I’m an award-winning author of novels and magazine articles. You can find my articles—many on mind-body and spiritual topics—in Oprah magazine, Prevention, National Geographic, and more. I started doing yoga back in my twenties when a woman almost-literally floated by me at the gym. When someone said she was the yoga teacher, I got off the spin bike and followed her into the class. I’m now a certified yoga teacher and longtime meditator. I’ve studied many classic yoga treatises, but it’s so much more fun to read—and to write—books that deliver yoga’s deep philosophies in a lighthearted, easily digestible way.
You’ve got to love someone who calls out those who think American yoga is a skinny white woman’s practice.
Stanley is a funny, deeply honest, large-bodied, gay Black woman who knows yoga is great for everyone—in fact, her prior book is Every Body Yoga. I love the way she weaves yoga’s philosophy and practices into this short and readable memoir of her life.
And I especially adore how she grasps yoga’s real purpose, which isn’t to pretzel up in funny poses but to slow down and calm the mind. Or, as she puts it: “Honestly, you really only need to know one pose and it’s called sitting the fuck down.”
How can you not want to recommend this book to, well, everyone?
Finding self-acceptance both on and off the mat. In Sanskrit, yoga means to “yoke.” To yoke mind and body, movement and breath, light and dark, the good and the bad. This larger idea of “yoke” is what Jessamyn Stanley calls the yoga of the everyday—a yoga that is not just about perfecting your downward dog but about applying the hard lessons learned on the mat to the even harder daily project of living. In a series of deeply honest, funny autobiographical essays, Jessamyn explores everything from imposter syndrome to cannabis to why it’s a full-time job loving yourself, all through…
I’m Assistant Professor of Religion at Kalamazoo College and my research focuses on the Mahabharata, an epic narrative tradition from South Asia. As an Indian-American kid growing up in suburban Boston, my first introduction to the Mahabharata tradition was from the stories my grandmother told me when she would visit from Chennai and from the Mahabharata comics that she would bring me. Many years later, my friend and colleague Nell Shapiro Hawley (Preceptor of Sanskrit at Harvard University) and I began to work on a project that would eventually become our edited volume, Many Mahābhāratas. I’m excited to share some of my own personal favorite Mahabharatas with you here.
Considered to be the longest poem in the world, the Sanskrit Mahabharata is comprised of around 1.8 million words (for comparison: the combined length of the seven Harry Potter books is barely 1.1 million words). At 928 pages, Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling is by no means a short book, but it does make the massive Sanskrit epic very accessible for general readers. While the Sanskrit Mahabharata is primarily composed in couplets called shlokas, Carole Satyamurti’s masterful retelling is in blank verse, which is the meter of my two favorite English epics: John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Jack Mitchell’s The Odyssey of Star Wars. I also especially love the way Satyamurti presents Karna, the secret elder brother of Pandavas and one of the greatest tragic heroes in world literature.
The Mahabharata, originally composed some two thousand years ago is an epic masterpiece, "a hundred times more interesting" than the Iliad and the Odyssey (Wendy Doniger), it is a timeless work that evokes a world of myth, passion and warfare while exploring eternal questions of duty, love and spiritual freedom. A seminal Hindu text, it is one of the most important and influential works in the history of world civilisation.
This new English retelling, innovatively composed in blank verse, covers all the books of the Mahabharata. It masterfully captures the beauty, excitement and profundity of the original Sanskrit poem as…
I love words, their sound, and their power. When I was a little girl, I would adopt one and make it my own. My parents long recalled my love affair with “nonsense,” which I would wield like a wand when hearing anything silly or irrational. I think words are interwoven with what we feel in a deep and inextricable way. I am also fascinated with how Indian thought offers millennia of wide and deep explorations of human experience in ways that trouble the basic assumptions of the modern West.
I love beautiful things and have been able to share beautiful things with my students with the help of Martha Selby’s translations and discussions of love poetry in three languages: Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Tamil.
This book explores the subtle joys and sorrows of love–love shared and love thwarted, love enduring and love grown stale, love that is playful and love that is cruel. The women’s voices, in particular, leap off the page. Readers are invited to feel the ways that these ancient poems still resonate, as well as to discern the specificity and distinctiveness of these Indian conceptions.
This book presents new English translations of 150 erotic poems composed in India's three classical languages: Old Tamil, Maharastri Prakit, and Sanskrit. The poems are derived from large anthological collections that date from as early as the first centruy CE to as late as the eight century. In Martha Selby's masterful translations, the poems both stand on their own as poems in English and maintain the flavours of the original verses as reflected in idiom and structure. The poems are grouped according to themes, and annotated whenever a brief gloss is necessary. The book begins with several scholarly essays on…
As a professional sanskritist and academic, I have travelled to India well more than twenty times, for fellowships, conferences, and (fortunately) months of study with a traditional Sanskrit pundit, the great N.S. Ramanuja Tatacharya. But my first trip was when I was twenty, dropping out of college and travelling from a kibbutz in Israel to India (overland no less, after a flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul in 1971) where I was graciously admitted into a yoga-ashram school. There I began learning Sanskrit as well as various yoga techniques. I stayed that time for two years. “All life is yoga,” says Sri Aurobindo, and I have long wished my life to be that since “yoga” is for me practically a synonym for “right living.”
This book provides a historical overview of yoga philosophy and psychology and is a great introduction to the study of yoga. It was originally written in French by Mircea Eliade, who became the dean of Religious Studies all over the world, for decades training graduate students at the University of Chicago. The book is now a little dated on certain topics such as tantra and the yogic practices of Buddhism. Nevertheless, it stands as the preëminent classic in the field of yoga studies. It has a bouncy but elegant style and has been a favorite in the courses I have taught on yoga at the University of Texas at Austin.
While a student in India in his early twenties, Eliade had an affair with the daughter of his Sanskrit teacher, the renowned and august scholar, Surendranath Dasgupta. There is apparently a novel by Eliade in Romanian about this and another…
In this landmark book, first published in English in 1958, renowned scholar of religion Mircea Eliade lays the groundwork for a Western understanding of Yoga. Drawing on years of study and experience in India, Eliade provides a comprehensive survey of Yoga in theory and practice from its earliest antecedents in the Vedas through the twentieth century. A new introduction by David Gordon White provides invaluable insight into Eliade's life and work, highlighting the key moments in Eliade's academic and spiritual education, as well as the personal experiences that shaped his worldview. Yoga is not only one of Eliade's most important…
I've been studying yoga in various forms since my first trip to India in the 1990s. I began as a curious tourist, attending the world's biggest human gathering (the Kumbh Mela). After working as a foreign correspondent—initially for Reuters then The New York Times—I returned to university, earning a master's degree in Traditions of Yoga and Meditation. I've since taught courses at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, on yoga teacher trainings, and via my website. The Truth of Yoga is the book I wish I'd found when I started exploring.
Sometimes fiction speaks truer than facts. This adventure set in India in the 1970s brings to life what it means to balance yogic ideas with a Western mindset. It's a mixture of hippie idealism, academic disillusionment, and searches for meaning as things fall apart. Beautifully written and wise, it evokes the common ground between yoga and Buddhism—particularly on causes of suffering and how to transcend it.
A stunning debut novel on sex, loss, and redemption.
It is 1975 and India is in turmoil. American Stanley Harrington arrives to study Sanskrit philosophy and escape his failing marriage. When he finds himself witness to a violent accident, he begins to question his grip on reality.
Maya introduces us to an entertaining cast of hippies, expats, and Indians of all walks of life. From a hermit hiding in the Himalayan jungle since the days of the British Raj, to an accountant at the Bank of India with a passion for Sanskrit poetry, to the last in a line of…
As a professional sanskritist and academic, I have travelled to India well more than twenty times, for fellowships, conferences, and (fortunately) months of study with a traditional Sanskrit pundit, the great N.S. Ramanuja Tatacharya. But my first trip was when I was twenty, dropping out of college and travelling from a kibbutz in Israel to India (overland no less, after a flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul in 1971) where I was graciously admitted into a yoga-ashram school. There I began learning Sanskrit as well as various yoga techniques. I stayed that time for two years. “All life is yoga,” says Sri Aurobindo, and I have long wished my life to be that since “yoga” is for me practically a synonym for “right living.”
Bhagavad Gītā. This is an indispensable primary source for yoga philosophy and practice, and there are many translations: by Edgerton, Easwaran Eknath, Van Buitenen, Sargeant, A. Mahadeva Sastri, H. Maheshwari, Mascaro, and others.
Unfortunately, the Gītā has been used for political ends, but I daresay it transcends politics. It continues the traditions of meditation of older Upanishads—jñāna-yoga, the “yoga of knowledge”—and introduces karma-yoga, the “yoga of action,” with principles that can be applied in practically every endeavor of life. No longer does practice require seclusion. Although the context is a battle, Krishna, the yoga teacher, urges ahiṃsā, “non-injury,” and other yogic values that can be put into play in practically anything that you do. Bhakti-yoga, the “yoga of devotion and love,” is a third broad type of practice laid out in the Gītā. Eliade disparages bhakti as yoga for the masses but surely it…
I have been a dreamer since my childhood and chasing my dream is the goal of my life. Dreams do not have a visible purpose the destiny is hidden behind dreams. While following my dreams, I had started searching for my origin, because I felt connected to some unknown place. I travelled to various ancient sites of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Indus civilizations and explored that these civilizations were very disciplined and advanced. Still, we are not able to unfold so many mysteries. I see the future in the past and present is just a stem in between, this inspired me to write a book.
This has original Sanskrit shlokas and is very well explained with the meaning of each word.
Bhagavada Gita is the base of philosophy of life. The relation of body and soul is beautifully presented. Krishna was a great philosopher, and this book teaches us how to live in this world with detachment when the time comes you must look everything as immortal.
The importance of karma without expecting the result is the key to happiness. No expectations, no regrets and sadness. Whatever happens, happens for good, this message makes life easier.
I am a speaker, author, and academic. Originally from Rome, I now live in the Netherlands, where I lecture and do research on international and diplomatic history. My book examines the ethical and pragmatic dilemmas that characterized the making of the German-Israeli relationship after the Holocaust at the outset of the global Cold War. I value good reads and excellent conversations, and I held visiting fellowships in, among others, Berlin, Jerusalem, and Oxford. My work won a Dutch National Research Council grant, a major research grant from the Alfred Landecker Foundation, and the LNVH award for ‘Distinguished Women Scientists.’ These days, I divide my time between Rome, Berlin, and Utrecht.
This is a classic ancient Indian text on diplomacy and one of the earliest books written in secular Sanskrit.
This book is many things–including one of the most comprehensive manuals on statecraft, which makes for a fascinating read and an important corrective to Western-centric conceptualizations of the history of diplomacy.
A comprehensive guide to everything you need to know about the principles of politics, statecraft, and warfare tactics. What makes a king powerful? What makes a kingdom undefeatable? What makes a government efficient? Kautilya' s Arthashastra answers all these questions and explores much more in this beautiful deluxe edition.A timeless classic from one of the greatest thinkers and strategists!• An easy-to-understand translation of the ancient Sanskrit text• A treatise on politics, philosophy, and military strategy• Discover why we need laws for efficient governance• A peak into one of the best minds of the Indian subcontinent• Text that had a major…
Inspired by seeing the movie Oppenheimer, I decided to pick up The Bhagavad Gita, which
Oppenheimer references a couple of times in the movie. However, I wanted to read it in English, not
Sanskrit, so I found the translation by Ann Stanford.
This is a poem that speaks to all men on the most basic
level. It probes man’s eternal motives
and attempts to understand what it is to live, and to die. It was written sometime between the fifth and
second centuries before Christ, somewhere in the north of India. It has survived because it teaches in a way
that must be experienced by the reader that the primal essence of the universe
is the essence of man, the self or soul.
It points the way to perfection, to achieve union with the supreme self.
Thanks to access to a good community library, I developed an interest in history from the age of seven. My interest in India grew when I married Indian-born Atam Vetta. After teaching, I set up a business and was director of Oxford Antiques Centre. In 1998, while chair of the Thames Valley Art and Antique Dealers Association, I was invited to become the art and antiques writer for The Oxford Times. That was how my freelance writing career began but since 2016 I have concentrated on writing fiction and poetry but make occasional contributions to The Madras Courier.
It is possibly the oldest surviving collection of 84 Indian fables, written around 200BC by Vishnu Sharma. He became a tutor to a king’s children. He engaged their interest by telling stories of animals with a moral message at end of each story rather like Aesop’s Fables. The animals are somewhat different. e.g The Monkey and the Crocodile, the Hare and Lion. Many elements of Rudyard Kipling’s children’s books such as the Just So Stories were inspired by The Panchatantra. There are of course Hindi editions available too.
The Panchatantra is a collection of folktales and fables that were believed to have been originally written in Sanskrit by Vishnu Sharma more than 2500 years ago. This collection of stories features animal characters which are stereotyped to associate certain qualities with them. The origins of the Panchatantra lie in a tale of its own, when a King approached a learned pandit to ask him to teach the important lessons of life to his ignorant and unwise sons. This learned scholar knew that the royal princes could not understand complex principles in an ordinary way. So, he devised a method…
