Tag Archives: Indian Philosophy

BOOK: “Kindred Spirits” by Edward C. Sellner

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Kindred Spirits: Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac, and ZenKindred Spirits: Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac, and Zen by Edward C. Sellner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site — Monkfish Books

Release Date: July 28,2026

This book intertwines the biographies of two prominent 2oth century American authors, Beat novelist Jack Kerouac and Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Besides the two writers’ general interest in Eastern philosophy and mysticism and the fact that they had broadly overlapping lifespans, I wouldn’t have placed them in the same basket (despite having read works by each and found both writers’ works enjoyable – though in distinct ways.) However, Sellner dives down into other points of commonality — e.g. Columbia University educated, lifelong Catholics, love of drink, ladies’ men (at some point, at least,) desire for a hermetic existence, etc. Of course, another important commonality was dying young, Kerouac at 47 and Merton at 53.

This book is a fascinating look at two authors who forever changed American perception of Zen Buddhism and Eastern philosophy more generally, though who did it through the lens of Catholicism. At its heart, however, it’s the tale of the struggles of two men to find something, something elusive yet for which they each felt a strong compulsion, something which even successes only left them hungering for more.

If you’re interested in the lives of writers, this book is an excellent read and I’d highly recommend it. Regardless of what you might feel about the connective tissue between them, both of these writers had an interesting life.

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BOOK: “Swami Kripalu’s Ladder of Yoga” by Richard Faulds

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Swami Kripalu’s Ladder of YogaSwami Kripalu’s Ladder of Yoga by Richard Faulds
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Monkfish

Release Date: April 7, 2026

This book discusses the organizational structure of yoga as described by prominent 20th century yoga guru, Swami Kripalu, an approach that draws on (but distinguishes itself from) the 8-limb (Ashtanga) framework outlined by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. Swami Kripalu deemphasized yogic ethics (Yama and Niyama,) and put great emphasis on hierarchy among the elements of yoga — i.e. that one must pass through the lessons of some limbs before you can begin to move up to the next. (This idea is certainly taught in Patanjali’s Sutras, but not with the same emphasis — hence Kripalu’s “ladder,” rather than “limbs” — making clear that these are not independent elements but rather are completely dependent.)

The greatest strength of this book is in distinguishing concepts like dhyana (meditation) from samadhi, distinction of which is often given short shrift with simplistic soundbite-like definitions in books on yoga. The book is not the usual yoga text in that it spends a great deal of time discussing the “higher limbs” of yoga (to resort back to Patanjali’s formulation.) Faulds adds benefit by discussing his own subjective experiences, the lack of access to subjective understanding often gives even students actively training with teachers doubts about their experiences.

I should point out that the book does also spend a good deal of page count (perhaps more space than any other subject) on pranayama (breathwork,) both covering it over several chapters in the book’s midsection and then further in a couple appendices that get into the physiology of breathwork.

One nice feature is that almost all of the chapters end with sections entitled “Be a Discerning Student” and “Applying this Chapter in Practice” to help readers with practical insights into what is by and large a philosophical discussion. There are also several appendices (the most useful one to me was a discussion of the shifting understanding of the term “samadhi” over time and across disciplines.)

If you want to explore what the higher limbs are and how they are distinguished, I’d recommend this book. (As I said, it also deals with Pranayama in some detail, but that will likely offer less new insight for students and teachers of yoga who’ve received an education in [and maintain a practice of] yoga.)

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PROMPT: Negative Feelings

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Daily writing prompt
What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?
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Sakshi Bhavan, the dispassionate witness, giving feelings one’s full attention without allowing rumination that compounds the effect.

Not technically a strategy, but I think it’s on point.

BOOK: “Four Chapters on Freedom” by Patanjali [Commentaries by Satyananda Saraswati]

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Four Chapters on Freedom: Commentary on the Yoga Sutras of PatanjaliFour Chapters on Freedom: Commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by Satyananda Saraswati
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher – Yoga Publications Trust

This book holds the Bihar School of Yoga commentaries on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. In addition to providing each Sutra in Sanskrit, a Romanized transliteration, a word-by-word literal translation, and a readable free translation into English, the book offers a commentary for each Sutra. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali consist of just 196 lines of Sanskrit, explaining the nature of yoga and how it is to be practiced. Because the Sutras are so sparse and open to varied interpretations, a commentary is essential and one’s learning experience is only as good as the translation and commentary. There are many English language commentaries on Patanjali’s Sutras available, but I don’t think one can do any better than this one.

In general, I have found the publications put out by the Yoga Publications Trust of the Bihar School to be as useful as they come. Their books are pragmatic, focused, and readable.

This book does, by necessity, use a fair number of Sanskrit terms repeatedly because there are not English words for many of the key concepts and to try to put them into English would be tiresome and confusing. However, there is a glossary at the end of the book (in addition to an index) to help the reader negotiate this Sanskrit terminology. The appendices also include a key to help English language readers with the pronunciation of Sanskrit terms. There are also appendices with the sutras written out in Sanskrit and Romanized transliteration in list form.

This book is well worth reading, whether one has read other commentaries on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali or not.

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BOOK: “Yoga Also for the Godless” by Sri M.

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Yoga Also for the GodlessYoga Also for the Godless by Sri M.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Penguin India

One common philosophical question regarding yoga is to what degree it is, in itself, religious. This has been argued by various sects from within Yoga, with some seeing Yoga without belief as oxymoronic and others arguing that the metaphysics of Yoga is essentially Samkhya (an atheistic philosophy.) Outsiders to Yoga have also had their say, as with the Roman Catholic Church telling its practitioners that the practice of Yoga is incongruent with that of Catholicism.

This book’s author takes on the question by examining what yoga is according to historic texts, specifically the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and then considering whether the practice that is laid out necessitates a belief in a deity, deities, or the supernatural. As one can tell from the title, Sri M (born Mumtaz Ali) argues that belief in divinity is not essential to the practice of Yoga.

Those who’ve read various commentaries on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras will find this book at best familiar and at worst just another set of Sutra commentaries. Sri M’s book is not just Yoga Sutra commentaries, but that does take up a fair amount of the page space. The early chapters focus more on the thesis question.

If you’re interested in the question of whether Yoga is inherently theistic, this is a fine book to investigate. It’s a quick read and draws heavily on sutras and scriptures (and, thus, is not just the author’s opinion.)

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BOOK: “Understanding Eastern Philosophy” by Ray Billington

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Understanding Eastern PhilosophyUnderstanding Eastern Philosophy by Ray Billington
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Site — Taylor & Francis

This book does a solid job for one that bites off so much in a single go. Eastern Philosophy is a large subject, and to try to outline the major premises of its varied systems and also compare them to Western / Abrahamic notions (when Western schools are sometimes no more different from Eastern schools than each side is within,) and to do so in under two-hundred pages is a daunting undertaking.

For the most part, I felt the book did a fine job of meeting its objective. A fair amount of selection and simplification is required. I will say the part describing karmic doctrine didn’t seem consistent with what I was taught and seems more in line with the early Western scholars who started writing about Eastern Philosophy but could not help but couch the subject in a Western / Abrahamic frame because it was what they knew and was invisible to them. I say this as one who is no big fan of Karmic philosophy, though for another reason (one which is also mentioned in this book.) I’ve always been told that the central idea is to do selfless acts in order to escape the karmic cycle. Billington, like others before him, states it as do “good deeds” and then he puts forth the critique that this won’t help because doing good for one’s own benefit is fraught with peril. My understanding from Sanskrit scholars is: first, Hindu philosophers were aware of this paradox from the beginning and that’s why the emphasis has always been on “selfless” acts; second, the Abrahamic bifurcation of all actions into good and evil is not so much a thing in Hindu thinking (most actions are inherently neither.) I should point out that there is a lot of internal conflict within these philosophies (e.g. differences between Buddhist and Hindu thoughts on Karma) and that Billington does elsewhere reflect on the differences between Eastern and Western thinking about good and evil.

The first two-thirds of the book is organized by schools of thought (beginning with the Indian ones and working toward Chinese / East Asian schools) and the last third deals with a series of fundamental philosophical questions.

If you want a quick outline of Eastern philosophical ideas, this book gives a good look at them, particularly if one is interested in a comparison to Western ideas. The book also spends a fair amount of time in discussion of what a religion is and how one differs from a philosophy.

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BOOKS: “Jñāna-Yoga: The Way of Knowledge” by Ramakrishna Puligandla

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Jnana-Yoga--The Way of KnowledgeJnana-Yoga–The Way of Knowledge by Ramakrishna Puligandla
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Google Books Page

This is one of the most useful books I’ve read on the topic of Jñāna-yoga — the approach to yogic philosophy employed by the studious / inquisitive (in contrast to Bhakti-Yoga [the yoga of those for whom faith and devotion works] and Karma-Yoga [the yoga for those for whom a course of self-less action appeals.]) There are Jñāna-yogic Hindu sects and Buddhism — in general — can be thought of as a school of Jñāna-yoga. The author draws from the teachings of both, principally Sankara for Hindu thinking and Nagarjuna for the Buddhist approach.

A word of warning, the author is a scholarly philosopher, and so — while not as unreadable as many works of academic philosophy — it will be a slog for those who are not used to reading scholarly writing.

That said, Puligandla does a fine job of laying out what he views as the central tenets of Jñāna-yoga in a concise fashion and reviewing them at the end. This is not to say I would agree with all that he proposes, herein. In particular, his Chapter 3 conclusions about consciousness are insufficiently justified to be considered core principles of Jñāna-yoga (in my view.) Of course, the beauty of Jñāna-yoga is that it not only doesn’t insist upon coming to the same conclusions, it generates explanations as to how it’s perfectly possible / reasonable to come to different conclusions (see “The Principle of Superimposition,” herein.) Furthermore, since the author is reporting the ideas of Sankara and Nagarjuna, I can’t really hold these ideas against him.

If you’re interested in Jñāna-yoga, and can handle scholarly prose, I’d highly recommend this book.

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BOOK REVIEW: Ashtavakra Gita Trans. by Bart Marshall

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Ashtavakra Gita: (bootleg version)Ashtavakra Gita: by Bart Marshall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

There are many translations of this Hindu classic of Advaita Vedanda, a non-dualist school that teaches the oneness of all things and the illusory nature of the universe that we think we know. “The Song of Ashtavakra” explores self-realization and the path to liberation (i.e. Moksha.) [Ashtavakra was a sage with birth defects from which the name “8 angles” derives. Yoga practitioners will know the name from an arm balance pose that involves balancing the kinked body on bent arms in a manner that was apparently reminiscent of the look of this sage’s body.]

The translation that I read, one by Bart Marshall, is clearly written in readily understandable language. It’s presented as a series of short-form poems arranged into twenty chapters that also form a dialogue between Ashtavakra and Janaka. This version doesn’t contain commentary and analysis as some translations do. Because it’s both highly readable and inexpensively acquired, I’d recommend one give it a chance. If you later decide you’d benefit from commentary, you’ll not be at a loss by having read this version first.

As is common enough in such tracts, the book can be repetitive as it reiterates ideas like the need to avoid desire and aversion and the nature of oneness. That said, there were some quite powerful statements that genuinely expanded on the ideas of the work. (e.g. 18.100: “One of tranquil mind // seeks neither crowds nor wilderness. // He is the same wherever he goes.” Or 3.12 “Why should a person of steady mind, who sees the nothingness of objects, prefer one thing over another?”)

If you’re a student of philosophy or of yoga as a philosophy, I think this is well worth a thoughtful read.


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BOOK REVIEW: Indian Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction by Sue Hamilton

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Indian Philosophy: A Very Short IntroductionIndian Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction by Sue Hamilton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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A concise guide to Indian Philosophy is a tall order. Over millennia, the discipline has had time to swell. This necessitated some careful pruning and selection on the part of the author. While the book does present key distinctions between all six of the orthodox schools of Indian Philosophy (i.e. Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa, and Vedanta,) the only one of the heterodox schools that it substantially addresses is that of Buddhism. (There are three major heterodox schools of Indian Philosophy by most accounts – Caravaka, Buddhist, and Jain, though some also include Ajivika and Ajnana to make five.)

This book focuses on the most novel ideas of each of philosophical schools under study, and it particularly focuses on points of debate where there is disagreement within or between schools. The book, therefore, moves metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, but doesn’t explore all major philosophical questions for all the schools.

If you’re looking for a book that sums up the key points of debate between and within major schools of Indian philosophy, this is a great book. It does the job quite well and with a minimal page count. If you need a book that offers insight into more than the major points of contention, but extends into a given school’s stance on some of the less provocative questions, I’d recommend Chatterjee and Datta’s “An Introduction to Indian Philosophy” (it’s much longer and denser, but dives deeper and farms wider.)

I like how this book was organized and thought it did a good job of being both concise and clear (a duo that doesn’t play well together with regards complex philosophical subjects.)

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BOOK REVIEW: An Introduction to Indian Philosophy Chatterjee & Datta

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An Introduction to Indian PhilosophyAn Introduction to Indian Philosophy by Satischandra Chatterjee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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India has spawned a number of philosophical systems over the centuries. Chatterjee and Datta provide an overview of Indian philosophy by comparing and contrasting nine major schools of Indian philosophy—the six orthodox schools plus three well-known heterodox schools. The dividing line between orthodox and unorthodox hinges upon whether a philosophy accepts the Vedas as sources of authority.

After an introductory chapter that lays out the concepts that will be needed throughout the remainder of the book as well as providing brief sketches of nine philosophical schools, the remainder of the book is a one chapter per school examination of metaphysics, ethics, theology, epistemology, etc. The authors first consider the heterodox schools: i.e. Carvaka (a materialist /atheist approach), Jain (one of the major Indian religions), and Buddhist. After examining the heterodox approaches, Chatterjee and Datta take on the orthodox schools in the following order: Nyaya, Vaisesika, Sankhya, Yoga (which you may not have realized was a philosophical system), Mimamsa, and Vedanta.

There are a number of questions that recur as the authors compare these schools to each other. A major point of consideration is presence or absence of belief in a god, and—for those systems that believe in a God or gods—what is the role of said deity. It might seem that all the orthodox systems would be theistic, but this isn’t the case (e.g. Sankhya.) Another key question is how one can know something, i.e. what is acceptable authority—can one only trust one’s own senses or can one trust everything but one’s own senses? Then there is the matter of ethics and how each system regards ethical behavior. Of course, there are some elements that are unique to a given system, and so it’s not entirely a matter of comparison and contrast.

There are no graphics in the book and the ancillary material is limited to footnotes, a select bibliography, and prefaces to the various editions of the book. Note: I read the 2007 / 7th Edition of the book.

I won’t say this book isn’t dry. It’s a philosophy textbook, after all. However, it does provide a solid overview of the topic and seems to take great efforts to be unbiased (to the extent of sometimes not challenging philosophical ideas that are patently unsound in favor of reporting what advocates of the tradition propose.)

I’d recommend this book for anyone who’s looking for an overview of Indian philosophy.

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