SRINGARA RASA
October—the long month of cooling temperatures and fading daylight in the Northern Hemisphere—marks our final month of working with the Rasas.
We have saved Love (Sringara) for last, giving us all 31 days to savor it together.
While Sringara is often defined as love, its depth as an emotion encompasses devotion, longing, and union. It is through Sringara we find wholeness in our loving connection with the Divine and one another. Our suffering from disconnection, separation, and loneliness transforms as we delve into our heart and the power of Sringara.
Throughout this month, we will explore love not only as a feeling, but as a way of seeing and meeting the world—with tenderness, reverence, and an openness to belonging. Each practice invites us to notice what draws us closer, what awakens the heart, and how even longing can become a path toward deeper connection.
What draws us closer may be a beloved person, a place where we feel at home, a prayer or practice that returns us to ourselves, or a moment of beauty that quiets the mind and opens the senses. Sometimes closeness grows through simple acts of attention: listening without rushing, offering care without being asked, allowing ourselves to be known, or staying present when distance would be easier. Sringara asks us to recognize these movements of the heart and to follow them with courage. In doing so, we discover that love is not only the bond we feel, but also the attention we give—a steady willingness to cross the space between self and other and meet what is there with tenderness.
As our practice focuses on awakening the heart, we are drawn to listening to its wisdom and messages. The sense of longing towards deeper connections becomes an awakening to what we value, where we feel separation and what we wish to move towards. If we remain present to longing, without immediate grasping, withdrawing or demanding it can deepen our attention and soften us into vulnerability. We become more willing to reach out, to listen, to pray, create or speak honestly about what matters to us. Longing becomes an invitation that carries us beyond self-protection and toward a conscious relation with ourselves, others and the Divine.
Sringara is the bridge from suffering to the joy of wholeness. Crossing the bridge takes steady practice, courage, a willingness to be vulnerable, and fearlessness. It asks us to remain open when the heart feels tender, to stay present to longing without rushing to fill it, and to risk meeting ourselves and others with honesty. Each time we listen deeply, offer care, receive love without resistance, or allow grief to reveal what matters, we take another step across that bridge. The movement is rarely direct; we may pause, retreat, or lose sight of the other shore. Yet the practice of returning—again and again—to compassion, attention, and trust gradually transforms separation into relationship. In this way, wholeness is not a distant destination but an experience that begins whenever we choose connection over withdrawal and let love guide the next step.