No Retreat

This compassionate and wise book takes readers by the hand and points us toward our inevitable destination, the one true refuge in the Heart. The devotional and radiant poems of No Retreat call out in the intimate voices of prayer, determination, wonder, lament, praise, and unstoppable longing. Written during solo spiritual retreats and periods of the eruption of intense spiritual feeling, the poems report in powerfully raw and honest language about our shared human efforts to wake up and discover more of who we are.


Sarasvati—a devoted practitioner and teacher of Trika Shaivism—brings everything to the page, including doubt. “I have learned I need help,” she writes, “and I practice to remember that.” Help comes in the form of the Teacher she regards as both assassin and friend. Throughout, a spirit of wry self-reflection and playfulness prevails.