THE TANTRIC PHILOSOPHY OF ABHINAVA GUPTA
Tantra: The word can be used
for any systematic instruction; it is not used as the name of a single school
of philosophy or of yoga. However,
views and texts concerned with yoga and mystic philosophy outside the orthodox
Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga and their classifications of revelation which
distinguish sruti¾the Veda and the
Upanishads¾from smrti¾the Gita and other texts¾were, and are, commonly
called Tantric. Tantric texts
usually recognize the authority of the Upanishads, etc., but see a greater
authority in later revelations and personal yogic experience. Among the clusters of features
belonging to most if not all Tantric views are an emphasis on a feminine divine
being or principle, called the Goddess and Shakti, who secures a yoginÕs
enlightenment and transformation. Bhoga, Òenjoyment,Ó is
usually said to be as important a part of the goal of yogic practice as
ÒliberationÓ (mukti) from spiritual ignorance (brahmasaksatkara, according to
Hindus). Tantric psychology came
to be centered on a yogic or ÒsubtleÓ or occult body comprised of canals, nadi-s for prana and sakti, and centers or wheels,
cakra-s,
of occult consciousness and energy.
There are Buddhist and Jaina Tantric texts and views as well as
Hindu. Hindu Tantrism divides into
the Saivite and the Vaisnavite as well as into numerous subcategories of
guru-student-guru lineage as well as of philosophy and mystic practice.
Mudra: See xpacket, Paul
Muller-Ortega, The Triadic Heaert of Siva.
ÒSeal,Ó Ògesture.Ó
According to Abhinava, the Absolute, Shiva, expresses, or impresses like
a signet ring a seal in wax, the enlightenment of the individual on the
individual (in gesture or speech, mantra), in what he calls Sambhavi-mudra, the Òseal of the
Absolute.Ó
Sakti (pronounced
ÒshukÕteeÓ): ÒEnergy,Ó Òpower.Ó
According to Abhinava, the Divine Mother, the active and creative side
of Shiva.
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The
great Tantric master, Abhinava Gupta, reformulated the Saiva Siddhanta of the Kirana
Tantra and
other early Tantric texts (which import the dualism of Samkhya) into a monistic
spiritual philosophy of a Divine Creatrix or Shakti, creating a divine
individual (cf., AurobindoÕs notion of a Òpsychic beingÓ).
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Dimensions of Kashmiri Shaivism
(from ÒshivaÓ)
1.
mythology
2.
metaphysics
3.
ethics
4.
epistemology
5.
mystic
psychology
a.
chakras,
etc.
b.
aesthetic
experience