have had really
difficult experiences,
which probably all of us have,

expressing kindness to them and expressing
the wish for your activities in this life
to benefit them is a really good thing to do.

STUDENT: I was wondering if you could
talk about fresh starts.

Moving to Portland, I feel like, is an opportunity
to kind of get out of some of my habits.

I've had a couple years where I was very isolated.

I didn't have a lot of community support,
and I feel like I need to learn how to be
in community more.

SHAMBHAVI: When we have a yearning for
something, whatever it is,
community or God or anything,

it does happen in circumstances that we make
decisions or we get distracted in ways that take
us away from what our real yearning is.

So the most important thing is to decide or feel,
more feel than decide, what is it
you want your life to be about?

I've said this so many times.

What do you want your life to be about?

And remember that.

Don't let yourself get distracted by other
people's demands or other concepts
that you have about

what you should be doing or should be wanting.

Many of us have concepts like we shouldn't be
wanting what we want, or we should do something
else first because that's what people do,

people of our ilk, whatever ilk you happen to be.

Or we have other people making demands on us,
or we have concepts in our mind about

certain things are more important than
what I actually want my life to be about.

The thing is, this is your life.

You're living it now.

It's not happening in the future.

For various reasons, you made some decisions
that caused some isolation,

and now you've identified through that experience
that yearning for community
and connection has gotten stronger.

And you've identified it more because it used
to be when I first met you,
you weren't really that into community.

You felt shy about community.

You had a lot of conditioning that made
you avoid community actually in some cases.

That was just conditioning.

That was just conditioning.

And then you went away and felt
very lonely and isolated.

So that really stripped you of something.

It stripped you of some of that conditioning.

You were able, in that emptiness, you were able
to identify more what your real yearning is.

And so now you have to hold onto that.

That's your number one step.

Hold onto that and make decisions
based on that, not on other things.

The decisions that we make about what we actually
want in our lives, how we want our lives to be,
what our lives are actually about,

doesn't mean that we cut down on everything.

It doesn't mean that we have to shear away
everything but this very most important
number one thing or one or two things.

It just means that we wanna live like a mandala.

Like think of yourself as a mandala,
where you have your center and then
you have outlying things going out.

So it's not like you have to ignore.

You can go to the suburbs.

You can go out to the country.

You can go to a restaurant
not in your neighborhood.

You can do things that aren't exactly
in that center, but you have
to make the center the center.

You have to keep it the center,
and that organizes things.

It organizes your time.

It organizes decisions that you make, behaviors.

It organizes how you spend your money.

For instance, many, many people have

conflicts between their more normative ideas about
the importance of extended family

and their less normative ideas
about the importance of
spiritual practice or spiritual life.

So many people make decisions such as,

I'm gonna go to a wedding for my
second cousin twice removed
rather than go to a spiritual retreat.

Or, I'm going to not do my practice
when I'm visiting family because it
makes them uncomfortable.

Or many, many other kinds of decisions like that
where there's one set of concepts
that's not jiving with

the idea of making your spiritual life central.

That's fine.
That just says your spiritual life isn't central.

But it's good to know that it's possible.

Like, that's one of my jobs, I think,
is to show you what's possible.

Not necessarily what you're gonna do, but what's
possible if you ever decide to go that route.

In any case, once you have identified something
like, I really wanna be in community, which

you've expressed to me
so many times in the last year,
you need to hold onto that.

That seems very central.

You need to make decisions that centralize that,
that give that primacy in your life
and that organize your time,

and then you'll be able to explore
that and hopefully be happier.

We're always happy when we know what our lives are
actually about and we organize
our lives around that.

I keep saying the obvious, which is
this is your life, because many people
know what is most important to them,

but they put it off because they're
trying to satisfy some more normative demands.

Ones they've internalized, ones that are external.

They're trying to satisfy those first so they
won't make anyone angry or be disappointed
in themselves in some ordinary way,

so they try to do all these other things first,
thinking, I'll have my real life later.

But it turns out your real life is
actually happening right now.

So that's why I keep saying that.

You need to do that now, not later.
Whatever it is.

And it could be more than one
thing that's central in your life.

I'm not saying you have
to choose the one true thing.

But it's good to know what's actually of most
value to you, what you want your life to be about.

When you're on your deathbed,
what do you wanna look back at?

Oh gosh, I went to 72 weddings
of 72 different cousins.
Yay.

[laughs]

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a nonprofit community offering opportunities
to learn and practice in the direct realization
traditions of Trika Shaivism and Dzogchen.

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