Sutradhar
Literally, the holder of string. But also, the teller of stories in the world of classical Sanskrit. He is of this world of illusions – Maya. And yet he is the herald of truth – Satya.
Simultaneously looking forward and backwards, a Sutradhar is he who is the bridge between two worlds, two realities. He who owns nothing. But is the repository of all knowledge.
Paro’s Sutradhar is she who takes us towards our ancestral wisdom. The one who unearths and illuminates what we have forgotten. This is where we return to our roots and rituals. The stories are told in one voice.
The stories are told in many voices. Because cultural knowledge is a shared heritage and we are all keepers and inheritors and messengers of that knowledge. We are all Sutradhars.
There are no current events.
Historically, a memento mori is a skull, usually displayed on the desks of philosophers and saints, as a constant reminder of death and mortality. In Latin it means “to remember you must die”
As we enter December, the last month of 2019, let’s contemplate on emptying ourselves of all the life experiences we had this year — our pains and joys, our material gains and losses alike
Tantra can be described as a body of beliefs and practices developed over millennia by loose affiliations of seekers or sadhakas who sought to free themselves from their limitations and become svatantra, “self-dependent.”
Growing up in India we were always warned of the dark and mysterious goddess—Kali. Stories of this apocalyptic goddess centred around death and destruction, her sinister black tongue exposed to the world, fearless in her stultifying anti-beauty (not ugly)
Sanskrit, an ancient language that has existed for approximately 500 years is also called Devavani – the language of gods. It is perhaps the most sacred and the most scientific language in the world
The profound brevity of this sentence, written by Patanjali, takes us immediately into the heart of what Yoga practice is about and what it’s meant to achieve. To cease the thoughts that consume our every living moment, and instead be ‘thoughtless’ in order to reach a fulcrum of silence and awareness
The Vedas declare “Vag Vai Brahmeti”; Brahman is verily speech. The various sound waves which are eternally and endlessly born from the womb of Brahman involute or descend from the higher causal levels to subtle and then gross or manifest levels
The evanescence of human existence compels man to probe life for deeper meaning and lasting value. The scientist attempts to unravel the mystery of life by exploring outer space. But with every tiny step forward he finds the horizons receding even further
A longstanding western tradition holds that the man was banished to the moon for a crime, like stealing. According to Dante’s Inferno that man was Cain
