A quiet space for noticing what is already here.
By now hopefully you've spent more time doing Qìgōng than reading about it — stopping, looking, listening, feeling your way into what Qì actually is before we ever got around to naming it. This post is the naming. Or rather, it's the skeleton underneath everything you've already felt: the three treasures, sān bǎo 三寶, that Qìgōng exists to cultivate. Sometimes they're called the three origins, sān…
Reflections on nondual Right Knowledge, pedagogy, and recognition by Dev Bhagavān There comes a point in every serious inquiry when the map has served its purpose. For many years my work revolved around structure. I immersed myself in the Advaita Vedānta tradition, the Buddha’s Theravāda Suttas , and the Taoist classics—not simply reading them, but living them in their native cultures . Toward the…
A few days ago, I found myself listening once again to Snarky Puppy. Their music is astonishing: the ensemble playing is effortless, the rhythmic precision breathtaking, and the joy they take in making music is contagious. Few contemporary groups display such generosity toward one another. Each musician shines, yet always in service of the whole. As I listened, however, a question quietly arose:…
Qìgōng (氣功) practice has four phases. They come in a fixed order: stop, look, listen, feel. Not because someone decreed it that way, but because each phase is the ground the next one stands on. You cannot skip ahead. Stop The first thing to do is nothing. Stop the discursive mind — the running commentary, the planning, the replaying of yesterday's conversation. This is the layer of mental noise…
The Great Work is complete. What do we mean by that? Well, the story goes back to 1984, when I got Śaktipāṭ from Śakti Herself, spontaneously, after many weeks of intense meditation. But without any desire for any particular outcome, She just gave it. And then I saw Brahman in the world, and the world in Brahman, simultaneously. But at that time, I didn't have any understanding of non-duality. So…
—and NOT on the lips by closing the mouth Vedic research by Dev Bhagavān There is a small but consequential dispute buried in how most of us were taught to chant ĀŪṀ: does the syllable close on the lips, or does it dissolve through the nose? The difference sounds trivial, until you try both and notice how different the two endings feel in the body — one stops at the mouth, the other keeps moving.…
You have probably felt this without naming it. You walk into a room and something in the air weighs on you; you walk into another room and something lifts. You spend a few days in the mountains and find your breath has changed by the time you come back down. You arrive at the sea and within twenty minutes a tension you did not know you were carrying has gone. What you are feeling is real, and the…
You have watched the video , perhaps a few times. You have stood. Maybe only for two or three minutes the first day, a little longer the next, and on some morning in the second week you noticed your shoulders had dropped without your asking them to. You may not have thought it amounted to much. But something has now landed in your body that was not there before — a small, particular knowing about…
One often hears that Advaita Vedānta is atheistic, that it denies God and teaches only an impersonal Absolute. Others imagine that Advaita proclaims, "You are God," meaning that the individual somehow evolves into a cosmic deity. Both ideas are misunderstandings. Advaita Vedānta neither denies God nor deifies the individual. Rather, it reveals the true relationship between the individual, the…
The recognition we have explored throughout this series does not remove the world: Mountains remain. People speak. Bodies age. Thoughts arise. Problems appear and are solved. Life continues. What disappears is not the world; what disappears is confusion. The Dream Continues Many people imagine awakening as the destruction of ordinary life. Quite the opposite—nothing needs to be destroyed. The…