No Retreat: poems on the way to waking up - Paperback

by Shambhavi Sarasvati (Author)

Shambhavi Sarasvati is a contemporary devotee, yogini and teacher. She follows in the footsteps of other women spiritual practitioners, such as Mirabai and Lalleshwari, whose devotional poems trace a step-by-step map of the journey to the heart of wisdom. This is a journey fueled by prayer, determination, wonder, lament, praise and unstoppable longing.

Written during solo spiritual retreats and periods of the eruption of intense spiritual feeling, Shambhavi's poems report in raw, tender and playful language about our shared human efforts to wake up and discover more of who we are.

Most Glorious Teacher,
please break down
the rock of my defenses.
If these words are insincere,
do it anyway. - from No Retreat

Author Biography

Shambhavi Sarasvati's principle training is in the View and practices of Trika Shaivism, the Tantrik tradition of North India, and the Dzogchen tradition of Tibet. She has been fortunate to have trained with several great teachers in these and other nondual traditions. She is the spiritual director of Jaya Kula, a nonprofit spiritual organization with centers in Portland, Maine and Portland, Oregon. Shambhavi communicates with heartfelt devotion in a clear and direct style, bringing relatable and practical wisdom from these ancient traditions to modern practitioners, seekers and the simply curious.

Shambhavi is the author of Returning: Exhortations, Advice and Encouragement from the Heart of Direct Realization Practice (2015), Tantra: the Play of Awakening (2012) and Pilgrims to Opennness: Direct Realization Tantra in Everyday Life (2009). In addition, she published an academic book, Avatar Bodies: a Tantra for Posthumanism. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Mills College and a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University.