The life and works of the mysterious Indian yogin, Saraha, who has inspired Buddhist practitioners for over a thousand years.
This is the first thorough overview of the life, works, and teachings of Saraha, “the Archer,” an elusive but influential 10th-century Indian Buddhist tantric adept who expressed his spiritual realization in mystic songs. Saraha’s poetic verses made the esoteric ideas and practices of Vajrayana accessible to a wide audience on the subcontinent and served as a basis for the exposition in Tibet of mahamudra, the great-seal meditation on the nature of mind that permeates every tradition of Buddhism on the plateau.
“After the Buddha himself, there is hardly a more important Indian figure among the legendary sources of the Tibetan meditative tradition than Saraha, the arrow maker, the radish eater, the father of mahāmudrā. And yet he remains among the most elusive. In this nonbiography, Roger Jackson . . . compensates by providing a vast treasury of any, and maybe all, relevant information. This includes an instructive survey of India and its contemplative religions, the origins of tantra, brief life stories, and an exhaustive list of literature attributed to Saraha. Finally, it is perhaps in Jackson’s profound analyses of some of Saraha’s lyrics that we come closest to sensing the real person.” —Sarah Harding, author of Niguma, Lady of Illusion
The life and works of the mysterious Indian yogin, Saraha, who has inspired Buddhist practitioners for over a thousand years.
This is the first thorough overview of the life, works, and teachings of Saraha, “the Archer,” an elusive but influential 10th-century Indian Buddhist tantric adept who expressed his spiritual realization in mystic songs. Saraha’s poetic verses made the esoteric ideas and practices of Vajrayana accessible to a wide audience on the subcontinent and served as a basis for the exposition in Tibet of mahamudra, the great-seal meditation on the nature of mind that permeates every tradition of Buddhism on the plateau.
Praise
“After the Buddha himself, there is hardly a more important Indian figure among the legendary sources of the Tibetan meditative tradition than Saraha, the arrow maker, the radish eater, the father of mahāmudrā. And yet he remains among the most elusive. In this nonbiography, Roger Jackson . . . compensates by providing a vast treasury of any, and maybe all, relevant information. This includes an instructive survey of India and its contemplative religions, the origins of tantra, brief life stories, and an exhaustive list of literature attributed to Saraha. Finally, it is perhaps in Jackson’s profound analyses of some of Saraha’s lyrics that we come closest to sensing the real person.” —Sarah Harding, author of Niguma, Lady of Illusion
