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Yoga Spandakarika: The Sacred Texts at the Origins of Tantra

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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.

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.

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.

The mark of a true spiritual teacher is in their ability to communicate clearly and concisely. Daniel Odier translates Spandakarika beautifully. I experienced a great release in my heart when I read the following paragraph on Stanza 40. "Man endlessly crosses the deserts looking for his eyes outside of his head. He sees the mountains and the lakes, the rivers and the forests, the shimmering light, the celestial canopy the blue sky, the stars and the Milky Way; but, not finding his eyes, he grows weary. He is overcome with fatigue. He ends up losing his sight. Suddenly, he can no longer see anything and, in this very darkness, he realizes that the mountains and the rivers, the sky and space are in his own heart. When he opens his eyes again, he sees that all that previously seemed outside of him now shimmers and vibrates in his own heart. He is overcome with joy. He finally sees." Thank you Daniel, for writing this translation, and for your guidance.

i share consciousness in the world, and this book is one of the three that i require as reading material. i can pick up almost any page at any time, and the teaching strikes my internal core directly. thankyou Daniel Odier for bringing such lightness of being and presence to me, and this world.

Odier's book is an exceptionally lucid, succinct "handbook" for those seeking elucidations as well as discussions of The Sacred Texts. This isn't a how-to on specific meditation practices; instead, it is an excellent dissertation on the Texts.

finding this book was like finding the truth of my heart written in a sacred text with beautifully illuminating commentary. this is the real thing. this teaching has had a great impact on my world. i highly recommend it to every yogi/yogini &/or tantrika that finds it in their field.

This book presents translations of early Tantras (sacred Tantric texts). In this book Odier reports that "in the spring of 2004 in China, I met the Grand Ch'an master Jing Hui, dharma heir of Xu Yun, better known in the United States as `Empty Cloud' (1839-1959), who is recognized as the foremost Ch'an master of the twentieth century. My master Jing Hui gave me the Ch'an ordination in the Lin t'si and Caodong schools, as well as the permission to transmit the Zhao Zhou Ch'an spirit in the West." Ch'an is Chinese Zen.