Lorin Roche - The Radiance Sutras

Lift a cup of soma in praise

to Lakshman Joo

... a round of soma on my tab

to his students

Lilian Silburn, Paul Reps, Jaideva Singh,

Alexis Sanderson, and

John and Denise Hughes

A case of amrita to

Panini and Company

Ambrosia on tap to Rabindranath Tagore

Bombay Sapphire to

Otto Bohtlingk, Rudolph Roth, and

Sir Monier-Williams

And a pet anteater

To Valmiki

Translating the nectar of wisdom

of the wisdom traditions

is the work of centuries

In your hands, you hold a treasure.

The Radiance Sutras, the life-work of beloved writer and teacher Lorin Roche, is a contemporary interpretation of the timeless, universal meditations of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. The 112 contemplative meditations known as both yuktis and dharanas unfold as a sacred exchange between the divine masculine as Shiva, or Bhairava, and the divine feminine as Shakti, or Bhairavi. This sacred teaching was revered by the great sages of tantra, including Kshemaraja in the 11th century through this last centurys yoga masters Swami Lakshman Joo, the yogini Lalita Devi, and Swami Muktananda.

The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra provides a way into the universal realization of divine embodiment that is developed fully within the tantras. Universal, sensual, very human experiences such as breathing, tasting, seeing, waking up, sleeping, getting angry, and making love become vehicles for realizing your nature. This happens at a deep level of vibration through the living current, spanda shakti, the pulsating source of consciousness of the early Trika-Krama lineages of tantra that knew of the quantum wave long before modern physics.

When I received the original draft of the Radiance Sutras from Lorin in 2006, I was enthralled by such somatic kinship with his poetic interpretation of the sutras of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. I was already in love with the Vijnana. When I was fifteen, Id discovered it in Paul Reps book Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Later, Id encountered it through the translation my root teacher, Daniel Odier, received from Lalita Devi, a realized yogini from Kashmir.

Lorins offering reignited a flame, and knowing Lorin is like finding a rare soul friend on the path who also shares a great love. Lorin brings to life the revolutionary insights of the early tantras so that they transform the material way we continue to experience our bodiesdespite living in the quantum age of physics, which recognizes our body as vastly composed of space and vibration. Lorin poetically translates the experience of spanda, the creative vibration, as always expanding and contracting, creating feelings, thoughts, or actions and then dissolving back into space.

Attend to the skin as a subtle boundary

Containing vastness.

Enter that pulsing vastness

And know there is no other but you.

YUKTI 25

With Lorins blessing I have included The Radiance Sutras, along with other scholarly translations, in Prana Flow teacher trainings to explore the transforming effect of the sutras within the living flow of yoga. I offer lines of the Radiance Sutras as an invocation, during the hovering space of a mudra or asana, and as a meditation to end a session. They offer ways of changing stiffness into fluidity, replacing density with shimmering energy, transforming separation into the sacred flow satisfied within. Students memorize lines and other teachers integrate the sutras into their classes. The Radiance Sutras has become part of our living library, because you can imbibe the teachings at any time and feel the reverberations. As you take in the sutra, the wisdom begins to transform you instantaneously.

The breath flows out with the sound sa,

The breath flows in with the sound ha.

Thus thousands of times a day,

Everyone who breathes is adoring the Goddess.

Know this, and be in great joy.

Listen to the ongoing prayer that is breath.

Life shall dance in you

A dance of ever-renewing delight.

VERSES 155156

In the flow of yoga, breath is the path of realization. In most contemporary yoga the bhava, or feeling essence, is substituted with technique. Lorin has a way of expressing the rhythm of the sensory somatic world and how its undulations and song of the body are part of the very flow of consciousness. The simple flow of breath, which for most modern practitioners is trapped under tensions and internal neglect, transforms into the most intimate connection to the sublime source.

Be conscious of this unconscious prayer (of your breath),

For She is the most holy place of pilgrimage.

She wishes for you to enter this temple,

Where each breath is adoration

Of the infinite for the incarnate form.

VERSE 154

The Radiance Sutras is the culmination of forty-plus years of devotion to this sacred text, as well as Lorin Roches life experience as a beloved meditation teacher and master writer-poet. Lorin has brought the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra alive for a wide audience in a way similar to how Coleman Barks revived the poetry of the great Sufi teacher, Jelauddin Rumi. These poetic interpretations have brought the vibratory wisdom of the tantras to the most neglected places within Western embodiment, as Lorin breathes a rhythm and life to language through his own realization. He has opened a doorway into the tantric realization of the divya deha, the divine body, the shimmering flow of embodied consciousness manifesting as Shakti and returning to infinite potency as Shiva.

It is with great celebration that this editioncomplete with Sanskrit Devanagari script, transliteration, and pronunciationgoes out into the world. The Radiance Sutras are spreading across the world. Beloved musicians Dave Stringer, Donna DeLory, Denise Kaufman, and Steve Gold compose to these poetic truths. Lorin, with his beautiful wife Camille, have been dedicated to this text with their life and you can feel that in their care.

Meditate on the Self as being Vast as the sky, a body of energy

Extending forever in all directions.

YUKTI 69

Your heart sees by its own light.

In meditation, adore the subtle fire

The light that you see by

Is the light that comes from inside.

YUKTI 14

May we all awaken to the inner light of the heartthe ripple effect that has immeasurable blessings and benefits to all. May this sacred resonance attune us all to the living sublime current. As the Vijnana Bhairava so eloquently invokes through Lorin,

Being transformed by even one of these practices,

Fullness of experience develops breath by breath.

One day the desire of the self for the great Self

Is consummated

VERSE 148

Be prepared, for you will not be the same person you were before you began reading. One of these sutras is enough to change a life.

SHIVA REA

Malibu, California

August 2014

The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra is one of the early teachings on yoga meditation. The name, loosely translated, means the terror and joy of realizing oneness with the soul. The text is only about two thousand words in the original Sanskrit, perhaps forty minutes of chanting, yet those few words describe the essence of many of the worlds meditation techniques. I call it the Radiance Sutras because it is so luminous.