Two old books, rewritten in plain English

Often dated to the later first millennium, from the Kashmir Shaiva stream of Indian contemplative writing. It is short. It is written as a conversation in which one speaker answers the other with a list of methods: breath, space, sound, the gap between two thoughts. Those methods are usually numbered as one hundred and twelve dharanas. Dharana here simply means a way of placing attention. People have used these instructions for a long time. Twentieth-century translations (among them Jaideva Singh) made the list widely available in English. This desk rewrites each method as an ordinary instruction. The older line sits underneath, in smaller type.

The Yoga Vasishta is a long philosophical poem, told as a conversation between the sage Vasishta and the young Rama. The Sara, the “essence,” is a later digest of that huge work into short chapters on mind, the world, and what you are looking from. The verses are brief. They were meant to be read and then set down, not collected as a system. This desk keeps that shape: one verse at a time, plain English first, the older line underneath. If a verse stays with you, you can keep it tomorrow. If it does not, the next one comes.