Content
Mallinson says Shiva Samhita exposes a yoga teaching, yet also calls itself a tantra; he also describes it as an eclectic collection of yoga lore. Shiva Samhita talks about the complex physiology, names 84 different asanas (only four of which are described in detail), describes five specific types of prana, and provides techniques to regulate them. It also deals with abstract yogic philosophy, mudras, tantric practices, and meditation. It emphasizes that even a common householder can practice yoga and benefit from it.
The first chapter mentions various methods of liberation and philosophical standpoints. The second chapter describes the nadis, the internal fire, and the working of the jiva. The third chapter describes the winds in the body, the importance of the guru, the four stages of the Yoga, the five elemental visualizations and four asanas in detail. The fourth chapter deals with the eleven mudras that can result in yogic attainments. The fifth chapter is the longest and most diverse—it describes obstacles to the liberation, the four types of aspirants, the technique of shadow gazing, the internal sound, the esoteric centers and energies in the body (such as the kundalini), the seven lotuses, the "king of kings of yogas", and a global mantra.
Read more about this topic: Shiva Samhita
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to the light,—to see its perfect success; but most are content to behold it in the shape of many broad boards brought to market, and deem that its true success! But the pine is no more lumber than man is, and to be made into boards and houses is no more its true and highest use than the truest use of a man is to be cut down and made into manure.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“You can hardly convince a man of an error in a life-time, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be. The geologists tell us that it took one hundred years to prove that fossils are organic, and one hundred and fifty more to prove that they are not to be referred to the Noachian deluge.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)