Yoga Spandakarika: The Sacred Texts at the Origins of Tantra (Paperback)

by Daniel Odier (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"The Yoga Spandakarika helped me realize how my human feelings are key tools to understanding this divinity, and that the Divine can be as close as a shiver of joy."
(Gef Temblay, Ascent, Issue 27 )

Product Description

Translation and commentary of one of the most important texts of the Kashmirian Shivaism tradition of Tantra

• Author was a student of the late Kalu Rinpoche

• Explores the transmission of Mahamudra, the Great Cosmic Gesture

• Includes the Vijnanabhaïrava Tantra, which contains the totality of the oldest source text on Yoga

The Spandakarika, the "Tantric Song of the Divine Pulsation," is said to have been transmitted directly to the sage Vasugupta from the hands of Shiva on Mount Kailas. In his commentary on these fifty-two stanzas, the sage Ksemaraja described them as the heart of the Mahamudra.

The oldest masters of Spandakarika viewed everything in the universe, including matter, as consciousness and created a yoga practice in accordance with this realization. The sacred dance of Yoga Spandakarika, Tandava, is extremely subtle and difficult, requiring thousands of hours of practice to master, yet it surpasses any other physical practice, allowing the practitioner to touch the divine inner pulse. Once its third stage has been mastered, the yogi or yogini is able to manifest the dance of Shiva in space, a tradition visible in the statuary of Tantric temples in India and Tibet. Energy is no longer contracted by the perception of duality, and the mind and body become unbounded, forming a sphere that contains all that was formerly outside. In Yoga Spandakarika Daniel Odier passes on these vanishing teachings as he received them from his Tibetan master, Kalu Rinpoche, and Kashmiri yogi Lalita Devi.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Inner Traditions (March 23, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594770514
• ISBN-13: 978-1594770517
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #223,736 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tantra from a true tradition, June 27, 2005

By	Toby Earp (Montreal) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I wanted to go to India in the early seventies and search for a guru, but I wanted so many other things too, and I did them instead. Daniel Odier went.

So did a great many others, and what they found was a measure of themselves. Some found a way to make erotic experience fresher, some found dope deals, some found a guru and a new lifestyle. Some found the face they had before they were born.

Daniel Odier teaches what he found, and he teaches with permission. That is, his own teachers have authorized him to pass it on. It is almost incredible that a person from a Western culture, with no initial knowledge of the languages and traditions, should be welcomed, trained in this way, and succeed in entering the line of teachers. It is almost unbelievable that he should find the masters to teach him in the first place--as the Tibetan saying goes, they are rare as stars in the daytime. On top of that, he has done the scholarship and the practice required to join together the three traditions of Zen, Ch'an and Kashmiri Shaivite Tantra. I do not think there can be a more trustworthy source today on these subjects, a true source springing from practical experience rather than solely from academic study.

This work is newly and competently translated from the original French. Like Daniel Odier's earlier work on the Vijnanabhairava Tantra, it takes the form of a commentary on his translation of an ancient and beautiful text. This commentary is authoritative but it is not an exegesis. It is personal and directed to the student who wishes to do the practice. Once more, something extraordinary occurs: to read it is to be convinced that if anyone can understand a line like, "In the absolute sense, pleasure and pain, subject and object are nothing but the space of deep awareness," and bring you to your own understanding of that line, it is Daniel Odier.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yoga Spandakarika, December 9, 2005

By	ascent magazine (Montreal Canada) - See all my reviews

The Yoga Spandakarika (spanda: sacred tremor; karika: set of verse), originally written in the ninth century by Kallata, is one of the fundamental Tantric texts of Kashmir Saivism. Teacher and author Daniel Odier brings one of the first translations of this scripture to the West with clear and engaging language and commentaries. In the book, he also presents the Vijnana-Bhairava - another fundamental text of Kashmir Saivism - and other scriptures to help assimilate the teachings.
A main principle of the book is that of spanda, the sacred tremor that inhabits everything. Odier teaches that in order to feel the tremor, we have to find the root of desire and experiment with that excitement, that shivering delight. He goes further to say that we come across this tremor in our everyday life, but in order to tune in to the Divine, we need our desires to be objectless. This is quite a challenge for me, but Odier continues by saying that the point is to understand that everything is Divine and that divinity is not an object so we should turn our desires toward that "objectless Divinity." At that moment, we can feel spanda without a cause or effect; we can just become the Spanda. He also encourages the practitioner to adopt a "spherical view," where everything is included in our practice. That view enables us to evolve without limitation and helps us to integrate wholeness in our lives.
The first section of the Yoga Spandakarika offers a full translation of the fifty-three verses, while the second section features Odier's commentary interlaced with the Spandakarika text and other sacred texts. The translations are fluid and poetic, and the commentaries illuminate the verse in an engaging way without using overly complex language and concepts.
Daniel Odier has a long history of training and practice in Tibetan Buddhism through his teacher Kalu Rinpoche. In another of his books (Tantra: l'initiation d'un Occidental à l'amour absolue, Paris: J.-C. Lattès, 1996; Pocket 1998), he explains his training with a Tantrika Master named Lalita Devi, who taught him the Tandava: a dance where the practitioner learns how to feel the spanda throughout his body. He has also trained in Ch'an Buddhism with Chinese master Jing Hui. I was quite pleased by this book and feel that Daniel Odier writes from a place of experience and not simply intellectual knowledge. The poetic translation reminded me that sacred texts are indeed poems and many translations rarely offer this. In my own path I have come to understand that Divine Mother encompasses my whole life and if I try to cut some part of my life, then I am only negating a part of my own divinity. The Yoga Spandakarika helped me realize how my human feelings are key tools to understanding this divinity, and that the Divine can be as close as a shiver of joy.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gift to Western Seekers, August 23, 2006

By	Greg Bosworth (Dawsonville, GA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Daniel Odier's rendering of the Spandakarika is a valuable resource for all seekers, but especially for westerners.

Most seekers are familiar with the great spiritual heritage of India and the spiritual wealth it has offered the world. Famous texts like 'Autobiography of a Yogi' or 'The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna' and the ancient texts are brimming with spiritual wisdom and humor, but I have always found such texts to be difficult at times for westerners like myself to comprehend completely. The times in which they lived, their traditions, culture, and language are indeed quite different from our own.

Authors like Danier Odier are refreshing to westerners (america, europe, canada, australia) in that they are more easily grasped by us. This book is a translation and commentary of one of the oldest and most important writings on Kashmir Shaivism (a pillar of Hindu mysticism). Odier, who has successfully traversed the path of sadhana by the grace of his teacher, describes the meaning of these texts in western terms. His humor, his metaphors, and the stories of his own personal experience of the 'sacred tremor' were invaluable to me and I found them far more revealing than the translation of the actual text itself.