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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...
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 sayhi@jayakula.org 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.
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.
[instrumental music plays] 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
non-profit 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: I was wondering, is the reason that
you kind of landed a little bit more in Trika
as opposed to some of the other traditions
that you studied in, like Dzogchen,
is it more because of all the
heart-based practices and focus?
SHAMBHAVI: Yeah, that's definitely one of the reasons.
Both traditions are householder traditions.
And certainly my Dzogchen teacher insisted on his
householder status, and refused to wear
robes or get installed as a monk.
But I think in general in Tibetan Buddhism,
a lot of the teachers are monks
or monastics of some sort.
And certainly in Trika,
it's much more determinedly a householder
tradition, so that's another reason.
And the glorification or the appreciation for city
life, being in the world in this very engaged way,
it's also part of Dzogchen
but it's more pronounced in Trika.
Even the siddhas of Trika that I may not wholly
resonate with, they were all incredibly engaged
in various discourse communities
and activities and stuff.
So I find that really appealing.
Also the gender stuff is sort of earlier.
It's more matriarchal or
matrilineal in a certain way.
In many ways.
Tibetan Buddhism is a little bit
later in the game and it's
more inflected by patriarchy.
So I think that's another reason,
but it's mostly explicit devotional
teachings that mostly happened
prior to Abhinavagupta that really spoke to me.
It's also the way that things get talked about
in Tibetan Buddhism and the emphasis on mind
and visualization has never really appealed to me.
So... just in general.
Dzogchen's not as much like that,
but Trika's definitely about all the senses and
the instructions about mind are very different,
and thoughts, and there's not any real attention
to witnessing, although there is in Hinduism.
And certainly the later teachers teach
the practices of witnessing and watching your
thoughts and watching your breath and stuff.
But as far as I know those are part of the
Advaita Vedanta tradition, not Trika, really.
The simplicity of it tends
to just be more sort of earthy.
And also the relationship to language,
the primacy of the word and sound and language,
and the languaging as the basic world process.
And that being under the purview of Devi,
that Devi is the speaker and the writer
and the bringer of the worlds, that's all
very appealing, because it makes more sense.
'Cause only people with women's bodies give birth,
so it's like very patriarchal to switch that.
In the Tibetan Buddhist traditions,
the male aspect is the creator.
It's like okay, I know you want to be the creator
but... [laughter]
But it's sort of by fiat, you know?
[laughs] It's much more gendered,
much more gendered than in Trika.
Gender is much more
a hard and fast category
in Tibetan Buddhism than it is in Trika.
STUDENT: Where does God start
and where does it end?
In our tradition, there is no
creation story, we don't have one.
Is that correct?
SHAMBHAVI: There's no creation story,
like a linear creation story,
but there's a whole cosmology about
how things come into being and go away.
It's just that it's happening continuously
and linear time is one of the phenomenon or
experiences that's being created by that reality.
So linear time is not
the ultimate experience of time.
It's a limited, local experience of time.
Obviously cultures have stories about
"in the beginning this happened and then that
happened" and they're very linear stories, right?
And in that context you can ask a question of when
did God begin. But in our tradition God,
or what we could call God,
is actually reality itself,
and reality itself is self-aware.
The entire reality is self-aware and alive
and then it is producing within itself all these
different experiences,
including experiences of linear time,
experiences of cosmologies
that have a linear explanation.
All of these things are being produced by this
alive aware reality, including you and me, and so
there is a story of how that production happens,
but instead of happening linearly it's happening
kind of horizontally, like in a plane
where there's just constant infinite planes
of becoming and unbecoming.
They're constantly happening, and locally there
might be experiences of beginnings and endings.
There are, actually, that's what
we call impermanence, right?
But if we're talking about the whole thing,
there can't be a beginning or an end....
because it is existence itself,
it's a way of talking about what is existence.
So there can't be anything but that or outside
of that, and that has no end or beginning.
STUDENT: Can you talk about forgiveness
so that we're not holding resentment or something?
SHAMBHAVI: Well, there's two aspects to that.
There's this thing that my Dzogchen teacher used
to usefully call instantly liberating appearances.
And that means that you see through appearances
instantly to see what's really
happening for somebody.
And when I was talking about all karmas being
a way to connect, or a way to try to connect
with others, to form connections with others,
if someone's yelling at you, for instance,
or they're desperately trying to maintain
a connection with you,
but they're doing it in all these
super damaging ways.
What liberating appearances means,
on one level it means seeing and feeling
what it is the person is actually trying to do,
and that gives rise to some compassion,
or at least softens things.
The ultimate liberation of appearances is only
available to you if you have a certain degree
of recognition of the natural state,
but that means the instant recognition
that everything is that,
that whatever is arising is that,
natural state expressing itself,
and then there's like no problem really.
But that's only on one side.
On the other side, feeling resentment or feeling
whatever you feel is also a secondary thing.
So we have habitual reactions to things,
that's our top level of reaction,
whether our habitual reaction is anger,
or sadness, or anxiety, fear, whatever it is,
it's our go-to, that's going
to be our first thing, right?
A burst of that.
And we might just stay at that level and it just
keeps repeating and repeating and repeating.
And of course, resentment is
a really great example of that.
Resentment's even a better example because
resentment is very much stuck energy
and it's kind of easy to feel that.
Resentment's kind of like a smoldering campfire
that just won't go out, and it really does relate
to how elements are expressing themselves in us.
So we have these habitual ways of responding
and it's related to our constitution and related
to various other karmas that we have,
and we can approach that in a lot of different
ways to relieve ourselves of those feelings.
I'm not saying to fix anything with anybody else,
but the alternative to trying to relieve ourselves
with forgiveness is, for instance,
getting help with balancing our doshas,
doing practice that helps us to get
more balanced and relaxed and spacious.
Drilling down through the top level emotions
that we feel and getting into,
"What is it that I'm really feeling?"
So I can give you a primary example in my own
life, it's been going since childhood.
It actually felt like it kind of mostly went away,
and then because of recent events in the world
it's kind of reared its head again, which is
feeling upset with other people for not treating
each other better, and that can show up as anger.
It can also show up in other ways,
but because I have a pitta constitution,
it more often shows up in anger.
But if I drill down below that, where do I get to?
What's behind and behind and behind that multiple
layers is my real desire for people to be treated
well, and that very, very heart-based desire.
So there might be anger or resentment or
frustration out here, but if I drill down,
it's like this very heart-based yearning,
you know, it's just yearning for people to be
happier and be treated with more kindness.
So if you can get to that thing from your
resentment, what is behind
and behind and behind it?
The, it's always something that feels softer,
and it's always something aspirational.
It's something we want
and it's not to get revenge, like... [laughs]
Revenge is on the outside, right?
But behind and behind and behind those kinds
of more superficial emotions are
heart-based things that are
aspirational and full of yearning
and full of devotion. Always.
So that's another way of liberating appearances,
to get in there and feel what it is that's
really motivating the external thing.
But it's hard, and also just be a little easy
on yourself too, because I know it
feels like horrible to feel resentment.
It doesn't feel good to you,
that's why you asked the question.
But we don't have control over
everything, try as we might.
And sometimes we just have to keep putting one
foot in front of the other, doing our practice,
trying to get back to the heart as best we can,
even if we fail, and there's some poignancy
in that, that even when we fail to do that,
there's a poignancy about just making the effort
and a feeling of kindness towards oneself just
for having made the effort even if you fail.
That's one thing about times like this when things
are very, very hard, is that they stir things
up and they show us what's still in there.
You thought it was gone, but no, nope,
it was just weaker so it didn't get triggered
so often, you know, but it's still in there.
But that's how the process goes.
That's why in mainstream Hinduism,
this process of relieving ourselves of karma
is compared to peeling the skins of an onion.
You think you're done peeling the onion and no,
oh my God, it's not done yet. [laughs]`
There's another little bit, and then there's
that really, really fine milky filamenty stuff
that can get stuck on it
that's like the thinnest, thinnest,
but sometimes the hardest to even get off....
It's kind of analogous to our
process of being relieved of karmas.
But we have to just recognize, this is how it is.
It's just how it is.
And whatever we've been served in our lives,
we've been served that by God.
Doesn't make it easy.
I'm not trying to bypass this or make it easy.
It's just what we've been served.
There is no way around that.
And if we can just approach that with some
friendliness and practicality, that's a good life.
STUDENT: Will you talk about death
and the experience of it from our side?
SHAMBHAVI: Well, our experiences of death are so varied.
There's not an "us" that has,
like, one experience of death.
[laughs] There's variations from person
to person, from culture to culture, from time
to time, in how we relate to death, for sure.
And some people do not go
gently into that good night.
My father and his father both spent their
whole lives afraid of dying and fighting dying.
And even when they were in their hospital beds
dying, were trying to rip things out of their arms
and run away,
like crazy, crazy lack of just
being okay with what is. [laughs]
And other people have
a completely different attitude.
From the perspective of this tradition, the
analogy that's always made is waves in an ocean.
So waves are ocean. Waves are ocean,
and they're made by the ocean,
and they are actually ocean.
So they arise.
And just imagine yourself on the shore
watching the ocean, which we all love to do.
We love that impermanence.
We love watching that change.
The waves arise, and we can
see the little swells happening.
But if we really think about it,
a wave has no edges.
There's no definite line where we could say,
"This is the wave, and this is
the rest of the ocean."
The wave is continuous with the ocean, and it has
only a quasi-independent experience.
We can definitely point to something and say,
"There's a wave," but it's
not a separate individual.
And then when the wave goes away, when it dies,
it just gets pulled back into the ocean.
Ma said it best.
She said, "Nothing is ever born,
and nothing ever dies."
So "nothing is ever born" means we never
have an independent existence from the whole.
We're always part of the whole.
And "nothing ever dies" means that when this form
goes away, we just become less conditioned.
These things just go back into the unconditioned.
And some patterns survive.
And our strongest patterns survive
and get plunked into other beings.
They get reused.
You can think of us as kind of,
like, bundles of different patterns.
When we die, those bundles dissipate a bit,
and the weak patterns probably don't survive,
but the really strong ones,
like doing sadhana every day is a very strong
pattern, or being angry at people every
day is another really strong pattern. [laughs]
So whatever's strongest has most momentum
and so it keeps going, and it can get
re-parked in somebody else or something else.
When we do sadhana and when we do work to try
to release ourselves of karmas, we're actually
helping other beings too, just doing that work.
Some people wonder or worry. Over the years,
periodically someone says, "I'm worried that I'm
being selfish by doing sadhana."
No, actually,
you're being incredibly generous.
[laughs] Because first of all,
you're going to treat everybody better,
and that'll be a blessing.
And you might contribute more.
Like when you die,
you're going to be contributing
good patterns to other beings.
STUDENT: So I'm going to carry my patterns
back into my reincarnation.
SHAMBHAVI: In the Tibetan traditions, you know,
they're just so into reincarnation.
In the Hindu traditions, they talk about it,
but it just doesn't carry the same weight
as it does in the Tibetan traditions.
Tibetans have built whole
industries around reincarnations. [laughs]
But the idea is that the more awake
we become through doing sadhana or
some other means, the more awake we are.
We're actually more awake, in a literal sense, in
an ordinary sense, and in a super ordinary sense.
That's why the more practice you do, a lot
of times, the fewer hours you sleep at night.
It's also why when you're going through periods
of real opening, or some more special
thing is happening in your practice,
you might not sleep for a couple of days.
The experience that I've had of this
is there's just nothing there to sleep.
Like, I couldn't identify anything in there
that was, like, a person that needed to sleep.
So there was no sleep happening.
And you don't feel tired, it's just...
there's no sleeper.
I don't know if that makes any sense at all,
but you don't stay in that condition.
I mean, even Ma slept.
[laughs] She didn't sleep very much.
But none of us stays in that condition.
We learn things from having been
in that condition, and it definitely affects our
form of embodiment, but
it doesn't stay that way all the time.
In any case, if we're just more awake,
when we die we're also more awake.
And that comes in degrees.
But the more awake we are,
the more coherency there is
in these patterns as we're moving
through the bardos.
And even though it's not like a soul, more things
kind of stay together in this awake experience,
and that's where we get the
phenomenon of reincarnates.
But reincarnation doesn't just mean anyone.
Not everyone is reincarnated
in the way that this is used.
The way that us ordinary shlubs go through
the bardos is, you know, we break apart,
the strongest things survive, and then
we end up in some realm. [laughs]
Working through more karmas.
If we have more awakeness, then
there is a possibility that someone will be born
who has more coherent memories
of past lives or other lives.
If you've ever watched a movie about reincarnation
or read stories about it, you realize that even
the great beings,
the great reincarnates,
they don't remember everything.
They remember enough.
They remember having done practice.
They might remember some students
that they had in previous lives.
They remember some places where
they taught and practiced.
They have easier access to practice
because it's almost like they're
picking up where they left off,
but they don't remember what
grandmom said to me when I was five.
[laughs] So there's not this
sense of total coherency.
Satsang with Shambavi is produced by Jaya Kula,
a nonprofit community offering opportunities
to learn and practice in the
direct realization traditions
of Trika Shaivism and Dzogchen.
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