Interested in supporting Santosha Tantra's Art? Write to info@santoshatantra.com
© SantoshaTantra 2024. Images and writing on this site may not be used without permission of the artist.
I have stood alone, blazing My own trail. I have lived outside of the spiritual tradition. An outsider, not because they outcast Me, but because it was just My own inclination. I don't come from the conventional point of view or mind set. It hasn't been an ordinary life, it isn't ordinary art. I wasn't part of any tradition that I could draw on or be an apprentice to, so there wasn't a place or way for it to be understood.
Over the years, people who don't know Me probably wonder why so much of My art is self portraits or has Me in it. But I never relate personally to it. I don't have any self reference. Since I don't have any self reference, to Me it is just a picture that expresses something, has a transmission of something, which just happens to be me.
There is no conventional way to recognize it. I have a different point of view and I try to express what is Transcendental about life, because I do have understanding, and a relationship to that. The personality of the world didn't and couldn't create a room or place for Me or My work; but I have to allow that My art has a place here, Who I Am has a place here, and what I've written and given to others has a place here. I know the ordinary ego is not going to make a room for that, but for those who need it and are served by it, there has to be a room for it. I have to allow that this is what I've done and given.
-Santosha Tantra
Santosha Tantra is a Transcendental Artist and Spiritual Realizer whose life has been devoted to Enlightenment, love, and creative revelation. Following her own Enlightenment in 1985, she spent more than four decades working intimately with a small circle of students, helping them deepen in their journey toward freedom.
Santosha's teaching was never confined to formal meditation. It unfolded through ordinary life—in conversation, travel, nature, shared meals, creative collaboration, and the continual invitation to live as already happy, loving, and free. At times mysterious, playful, humorous, or intensely direct, her work always arose in love.
Art is inseparable from this life and teaching. Through vivid digital collages, Santosha expresses the freedom, color, and immediacy of her realized life. In her photography, she captures the play of light and the intimacy of truly seeing. Her short stories awaken the imagination of those who yearn to live with their hearts free, while her ecstatic poetry gives voice to the joy, intimacy, and freedom of her spiritual understanding. She also transforms her original poetry into music, using AI as a compositional medium through which her words can take on rhythm, atmosphere, and voice.
Fashion is another dimension of this expression: she uses color, pattern, and form to “wear the world,” creating a living invitation through which others may be attracted to her presence and the freedom she embodies.
Across every form—art, photography, fashion, stories, poetry, music, and the living relationships of her teaching—Santosha’s work returns to the same recognition: happiness, love, and the Divine are not distant goals to be attained, but the truth of life already present.
Santosha currently lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills and continues to make art. A small sampling of her life's work is showcased here.
“My art is My life, My life is My art”
© The Hawk Flies Free LLC. Images and writing on this site may not be used without permission of the artist.
Why do I say life is art? Because the beauty is evident; you just have to look. Art is aliveness. It generates the feeling of being seen, being able to look and feel. To live a life, to actually have a life, you have to see it, you have to be in it, you have to feel it. I think that the real art is life.
Unlike the chaotic chattering egoic mind, I don't have an internal anything to do with anything. So I don't have an idea, an internal image that somehow I own, it's My idea, I'm bringing it alive. Everything is to Me a circle of life, so everything in life is art. Everything that I express is that, is that relationship. And the relationship I have with everything is recognizing it as My own self. Not as My own 'personal' self - that thus having recognized it, I own it - but that thus having recognized it, I see everything as Consciousness, as God, whatever word you want to use, Bliss.
That's why there's joy in the creative act because it is that being in direct relationship, connection with everything, to the degree of intimacy that you know and recognize that it is all God, including your own form, including everything you see. So my process has never been a thoughtful or intentional one but rather a spontaneous recognition of everything, and I follow the attractions.
I have stood alone, blazing My own trail. I have lived outside of the spiritual tradition. An outsider, not because they outcast Me, but because it was just My own inclination. I don't come from the conventional point of view or mind set. It hasn't been an ordinary life, it isn't ordinary art. I wasn't part of any tradition that I could draw on or be an apprentice to, so there wasn't a place or way for it to be understood.
Over the years, people who don't know Me probably wonder why so much of My art is self portraits or has Me in it. But I never relate personally to it. I don't have any self reference. Since I don't have any self reference, to Me it is just a picture that expresses something, has a transmission of something, which just happens to be me.
There is no conventional way to recognize it. I have a different point of view and I try to express what is Transcendental about life, because I do have understanding, and a relationship to that. The personality of the world didn't and couldn't create a room or place for Me or My work; but I have to allow that My art has a place here, Who I Am has a place here, and what I've written and given to others has a place here. I know the ordinary ego is not going to make a room for that, but for those who need it and are served by it, there has to be a room for it. I have to allow that this is what I've done and given.
-Santosha Tantra
“My art is My life, My life is My art”
© The Hawk Flies Free LLC. Images and writing on this site may not be used without permission of the artist.