The Heart of the Yogini: The Yoginihrdaya, a Sanskrit Tantric Treatise

I fell in love with a Yogini statue at the Nelson Atkins museum in Kansas City. There are a few of them in the US. But they dont have much information about them. After alot of searching for information about them I found this book.This book is so well written and researched. Many books, even translations, about Eastern beliefs are skewed by western prejudices. They translate eastern non dualistic beliefs and practices with western dualist eyes. By doing so they loose the meaning and beauty of those beliefs.This book is obviously written by someone who has tried, with great respect and humility, to translate this ancient work in a way that is true to the culture it has come from.This book gives alot of historical context as well. Which is a huge help.It is also wonderful that it is on kindle. I will be reading and rereading this book for a long time to come.

I like this book. It is accurate , very well researched and scholarly with out being boring. Sanskrit terms are defined .I have paired this reading with Muktananda's Shiva Sutras, together a good balance

This is a seminal work of Shri Vidya and is an excellent translation with commentary of this highly important text.

A new classic on tantra

I'm ecstatic that this English translation of the text exists and is available to a general audience. The Yoginihrdaya is a work of central import to the Srividya tradition of Tantric Hinduism and discusses the mystical diagram (Sriyantra) of the goddess Tripurasundari; elucidating its centrality in the manifestation/resorption cycle of this enigmatic Tantric deity. The translation itself is a solid effort and, again, I'm thrilled to have a copy in English. However, the commentary running throughout leaves so much to be desired, thus the 3 star rating. It's as if the author only wanted to do a straight translation and decided at the last minute to (grudgingly) throw in a commentary. The commentary on the text is so lazy, superficial, and scant that it scarcely does anything to illuminate the concepts introduced. It is so lacking in any detail or explanation that I honestly wonder why the author even bothered to include it. Entire sections of the text are summed up within a sentence or two, complex concepts and instructions are glossed over in a frustratingly shorthanded lack of detail, and at several points in the text the author just comes out and says that he doesn't feel like explaining it in any more detail. I found myself very disappointed with the author's apparent lack of interest in illuminating the text, leaving many sections completely obscured. There is a far superior Sanskrit commentary on the text known as the Yoginihrdaya Dipika. However, to my knowledge, it has not yet been fully translated. So for now at least, we'll have to settle for this. Or learn classical Sanskrit.

Very rare text, really difficult to find anywhere else, thanks

I purchased it through Amazon in March2016 and read carefully with the two Sanskrit commentaries of Amrtananda and Bhaskararaya. It is a moderately good translation of a difficult text, however not free from confusion. It is not right to include Srividya under Kashmirian nondualist systems, as the author remarks, nor is the rendering of "sanketa" as "encounter" is correct which is due to following a misleading line in the commentary of Amrtananda which is not also clarified by Pt B B Dwivedi in his Hindi translation of the text with Dipika of Amrtananda. Actually here it means a "sign" or a symbol as rendered by Bhaskararaya in his Setubandha commentary. Since it is the only translation in English, those who do not know Sanskrit have to follow it. It is a commendable attemt notwithstanding its shortcomings since it gives an opportunity to the not-Sanskrit-knowing people to have a glimpse of an abstruse text of great spiritual importance.

Not good book।issues not taken seriously