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“All religions are the same in essence. They differ only in form.”
“Choose any path. Walk it sincerely. You will reach the same destination.”
“Yoga means union — union with the Self, with all beings, with the Source.”
“To know that, and to live from that, is the goal of yoga.”
“Easeful, peaceful, useful — that is the goal of life.”
“Easy on the body. Peaceful in the mind. Useful in service.”
“This trinity is the practice.”
“You cannot pour from an empty vessel.”
“Take care of yourself first. Then you can serve.”
“This is not selfish. This is wise.”
“Selfishness is taking without giving back.”
“Self-care is filling the well so it has water to share.”
“The yoga sutras of Patanjali are the eight-fold path.”
“Each limb supports the next. Skip none.”
“The first two limbs — yama and niyama — are the foundation.”
“Without ethical foundation, no yoga is possible.”
“Asana is what most people think of as yoga today.”
“It is the third limb. Important, but not the whole.”
“Truth is one. Paths are many.”
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