Satsang
PODCAST
EPISODE NO.
193

The Simplicity of Relaxing in the Natural State

People looking up at the trees
April 15, 2020

Our minds are junkies addicted to complication. But the essence of direct realization practice is simplicity itself. A podcast from Satsang with Shambhavi

Podcast First Words

You’re carrying around with you a lot of received habitual patterns of responding and relating to life. The ways that you relate to yourself. Your emotional patterns of response. Your concepts and ideas about things. How you use your mind. How you relate to other people. All of these are—not entirely, but by and large—basically a jumble sale of used items. Worn out, used, stale items.

These things make your life very complicated. You have all kinds of attachments, like attachments to an old, smelly sweater. You have attachments to old, smelly ways of relating to life that you’re not letting go of. And they make everything really complicated. It gets you in all kinds of entanglements. And it gets you into situations in which you’re not seeing clearly and can’t navigate clearly or wisely.

Now, the biggest name for the genre of traditions that I’m practicing and teaching in is direct realization traditions. The two traditions that I’ve studied in are called Trika Shaivism and Dzogchen. Trika Shaivism is a tradition from Kashmir, largely. And Dzogchen comes from a lot of different places, but it became what we know of it today in Tibet. These traditions are related both in their view and historically. I won’t go into that right now, but in any case, they’re both what are called direct realization traditions.

That means that, very simply, the goal of the tradition is to see for yourself how things are. How things really are. How you really are. And how life really is. To see that for yourself, but not in an ordinary way. Because of course, right now, you’re seeing things. But what you’re seeing, sensing, and feeling are very limited.

ABOUT THE PODCAST

Satsang with Shambhavi is a weekly podcast about spirituality, love, death, devotion and waking up while living in a messy world.