Gorakhnath

But I go through that in a lot of detail, trying to identify these different siddhas whom he names.

And some of them are well-known Nath yogis like Goraksha and Matsyendra, of course.

But then a lot of them are very obscure.

The most significant in terms of trying to understand where he came from is this Allama Prabhu, who becomes kind of one of the main saints of the Veerashaiva tradition from the Deccan region.

He just wants to, like, help devotees.

The siddhas like Matsyendranath, Gorakshanath, Abhinavagupta, and Vivekananda, they're like bodhisattvas.

They stick around as siddhas in order to teach others.

That's their play.

If I can, by my death, give this guy something, a sincere devotee, then I might as well do it." It's like that Buddha story of the Buddha sacrificing himself for the cubs of the tiger.

So Shankara goes in the middle of the night to the ritual site, and right as he's about to be sacrificed, his disciple, Shankara's disciple, Padmapada, appears in the form of Narasingha and kills the Aghori.

And in the other version of the story, the um- Gorakshanatha Sangraha, the Gorakshanatha Siddhanta Sangraha.

The story is told in a different way.

For Allama, body is not important.

There is an encounter between Gorakhnath and Allama, and Gorakhnath stands for Vajrakaya, diamond body.

And, uh, in the narrative, what happens is both of them meet in a narrative, both of them meet and, uh, uh, Gorakhnath challenges him to swing the sword.

When Allama swings the s- sword, uh, you know, nothing happens to, um, Gorakhnath's body.

Then Allama, in return, challenges Gorakhnath to, to swing, uh, the, the sword But the sword simply passes through the body of Allama.

So for Allama, according to Nagaraj, body is a fragile thing.

What matters is the spirit.