In this episode, Dr. Robert Svoboda explores Shabara Tantra as a radical, devotion-based practice.

Now, many of you may never have heard this word Shabara. Shabara is a very interesting Sanskrit word that literally means bridled. Brindle means kind of a tawny color, but with streaks of other color going through it. And why the color part is important is because, of course of the word varna, which literally means color, but is used and in particular was used in the past to indicate a classification of society.

So there was this organized part of society, each of which had a different color associated with it, but there were other people outside of society, like tribal people, for example, who were totally outside of society, and they were spoken of as being shabara as not having one specific color, not fitting in to the parameters that the organized society insisted on now this concept of Shabara has been around for a long time. For example, in the Ramayana, as Rama is moving through the forest, there is a great devotee of Rama whose name is Shabadi, so she may, that means the tribal lady.

She’s an, elderly woman who’s been focusing on Rama for many years. And when Rama comes to the ashram where she is living. Rama takes food from her, takes Budda, takes jujubes from her that she has tasted to make sure that they are sweet. Now, normally, of course, in anywhere, but especially in India, you would never give someone food that you would taste it already. But Rama knew that her devotion was pure, and that’s why he accepted those fruits from her and ate them with great satisfaction.

So the Shabara Tantra is something that was developed by the nine knots and developed because the knots, the nine knots are non-sectarian. They don’t care about the varna or nonna. They are only interested in people who were willing to do sadana. Who are willing to be focused on reality and who want to move forward with their spirituality. So the thing about Shabara tantra that is different or Shabara mantras is that they are not necessarily in Sanskrit. They very commonly are in local languages.

Vernaculars and often mantras and Sanskrit either don’t have a specific meaning that’s easy to see from them. Or the meaning may be very Uncertain according to how you want to use the mantra. The Shabara mantras often are very clear what the meaning is the effect of the mantra has been created by whoever it is who that has given the mantra to you. So the knot sampradaya is very much a Guru Shishya Sampradaya. The focus of the devotion of the disciple for the guru is immense in the knot sampradaya, the knot sect.

So when a guru gives you a Shabara mantra, the important thing is that you take that on faith and you recite it, and you do what you’re told to do with it, and it will give you the result. Now, although our Guru was himself a Brahman, he would periodically, according to his whim, give people mantras and at least once a Brahman in Bombay who said, ” but Guruji, this, this is not proper Sanskrit.” And, guru Mar said to him.

Whatever I give you is a mantra. You recite it as I tell you, and you’ll get the result. If you don’t have any faith, do whatever you please, but if you want the result, do as I tell you. So the Shabara tantra is a different kind of tantra than the standard Tantras, where you have all kinds of fancy Sanskrit, monts and all kinds of fancy ways of doing things. It’s much more direct. It’s much more based on receiving it from a guru, and it’s meant for everybody.

There is no limitation as to, who your parents were, or what kind of level in society you come from it’s meant for the people who are sincere and who want to make sincere progress.