August 8, 2024

Article highlights:
  • Something lost that found me
  • And amazing text 

Around 1997-98 an acquaintance sent me a website link he thought I’d enjoy.  It was early days of the internet, remember, so I was taken to a very basic website, one we’d now consider rudimentary.  It was a lot of text and nothing more. 

But oh the text!  It was amazing.  And for that period it became one of the most important contributors to my spiritual development, leaping me ahead in bounds.  What was it?  

It was translations of sutras from an apparently famous Sanskrit text, one I’d never heard of.  They were transportive to me and I went to the website often for a year or more until one day the website was no longer maintained and functional.  

Over all these ensuing years I’ve tried to find them again in some form.  But I couldn’t remember the Sanskrit name of the sutras, and an author wasn’t given on the website since the translations came from ancient texts.  So without enough information, I never did find them.

Until they found me again recently via my friend Anne.  When she told me about a book she was enjoying, I began to feel excitement that it might be those sutras.  I got the book and wasn’t disappointed.  It was indeed the material I’d seen so many years before.  I can’t wait to share one with you today!  But first, a bit more about this.

I learned that what I’d seen long ago was the 112 dharnas of Vijnana Bhairava – you see why I didn’t remember that?  They were an English translation by Lorin Roche and were originally published by him in 1993 under the title Subtle Bodies.  The website didn’t include the entire book, only his translation of the sutras.

The book I have now is that author’s material, retitled,  The Radiance Sutras  – 112 Gateways To The Yoga of Wonder & Delight, by Lorin Roche, PhD.   The Forward by Shiva Rea begins with the words: “In your hands, you hold a treasure,”  and I think that’s absolutely right… it’s a great treasure. 

To me, they feel like love letters from God Within. Love letters – in a way – from myself to me, from the divine in me dancing with the Yin and Yang of my being, loving me into the divine I Am.  And I think this contemporary interpretation makes them transformative, even in English.

Each Sutra is very short but I find them truly amazing in their ability to transmute my moment from the mundane to that of divine consciousness.

Today’s was:
 
Elaborate rituals and garish images
May be useful in meditation when your mind is 
    whirling with thought
Of sex, money, and power, wandering like an elephant
    in heat.
Go ahead and use these tools, yet know,
Beating drums and blaring trumpets
Cannot summon the One who is already present.
 
I am not a collection of incantations
    known only to experts.
I am not a ladder to be climbed,
Or a sequence for piercing energy centers in your body.
I am not to be found at the end of a long road.
I am right here.
 
It’s said that hearing them chanted in Sanskrit is a special experience, so I’m including a You Tube video of that.  The video is 44 minutes of beautiful Sanskrit chanting.  I’m having wonderful experiences with it.  It’s a blessing to listen to – whether for 5 mins or letting the entire length work it’s way into my being. Or simply having it on in the background of my day.
 
Enjoy!
With love,
Mayet Leilani
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