Welcome to the inaugural issue of Sutra Journal, a free, monthly online magazine with a Dharmic focus, featuring articles on Yoga, Vedanta, Tantra, Buddhism, Ayurveda, and Indology.
Yoga arose and exists within the Dharma, which is a set of timeless teachings, holistic in nature, covering the gamut from the worldly to the metaphysical, from science to art to ritual, incorporating Vedanta, Tantra, Buddhism, Ayurveda, and other dimensions of what has been brought forward by the Indian civilization.
Sutra Journal aims to cover all this and to extend the conversation, involving more and more people who are also looking for depth of discussion on this wide ranging set of interconnected subjects, towards their own process of individuation. Extending this conversation even further will in the future involve conferences, online courses, retreats, and yatras to India.
Sutra Journal is a platform for diverse voices and the inaugural issue spans a wide range, from a first person account of sadhana to a survey of the integration of dharma shown in the writings of Fritjof Capra, to a scholarly investigation of mantra, to showing how Dharma relates to the scientific worldview and to the larger religious landscape, and more. There are articles pertaining to the intellectual, devotional and service aspects of Dharma, the latter being featured in interviews with practitioners bringing Seva, or service to the world.
Along with extending this conversation for the benefit of one’s personal development, Sutra Journal will extend this to initiatives which 'bring Dharma to the world' through trauma informed yoga workshops, retreats, documentaries, informative blogs and training programs.
Our consulting editors Dr. Jeffery D. Long, Dr. Sthaneshwar Timalsina and author of American Veda, Philip Goldberg bring an enormous amount of knowledge and experience to this venture. Our Seva Council members Dr. Stuart Sovatsky and Dr. Richard Miller bring an equally deep and holistic approach to tying together the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of the human condition, both towards healing and self-development.
The purpose of the Seva Council is to highlight and support individuals and organizations that are applying Dharmic teachings to systemic issues that plague the modern world like trauma, depression, dependency and abuse. We intend to organize retreats, workshops, yatras for vulnerable and underserved communities and train Yoga teachers to serve these communities. We hope to hold conferences towards establishing new standards in how Yoga is taught and certified.
Sutra Journal was created after the desire to effect positive change in the world we all share. Our ways of thinking and doing things, if we don’t change them, will lead us to ecological and social disaster. While this is true, we are now also at a moment of paradigm change.
The Dharmic worldview has much in common with the currently occurring shift in Western thinking, which has marginalized monotheism due to the rise of the non-dual view of modern science. Yoga is now here to stay and it brings in its wake the depth and richness of the Dharmic worldview. “Spiritual but not religious” is now an oft-heard phrase and it represents the rejection of exclusivist theism, scientific materialism, and the cynicism of post-modernist thinking.
More than 2000 years ago in India, the Chandogya Upanishad forwarded the non-dual view as “Tat Tvam Asi”, meaning ‘This is you’. This is just the same as what Carl Sagan said about the newly arisen view of self in the Western civilization: “We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself”. India and the West now see eye to eye.
Welcome to the party! We have lots to talk about…
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