For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

Towards the end of 2024, we gave a talk called What's Our Lineage? and then in May of 2025, we presented a sequel called Our Tantrik Lineage. Both these talks are my attempt to reflect upon and understand the diverse influences that pour like so many streams into my lectures and spiritual life. These two talks are also a commentary on how complex and nuanced the lineage of Sri Ramakrishna is!

But even having presented these ideas over the course of the last three years, and even having given about 21 lectures on the the role of the guru in the Tāntrik tradition over the course of the last six years (they're all here in this playlist), there's still some confusion about who I am, whether or not I have the right to do what I do and whether or not my views are based.

And in the interest of having a broader discussion on responsibility, integrity and accountability in the spiritual world, especially on the internet, we present this talk "What is Our Lineage, Actually" to reflect upon the tension between sticking to tradition and innovating beyond it!

In this talk, our subtlest & most nuanced yet, we dicusss mīmāmsa, the reverential & yet critical reading of a sacred text with an appeal to Yāska's rules of grammar & etymology (Nirukta) before asking: are these still relevant and valuable today?

In other words, do the rules still apply when we read texts now in the modern era?
And more importantly, which texts should be read reverentially?
Is there a sense in which the texts that are considered authoritative and sacred back then no longer hold the same place in light of modernity?

And perhaps an even more cutting question is this: is there even a place for logic, grammar, etymology (i.e the analytical mind) in the study and practice of sacred texts like Vedas & Tantras?
And if we don't think there is, then, what tools are left for us when it comes to discernment in our study and practice?

More importantly, even if we accept Niruka (the rules of Sanskrit grammar and etymology), when we comment on a text is it ever exegetical (an unbiased attempt to explain what the text is saying) or is it necessarily, given the confirmation bias that we all carry, eisegesis (explaining a text to promote and support what we already believe).

Besides these questions above, we ask a series of 8 difficult questions about the tensions between sticking to tradition and innovating beyond it!

More importantly, I present a few different stories from our history to show some divergences between Gurus and their disciples:
1. Ramanuja & Yamunacarya
2. Chaitanya, Krishna Bharati & Ishvara Puri
and some more contemporary examples
3. Vivekananda & Ramakrishna
4. Chaitanyananda (Ayaji) & Amritananda Saraswati
5. Anakin Skywalker & Obi Wan Kenobi
to pose a few difficult questions about ekāvākyatā, sampradāyic consistency!

Hit Me Up x

Support the show

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

A rather foundational and exciting discussion about linguistic mysticism in both its psychological and metaphysical dimensions. We first sketch out the Sanskrit language system and then we make a case for how words sculpt our reality, on a psychological level. But then, we daringly go beyond mere linguistic mysticism to a far deeper insight on the inseparability of the world and language. The world IS language!

And so if Tantra is a tradition that promises to create change in the world through its application (which is to say, change in the mind since, having proven that world is only ever internal and never external, to change the mind is to fundamentally alter the "world" experienced within it), then naturally the main modality employed in tantra is language, or rather, the power of the Word. 

Also, I was trying to share my wifi password but then accidentally turned off the wifi at the end so the video dropped. By I think that was a good place to end our discussion anyway! 

Hit Me Up x

Support the show

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Sanskrit words are multivalent: they mean many different things in many different contexts. And so understanding the context in which a charged word like "God" or "Tantra" is used is very important since almost all of our misunderstandings between one other might just come down to this: we assume we all mean the same thing and have the same experiences with terms that we use in common, like "God" and "Tantra." Because this is simply not the case, we take some time in this video to carefully specify and define just what we mean in our community when we use the word "Tantra"! 

And just as Sanskrit words are complex, the Sanskritic traditions are doubly so. The world of Śaiva & Śākta Tantra is dizzying in its dazzling display of diversity and so approaching things with care, subtlety and nuance is doubly important! And for this, once again, we must define just what we mean when we say "Tantra"! 

Hit Me Up x

Support the show

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Tonight is the eclipse full moon celebrating the birthday of Sri Chaitanya, the Incarnation of Divine Love (premāvatara) and commemorating both the burning of the demoness Holikā (as per the Vaishnava story of Prahlāda, the demon boy who loved Vishnu) as well as the burning of Kāmadeva, or Cupid (as per the Shaiva and Shakta Puranic stories of Shiva burning Kāmadeva and Lalitā defeating Bandhāsura).

Since many are already familiar with the celebration of Holi (pelting each other with colored powders) and since we gave a talk on it last year called What is Holi?, I thought this year, it would be nice to offer a few more esoteric reflections on the celebration with regards to Tantrik Non-Duality! 

Find all our talks on Tāntrik Vaishnavism here. 

Hit Me Up x

Support the show

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Besides the fact that Sri Krishna and Ma Kali share the same bīja mantra and besides the significant historical and cultural overlap between these two traditions in Bengal, there is a certain esoteric "bħāvic" connection between these two deities, one of madness and ecstasy that we see so perfectly expressed in Sri Ramakrishna. In this talk, we explore that bhāva of mad love, with some important digressions into the Tāntrik understanding of Deity and of Mantra. 

Happy Holika/Kama Dahanam! Happy Chaitanya Purnima
Happy Vasant Purnima/ Spring Eclipse Full Moon!

You'll find all of our Tāntrik Vaishnavism lectures here & all our stuff on Mā Kālī here. 

Hit Me Up x

Support the show

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

We start by explaining the pañca-makāras, the transgressive offerings in the context of Kālī pūjā in the Vāmācāra, the so-called "left-hand path" of Tantra, mainly to point out the "curse" that is on alcohol & meat with reference to King Parsokhit in the Bhāgavātam, and to Pauranic stories of Brahmā & Śukra who all have cursed alcohol. We explain also how meat is cursed also before offering some modern day examples to show how that curse plays out. 

These remarks act as a sort of disclaimer for anyone who wants to experiment with Kaulācāra or Vāmācāra! 

Mainly, we present he Vāmācāra strategy of mitigating the curse, with a reference to the Brahma-śāpa-vimocana stotram which is used to remove the curse on the Devī Māhātmyam. We explain also the logic of using the pañca-makāra to demonstrate how this approach could be spiritually nourishing for a certain kind of person. We also offer a short digression about the esoteric deities  of Vāmācāra: Ānanda-Bhairava & Ānanda-Bhairavī in sexual union, i.e ārdhanarīśvara. 

But very quickly we digress into a subtle discussion about the Big "I", pūrnahantā, my essential nature as the Self, Consciousness reflecting upon Herself through all beings sentient and insentient. This is the highest non-dual teaching of our tradition! As such, we present the pañca-makāras as a modality, an approach to co-opt intensely disturbing as well as intensely pleasurable experiences to "touch down" on my essential nature as blissful, ever-full consciousness! 

You'll find all of our lectures on Vāmācara & the more transgressive aspects of our tradition here. 

Hit Me Up x

Support the show

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Śiva is often described as "vicitra", strange and wonderful! Having touched upon this idea off Śiva's weirdness a little bit in our Shiva, Paradox Personified lecture, we go in with some finer brush strokes to make a point about how all the various depictions of Śiva in Pauranic literature might be pointing to a very unique, mind-boggling kind of theology that is wholly unlike anything else you might have heard in the world of comparative religion! 

We gave this talk as part of our Śiva rātri celebrations up in our new retreat space in Oxnard. We paused the recording after the first section to go and do our Ganesh puja and then we recorded the second session, picking up where we left off later in the evening before the first prahara puja! Forgive me for the little discontinuity in the middle! 

Hit Me Up x

Support the show

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Just a little riffing on the Puranic depictions of Shiva, as per or Shiva Ratri festivities this year! There's something very weird and wonderful (vicitra, in Sanskrit) about our Mahadeva, is there not? 

Hit Me Up x

Support the show

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

I'm a little late on this video (I had meant to get it out before the festivities this year) but hey, maybe this is for next year and if you're particularly hardcore, for next month (since there's a śiva rātri every month the night before the new moon)!

In this talk, we go over some rituals and practices for observing śiva rātri for people asking questions like, "when/what is śiva rātri?", "what should I do all night?", "what is fasting and how to do it?" etc.

Here is a playlist of all our talks for śiva rātri.

Hit Me Up x

Support the show

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Leading up to Śiva Rātri (which is coming up for us this Sunday on February 15th, 2026), I'm releasing a bunch of videos on different aspects of our tradition, as part of the celebration!

Having already put out Secret Kālī Teachings in Śaiva Texts which featured a (śaktra reading) of sample from the Paramārthasāra, a profound non-dual transmission from the master, Abhinava Gupta, we now turn to something even more esoteric (guhya) and essential (sāra): a teaching from the Vijñāna-Bhairava Tantra on worshipping Śiva as the pure, non-dual consciousness which you, yourself, right now are!

This is the 2nd of 4 or 5 videos for Śiva Rātri this year!

Here is a playlist of all our Śiva Rātri content over the years!

Hit Me Up x

Support the show

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST 
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM