Swami Satchidananda
Indian-born Integral Yoga master and founder of the Integral Yoga Institutes (1966) and Yogaville (1979) — and the man who, on August 15, 1969, opened the Woodstock Festival with a brief invocation that introduced yoga and Eastern spirituality to a generation of Western seekers in a single televised moment. Born C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder in 1914 in Tamil Nadu, he took monastic ordination as a swami of the Saraswati order under Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh in 1949 and was sent to teach in Sri Lanka, then to America in 1966 at the invitation of artist Peter Max. From there he built a worldwide network of yoga centers, an interfaith retreat at Yogaville (Buckingham, Virginia) crowned by the Light Of Truth Universal Shrine (LOTUS) honoring all faiths, and authored canonical commentaries on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita. He died in 2002. His Integral Yoga synthesizes Hatha, Raja, Karma, Bhakti, and Jnana yogas into one unified spiritual life-practice.
quotes in library
Quotes by Swami Satchidananda
109 quotes“But it is fully alive on the inside.”
“If a word fails any of those three tests, do not speak it.”
“This single discipline transforms relationships.”
“Hatha yoga is the gateway, not the destination.”
“Through the body, you reach the mind. Through the mind, you reach the soul.”
“Through the soul, you reach the Self.”
“Through the Self, you are home.”
“Service is the highest yoga.”
“Karma yoga is the discipline of acting without attachment to results.”
“You do your best. Then you let go.”
“This is not laziness. This is wisdom.”
“You retain the freedom of full engagement, without the burden of attachment.”
“This is karma yoga.”
“You don't have to wait for ideal conditions to begin.”
“This very moment is the golden present.”
“Use it. Be in it. Receive it as the gift it is.”
“Tomorrow may not come. Yesterday is gone. Today is your only certainty.”
“Spend today wisely.”
“In every action, ask: is this loving?”
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