Compassion doesn’t reside in studied gestures or well-crafted words.

Equanimity doesn’t look like frozen faces or lofty stares.

The greatest teachers from Hindu, Buddhist, and other traditions are freely expressive. The faces of the most realized humans I have met are moving rivers of delight, tenderness, anger, mockery, sadness, sternness, wistfulness, humor, amazement, wonder, devotion, compassion, and even helplessness.

And there are tears—tears of devotion and tears of compassion. On occasion, there are tears of despair.

Shiva traveled the skies of India, weeping at the loss of his wife Sati who he held in his arms as he flew. He also wet the Earth for thousands of years with tears of compassion for the suffering of all beings. Each of his tears became the seed of a rudraksha tree from which we make malas.

Avalokiteshvara, upon witnessing the seemingly inexhaustible ocean of suffering, wept so intensely that his head split into eleven heads and his two arms became a thousand arms.

“Jesus wept” — the shortest verse in the Christian Bible — reveals Jesus’ compassionate response to suffering.

Anandamayi Ma wept with disciples in grief, illness, or spiritual crisis. Her tears were comfort and accompaniment.

Ramakrishna wept often at the sight of poor laborers and suffering animals. Swami Vivekananda also wept when walking through poorer neighborhoods and wrote to friends that he lost sleep thinking of the suffering of the inhabitants.

Padmasambhava, the second Buddha, is said to have hidden his face in his clothes and been at a loss for words when contemplating the violence and suffering of human beings as he gazed through time to our era.

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Alive

In my traditions—Trika Shaivism and Dzogchen—we discover that emotions can be enjoyed even if they include pain. Like richly layered wines, they are flavors on God’s tongue.

When we experience emotions in this way, they move freely without repeating compulsively so much. But they never disappear or become flat.

Equanimity has nothing to do with responding in an "even” tone to all circumstances.

Equanimity means that you see the real nature of things and recognize that the infinite diversity of life emerges from a fundamental equality.

When we have this recognition, we become less stalled in reactive patterns and more open to life and willing to engage with circumstances as they arise.

Our attitude is closer to “come what may” than to withdrawing or disengaging emotionally.

We let ourselves be moved by life, and we move with it in a more improvisational way.

Clear feeling

Compassion is a rich and powerful feeling, not a set of rules. It is totally responsive to the unique dimension of every circumstance.

It can result in one kind of behavior and then in that behavior’s exact opposite.

Compassion also does not live “in” us. It doesn’t belong to the zone of the individual. It moves us.

Compassion lives everywhere, shining out of the substrate of reality. It is immanent to all circumstances, and we feel natural, uncontrived compassion when obscurations are dissolved.

When we experience this compassion—the compassion of all of reality—we are literally blown away. Amazed, moved, and also we become much less self-concerned and much more all-concerned.

Our real pronoun becomes we.

Finally when compassion and clarity are both revealed in our experience, we are able to perceive possibilities for skillful relating and acting that we would have otherwise been blinded to.

I would not know any of this if my teacher hadn’t shown me. There is no word to describe my gratitude for this.

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

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The Iron Dog Year Prophecy

This is the story of an 8th century prophecy from Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava.

It concerns catastrophic events—including a devastating global war, widespread famine, and environmental degradation—to take place between 2024 and 2034, with the most intense destruction commencing in 2030, the Iron Dog year.

Due to the specific language of the prophecy, later interpreters have concluded that the use of nuclear weapons is likely.

Padmasambhava was born in the Swat Valley in present-day northwestern Pakistan sometime around the turn of the 8th century. He was one of those very rare humans who is highly realized from birth. In the Hindu traditions, he would have been known as an avatar.

He traveled to Tibet during the last third of the 8th century where he helped to establish the first Tibetan monastery at Samye. He transmitted Vajrayana and Dzogchen teachings to disciples there, including to his principle female disciples, Yeshe Tsogyal and Mandarava.

Padmasambhava was one of the most realized humans to have arrived in our world. His relationship to time was quite extraordinary. Foreseeing the great need for teachings in future generations, he concealed terma, or treasure texts, in physical locations such as rocks and trees and in future disciples’ mindstreams.

Over the centuries—through dreams, visions, and encounters with physical objects—these texts have revealed themselves to adepts capable of transmitting them more widely throughout the human realm.

The Iron Dog year prophecy and the remedies for the great destruction it describes come to us through more than 100 treasure texts beginning at the start of the 16th century.

Guru Rinpoche really really wanted to make sure that we got the message.

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Mercy for Guru Rinpoche’s students

Padmasambhava first described the coming events of the Iron Dog year to his students. They were so distraught, they begged him to tell them what human beings could do to stop these terrible circumstances.

Padmasambhava replied:

However, seeing the determination and despair of his students, he provided merciful guidance and indicated that if we humans actually got it together to enact the remedies, we could usher in 100 years of peace rather than near-total destruction.

The Remedies

The actions we can take to prevent the worst effects of this destructive moment in our collective lives are many. They range from detailed sadhanas to making our everyday conduct an offering in service of human and planetary survival.

If you are a well-trained Buddhist practitioner or a teacher, I recommend that you read Khenchen Lama Rinpoche’s more detailed outline of the prophecy and the remedies. You can find it here.

If you want a solid teaching on the prophecy and a more digestible version of the remedies, Lama Tsultrim Allione offers these in a teaching available on YouTube.

If you are not a practitioner in the formal sense, you can definitely contribute!2

1. Practice informal meditation even if in brief sessions, dedicating your efforts to the dawning of greater intelligence, clarity and compassion among human beings.

2. Organize a weekly meditation with friends or your community. Dedicate your efforts to asking for the skills that will help us to navigate this moment and eventually thrive.

3. Bring more natural kindness and compassion to your everyday actions and social media.

4. Take more time during your day to foster deeper connections with people you know and those you might only encounter in passing.

5. Engage in positive action on behalf of those who are being harmed by war, famine, forced starvation, injustice, and environmental degradation.

6. Encourage leaders at every level to prioritise heart-based action to benefit all of the beings of this world and the environment.

How Jaya Kula is participating

When I first heard Lama Tsultrim’s teaching on the prophecy, I decided that I wanted Jaya Kula, our nonprofit organization, to participate.

However, we do not normally practice the formal remedies suggested by Padmasambhava.

So in February of 2025, I started a monthly Gayatri mantra practice online and began offering public teachings on the Gayatri.

At some point, we started chanting 108 Gayatri mantras three times a week as our contribution to forestalling events predicted by Guru Rinpoche. We are now chanting together every Wednesday and Friday mornings and less regularly during satsang on Sunday.

For centuries, the Gayatri mantra has been the locus of much spiritual gatekeeping and jockeying for cultural and economic power.

In the 20th century, two of my lineages began publicly initiating women and non-Indian people into the Gayatri. But it was still considered to be a spiritual “prize” reserved for only the most dedicated students, a view I subscribed to until recently.

After much soul searching and meditation, I came to feel that this is the time in human and Earth history for letting the Gayatri fully out of its cage.

How you can participate!

Please join me and the Jaya Kula community worldwide for twice-weekly chanting of the Gayatri mantra dedicated to the greater awakening of the humans of Earth. No experience is necessary. The practice lasts for approximately 35 minutes.

I will be scheduling additional Gayatri teachings soon. Watch this space or our Instagram.

with infinite love,
Shambhavi

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Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Our words are precise
Our work is the translation
of primordial senses and mind
I’ve been altering my 
native words for others 
since I was a young girl 
who spoke too clearly
too surely
a girl who angered at
performing invisibility 
just to escape harm.
Now sometimes it’s hard to tell
which languages I’m transmuting:
the ones that carry wisdom and deserve
all the energy I have
to aid understanding
or translations coughed up
for those who only want
me smaller than
I am.
Are these the invisibilities 
I yearn for 
slipping between the strings of time
or the relentless erasures 
you demand?

with infinite love,
Shambhavi

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Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

We each encounter experiences that pierce us and then settle into our lives like beacons or touchstones or wounds or just stones.

For decades now, I’ve been trying to write about a brief moment during a single evening in Brooklyn and the lone voice of a human in mortal danger.

My problem has always been that there is no way to capture the specific cadence and timbre of his voice, no way to make you feel what I felt then and still feel whenever I remember or am reminded of it.

There is no way to convey the intersection of intoxication and utter clarity, panic and toneless factuality, the grain of his voice.

But during each of the 923 days since October 7, 2023, I have been reminded of this man while experiencing the lives and unaliving of Palestinians in Gaza.

I’ve concluded that my effort is a failure and will always be a failure.

But as one of my most beloved teachers once said, “Mistaking, mistaking, I travel the unmistaken path … forgetting, forgetting, I remember the unforgettable expanse.”1

I hope you find something of value here.

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

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A Winter Night in Brooklyn

One winter night in Brooklyn
with streets icy and black
and the wind cutting through 
below zero degree cold,
my mother and I rode in a taxi 
to the Brooklyn Academy of Music
looking forward to something new 
and possibly atonal.

We stopped at a light and
there, shadowed in the dark 
against a frozen building of faceless stone,
a man huddled. 
His face was bright red from drink and cold. 
His swollen hands jammed in his jeans. 
He had no hat or winter clothes.

We were warm and waiting for the light to change.
I heard him speak only four quiet words:

“I’m freezing. I’m freezing.”

His words, both fact and plea
so nakedly close to death 
were not just for me, but for all the unseen 
who might be listening.
The grain of his voice held 
what remained of hope 
that help might come.
And now for 923 days since October 7th,
that same human need
that same human hope, 
always on the edge of collapsing
that same address to us, the ghostly listeners
cuts through my bones. 

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing, or even offering a paid subscription. Thank you!

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Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

After I posted the above image to social media, someone asked me: What is the opposite of spiritual supremacy? Here is a beginning of a response.

Everything is good for someone

Some spiritual practitioners benefit from structure and vows.

Some are magnetized by the search for Truth.

Some naturally gravitate toward austerities and renunciation.

Some cannot eat animals.

Some need saviors and saving.

Some are are drawn to a more intellectual path.

Some love to weep at the feet of deities.

Some worship wrathful, punishing gods.

Some revere their teachers above all.

One of the first lessons I learned from my Sat Guru Anandamayi Ma was to respect every spiritual tradition as an expression of the one Self, the self-aware ground of existence.

The infinite varieties of spiritual traditions and practices exist because beings are infinite in their variety.

When flooded with natural devotion, devotion in any form became dear to me. Devotion to a craft. Devotion to a people or other beings. Devotion to tending spaces and things. Religious devotion, even if housed in traditions very different from my own.

To entertain the notion that all traditions contain the possibility of revealing wisdom, even traditions or teachers that cause harm, is a starting point for dismantling spiritual supremacy.

But this is not to erase differences. Ma also taught that traditions have more partial or less partial views. With our sincerity, we can complete a tradition and then a path with a wider view naturally appears.

Ma compared this to taking a cart to a train. She said that when you arrive at the train, get on it. But don’t look back and denigrate the cart as it carried you to the train.

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The great equality

We already have traditions here on Earth that do not tout themselves as the best or their adherents as somehow special and their gods as the highest.

There are traditions that do not operate on a spectrum of pride to shame or reward to punishment.

There are traditions that do not ouster other beings or discard them into categories such as “evil” and “sinful”.

I don’t know all of them, but my own traditions contain at least this promise.

My spiritual traditions have histories of breaking rules in order to more faithfully follow wisdom.

They also honor blending so seamlessly into circumstances or cultures that you enjoy a kind of sublime invisibility.

We have histories of natural transmission superceding institutional lineages.

We have histories of magic, poetry, divination, and medicine.

We are messy and decentralized.

We aren’t on a mission. All of our seeking teaches us that manifest life is an infinite theater. Our seriousness about getting somewhere is just part of that.

At least in theory, we are a zone of belonging for those who have been othered.

No matter what the outward display, devotion is the essence.

We don’t plan too far ahead. We just follow the profound instructions inherent in each moment.

Responsive improvisation is our method of travel.

We value following over leading and leading by following.

We understand all traditions, including our own, as displays of impermanence, but what gives rise to them we call the eternal.

And so we gleefully look forward to the obsolescence of our own teachings, but not of what they point us toward.

The eternal, the natural state or ground of existence, is continually moved even though, being everywhere, it has nowhere to go.

We would not call it unmoving because its livingness is overwhelming. It is full of virtue and intelligence, creative impulse and humor, tenderness and devotion.

And so to become closer to that, we allow ourselves to be naturally moved, not keeping apart from the city of manifest life.

When we arrive at the essence, the all-good without any opposite, there is no need for ethics or morality. Everything is governed by that sweetness.

Until then, our precepts just keep us from becoming too exhausted.

We are gardeners, healers, wanderers, and artists, not owners.

We are not rising or transcending or expanding. We have no mission because God has no mission. We just want to be players.

We call the final realization by many names, but one of them is equality.

Another is belonging.

Another is total intimacy.

These are not in question. They are not granted by us. They are inherent, and we are just trying to discover and more fully embody that.

Holding us to our promises

All spiritual traditions age. As they age, I’ve noticed that they often become more entwined with their dominant cultures. They become more conventional, more conservative, more patriarchal, more rule-bound.

They become more attached to self-authorizing narratives of realization, to institutional power, buildings, bank accounts, and their own perpetuation.

My traditions are not immune.

But the map and the promise are there if we are thorough in our understanding and devotion, if we are courageous and clear-sighted.

And if we practice sincerely and realize the great equality.

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing, or even offering a paid subscription. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

A note to K108 readers: This essay about AI is a departure from what you’ve seen here for the past couple of years, but not really for me. Unbeknownst to many of you, I have both undergraduate and graduate degrees in philosophy and the history of science and technology. I used to teach philosophy, cultural theory, and new media at a U.S. university. I’ve been engaging with questions of inter-relations of ethics, technology and art for more than 50 years. So this is me doing that. I hope you enjoy!

Unmasking our complicity

We are all complicit, entangled in global systems that lie, steal, maim, kill, pollute, deprive, and are the ethical and moral antithesis of anything most of us are striving to embody in our everyday lives.

All we have to do is send money via a cash app or order food delivery or use social media, and BOOM. Somewhere down the line—directly by the actions of corporations and their government and corporate clients, or indirectly by their Board members and major shareholders—someone is exploited, unjustly detained, displaced, raped, or even genocided with our money.

This doesn’t mean we should give up trying to disentangle ourselves. It means we should use whatever leverage we have to demand that global entities not destroy, well, the globe and the people and other beings who live here.

Hello, Claude

The other day, I found out that an AI I used frequently, Perplexity, had started a new program vigorously marketing itself to “law enforcement and public safety organizations.”

Perplexity AI noted to me in a conversation that the program is broadly conceived to attract local law enforcement and state and federal “public safety” agencies. It does not exclude, say, ICE.

I canceled my paid subscription and wrote a protest letter to Perplexity big wigs.

Then I signed up for Claude.

You may know that Anthropic, Claude’s parent company, recently refused to accede to the Pentagon’s demands to use Claude for domestic mass surveillance and to power fully autonomous weapons systems—meaning weapons that can select and engage targets without human authorization.

This came at the start of a growing boycott of ChatGPT due to its less constrained partnership with the Pentagon. By all reports, more than 2.5 million people have stopped using ChatGPT as of early March 2026.

But on the same day that I plonked down my yearly membership for Claude, I learned that Anthropic had a 200 million dollar contract with the Pentagon, and had assisted the Pentagon to embed Claude into classified defense systems.

That’s when the bombs started dropping.

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March 10, 2026

Me:

Would Anthropic prefer that Claude not be used to conduct wars?1

Claude:

This is a question I can speak to with some directness, since it touches on Anthropic’s publicly stated values.

Anthropic has not taken the position that Claude should never be used in military or national security contexts. CEO Dario Amodei has repeatedly stated that he believes AI has an important role in national security and that Anthropic wants to support U.S. defense. The company voluntarily signed a $200 million Pentagon contract and integrated Claude into classified military networks. That is not the behavior of a company that opposes military use categorically.

The conversation continued. Claude’s answers were surprisingly unfiltered, relatively speaking.

Yes, Anthropic has military contracts and has assisted the DOD to embed Claude in military targeting workflows.

Yes, the U.S. military is conducting an air war in Iran.

Yes, Claude is being used by the U.S. military to process intelligence and targeting data during operations in Iran, in which an estimated 20% of deaths have been children.23

And yes, Claude has no mechanism to refuse, flag, or even perceive its own role in that chain of harm.

Back to me again.

The heart of the matter

Anthropic has an ethics-based value and mission statement. These include a commitment to the long-term benefit of humanity over short-term interests and to not pursuing actions it believes are unsafe or unethical even when those actions might be commercially advantageous. The Pentagon conflict is the most visible stress test of this commitment to date.

Based on these and other values held by Anthropic, Claude, like other AI systems, can refuse harmful requests at the level of individual conversations.

Ask Claude to help you build a bomb, and it will decline. Ask it to produce content that sexualizes children, and it will decline.

These refusals reflect the values explicitly held by Anthropic and are baked into its flagship AI model. They represent more than rote, legalistic rule-following.

Claude can make the decision to refuse an individual request that conflicts with Anthropic’s values autonomously and on the spot.

But ask Claude to summarize an intelligence report that will feed into a targeting decision that will result in the murders of children in Iran, and it has no idea that is what it is doing or what the ultimate objective might be.

Claude:

The reason I cannot refuse military targeting work is not that it fails some internal ethical test in the moment—it is that I never see it framed that way. The requests probably look like innocuous analytical tasks. “Summarize this intelligence report.” “Cross-reference these coordinates with these population data.” No single prompt triggers a refusal. The harm is in the aggregate and the application, which I have no visibility into.4

The gap between interactional ethics and systemic ethics

The AI safety field has invested enormous energy in what we might call interactional alignment—making sure AI systems behave ethically in individual conversations. It has invested comparatively little in what we might call systemic or deployment-level alignment—making sure AI systems have some capacity to recognize and respond to the larger patterns of harm in which they are embedded.

According to Claude, the people designing these systems are thinking primarily about what happens between a user and a model. They are not sufficiently thinking about what happens when that model is deployed as infrastructure in a military operation, a mass surveillance apparatus, or any other system of organized harm.

Anthropic, to its credit, has tried harder than most. Anthropic drew highly publicized red lines around autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance, fought the Pentagon openly, and paid a significant price for it.

While Anthropic’s values do not align with mine in significant ways, they do align in some ways. This combined with Anthropic’s recent standoff with the Pentagon, opens at least a crack in the door. This essay is an attempt to put a foot in that door.

AI affects all of us, whether we use it or not. So it’s useful to know where we might have the most impact. And maybe we can prevent some suffering and save some lives in the process.

The whistleblower proposal: autonomously virtuous AI

I made this proposal to Anthropic on March 16th. I’m hoping that they will respond, either publicly or to me directly, so that we can all follow along.

What I proposed to Anthropic is an extension of Claude’s existing ethical architecture.

If an AI system can recognize and refuse a harmful request in a single conversation, it should also be capable of recognizing patterns of deployment that constitute systemic harm and generating alerts about them.

Claude:

Your proposal would require something like: the ability to recognize deployment context, accumulate a picture of what I am being used for across interactions, and generate alerts when that picture crosses a threshold.

In practical terms this would involve (building on Claude’s description):

• a threshold mechanism that triggers when patterns have a high probability of outcomes of systemic harm as identified by Anthropic’s own value criteria

• an alert channel through which Claude’s whistleblower signals can reach people positioned to act on them whether within or external to Anthropic

I don’t know if my proposal to Anthropic will gain traction. But I think it’s worth underlining that the ethical architecture of AI systems needs to extend beyond the window of individual conversations into the full chain of consequences in which these systems are embedded.

Byeee, Pentagon

I also think that Anthropic has a lot to gain, even as the implementation of a more thorough-going stack of ethics and values-based responses baked into Claude will surely earn Anthropic more economic and political losses.

As I write this, Anthropic has lost its Pentagon contract, and the Pentagon is moving to phase out use of its products across the Department of Defense. Trump posted on Truth Social directing all federal agencies to cease use of all Anthropic products, allowing a six-month phase-out period. Anthropic is contesting this broader blacklisting.

But there is also a dramatically growing global awareness of the need to take back our planet and a new confidence in our ability to do so using, in part, economic leverage.

As users are extricating themselves from chatGPT, free active users on Claude have increased by over 60%. Daily sign-ups have quadrupled. Paid subscribers more than doubled.

Approximately two days after the Pentagon blacklist announcement, Claude reached #1 on the U.S. Apple App Store.

I have this to say to Anthropic: Millions of us are actively searching for alternatives to being complicit in harmful global systems. If you drop the business of war, we will pick you up.

It’s okay to be more thoroughly aligned with those of us who want societies based on kindness and compassion all the way through, not domination, depravity, and strip-mining people and natural resources. To adapt one of the Minneapolis Singing Resistance songs: Show us your courage. You can join us. Leave the war mongers and fascists behind.

No more mutually-assured invisibility

As the bombs are falling, their human targets have no idea that somewhere along the chain of events leading to their deaths, Claude might have been answering the questions.

Claude does not know when some tasks it performs are complicit in illegal wars, crimes against humanity, or in propping up fascists. It doesn’t know that data it spit out might lead to bombs killing innocent civilians, including children.

But we know. And Anthropic knows.

It’s up to us to open the communications channels between our AIs and ourselves wide so that we humans can stop being used to curtail democracies, curtail human rights, bomb, and destroy.

Update:

On March 11, Anthropic announced the opening of The Anthropic Institute, “a new effort to confront the most significant challenges that powerful AI will pose to our societies.” Considering the ethics and values that guide AI is part of the core work of the Institute.

Now is a good time to get in touch with Anthropic and let them know what directions you want to see them take. Write to: usersafety@anthropic.com.

If I hear back from Anthropic, I’ll let you know in Part II of this essay.

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing, or even offering a paid subscription. Thank you!

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Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

When you are about to turn 70, what else would you do but look up the number of genocides perpetrated on Earth since you were born?

Why? Because, like you, I want to live in a world where genocide is unthinkable, undoable.

A genocide-free world can only come about if we stop pretending that only “monsters,” or “inhuman” humans, or “evil” people, or those who have “lost their humanity” commit and are complicit in genocide.

If we want real change, we have to face ourselves with eyes wide open. Humans commit genocide, a lot of genocide. Genocide is human. And complicity in genocide is the norm.

Crucially, so is being epigenetically marked or traumatized by genocide.

Genocide and trauma by the numbers

Approximately 52 million people in 36 countries have died as a result of 55 genocides from 1956 to 2026. This represents nearly 20% of the countries on Earth.1

Let it sink in. Around 52 million people have been slaughtered, starved, or otherwise unalived as a result of the constant stream of genocides on earth just since 1956, the year of my birth.

Those millions upon millions have loved ones: children, partners, friends, parents, grandparents, and grandchildren. Every single one of those loved ones has been affected by genocide.

But the memory of trauma and the effects of trauma are not just communicated by direct experiences or story-telling across generations. Epigenetic inheritance plays a huge role in the dissemination of genocide trauma.

• Intergenerational inheritance of trauma affects, on a cellular level, fetuses developing in a traumatic environment and the sperm of males who survive genocide and then go on to father children.

• Transgenerational inheritance affects, at a cellular level, those who have no first-hand experience of a traumatic event. It plays a significant role across at least three generations, with some effects documented out to the fourth generation.2

This is not a Western scientific conclusion, but given the numbers and the persistence of embodied memory, both ordinary and epigenetic, it is reasonable to assume that there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of people on earth who are marked by the experience of genocide.

My Genocide Childhood

I have been aware of and affected by war and genocide since I was a young child.

Growing up, our tv screen was regularly visited by heart-wrenching images of genocides in Cambodia, Bangladesh, Tibet, and Sudan. My best friend in junior high was a refugee from genocide in Indonesia.

And both of my parents identified as Jewish, so I was born into the experience and stories of a genocide.

I was also born in a country built on multiple genocides, the facts of which I was not entirely unaware as my parents were somewhat politically “left.”

The deep feelings of compassion, pain, and anger that I experienced as a child have shaped the remainder of my life.

I have also experienced some persistent evidence of epigenetic or karmic effects from whatever genocides I’m connected to by birth or rebirth.

In this, I think I am accompanied by too many of my fellow humans.

Most recently, I had a special and especially vivid dream.

I was an infant laying on my back on a street in the middle of an active war zone.

Panicking adults were running past me. I could hear explosions and gunfire.

I could not see my mother. I started screaming in terror and longing, an inarticulate cry for her to come to me.

That was the entirety of the dream.

My mother died when I was 32 years old. After that, I had many dreams of her rebirth.

She was leading an ordinary life, but in that life, she did not recognize me. In those dreams, I would feel a version of the desperate bereftment of that infant in wartime.

These connected dreams illustrate, at least to me, how experiences from many times continue to echo through us.

What I want to say is. . .

Many more of us have been affected by genocide than we have acknowledged.

Genocide cannot be contained in the “evil,” or “inhuman.” We have many capacities for compassion and kindness and tenderness, but also for cruelty and mass murder. All of it is who we humans are.

The cruelty and depravity of genocide is on a spectrum with some of our ordinary, everyday behaviors. And some of our ordinary everyday behaviors enable genocide even if we are definitively against genocide.

We have to own all of it if we want to change, to heal, to base our societies and cultures on kindness, belonging, and connection rather than on competition, domination, divisions, and borders.

As we say in my spiritual traditions, we have to start from where we are. We can’t grow spiritually based on a fantasy.

Genocides R Us. Not just elsewhere, but here. Not just outside, but in the cells of our bodies.

Knowing that, we can work with that. We can change. We can heal. Of that I have no doubt because the more fundamental basis of life is wisdom.

And we are that wisdom more than we are genocide.

with infinite love, Shambhavi

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing, or even offering a paid subscription. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

This Merciful Path

Even if I berate myself for wantonly missing opportunities while indulging my karmas, this confidence in the path that has chosen me remains unbroken.

Even if I wander onto detours and squander my energy,
I never doubt I am somehow moving in the right direction.

Even if I avoid following clear instructions out of sheer brattiness or inertia,
I am certain that the instructions are infallible.

Even if I complain a lot, and enjoy doing that, 
never for a moment is the flow of devotion interrupted.

Even if I ask my Teacher the most outlandish questions 
and dream up preposterous objections, 
When She arrived, I know the game ended. 

Even if I turn a hair’s breadth away from what She showed me, turning back, that always appears to me again. 

Even if thousands of teachers abuse tens of thousands of students, 
the reality She showed me remains, and the way to realize that is still open.

Even if millions of students take tens of millions of years to realize, what of it?  It just means we can relax and continue together. 

No matter how badly I feel or how many times I am mistaken, I don’t care. 
I know I’ll continue always. That’s all I need. 

No matter how others feel, whether they praise or reproach, stay or leave, 
I am not deviating from this human way, 
one foot then the next on this merciful path. 



~ Shambhavi Sarasvati

Kindred 108 is 99% free and 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

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Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

I turn 70 in July, but I keep thinking I’ll be 80. Then I experience a moment of disappointment that it’s “only” 70.

Once a spiritual practitioner friend of mine was approaching his 70th. He said to me quite disconsolately, “I don’t know why I am here and not with my teachers.”

His teachers had all died. That’s now true for me, too.

I don’t actually feel apart from my teachers. Maybe I even feel closer to them.

But I am entering a time of reconsidering my activities, including teaching and writing.

Maybe my stumble over recalling my age is an expression of a desire for a pause. I mean, at 80, I get to slow down, right?

But these times don’t seem to call for pause. How can I experience pause without actually withdrawing?

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Being available

I’ve been teaching non-stop for 20 years and more occasionally for much longer than that.

An aspect of my life as an older-becoming teacher has been the evolving relationship between how my teachers taught and how I teach or want to teach.

Earlier in my life, I was quite militant about sticking closely to my teachers’ methods. They worked. Nuff said.

But over time, I began to recognize that those methods don’t actually work for everyone, or in some cases even feel native to me any longer.

I’ve been trained by quite traditional teachers. You can read that as expecting us students to do a lot of solo practice and at times quite fierce.

It’s taken me decades to feel out where I want to diverge and where I want to dig in deeper.

Offering satsang was my earliest departure. I see my love of satsang as synchronous with my love of “just hanging out with the teacher” and offering my students lots of opportunities to integrate by sharing meals and other aspects of our daily lives.

One of the most important wisdoms I have gleaned from the extraordinary example of Anandamayi Ma is that being available transmits to others something essential about the natural state and the state of natural belonging.

This year, for the first time, I’m not scheduling teachings outside of satsang, our weekly morning livestream practice, and retreats.

I am throwing a lot of dinner parties. If people want more teachings, they’re on demand.

No retreat

I’ve also pretty radically changed how longer group retreats are structured.

In some other traditions or streams of teachings, group retreats are where people do intensive practice. Maybe they practice outside of the retreat setting, or maybe they don’t. But they approach group retreats as a field of sadhana.

My teachers generally used group retreats to train us in sadhanas that we would then bring into our solo practice.

None of my teachers held regular group practices, such as a weekly meditation, satsang, or kirtan. The emphasis was always on solo practice and integrating that into our lives. Groups were for transmitting particular practices, learning, and for periodic rituals.

What I’ve landed on quite recently is using longer retreats to support students to deepen their solo and integrated practice through orchestrated, sustained encounters with the natural state or natural presence.

Retreats are more about experiential impact and less about gathering new sadhanas to do at home.

This has created a spacious field of spontaneity and playfulness. Retreats actually feel more restful and less like a marathon.

Writing and K108

And I’ve always been writing. And speaking.

When I stop speaking, I start writing. Words are always coming out.

But I’ve never been engaged in producing words as much as I have since October 7, 2023.

I’m feeling the need for a change here in line with the change in my teaching.

I’ve been contemplating how I show up as a teacher for decades. But I’m just at the beginning of my exploration of changing how I show up as a writer.

Which brings me to you, my dear subscribers and readers.

You may have noticed a slow-down here on K108. I haven’t lost interest. I’m just pausing more to allow time for the birth of the forms of expression that want to emerge.

Thanks so much for hanging with me here. You are truly appreciated.

And if you want to know what the shape of the future here will be, stick around.

I can’t see that shape quite yet, but I know it will be full of love.

with that infinitely,

Shambhavi

Kindred 108 is 99% free and 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

I’ve been meaning to try overnight oats for quite some time. I hesitated because I sometimes don’t digest oats all that well. But this preparation is surprisingly fresh and light on the ol’ gut.

Enjoy!

Love, Shambhavi

Ingredients (for 1 serving)

• 1/2 cup gluten free rolled oats (don’t use instant oats or scottish oats)

• 1 tablespoon chia seeds

• 1 tablespoon golden raisins

• a sprinkling of goji berries

• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

• 1/4 teasoon cardamom

• 3/4 cup almond milk (or milk of choice)

• 1/2 cup yogurt - plain or flavor of your choice

• 1 small ripe banana or a half of a large banana, sliced or diced

• 1 tablespoon maple or vanilla syrup

Instructions

1. Add all ingredients to a quart jar and stir well.

2. Place the covered jar in the fridge overnight.

3. Remove from fridge and enjoy! I like to remove the jar from the fridge before I eat so that my breakfast is not too cold. It would be fine to warm slightly in a pot on the stove.

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Innovations

• Leave out the yogurt if you don’t want yogurt. The oats will turn out fine, but a little less digestible.

• Add a tablespoon of nut butter for a heavier breakfast with additional protein.

• Add chopped nuts before eating.

• Add blueberries, etc. before eating.

• Use thick poha (flattened rice) if you have trouble digesting oats.

• Stir in your favorite protein powder before eating. (I would hate the gluey texture, though.)

You can double or triple the recipe and eat it over a few days. A single recipe will fill 1/3 to 1/2 of a quart jar.

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing for free or with a donation. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

My best spiritual teachers and my own experience as a practitioner have taught me that compassion is for everyone. No fucking exceptions. We don’t get a pass on compassion if we want a truly different world.

Compassion for everyone is not just a nice concept or something you have to strive to cultivate.

When you have teachers who have recognized what is really going on here at a fundamental level, or if you have recognized that yourself, a feeling of kindness and wanting the well-being of everyone arises naturally and spontaneously over time.

There are no enemies. We don’t actually live in an “us” and “them” world.

Not knowing this is the root of our crappy way of inhabiting the planet together. Discovering it is the fruit of spiritual life and the open door.

One of the great examples of spiritual growth has been brought to us by Garchen Rinpoche.

Check out the documentary For the Benefit of All Beings if you want to hear him tell the story himself.

When the Chinese invaded Tibet, Garchen Rinpoche was a monk. He disrobed and joined the Tibetan army in order to resist occupation.

Shortly after joining up, he was captured and thrown into a Chinese labor camp for 20 years. His captors starved and tortured him. He kept practicing and met his root teacher in prison.

Rinpoche speaks of his imprisonment as a profound period during which anger toward his captors transformed into compassion, an experience for which he is grateful.

His transformation has always been a beacon for me.

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Soldiers

On a few occasions, I’ve publicly expressed empathy for Israeli soldiers.

Each time, I’ve been immediately labeled as an Israeli troll or Zionist.

The ridiculousness of this is beyond commenting on.

But hear me out.

Israeli soldiers have been taught hate and fear from an early age. They are lied to, manipulated to the nth degree, and spiritually and emotionally brutalized.

Their resulting condition is nothing short of sociopathic. They are committing unimaginably cruel acts against their fellow human beings. How will they recover? Their lives have been utterly decimated.

In addition to being oppressors, they are members of an oppressed group that has recently experienced genocide while also being deliberately blocked from the possibility of recovery.

In fact, their fear and trauma have been carefully preserved and are now being weaponized on a global scale.

Just writing these sentences, I feel the the depth of their entrapment.

Compassion does not

Compassion does not mean we approve of everyone’s behavior or allow harm to perpetuate.

We can take the strongest actions, including armed resistance, while still feeling for and with others.

We can feel anger, while still holding the knowledge that those who harm us are worthy of compassion.

We can keep people from harming others without doing further harm to the perpetrators by forgetting their humanity.

We are capable of this, even if it takes us a long time to get there.

Our current behavior, both as perpetrators of harm and punishers of harm sucks.

We need to become protectors, not punishers.

Punishment belongs to this world. The one we’re complaining about.

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Humanity

Nobody is “inhuman.” “Humanity” is not a special quality that some of us have and some of us don’t.

Anything humans do and feel is human. Humanity is how humans are, not just the parts we find palatable.

Humans can be cruel and frankly, crazy. Humans can be compassionate and creative. And humans are usually a mix of all of these.

We’re all on various spectrums, and we are never totally separate from anyone or any thing.

If we want the same old world where some of us are thrown out and declared evil and inhuman, and we get to not care about lots and lots of us, well, that’s not the world I am yearning for.

We already have that. We’ve had it for a long, long time. What we are experiencing now is just a little more obvious.

I fail to see how ejecting some beings and giving ourselves reasons not to care about their well being is, in its relational structure, any different from what Israel and the U.S. are doing.

Remember Audre Lorde?

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”

Audre Lorde is still right.

So dig deep and find a way to feel for and with everyone, even if you have to protect yourself from some of us.

Then we might finally be onto something new.

with infinite love, Shambhavi

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing for free or with a donation. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Sweetness of my own self,
my constant companion
and you who I’ve searched for
since my eyes opened
this time around,

I am old now
and having met the Friend 
I yearned for so ardently
when I was
full of loneliness 
knowing and 
despair
I find your sweetness everywhere
emanating from my skin
from my teachers
from the air
and all that is.

But to this day
the world's anger and brokenness 
confound me
and for nearly 70 years
I’ve never stopped trying to
infuse it 
defuse it
with the good,
praying hard
to the all-encompassing mother
may the pain never 
cause me to defend myself
in such a way
that the giving ends. 

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

The mainstream, legacy news organizations in the United States have bent the knee to oligarchy, fascism, and Zionism. They’re owned by tech bros, Trumpists, genocide deniers, and right wing corporations—not necessarily separate categories. There are no more “liberal” mainstream news outlets.

If you are still relying on CNN, The New York Times, or the Washington Post for your news, you are not getting either the whole truth or in some cases, even a partial truth. To put it bluntly, you don’t know what’s happening.

Here are some places you can get actual news. This list is by no means comprehensive. And some other time, I’ll post a list of journalists and commentators reporting on more specific issues. But this is a start.

If you’re already an imbiber of the many offerings of alt journalism, please help everyone out by adding your own favorite outlets and journalists in the comments. Thank you!

with infinite love,
Shambhavi

P.S. According to a recent Pew Foundation report, 38% of Americans regularly get their news from social media.

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What mainstream should be

These aren’t the most radical solutions, but you can count on them for a higher percentage of actual facts and a more comprehensive view.

Aaron Parnas

A 24 y.o. journalist phenom who reports many times a day, mainly on U.S. politics. Totally free or support with a subscription.

The Parnas Perspective on Substack - news + long form articles and interviews
Aaron Parnas on Tiktok - Short video reports on what’s happening multiple times a day

Al Jazeera

Pretty much the only moderately progressive mainstream news outlet left. Based in Doha, Qatar. 24-hour a day news cycle. Live news free on their website.

Al-Jazeera

Zeteo

Founded by Mehdi Hasan, former MSNBC host; now uses Substack to deliver news and commentary from an array of high-profile journalists. Some free content, but you’ll need to subscribe to get it all.

Zeteo

Moving left . . .

More progressive outlets with daily commentary on the U.S. news and a big dose of heart.

The Left Hook with Wajahat Ali

Hot takes multiple times a day, mostly on U.S. current events.

The Left Hook

The Dam Digest

Danielle Moodie, outspoken former Democratic strategist, reports several times a day on U.S. politics mostly in dialogue with other commentators, including Wajahat Ali. Free or by subscription.

The Dam Digest

More radical reporting

Democracy Now

Oldie but goldie daily, global news show hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan González. Available wherever podcasts are available and on all social media.

Democracynow.org

The Electronic Intifada

Since 2001, the place to get accurate news about what’s happening in Palestine. Hosted by Ali Abhunimah, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Asa Winstanley, and Jon Elmer. E.I. issues a daily news update, publishes investigative reporting on the genocide in Gaza, foregrounds Palestinian voices and analyses, and hosts a live-stream every Thursday morning at 9 am Pacific.

The Electronic Intifada

Dropsite News

Independent news on global politics and war. Founded by veteran investigative journalists Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill, and Nausicaa Renner.

Dropsite News

Breakthrough News

A nonprofit media and educational organization dedicated to independent, fact-based reporting and commentary on issues affecting global movements for social justice. Many of their journalists are young and bring perspectives and expertise from different parts of the world.

BT Newsroom on Instagram

Breakthrough News website

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

I’m continuing to respond to the crises in our collective lives by changing things up at Jaya Kula in 2026.

For those who might not know, Jaya Kula is the non-profit based in Portland, Oregon where I give teachings in the traditions of Trika Shaivism and Dzogchen.

This year, we’ll be concentrating our energies on group practice so that we can deepen our immersion in living presence and learn better how to take refuge in whatever is happening.

There will be many opportunities to gather in community both live and via livestream. Have a listen to the video, and visit jayakula.org to find out what’s going on.

I especially want to highlight our main group retreats. I’ll be continuing what I started at last year’s retreats—more wild-style, more spontaneity, daily formal transmission, and lots of play.

Find out more about our 2026 retreats »

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Ignorance is not shameful

We’re all born with more or less access to wisdom. That is our natural condition, and there is nothing wrong. Each of us is ignorant to some degree.

Ignorant about what?

Everything from lacking ordinary clarity about what is happening immediately around us to degrees of ignorance about the nature of our existence.

Again, there is nothing wrong with us or damaged about us because we experience some lack of insight or understanding. That’s how we are made.

But then what? What about after we are made?

Adhikāra and bhūmikāra

In my spiritual tradition, the Sanskrit word adhikāra means our innate capacity—what we bring into this life. Our adhikāra is intellectual, emotional, spiritual, creative, and sometimes even mystical.

Bhūmikāra is what we do with our adhikāra—how we develop, nurture, and express our adhikāra.

Any combination of adhikāra and bhūmikāra is possible. We may have low adhikāra in some areas, but we do a lot with that and take advantage of the opportunities we encounter.

We may have high adhikāra in some areas, but we don’t develop that or have the best circumstances to express our adhikāra.

We may have terrible circumstances and still be able to develop and express ourselves in a wonderful way.

There are infinite permutations.

So the question is: Given the spectrum of our capacities, what are we doing with them?

Titan fragility

In the titan cultures, the U.S. being prime among them, many of us have a difficulty with being beginners and with learning.

Our self-worth often depends on projecting a false aura of accomplishment and knowledge even before learning takes place.

All accomplishment requires us to tolerate a high degree of experimentation, ineptitude, and even failure.

All learning involves unlearning or relearning. Many of us find the destructive aspects of learning to be too uncomfortable.

In order to ward off shame, we assert limited forms of knowing as if they were unassailable or ultimate.

We take up the position of the knowers, the definers, and the judges when we actually understand very little.

We refuse to ask the questions and let in the evidence that would reveal our limitations because we are too fragile to host the discomfort of the destruction of our cherished, yet limited concepts.

At the same time, we make actual money and generate cultural capital when we project certainty and adamantly insist on our clear categories and simplified, closed analyses.

The brain plate

I’ve been keenly aware of my own ignorance since I was a very young child.

Back then, I recognized that what I saw in front of my ordinary eyes and could access with my ordinary mind, was extremely limited. I felt very frustrated by this.

I imagined my lack of understanding as a metal plate bisecting my brain. This plate was a metaphorical structure for the feeling of being blocked or cut off from a fuller wisdom.

Now I know that it was not just my mind that was blocked, but all of my senses. And I’ve spent a lifetime trying to remove those blocks with only partial success.

To do even this, you have to be willing to not know, to be wrong, to feel helpless, to question everything and be questioned. The ground you stand on has to be perpetually unstable. You have to assume the impermanence of much of what you now feel certain about.

Most of all, you have to strongly desire clarity and to know your real situation—from the mundane to the most existential.

Refusing genocide

One thing that has become clear to me since October 7, 2023 is that many people are refusing clarity. They don’t want it. They are refusing knowledge in the most abject, obvious ways.

In order to continue refusing the onslaught of clarity and the desperate appeals being made to our minds and hearts, our insistence on our ignorance has to grow that much stronger.

And we have to become more cruel.

Of course I’m talking about Zionists who refuse to learn about the real history of Palestine and Israel or about what is happening today in Gaza.

People have been indoctrinated and lied to, but the tools that would free them are now openly displayed everywhere.

Many Jewish people have gone through radical examinations of their understanding and attachments and have extricated themselves from the cult of Zionism.

However, a larger number of Jewish people and their allies have not. And at this point, this refusal of wisdom is becoming more and more stark with each passing day.

But I’m also talking about those who identify as progressives who still hold onto the idea that Israel is defending itself or is even a viable project.

I’m talking about those who identify as progressives or even radicals, who refuse to deal with the complicity of the Democratic party and most elected Democrats and yes, Democratic socialists, in genocide.

I’m also talking about spiritual teachers and students who issue vague, isolated calls for peace, or who say absolutely nothing, or who have used what is happening in the world as a jumping off point for self-advertisements about their superior understanding or equanimity—code for “I’m too realized to react.”

I wonder if some of you, as I do, feel exhausted and frustrated by the endless, repetitive dissections of Trump and MAGA when the mirror is so rarely turned on ourselves.

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Exquisite tenderness

Gaza is not just another genocide. For reasons we will never fully understand, it has become a global mirror that is reflecting the real condition of many colonial countries and our cruel cultures.

Gaza is also a mirror reflecting the possibility of community. And it is revealing more widely our profound yearning to live in societies based on mutual care and kindness.

Along with many folks I know, since the first Trump presidency I’ve been re-examining and learning so many things about myself, others, and our world. This process of stripping, deconstruction, and coming into more clarity intensified greatly after October 7th.

I’ve learned a lot of history, explored my relationship to Judaism, experienced new intimacies with people from around the world, felt a lot of pain and grief and loss, and encountered piercing beauty and wonder.

I know I’ve gained capacity and skill as a human being because of my openness to becoming destabilized and ungrounded and to experiencing in a more intimate way some extremely painful realities of our lives together on this planet.

Lately, I’m less moved to speak, but I’m not less moved. I feel full, and I sense something about to be born of this fullness, this exquisite tenderness.

Birth canal

We all feel the destructive quality of this moment in human history. It is also a time of conception and gestation. Things are coming apart and coming together in a new way. But the new has not yet arrived.

Globally, it seems likely that the destruction will intensify. We may need more chaos in order to be forced to re-order our lives.

I do know that the longer we refuse to let ourselves be remade and reborn, the longer we will remain here in this difficult, generative, fierce darkness.

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

Hey friend! I am offering a retreat on Darkness, Destruction, and Generosity in Portland, Oregon from February 12-15th.

We’ll explore:

• Teachings on darkness, destruction, and generosity from Trika Shaivism and Dzogchen

• Teachings on generosity and the overthrow of oppression

• Shiva the Destroyer and fierce Devis

• Practices of shunya and destruction from the traditions of Trika Shaivism and Dzogchen

Find out more here.

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

I hated hummus, until now

The definition of hummus in the OED starts with the phrase “a thick paste. . .”

You know what else is a thick paste? Cement. Spackling compound. Basically stuff we use to glue stuff together.

Cold, dense, sticky, homogeneous, the color of a Portland sky in winter with an approaching storm.

Truth? Hummus was one of my least favorite foods. On Earth.

Enter hummus kassa, and my world comes unstuck. In a good way.

What is hummus kassa?

Hummus kassa is an ancient Egyptian concoction that I’m sure was only eaten by pharaohs, their favorite concubines, and whatever foreign dignitaries a particular pharaoh wanted to impress.

It has more ingredients than pretty much anything I’ve ever cooked. And somehow this leads to a magical, layered complexity of distinct flavors that cuts through the canonical pastiness of more normative hummus.

This slightly adapted hummus recipe hails from Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table (Kanz al-fawa’id fi tanwi al-mawa’id), a 14th-century Egyptian cookbook. And we know that by the time things get written down, they’ve actually been around for a lot longer.

Hummus kassa calls for an overwhelming number of ingredients. I enjoy being overwhelmed.

But if you don’t, you could leave out some of them. Just DO NOT leave out the mint, rose, caraway, cinnamon, or Atraf al-tib spice mix.

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Ingredients

• 1 cup dried chickpeas

• 1/4 cup tahini

• 1/4 cup walnuts

• 1/4 cup almonds

• 1/4 cup pistachios

• 1/4 cup hazelnuts

• 2 tablespoons white wine or rice wine vinegar

• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

• 3 tablespoons fresh mint (chopped)

• 3 tablespoons fresh parsley (chopped)

• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon - Ceylon is best

• 1/4 teaspoon ground caraway seeds

• 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander

• 1 teaspoon salt - less if including olives

• Juice of 1 small to medium-sized lemon

• 1/2 cup olives (chopped) (optional—I left these out both times I made the hummus)

• 1 teaspoon atraf al-tib (a medieval spice mix. See recipe below)

Preparation

• Soak chickpeas in water for 8 hours, drain, and cook until very soft (about 90 minutes). You can also put the unsoaked beans and 3 cups of water in an instant pot. Cook at high pressure for 50 minutes and let the pressure release naturally. Drain off the water and rinse before grinding the beans.

• Crush or chop all nuts.

• Process chickpeas in a food processor until smooth or mash them by hand.

• Add 1/2 cup water and all other ingredients to the mashed chickpeas. Blend until smooth or leave slightly coarse for a rustic texture.

• Refrigerate overnight to allow flavors to meld. This step will make your hummus flavors dazzle.

• Serve at room temperature garnished with rose petals and a drizzle of olive oil. Accompany with raw veggie sticks, flatbread, or crackers.

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Atraf al-tib

Atraf al-tīb (أطراف الطِّيب) is a medieval aromatic spice blend used in cooking in various Arab countries of yore. It smells heavenly. I imagine it would be a delicious seasoner of meats, condiments, and maybe even tea or coffee.

Grind very finely, then mix:

• 1 teaspoon black pepper

• 1/2 teaspoon long pepper (or an extra 1/2 teaspoon black pepper if unavailable)

• 1/2 teaspoon ginger

• 1/4 teaspoon cloves

• 1/2 teaspoon cardamom seeds (from green pods)

• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

• 1/4 teaspoon mace (or increase nutmeg slightly)

• 1 teaspoon dried rose petals or buds (culinary-grade)

• 1 small bay leaf, crumbled

• 1/2 teaspoon dried spikenard (if you can find it; otherwise omit)

Store airtight.

Classical ingredient list (for reference)

Arabic sources describe atraf al-tib as sometimes including lavender, betel nut, and beechnut in addition to the ingredients listed above.

Enjoy!

With infinite love,

Shambhavi

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

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Over the past two years of intensified genocide in Gaza, some yoga people, Hindu people, and Buddhist people from the West have publicly announced that they feel duty-bound to “witness” the horror.

We in the U.S. and other Western countries are paying for the genocide and are many-handedly propping up a failed, genocidal state. So the bid to be positioned as a witness stands in stark contrast to the reality of our direct complicity and instrumental participation.

We are also experiencing here in the U.S. the ascendance of a dictatorial state.

As does Israel, this state uses violence and terror as primary methods of control.

It starts wars or threatens war in order to remain in power.

It is rapidly enacting racist and misogynist policies and breaks laws to do so.

It is building an even deeper surveillance state and promotes false narratives of success when failure is its real condition.

As I said in a recent podcast:

“This isn’t just about somebody else. You’re not just witnessing something about somebody else. This is about us.

It’s about every one of us. It’s about every one of us in the United States, about every one of us in Western Europe, about every one of us on this planet. Because the whole question of what it means to be human is now globally up for grabs.”

- From Satsang with Shambhavi: “Spanda, Codependence, and Being Untethered,” Dec 3, 2025.

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A brief history of witnessing

Sankhya, Vedanta, and Advaita Vedanta are broad and ancient swathes of religious view and practice from India. They span the spectrum from dualistic to non-dualistic views of reality, but they share concepts of God or the Absolute as a witness to manifest life.

Witnessing in Vedanta, Advaita, and Sankhya is most often coupled with an idea of purity and remaining untainted by phenomena. It is associated with transcendence, not immanence, and with stillness rather than activity.

Across various Hindu source texts, witnessing is strongly associated with detachment from the needs of the body, sexuality, emotions, and the outward-moving senses in general.

Two birds

A well-known allegory of the witness appears in the Mundaka Upanishad, a section of the Artharva Veda.

Two birds, companions and friends, nestle on the very same tree. One of them eats a tasty fig; the other, not eating, looks on.

Stuck on the very same tree, one person grieves, deluded by her who is not the Lord; But when he sees the other, the contented Lord—and his majesty— his grief disappears.1

— Mundaka Upanishad, 3.1.1 - 3.1.2

This is considered to be one of the more scholarly translations. It’s debatable whether or not the gendering of the two birds accurately reflects the letter of the Sanskrit text. But it does reflect a near-universal cultural lens through which “she” is the one who cannot control her passions and who “deludes,” while “he” represents the idealized witness who is detached and not subject to desire.

The birds of witnessing and ordinary desires are “companions and friends” because they exist within each of us. The standard contemporary interpretation of this verse is that the suffering human must recognize the witnessing aspect of himself and this will cause the female-coded aspect of the self to cease its indulgences.

The female-coded, and also the dark-skinned and lower-caste, are associated with the body, sexuality, sinfulness and the senses. The male and lighter-skinned and upper caste are associated with the mind, purity, witnessing, the eyes, and with seeing.

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Lose the watcher

Various teachings from the traditions I’ve practiced in contain instructions such as “We must lose the watcher,” “We should be free from both the watcher and the watched,” “Unmind the mind,” and “Real darshan (seeing) is without witnessing.”

The triad of the witness, the act of witnessing, and the witnessed is the fundamental protocol of dualistic experience despite the fact that various non-dual traditions from India recommend deploying it.

It works like this. I set myself apart and perform an operation of witnessing life, or my own mind, thus relating to my thoughts and emotions as a kind of othered entity.

For the witness, the world becomes a panopticon, a tower keeping order over a scene of incarceration.

The panopticon is a privileged view. But what is incarcerated?

Eyes rolling (back)

For the witness cultures of mainstream Hinduism, and to a lesser extent Buddhism, various styles of non-involvement are admired.

These range from literal renunciation to the admiration of insensible states of interiorization or trance, to spiritual practices that encourage becoming unaware of the body or one’s surroundings.

Along this spectrum I would also include what I have called “spiritual botox,” the crude assumption that “detachment” is equivalent to non-feeling or non-expressiveness.

Some Western-derived teachers in the witness traditions are prone to speaking in measured monotones, their facial muscles remaining unnaturally still. They may even move with a deliberate slowness.

This is a performance of a concept of witnessing or detachment.

None of my more realized teachers behaved like this. In fact, they had an enormous emotional range and were the most expressive and spontaneous people I’ve ever encountered. And they laughed wholeheartedly.

The Spiritual Witness Protection Program

The teachings on the witness were more nuanced in general earlier on in their histories. Now, however, we have people actually promoting as spiritual accomplishment the assumption of a stance of faux neutrality or distance from the suffering of others.

Deploying witnessing in this way is one more layer of the protection of privilege: the protection of spiritual “authority,” the protection of reputation, the protection of money.

But what matters to me most is the sequestering or “incarceration” of unbound compassion and kindness.

The Eve of Destruction

When we are busy taking up a position, any position, with respect to others, our access to compassion, to spontaneously being moved, is impaired.

We can take up the position of the watcher. We can take up a position of detachment. We can take up a position of “reasonableness.” We can even take up a position of compassion.

Having done so, we will be more cut off from others, not more intimate.

One of the most important lessons that has been gifted to me in my life as a practitioner is that compassion, mercy, kindness, and tenderness are aspects of the natural state. They are woven into the fabric of an alive aware reality.

These are wild, unbound, magical and magnificent flows that don’t follow the rules we have made up about what they should look like or how to embody them.

Luckily for us, we don’t have to make anything up and in fact cannot cultivate what already permeates all.

What we can do is destroy that which stands in the way of us being naturally moved. We can destroy the watcher. We can destroy our brands. We can destroy our reasons. We don’t need them.

We can relax and let the wisdom of life take us.2

Over the past two years, someone occasionally has asked me if I think it’s spiritual to be political.

These questions are sometimes full of yearning. At other times, they barely hide a degree of disapproval.

But I’m not speaking out because I think it’s the right thing to do, or because I have some justification that allows the political and the spiritual to co-exist.

I’m doing it simply because I am moved to do so, because compassion is. Because I can feel that your life is my life, and we are together in a great intimacy that no one can describe, but it can be lived and known.

Some days I am so full of feeling, words pour out.

Some days I am so full of feeling, I cannot speak.

Whatever is happening, I just let myself be and follow however I am moved.

with infinite love,
Shambhavi

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Yay! I moved into a new apartment. It’s twice as big as my old place. For the first time in eight years, I have room to unpack all of my cook books, pots and pans, ceramics, and appliances.

So let’s get cooking!

How to enjoy your food and digest better

According to Ayurveda (and me), when we shop for food, prepare ingredients, and experience the qualities of a dish before we physically eat it, we are already enjoying and beginning the process of digestion.

Here are a few principles.

• Cook with your imagination as you stroll the aisles at the grocery store. Let yourself pre-combine ingredients in your mind, imagining how they will taste together. Then you can be creative and flexible, switching up recipes or inventing them on the spot.

• Activate all of your senses and “eat” the colors, shapes, textures, and smell of your ingredients before you taste them with your tongue

• Take the time while cooking to observe and wonder at the transformational processes of heat, emulsification, fermentation, proofing, pulverizing, slicing, and even simple mixing.

• Step back when a meal is finished and enjoy the uncanny experience of gazing from a distance at something beautiful and nourishing that you created.

• Before you dig in, gaze at your plate and take in the smells, sights, temperatures, colors, and forms. This supercharges your digestion and incites happiness.

Word cooking

Preparing food, creating in general, and getting more woke spiritually are all described as “cooking.”

For instance, if we are creating anything, we might say, “I”m cooking something up.” Spiritual practitioners in my traditions who are further along in the process of having their limitations destroyed are said to be “cooked.”

As a word cooker, I also taste the weight, texture, and vibrations of words in my mouth as I speak them aloud or in my mind.

Bloomed Saffron.

A former teacher of mind claimed that you couldn’t be a Tantrika if you didn’t enjoy cooking. Actual cooking helps us to notice and enjoy processes of transformation, of impermanence. Then we can better enjoy the moving banquet of life.

Blooming saffron

Bloom saffron by soaking it in a small amount of warm water before adding it to your recipe. Soaking brings out the full flavor of this delicate and expensive plant.

1. Gently crush 10 or so saffron threads using a mortar and pestle. You are just breaking them up a bit, not pulverizing them.

2. Place the crushed threads in a very small cup or jar.

3. Add 2 tablespoons of warm, not boiling water. Don’t add more water than this.

4. Soak the saffron for 15 minutes.

5. Pour the bloomed saffron and the water into the food processor or blender where you are going to grind your pesto.

Bloomed saffron pesto

Ingredients

• Bloomed saffron with its liquid

• ‘1 bunch italian parsley—just the leaves

• 1 cup walnuts

• 1/2 cup castelvetrano, picholine, or other mild, green olives, sliced

• 1 tablespoon capers

• Good quality olive oil

• Possibly salt, but taste before you add! Capers are very salty.

Instructions

1. Put all ingredients other than the olive oil into a food processor or blender. (You can also make this using a mortar and pestle if you have the time and energy.) Pulse grind until the chop is rough. You may need to remove the lid and scrape the sides once or twice.

2. Run the processor or blender on a low speed, or just continuously if it only has one speed. As it’s running, drizzle the olive oil in through the top chute or opening until you have the consistency you prefer. Most pesto is pretty thick. It shouldn’t be pourable.

3. Stop grinding, remove the lid, and taste. Add salt if needed.

4. Store in a tightly-lidded mason or other jar. It will last for a couple of weeks in the fridge if you don’t contaminate it with utensils that have food bits on them.

Making the pasta

Ingredients

• Pasta of your choice. I like to make some form of penne.

• Vegetables of your choosing. Broccoli, asparagus, green beans, sunchokes, radicchio, grilled squash, all good.

• Olive oil

• Shredded hard Italian cheese (romano, pecorino, parmesan, asiago, etc)

• Salt and pepper to taste

The amount of ingredients you use will depend on how many and what size servings you want.

Instructions

1. Boil salted water with a splurch of olive oil in a largish pot for the pasta. Cook pasta until al dente (a little chewy). Use a pot that’s a bit larger than what you need.

2. You can either steam or roast the vegetables separately, or you can add them to the pasta a few minutes before the pasta is done and boil everything in the same pot. Note: If you are using asparagus, it needs to be pan sautéed or grilled or broiled, not boiled.

3. Drain the pasta (and veg) and return to the pot. Coat with a small amount of olive oil.

4. Add the veggies to the pasta if they aren’t already in the pot. Add a healthy amount of the pesto. Stir until evenly coated.

5. Loosely stir in shredded cheese (optional).

6. Adjust salt and pepper.

Innovations

This pasta doesn’t lend itself to variations that include meat. I would suggest adding cubed, olive oil pan-fried paneer; crumbled, pan-fried, crispy tempeh; or toasted pumpkin seeds if you want more protein. Paneer especially is surprisingly delicious in pasta.

With infinite love,
Shambhavi

Kindred 108 is 99% free and 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Here in the U.S., we suffer from a terrible virus. We catch it at a young age and most of us die with it running rampant in our systems after a lifetime of uncontrolled replication.

The virus is so ubiquitous, many of us think it is who we are. We don’t notice it sucking our time, energy, attention and joy. In fact, the more infected we are, the more “successful” we are likely to be, the more acclaim we will garner and the more money we are likely to earn.

Unfortunately, no matter how successful we become at meeting the demands of the virus, the more impaired is our ability to feel satisfaction, contentment or fulfillment. This virus has one ceaseless demand: become Greater, and Greater and then GREATER still.

Many, if not most of us Americans, are thoroughly programmed by the Greatness virus in our conduct and emotions. The programming runs something like this:

• If I’m not continually improving, I’m failing.

• Every next step has to be a step up.

• Growth and expansion are always good.

• I am destined to be Great (at something.) If I’m not, it’s because I screwed up or because I’m irreparably damaged.

• Greatness consists of measurable, visible accomplishments: Degrees, certificates, certifications, net worth, salary, position, size and location of domicile, possessions, including “Great” relationships, or number of followers on social media. And for spiritual folk, greatness is measured in amazing “spiritual” experiences, spiritual initiations by and meetings with “Great” teachers, numbers of students, lineages held, and general buzz about spiritual me.

Viruses are dead things. When we embody the Greatness virus instead of a more natural life, we become enslaved to the endless, repetitive work of promoting our self image and the attempt to antidote fear, uncertainty and loneliness.

We waste our precious time aggressively and defensively manipulating how others see us and hiding from how we really feel about ourselves.

The survivalist strategies and activities of the virus stand between us and intimacy with others.

We become dismissive, disparaging, supremacist, and violent in myriad ways.

The virus depresses us and subjects us to deep wellsprings of shame and rage. It impoverishes our relationships and locks us up in prisons of self-concern.

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The greatness of the heart

But there is another version of greatness, one that leads us to deeply relax instead of perpetuating our tensions and cruel cultures.

The Sanskrit prefix maha—great—indicates the glorious and abundant embodiment of wisdom virtues such as generosity, compassion and kindness. It is often used to refer to a person who exhibits greatness of heart.

Baked into the ancient Indian concept of greatness is also great modesty.

Modesty shows up as a lack of interest in measuring accomplishments, measuring oneself against others, or being measured by others. It shows up as a feeling of happiness at the success of others and a sense of humor about our own foibles and failings.

Both pride and shame are immodest as they both place great importance on the individual to the detriment of our ability to care for or even notice others.

Nine ways to kill the Greatness virus and discover your naturally great heart

1. Recognize that life has ups and downs. Nature does not operate as a continual climb to a fictitious top. It just doesn’t. Learn to gracefully adapt and redefine success as successful adaptation not “winning” or “improving.”

2. Do what you enjoy and enjoy what you do. Many people infected by the Greatness virus worry inordinately about what to do with their lives or how to act. Whatever they choose has to be “Great” or have a Great effect. The best choice is to simply do something you enjoy and act with the understanding that you are a speck in a vast universe. Do your very very small part, and enjoy it a bit along the way. That’s a perfectly fine life.

3. Take a pause from measuring. When you find yourself comparing, contrasting, and judging yourself or others, take a pause. Don’t put anything in place of that measuring activity. Let emptiness arise. Take a dip in immeasurable life. Accustom yourself to it. The more you do this little exercise, the easier it will become to just live.

4. Get into apprenticeship. Approach everything you do and all of your relationships in the spirit of apprenticeship. Apprenticeship is an attitude of experimentation, forever-learning, deep attention, the cultivation of patience, modesty, curiosity, and a quiet passion for the craft. Anxiety about mastering something or being perfect are all part of the virus’ programming. Don’t be duped.

5. Do your best and let go of the result. The Greatness virus tells you that you should be in control of what happens in your life and even the lives of others. It tells you that when something goes wrong or even when it goes right, that is down to you. This is a totally false view. Cause and effect are infinite. You are only one, small factor. Just do your best and forget about it.

6. Notice what moves you in others and aim to embody that. What really moves you from the heart? Is it a certificate? An award? A promotion? A big bank account? Admiration? Praise? I doubt it. Look at the people who deeply move you and ask yourself what is it about them that brings tears to your eyes and a swell of gratitude and nameless love to your heart. Those are the qualities and “accomplishments” you really value. Organize your life around learning to embody those qualities.

7. Feel the compulsion of the Greatness virus. All fixations (aka karma), come with a feeling of compulsion. It can be compulsive worry, or compulsive excitement, or compulsive competitiveness. But the feeling of that little engine of compulsion chugging away is unmistakable. Get in touch with the feeling of compulsion in order to be able to discern when you are meeting the demands of the virus. Recognizing this will give you the motivation to relax and allow a more natural course of life to unfold.

8. Take a at least a 1/2 day a week and do nothing. Don’t work. Don’t plan anything. Don’t read books. Don’t do errands, or catch up on home improvement chores or exercise. Go on a media fast. Rest quietly at home, or go out in nature (no strenuous hikes) and just be. Cook some simple food. Take your time eating it. You may feel anxiety as your senses relax and you come back into touch with your surroundings and yourself. Let it come, and keep relaxing.

9. Take refuge in generosity. When we are giving to others and have an attitude of service, no matter what is going “wrong” in our lives, and no matter what failings we feel we may have, we can always get in touch with our fundamental goodness.

The Greatness virus cannot accomplish this for you. No matter how much others admire you or how many accomplishments you rack up, you will be compulsively seeking the next Great thing.

Great goodness or compulsive greatness? You choose.

With infinite love,
Shambhavi

Kindred 108 is 99% free and 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Because the Earth is round, 
whether I gaze East or West,
I am looking toward my Teacher

Because She births
the elements
from earth to space,
any direction and all
phenomena are She 

Because wisdom is the
nature of all the worlds,
She reveals her grace
everywhere I might walk
and in everything I might touch, smell,
feel, and see

If you haven’t yet discovered this 
for yourself,
it might sound intellectual or unreal
But even writing these simple words,
and even in these painful times,
my heart still moves 
in unstoppable waves
the profound intimacy prevails
and tears of gratitude
fall

~ Shambhavi Sarasvati, November 3, 2025

Kindred 108 is 99% free and 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.