Yoga In Kathmandu
Yoga In Kathmandu 
Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), humanist and social reformer, attended Calcutta University and later studied the Vedas, Upanishads, Sufism, the Bible, Sikhism and Buddhism with Sri Ramkrishna Paramhansa. His “Paper on Hinduism,” was read at the World Parliament on Religions in 1893. Vivekananda’s addresses at this congress emphasized the belief that no one religion is superior to another.
Human beings across time and cultures have confronted a hauntingly universal set of questions: Who am I, really? Am I just this body and mind, or something more? What is my purpose? Why do I suffer? These questions aren’t merely philosophical, they are deeply personal and existential.
We are conscious beings dropped into a vast universe without instruction manuals. In moments of stillness or crisis, the illusions of identity and certainty fall away, leaving us naked before questions we can’t ignore. Am I free to choose, or is my fate written? Whats the reason people suffer so unevenly? Why do I feel so alone even when surrounded by others?
Existentialism, especially in Western thought, frames this as the human condition: we are self-aware, yet vulnerable; seekers of meaning, yet cast into silence. This longing for clarity, belonging, and peace is not an accident, it’s a sign of our deeper nature trying to awaken.
Swami, trained in both Western education and ancient Indian philosophy, understood these dilemmas deeply. His response, rooted in Vedanta, was radical: You are not the body, not even the mind. You are the eternal, undying Spirit, the Atman. The body may die, but the soul is uncreated, unborn, and undying.
But what about suffering and inequality? Why are some born crippled, others wealthy? For Vivekananda, the law of karma and reincarnation explains this. Each soul carries impressions (vasanas) and tendencies born of actions in past lives. The body is not the soul’s prison, but its temporary instrument, chosen by the soul to express those tendencies. This is not fatalism, but freedom: you are responsible for your destiny across lifetimes.
And what of forgetting past lives? He explained that memory lies not in the surface mind, but in the depths of consciousness, like languages forgotten and remembered again. Through deep meditation, the ancient Rishis could recall these hidden impressions. Modern seekers can try the same.
He turned the existential quest on its head. Instead of despairing over meaninglessness, he saw these very questions as signs of spiritual readiness. The Hindu does not fear death, for the Self cannot be destroyed. The Gita declares: “Him the sword cannot pierce, him the fire cannot burn.”
He said, “Here I stand… If I shut my eyes and try to conceive my existence, what is the idea before me?” It is not merely the body—it is the “I,” the Spirit, radiant and free. Swami taught that we are each a “circle whose circumference is nowhere and whose center is in the body.” Death is simply the shifting of that center, not an end.
Through this lens, all existential dilemmas, identity, meaning, death, freedom, are not problems to solve, but illusions to outgrow. The soul is not bound by matter, and truth is not external but already within. The goal is not to seek God outside, but to awaken the God within.
In the end, Swami Vivekananda did not just answer existential questions, he invited the world to verify the answersthrough personal experience. Not blind belief, but direct realization. That was the power of his vision.
The “Ten Ox-Herding Pictures” (Japanese: Jūgyū zu / 十牛図), also known as the Ten Bulls, is a famous series of images and accompanying poems that illustrate the stages of a Zen practitioner’s journey toward enlightenment and return to the world with wisdom and compassion.
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870-1966) is an influential scholar of Japanese Buddhist thought and one of the first persons to introduce Buddhism to the West. He is perhaps best known for his description of Zen history and practice in Zen Bud-dhism. The existentialist Martin Heidegger, the psychologists Carl Jung and Erich Fromm, and the musician John Cage, all acknowledge D. T. Suzuki’s influence on their work and thought.
There is a profound meditation path inspired by the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, especially within Zen (Zazen) and Chan Buddhist traditions. While the Ten Ox-Herding sequence is more descriptive than prescriptive, Zen masters have derived meditative stages and methods aligned with the journey it illustrates.
Here’s how you can understand and practice meditation aligned with each stage, progressing day by day toward deeper self-realization and integration.
Technique: Contemplative journaling or analytical meditation (e.g., on impermanence, dissatisfaction, restlessness).
Objective: Recognize your suffering and your desire for something deeper.
Practice: Ask yourself:
“What am I truly seeking in life? And What feels missing?” Journal your honest answers without judgment.
Duration: 15–30 min sit
Instruction: Take your seat with calm and presence, with spine tall but relaxed. Gently close your eyes. Bring your attention inward. Begin with your breath, soft, natural. Feel a quiet longing. A gentle ache. What is it that you seek? Not the surface desires… but that deep, wordless call. Let silence answer. No need to grasp. Just listen.
Technique: Zazen (seated Zen meditation)/ Eg. Lotus/Half Lotus
Objective: No trying to change anything. Just notice patterns.
Practice: Breath in. Breath out. Thought arises. It passes. Watch your breath, thoughts, and emotions like footprints in the sand.
Duration: 15–30 min sit
Instruction: Sit comfortably, with spine tall but relaxed. Gently close your eyes. Begin in stillness. As you inhale and exhale, become the observer. Thoughts may arise, memories, images, sounds. Let them pass like footprints in snow. Your breath is a thread. Return to it gently. Over and over. Each return is a step forward.
Technique: Vipassana-style insight meditation or Koan practice. Koan example: “What is your original face before your parents were born?”
Objective: Try to recognize: “Who is watching?”
Practice: Direct experience of awareness itself. Sit in silence. Let thoughts come and go. Watch them like clouds.
Duration: 15–30 min sit
Instruction: Come to a stable and effortless seat. Gently close your eyes. Sit in awareness. Let thoughts come and go without pushing or pulling. Now ask: Who sees these thoughts? Who hears this voice within? Don’t answer, just turn attention inward, like a mirror turned to reflect its own surface. Be the watcher.
Technique: Focused concentration (Samatha) on the breath or a mantra.
Objective: Gain stability over thoughts and emotions. “Like holding a wild Ox with a rope, patience, firmness, nonviolence.”
Practice: When the mind wanders, gently return. Stay with a single-pointed focus. When distracted, return without frustration.
Duration: 30–45 min sit
Instruction: Ease into a posture of quiet dignity, with spine tall but relaxed. Gently close your eyes. Sit in awareness. Focus your attention on the breath or silently repeat a mantra, like So Hum. When the mind drifts, gently bring it back again and again. Stabilize attention gently, No struggle. No anger. The Ox is wild but it begins to feel your presence. Settle.
Technique: Longer sessions of deep meditation, alternating stillness and walking meditation.
Objective: Cultivating equanimity.
Practice: Mantra/Visualization, You may also visualize riding a calm Ox through a peaceful valley.
Duration: 20 Mins Walk slowly, syncing breath with steps. Then sit in stillness and feel the peaceful after-effect for 60 Mins
Instruction: Begin with walking meditation or gentle breathing. Notice how each breath becomes steadier. Each thought softer. The Ox now recognizes you, not as an enemy, but as its friend. Sit comfortably, with spine tall but relaxed. Gently close your eyes. Sit in awareness. Feel the Quiet. Let inner peace bloom.
Technique: Natural breath awareness without effort. Practice gratitude meditation.
Objective: Let the practice flow; meditate not to fix anything, but to be. Feel the presence of life.
Practice: Loving-Kindness (Metta Bhavana), Radiate compassion toward yourself, then others.
Duration: 60 Mins
Instruction: Settle into stillness with ease, with spine tall but relaxed. Gently close your eyes. Sit in awareness. As you breathe, imagine yourself riding the Ox gently along a quiet mountain path. There is no destination. No goal. Let the heart open and Ox carry you home, effortlessly. Let joy arise. No need to force it. Just the joy of return. Smile. You are coming home.
Technique: Shikantaza (“just sitting”) pure presence without goal.
Objective: State of non-duality. You are just awareness. The doer disappears.
Practice: No object. No breath focus. Just sit.
Duration: 60 Mins
Instruction: Find a relaxed, grounded posture, let thoughts arise and pass without clinging. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. Let go of techniques today. No object, breath. Just sit. Let thoughts rise and fall and stillness be. The Ox is gone. There is only this presence without effort. You are.
Technique: Continue Shikantaza or Open Awareness (Mahamudra/Dzogchen-like).
Objective: Dissolve all concepts of “self”, “enlightenment”, or “practice.” There is just this, an effortless flow.
Practice: Experience the spaciousness of mind. No center. No boundary. Just awareness being awareness.
Duration: As Long Possible.
Instruction: Just sit. Today, even the idea of self dissolves. Drop into the vast sky of awareness. No separation, identity. Just this boundless space. Sit as no one. Breathe as everything. Be.
Technique: Watch nature as it is, tree, breeze, sky. Feel yourself not separate. Rest in the truth: This is it.
Objective: No clinging, neither pushing. Just gentle being.
Practice: Walking meditation, mindfulness in daily life.
Duration: To Your Wish.
Instruction: Open your eyes or sit in nature. The world is not separate from you. Trees, clouds, sounds, each is your reflection. Rest in this quiet harmony. You have returned. Not as a seeker, but as presence itself. Everything is sacred. Move with the rhythm of the Tao/Nature.
Technique: Meditation in Action: Serving others, smiling to a stranger, listening deeply. You become a mirror: calm, grounded, compassionate.
Objective: Enlightenment is not escape, it is embodied presence in the world.
Practice: Go about your day in full awareness. Offer kindness to each person you meet. “Chop wood, carry water—every act is sacred.”
Duration: Wishful
Instruction: Today, your meditation is in life itself. As you walk, speak, act, stay awake. Let your hands be open and your smile be real. There is nothing to teach only to be. Every step, a blessing. Every act, a gift. You are the Ox and the world.
At Yoga in Kathmandu, we invite you to embark on a journey, not to become someone new, but to remember who you truly are. Truth is like the sun hidden behind clouds. It is always shining, radiant and eternal, but often obscured by the veils of ignorance, attachment, and dualistic thought.
Enlightenment isn’t about acquiring something external. It’s about waking up to what’s already here, already alive within you.
Because we are asleep entangled in illusion (maya), ego, and the ten thousand distractions of modern life. The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures remind us that the Ox, our true nature is always present. But the seeker must walk the path to see it, to tame it, and ultimately to dissolve into it.
Here in the sacred atmosphere of Nepal’s mountains and valleys, Yoga in Kathmandu offers the perfect setting for that inner work.
Swami Vivekananda might say in Zen language:
“You are already free, just forgot. Now sit still and remember.”
Welcome home to Yoga in Kathmandu.
