I shall begin this week’s commentary by describing an insight I had after our second class. It dawned on me that my approach to the readings had been in error.
For the past three decades, I have pursued a private study of Oriental and Occidental mystical paths, with the purpose of developing a personal path for myself. My modus operandi has been to survey through a lens of heartfelt interest and critical thinking the texts, images, myths and methodologies of each path I studied, in order to glean for myself the elements that would best contribute to the “rational mysticism” that has become my own personal path.[1] With this same approach, I plunged into last week’s readings.
However, upon reflecting after class, I came to understand that as an academic student of religion I am no longer in the mode of truth seeker. I am now a knowledge seeker. Therefore, my automatic questioning—“Yes, but does this work?” no longer pertains. My new role is that of a cultural anthropologist focusing on religious culture. My aim now is not to critique the religious cultures I study, but simply to learn about them—their history, tenets, relationships, etc.—as objectively as possible.
Your essay on Shakta mentions four approaches to the study of Shakta traditions: 1) historical survey, 2) thematic or contextual study, 3) detailed studies of specific goddesses and, 4) textual translation and analysis. Based on the course syllabus, it appears that we will cover every one of these approaches in this colloquium. I must admit that I am least interested in historical survey, which is the chief focus of Roots of Tantra. Perhaps that is why my favorite essay thus far has been Muller-Ortega’s Becoming Bhairava, which falls more into the category of thematic study (i.e., the teaching itself and its implications).
I personally find Kashmiri Shaivism, in general, and Abhinavagupta, in particular, to be the most brilliant of the Tantric sources of which I am aware. That reveals my own leaning toward Zen and Dzogchen, with which Abhinavagupta’s Tantric-yogic exposition of the nondual consciousness resonates. In Abhinavagupta’s interpretation, “Bhairava comes to mean the unencompassable and exquisitely blissful light of consciousness that is to be discovered as the practitioner’s true inner identity.”
We also run into the ubiquitous paradox, in which Bhairava is seen at once the supreme consciousness and the naked beggar, “both anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic or as both sakala (the composite form of the personified deity) and nishkala (the transcendent form of nondual consciousness).”
I found it interesting from the viewpoint of modern science that Abhinavagupta, writing in the tenth century c.e., describes reality as composed of an “infinitely complex vibratory web,” and he says elsewhere that the apparently solid appearances of physical objects are understood as “complex interference patterns that arise in the intermerging cross whirl of energies.” It would take another two pages to explain David Bohm’s holographic model of matter (based, like a holograph, on complex interference patterns), but my point is that a modern physicist has also postulated this view.
I read the notes about the contributors and was interested to learn that Muller-Ortega has written a history and theology of the Siddha Yoga lineage. The late Swami Muktananda of that lineage was himself inspired by Kashmiri Shaivism and I have read his book on the subject, Secret of the Siddhas.
I found it satisfying to my raw-silk Zen heart that Abhinavagupta reevaluates the place of ritual, stating that the direct absorption in the Heart fulfills the purpose of any ritual. “Indeed, the entrance into the Heart constitutes initiation, even if the actual ritual of initiation has not been performed.” Moreover, the Heart-awake adept understands the essence of all rituals “even if he does not know their specific rules.” Abhinavagupta explains, “with respect to the Ultimate, which is only consciousness, all other things are extraneous.” Muller-Ortega goes on to say that these statements indicate a move toward “transcendence of the need for elaborate ritual.” Abhinavagupta focuses on the idea of appropriation, making the deity into oneself. Thus for him, the meaning of ritual is in the process of gathering in the ritual’s outer components into one’s own identity as the Heart. “Ritual serves as a context within which the vira will eventually attain the advanced form of meditative realization known as the extrovertive samadhi (unmilana samadhi).” Interestingly, Ramana Maharshi, the famous advaitin, spoke of this same extroverted samadhi, which he called sahaj samadhi, to contrast it with the introverted (nirvakalpa) samadhi.
I believe that the second phrase of the mahamantra of the Prajnaparamita Sutra (gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha) that is, “gone beyond the beyond” or “gone beyond going beyond,” refers to this transition from introverted to extroverted (or complete and all-inclusive) samadhi.
Dennis Hudson’s essay Early Evidence of the Pancaratra Agama was one of the most unreadable works I have ever waded through. I did manage to learn a few tidbits. For example, the Indians see the dark spots on the moon as a hare, as do the Chinese.
I found it interesting in Linda Gupta’s essay, Tantric Incantation in the Devi Purana that the editors chose not to include the thirty-two bija mantras with the text of the Padmala Mantra Vidya. Her choice of words, “… the exceedingly powerful thirty-two germ-syllables have been deliberately excluded by the editor…” makes me wonder about that notion that anything is a proper subject for study by the modern academy.
At one point in the Devi Purana, it asserts that the Padmala Matra Vidya “is a mahavidya that guarantees success in all actions.” It touts that its power is unique because it contains “the essence of all the texts and scriptures disclosed by Shiva in the mulatantra.” I wonder what happens when someone chants a mantric formula several thousand times—say the seed-syllable for warding off weapons—and then, on the way home, drives a thorn right through his sandal deep into the sole of his foot. Does he go into battle with the same confidence as before the mishap? If the mantra cannot guard against a thorn, can it protect from slings and arrows? With this question, it may seem that I have shifted from my new stance (refer to first paragraph) as an objective cultural anthropologist, studying (not questioning) the religious beliefs of a foreign culture. Nevertheless, indeed, I ask this question as an anthropologist: Even in ancient, pre-scientific cultures, human beings have always been keen observers of events and capable of reasoning. So how is it possible that such guarantees of success in all actions held up to scrutiny?
[1] I even planned to write a book on the subject, but John Horgan, author of The End of Science, has beaten me to it with his just-published book, Rational Mysticism.
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