7: Katyayani Shakti Peeth: Receptivity
Oct 07, 2023
Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh, India
Radhe Radhe! Upon entering Vrindavan, these are the words you hear more than anything else. Vrindavan is located in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh. The town is famous for being the place Lord Krishna grew up in after being born a short distance away in Mathura. He ends up in Vrindavan as infant in classic turn of events that is the interminable battle of good against evil. As a young man he would dance all night long in a famous garden here with his beloved Radha. She is an incarnation of Laximi as the embodiment of unconditional devotional love and compassion.
Radhe Radhe is what people say here when they are happy. When they are helpless. Overwhelmed. When they feel blessed. After cheating death. When being grateful. This is how I hear it used in the course of one day here. There is something so soothing about invoking the Devi in this quality that is the transmission of sweet love through Radha. It is powerful...
6: Guhyeshwari Shakti Peeth: The Secret
Sep 29, 2023
Kathmandu, Nepal
Returning to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, for a week and being in one place is a much needed break from the road. Nepal’s history and beauty is a lot to absorb. There is a paradox hard to makes sense of. Just like Muktinath, there are several spiritual significant sites for both Buddhists and Sanatanis that I visit. The birthplace of the Buddha in Lumbini was a big highlight for me. It was rediscovered in 1895. Since then, it is slowly being excavated to reveal the many layers of this land’s ancient history across centuries. It is history that became hidden to us by Mother Nature’s elements but remains preserved deep in the earth. Then there are the vast national parks aside from the Himalayan range that are home to all kinds of wildlife and nature. These parks are not like the protected parks we take for granted in the West. People have been living in their villages within these wild spaces for centuries harmoniously. They lived...
5: Gandaki Shakti Peeth: Mystery
Sep 13, 2023
Muktinath, Nepal
Nestled before me in the Himalayas is Gandaki Shakti Peeth in Muktinath, Nepal. It is so close and without the wings of a bird, so far. The trip there will be a lot like the one that got me here. Long. It is time to say farewell to Tibet and take a 13 hour road trip from Darchen to Gyirong before crossing into Nepal at Rasuwagadhi. It is a 2000m descent. Scarcity of the desert terrain with its hints of greenery, dry air, tapestry of cotton candy like clouds woven into a hypnotic blue sky quickly disappears. The image of vastness that is the Tibetan plateau shifts dramatically as we drop into a valley carved out by the Trishuli river. I begin to comprehend the descent once the road no longer disappears into the horizon, but blindly ends into the curvy contours of this mountain. The sparseness is replaced with lush tropical greenery blanketing sheer stone cliffs. How life comes to exist through the unforgiving nature of rock is a great mystery to...
4: Dakshayani Shakti Peeth: Humility
Jul 11, 2023
The journey to Dakshayani Shakti Peeth is not easy. Dakshayani, meaning daughter of Daksha, feels like the right place to begin. It is also in one of the holiest places on earth. Located along the banks of Lake Manasarovar in the southeastern part of Tibet, technically Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It is at the edge of the Himalayas and very close to the borders of India and Nepal. All the money in the world would not have made it easier to get here. Money may not be the rate limiting factor we believe it to be. I imagine, this is the first of many lessons awaiting me this year. It is immediately clear that embarking on this Shakti Pilgrimage is not just rocking up to a bunch of temples. The trip begins with discovering what I am made of from within, rather than any taste of shakti prevailing from the outside.
Travel to Tibet post-Covid is just starting to come back. Routes through Nepal or India are not options yet, leaving me to go through mainland China....
3: Sati & Creationā€™s First Love Story
Jul 11, 2023
Creation has always been a process of trial and error starting from the big bang or what the Vedas teach as the utterance of the bija (seed) sound of creation, OM. Like all trial and error processes, we are still evolving through the parts that do not work so well for the whole. These are parts we disown and exclude despite being part of us. Sanatana Dharma’s creation stories begin with its own Holy Trinity, very similar to Christianity’s Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the forms of Lords Bhrama, Vishnu and Shiva . They are not a polytheistic version of “GOD,” as much as the agents of God’s conscious (Atman or Brahman).
Lord Brahma, the father of creation, and Lord Vishnu, the son in charge of its preservation, were having struggles in the early days of making the universe. There were conflicts, divisions and worst of all, beings created that would not procreate. They knew they needed the help of Lord Shiva. Shiva, who as the Holy Spirit was...
2: Hinduism, Sanatana Dharma & Truth
Jul 10, 2023
I grew up in a Hindu household in the United States. The first child to freshly minted immigrants from India. My father, in his own way, is a Bhakta. He has a devotional and ritualistic practice of prayer to God that is part of his everyday routine ever since I can remember. You will never catch him reading spiritual texts. My mother, on the other hand is a Jnani. She is all about obtaining knowledge and learning through texts. Idol worship is not her thing. They are both Hindus, practicing Hinduism. They agree that Hinduism is not a religion, but a way of life. Their personal practices could not be more different and they are like most Hindus I know. They tend to their spiritual needs in the way that best suits their nature (pakriti). No one is persecuted for this.
To this day, I find Hinduism incredibly confusing. It is not a philosophy of one person’s making. There is no one text to learn from. While its knowledge persists through time, time...
1: The Inspiration
Apr 30, 2023
I feel impotent in my life. It has been this way ever since I can remember. How I think about it has changed with a tremendous amount of effort. A journey of healing that remains in progress. Today, I would say that I struggle with "agency." The feeling of power in my actions to produce a particular outcome in my life. This is different from control over my life, which is a bit of a myth. Control over life belongs to a realm of greater forces beyond any human. Rightfully so. Agency is a capacity. It is first nurtured in us as children when our yeses and noes are heard and respected. In time we deepen it like any skill we cultivate. Agency is the capacity to meet what shows up in my life and look it straight in the eye. Agency and embodied empowerment go hand in hand.
As a woman, a "colored" woman, more precisely a "wheat-ish" woman, I know the experience of disempowerment. It feels imposed on me. I feel it as an absence of my on intrinsic experience of...
Author
Ruchi Puri, MD
Beā€¢ology Founder
Ruchi is an Ob/Gyn specializing in Holistic Women's Health. She is currently traveling through South Asia on a pilgrimage to the 51 Shakti Peeths exploring the wisdom of the sacred feminine.
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Recent Posts
7: Katyayani Shakti Peeth: Receptivity
Oct 07, 2023
6: Guhyeshwari Shakti Peeth: The Secret
Sep 29, 2023
5: Gandaki Shakti Peeth: Mystery
Sep 13, 2023
