Breath bandha, drishti..... Guru? Plus “Buddha & the Yogis: The Vajra Body”. Robert Thurman, Richard Freeman and John Campbell Video and podcast

Perhaps I understand why Sharath stresses the Guru idea (see this video where he compares the Guru to God as in if you found God surely you wouldn't then look elsewhere.... or would you).


Sharath's grandfather Pattabhi Jois played such an important role in his life, for Sharath he seems to have been guru first grandfather second, of course he wishes such a relationship for everyone.

Pattabhi Jois was a Sanskrit scholar, a devoutly religious man and had practiced Yoga for many years. When the western students turned up at Pattabhi Jois' door in Mysore, many of them came with Autobiography of a Yogi in the back pocket of their Levi's, some came looking for a Guru others it seems just started to refer to Pattabhi Jois as Guruji out of fondness and respect and perhaps reverence. With Pattabhi Jois' passing newer students, brought up on stories of Guruji and no doubt Sharath's stress on the importance of the guru, of parampara, seem to be at a bit of a loss. I read and hear Sharath himself referred to as The man, Boss, Sharathji....., Guruji is perhaps next if it hasn't begun to happen already.

A good thing, a bad thing, does it matter..... is a guru necessary for this practice? Breath, Bandha Drishti.... Guru?

Does parampara or a passing along of the practice require a guru, are teachers that we respect enough, is the practice itself enough, doesn't it teach itself?

Ekam the arms follow the breath go up, dve, they follow the breath down.

Practice leads to the yama/niyamas and working at those along with your practice are perhaps sufficient for several lifetimes.

My suspicion is that too many teachers get in the way of practice, whether intentionally or not they make/create students dependent upon them...., the better teachers provide tools then shoo us out the door or into the mysore room to discover/explore our practice for ourselves.

Krishnamacharya was Pattabhi Jois' Guru as he was my own teacher Ramaswami's . I've never felt urged by Ramaswami to seek out a guru myself or to consider him as such. I respect him immensely as a teacher as I do Pattabhi Jois' son Manju, who strolls into the Shala singing out "Never fear Guru's here" a parody to overcome our first day clumsy reverence.

Reverence for a teacher ( note Reverence rather than merely respect) is a characteristic of tantra upon which hatha yoga relies heavily. Krishnamacharya seemed to strive for a balancing act between Hatha and the pre tantric Yoga Sutras of Patanjali although clearly his preference was for Patanjali but also Yogayajnavalkya, he seemed to turn almost reluctantly to the hathayogapradipka.

Modern Ashtanga seems to have tipped over more towards the hatha camp although many hatha yogis I've met may feel that Ashtangi's merely dip their toe in those murky waters, hatha lite as it were.

Tantra.... my temptation is to reject it altogether and just turn back to Patanjali and his early pre tantric commentators, to Samkhya. Patanjali's yoga seems to have been enough for the old Yogis for many hundreds of years before the hatha yogis turned to tantra and how many more hundreds of years did Yoga do very nicely thank you very much without tantra, before Patanjali constructed his sutras.

Tantra.... now there's labyrinth to get lost in a tantric Ariadne may well need a bigger ball of string.


Isn't Patanjali still plenty to be going on with, for this lifetime at least.

If I look at Anthony Tribe's defining features/characteristics of tantra there are few if any I have any leanings towards.

Characteristics of Tantra( from here)

"André Padoux notes that there is no consensus among scholars which elements are characteristic for Tantra, nor is there any text which contains all those elements.[5] And most of those elements can also be found in non-Tantric traditions.[5] According to Anthony Tribe, a scholar of Buddhist Tantra, Tantra has the following defining features:[19]

Centrality of ritual, especially the worship of deities
Centrality of mantras
Visualisation of and identification with a deity
Need for initiation, esotericism and secrecy
Importance of a teacher (guru, ācārya)
Ritual use of mandalas (maṇḍala)
Transgressive or antinomian acts
Revaluation of the body
Revaluation of the status and role of women
Analogical thinking (including microcosmic or macrocosmic correlation)
Revaluation of negative mental states"

If I were to seek out a Guru, I might well make the trip to Boulder, Colorado, I'm sure Richard though would hate the idea but what a wonderful teacher and I must confess to some reverence, I was quite tongue-tied when I attended his intensive in the UK a few years back.

Here he is talking tantra and kundalini with Robert Thurman first in 2011 (video) and again in 2013 (podcast). thank you to Angelo for the heads up on this, fascinating stuff. Richard makes for a quite dashing Ariadne.

Robert Thurman and Richard Freeman discuss the intro to what Freeman describes as the “handbook to Kundalini yoga,” Thurman’s translation of Tsong Khapa’s Brilliant Lamp of the Lamp of the Five Stages: Practical Instructions in the King of Tantras, The Glorious Esoteric Community. In this video, filmed during Buddha and the Yogi’s: The Vajra Body retreat at Menla Mountain Center, June 12, 2011, Robert Thurman, Richard Freeman and John Campbell explore how Nagarjuna transcends time and space and get to the root of the tongue.