A Meditation on Expanded Awareness from Śaiva-Śākta Tradition

Jun 19

By Gavin Flood

Contemplative traditions focused on Śiva and the Goddess developed during the medieval or post-Gupta period in Kashmir, although not limited to that region. In this short paper[1] I will firstly describe textual accounts of a kind of meditation in those traditions and secondly draw out an implicit understanding or model of expanded awareness that the texts present and its relevance to embodied philosophy.

Most tantric texts of the Śaiva corpus are concerned with procedures of daily and occasional rituals along with rites for a desired end[2] but some are concerned with meditation (dhyānam, bhāvanā), in particular the visualization of deities or more precisely the recitation of the visualization text, such as the root text of the Trika, the Mālinīvijayottara-tantra, and some texts contain descriptions of meditation practices without visualization with a focus on the spontaneous expansion of consciousness or awakening in an instant, such as the Vijñānabhairava-tantra. It is in the more esoteric cults that we find the idea of meditation as expanded awareness, a tradition mostly identified with Goddess or Śākta forms of religion. Indeed, as Alexis Sanderson has established through many years of inquiry based on manuscript sources, these Goddess traditions are conceptualized as the heart of non-dualist Śaivism. In particular, the Krama or ‘gradation’ system teaches the expansion of consciousness as the deeper meaning of scriptural revelation. This Śaiva-Śākta tradition has scriptural authority in revealed texts and its vision is articulated in the philosophical discourse of the Śaiva-Śākta philosophers, Abhinavagupta and Kṣemarāja. As Sanderson observes, there is a striking parallelism between this Krama tradition of consciousness as unbounded, innate freedom and the Great Perfection (rDzogs chen) of rNying ma pa Buddhism with its emphasis on enlightenment by direct experience of the great primordial purity (gzhi ka dag chen po)[3]. It is this Śaiva-Śākta idea of meditation as the realization of this innate purity of awareness which is also an expanded awareness that I wish to examine here.

There are various sources for understanding meditation as focusing on consciousness. We have, for example, the root text of the Trika cult, the Mālinīvijayottara-tantra, which sees consciousness as a stream of awareness (cintā)[4] and the Netra-tantra in its eighth chapter describes the identification of the yogi with the absolute state of Śiva without mediation, by which the Yogi becomes ageless and deathless:[5] knowing that “I am Śiva, I am without second” (Netra-tantra 8.18: śivo›ham advitīyo›haṃ), which frees the practitioner from the cycle of becoming.[6] This idea of the realization of an expanded awareness identified with the supreme reality of Śiva is also found in the Śaiva meditation text, the Vijñānabhairava-tantra. It describes several meditation practices (called dhāraṇam, support) that develop a condition of what we might call expanded awareness. Yet these ‘supports’ are to induce the realization that consciousness has no support: the text redefines meditation (dhyānam) not as visualization of a deity with body, eyes, mouth and so on, but as the mind abiding within itself without any support. For example, the text states: “Making the mind [go into] external space, abandoning constriction, which is all pervading, empty, without support, and eternal, he should enter that which is completely full” (Vijñānabhairava 128: nitye nirāśraye śūnye vyāpake kalanojjhite / bāhyākāśe manaḥ kṛtvā nirākāśaṃ samāviśet); and “For [true] meditation is the intellect unmoving, without form, without support; [true] meditation is not the imagination of a body with eyes, face, hands and so on” (Vijñānabhairava 146: dhyānaṃ hi niścalā buddhir nirākārā nirāśrayā / na tu dhyānaṃ śarīrākṣimukhahastādikalpanā). The terms translated as ‘meditation,’ namely dhyāna and bhāvanā, have the implication of visualization in a tantric context. Third person singular optative verbs (‘s/he should visualize’) are common in these texts (dhyāyet, cintayet, vikalpayet, bhavet), so the notion of meditation without visualization is not common. The Vijñānabhairava-tantra describes various methods of meditation conducive to the realization of an expanded awareness, such as focusing on the body as empty and realizing that there is no meditation object,[7] meditating on a space inside a pot with the eyes open,[8] gazing upon an empty landscape,[9] gazing into a well,[10] and gazing at a space containing rays from the sun.[11]

The Sky of Consciousness in the Krama

But it is with the Krama system that we find an emphasis on the expansion of consciousness as a kind of non-dual awareness, often referred to as the ‘sky of consciousness’ (cidvyoma, cidgaganam). The Krama was a Śākta tradition, also known by the names Mahānaya, Mahārtha, Devīnaya, and Kālikula,[12] that seems to have its origins in Uḍḍiyāna, a kingdom to the north-west of Kashmir; a cremation ground ascetic tradition perhaps originating in a famous cremation ground in Uḍḍiyāna, Karavīra, prior to its transposition to Kashmir, that we know about through accounts of Tibetan and Chinese monks who visited the region.[13] It is the site of one of the four Śākta centres of pilgrimage or pīṭha.[14] The tradition has a scriptural revelation with two texts being revered, namely the Kālīkulapañcaśataka and the Kālīkulakramasadbhāva, dated prior to the Kashmirian philosopher Abhinavagupta (c. 975-1050 AD), and there are later post-scriptural texts that summarize the system such as the Mahānayaprakāśa.[15] As Sanderson has described, there is a substantial post-scriptural Krama literature, with three texts bearing the name Mahānayaprakāśa, one of which published in Trivandrum offers a linguistically sophisticated summary of the Krama system that culminates in consciousness devouring itself (alaṃgrāsaḥ, haṭhapākaḥ) and this is the deepest truth of the Śaiva corpus, the Goddess being the inner essence of even Śiva such that he cannot perceive this because it cannot be objectified.[16] The Goddess is higher than Śiva and more subtle. Sanderson translates the text in a passage worth citing as follows:

(104–5b) Maheśvara’s repose within himself is the highest state of self awareness. But by the finest of distinctions there shines a state even higher than that. This is the Goddess-ground, in which even the Lord cannot see his way. (105c–106) Being and non-being are grounded in the light of all manifestation, and that is grounded in the ecstasy of consciousness void of all dependence, which in turn comes to rest spontaneously in the limit of the self-groundedness of that all-encompassing [light], where the impressions of the influences left in consciousness by awareness of degree and the like are completely absent. (107–109) What we mean by ‘the Goddess’ is that untranscendable ground that remains when it has devoured even the subtlest traces of the impressions of these influences, positive, negative and both, that persist even within the state of the self-groundedness of that all-encompassing light. This path of [meditating on the cycles of] the deities [of cognition] is precisely the path of the Goddess [so defined]. It derives from that abyss in which all imprints are obliterated. (110) The nature of the Supreme Lord [Śiva] is the self-groundedness that devours awareness [of degree and the like]. We define the nature of the Goddess to be the point in which that itself comes to rest. (Mahānayaprakāśa (Triv.) 3. 94–111. 3.104–111: maheśasyātmaviśrāntiḥ parāhaṃtātmikā hi yā | tasyā api parāvasthā bhāti sūkṣmaprabhedataḥ | 105 tad devīdhāma yatrāsau kāṃdiśīko vibhur bhavet | bhāvābhāvau prakāśe’ntaḥ pratiṣṭhām adhigacchataḥ | 106 sa cāpi sakalāpekṣāśūnyāyāṃ ciccamatkṛtau | tāratamyādikalanāvāsanāvedhadūrage | 107 paraviśrāntiparyante sāpi viśrāmyati svataḥ | paraprakāśaviśrāntidaśāyām api ye sthitāḥ | 108 vāsanāvedhasaṃskārā bhāvābhāvobhayātmakāḥ | *antas tān grasanīkṛtya (conj. : atas tām asanīkṛya Ed.) yā viśrāntir anuttarā | 109 sā devī kathyate tasyā nayo ’sau devatānayaḥ| *yatrāva.te (em. : yatrāpaṭe) *parikṣīṇo (Ed. : parikṣīṇā Cod.) *viṭaṅko (em. [cf. here 1.1d and 3.82a (avaṭāṭaṅka-), and commentary introducing Bhāvopahārastotra v 1: niruttara–nirniketanāvaṭaviṭaṅka-]: ’pi ṭaṅko Ed.) ’sau nayas tataḥ| 110 yā kālagrāsaviśrāntis tad rūpaṃ parameśituḥ | yā tadviśrāntiviśrāntis tad devīrūpam iṣyate.)[17]

This passage illustrates the way in which the tradition understood itself as transcending the lower strata of the tradition and how the grounding of all manifestation is the light of consciousness that the tradition identifies in theistic terms as the Goddess. The Krama regarded itself as the culmination of a graded revelation beginning with the Śaiva scriptures, then moving up to the Śākta revelation and even transcending this to a sudden enlightenment somewhat akin to the rDzogs chen that locates itself at the summit of a hierarchy of revelation, from Atiyoga teachings to the Anuyogatantras, Yogatantras and so on to the Mahāyāna sūtras.[18] But as Sanderson observes, neither the Krama nor the rDzogs chen cut themselves off from those lower levels, which are necessary for their existence, even in terms of mundane issue such as the necessity of patronage.[19] The Krama doctrinally emphasizes a higher teaching that while being at the summit of a hierarchy of revelation, simultaneously undermines that hierarchy through the equalizing claim of the unity of the field of consciousness.

Sanderson notes that, unlike the Śaiva traditions, the Krama teaches no rituals, no initiation, no hand gestures (mudrā), no visualizing meditation (dhyānam), and its teaching conveyed by the Goddess Bhairavī to her spouse Bhairava, thereby inverting the normal gender relations.[20] In negating usual ritual and meditative practices, the Krama lays stress upon the state of liberation as light identified with consciousness and it is the Goddess who teaches this to Bhairava who, as we see in the above passage, is himself ignorant of this teaching. In the earlier Krama scripture, the Kālīkulapañcaśataka, she teaches to Bhairava a meditation on her nature as pure light which is consciousness:

7.42cd-43. I will tell [you] about the secret, supreme system relating to the Goddess. One should meditate the supreme sun, whose nature is light, the supreme expansive one, the circle of pure consciousness connected to limited consciousness, having the appearance of ten million moons.

(kathayāmi rahasyaṃ ca kālikākramam uttamam || 7-42 || cintayet paramādityaṃ [k, kh, g: -ditya] dhāmarūpaṃ paraṃ vibhum |ciccakracetanāyuktaṃ candrakoṭyavabhāsakam [g: candrakoṭyaṃ-].)

Here we have a succinct statement of meditation as expanded awareness. The circle of absolute consciousness (citcakra-) is expansive (vibhum) and identified with light but becomes manifested as limited, individualized consciousness (cetanā). The terms cit, for absolute consciousness, and cetanā, for individualized consciousness, are used in Kṣemarāja’s summary of the recognition school where the sentient being (cetanaḥ, he uses the masculine here) has contracted consciousness as its nature: “A sentient being (cetanaḥ) whose nature is contracted consciousness (citisaṃkocātmā) has the universe contracted” (Pratyabhijñāhṛdaya sūtra 4: citisaṃkocātmā cetano ‘pi saṃkucitaviśvamayaḥ).

This expanded consciousness that the practitioner or Sādhaka achieves is the sky of consciousness identified with the Goddess. The Kālīkulapañcaśataka goes on:

7.48. He who suddenly finds [that level of tranquilized consciousness identified with the Goddess] becomes a mover in the sky of consciousness. [So] the entire immeasurable universe is consumed again by the play [of the Goddess]. 7.49. There is no one equal on the earth to that Sādhaka. He stands supreme in the three worlds in his power, like the Lord. 7.50 The supreme power of consciousness has been told to you, O three-eyed one. This is the supreme secret which cannot be named, the system of the Goddess. (yo vindati sakṛt tasyāstatkṣaṇāt khecaro [g: khavaro] bhavet | nirmātiviśvam akhilaṃ grasate līlayā punaḥ || 7-48 || na tasya sādhakasyaivam upamā bhuvi [g: bhūvi] vidyate |trailokye [g: -kya] tiṣṭhate paraḥ [k, kh, g: paraṃ] prabhutvena [g: prabhū-] yatheśvaraḥ [k, kh, g: -ra] || 7-49 || paraṃ vijñānavibhavaṃ kathitaṃ te [k, kh: kathitānte] trilocana | etad rahasyaṃ paramaṃ nākhyeyaṃ kālikākramam || 7-50 ||)

““Where the Goddess is established is the level of tranquilized consciousness””

The Sādhaka who becomes expanded awareness, moving in the sky of consciousness has a cosmological correlate as the dissolution of the universe; his or her attainment is likened to the universe being devoured in the play of the Goddess again (punaḥ). The sky of consciousness is identified with tranquilized consciousness, which is identified with the Goddess: “Where the Goddess is established is the level of tranquilized consciousness” (Kālīkulapañcaśataka 7.46ab: yatra sā saṃsthitā devī cittaviśrāmabhūmikā [k, kh: vida-; g: cida-]). The first chapter extols the Goddess who is firm intelligence (dhairyam); a man (naraḥ) realizes this cognition or knowledge pertaining to the Goddess (kaulajñānam) and attains a divine body (divyakāyaḥ), truly practicing by the path of the mouth of the Yoginī (Kālīkulapañcaśataka 1.50-52: yoginīvaktramārgeṇa saṃcaraty eva). The Yoginī could be a deity or a human practitioner who reveals the esoteric truth of the Goddess. This is the supreme secret told to Bhairava by Bhairavī that is really his deeper nature, the essence (sāraḥ) of the universe itself, the true nature of the supreme (inner) sun (paramārkasvarūpiṇī), the unnamable.

The one who knows the system of the Goddess, the Kulavit, is united with all other practitioners and attached to the consciousness of the Goddess system: he meditates upon her in both a subtle and gross condition, that is, both in a subtle consciousness and in the world (Kālīkulapañcaśataka 2.67: “The knower of the family of Goddesses united with the Sādhakas, attached to the consciousness of the Goddess system, should meditate the supreme Power who is in a subtle and gross condition”; kulavid [k, kh: * lavin] sādhakair yuktaḥ kramavijñānapāragaḥ |cintayet paramāṃ śaktiṃ sthūlasūkṣmānuvartinīm [kh: sthūla * *(?)kṣmānuvartīnāṃ; g: -śūkṣmā-] || 2-67 ||). Meditation upon the nature of the universe as the great beneficent Goddess (mahālakṣṃīm) is meditation upon she who is addicted to consuming the universe (viśvagrāsaikalampaṭām) (Kālīkulapañcaśataka 2.68cd: viśvarūpāṃ [kh: visva-] mahālakṣmīṃ viśvagrāsaikalampaṭām). She has gone beyond the standard six-fold yoga of the Śaivas and always moves in her own practice (Kālīkulapañcaśataka 2.70ab: “She always moves in her own practice having become liberated from the sixfold practice”: ṣaḍaṅgayoganirmuktāṃ svayogānucarāṃ sadā).

As Sanderson has documented in detail, alongside this identification of expanded awareness with the Goddess, the Goddess should be worshipped externally too and here through the harder tantric practices of offering meat and alcohol in the context of orgiastic worship.[21] The text states: “He should worship her with mental flowers, with many enjoyable foods, with meat and drink, with divine and beastly [worship], with the highest and the lowest” (Kālīkulapañcaśataka 2.72: pūjayet [k, kh, g: pūjayen] mānasaiḥ puṣpair bhakṣyabhojyair anekaśaḥ [g: puṣpaibhakṣabhojyaṃ-] | māṃsaiś ca pānakair divyaiḥ paśubhiś cottamādhamaiḥ [g: paśubhiḥścottama-]). Worship ‘by the beasts’ (paśubhiḥ) refers to normative, non-transgressive worship, whereas divine worship is transgressive, offering meat, alcohol, and sexual substances along with sexual ritual to the Goddess, and one should not hesitate in this practice. As it says in the Trivandrum Mahānāyaprakāśa, “for compliance is to be observed in [rites involving] sexual congress, wine, and meat [consumption], in particular, attachment [to those rites is needed] for all people, of anyone, anywhere. [But] if at first, they are detached [from the rites, then] the teaching does not grow in consciousness, even a little” (Mahānāyaprakāśa 9.4-5: prāyo hi maithune madye māṃse ca paridṛśyate / āsaktiḥ sarvajantūnāṃ viśeṣāt kasyacit kvacit //4// yadi tattyāgasaṃrambhaḥ pūrvaṃ teṣāṃ vidhīyate / upadeśo na sa manāg api citte prarohati //5//).

The supreme Goddess is, of course, Kālī in the form of Kālasaṃkarṣaṇī whose revelation is the northern or upper tradition (uttarāmnāyaḥ). By the time we get to the Yoginīhṛdaya (11th cent) the Śākta traditions have been classified according to four streams (āmnāya), that correspond to the four directions: the eastern or primary (pūrvāmnāya) containing the Kaula tradition worshipping the Goddess as Kuleśvarī with Kuleśvara; the western transmission (paśimāmnāya) worshipping the crooked crone Kubjikā; the southern transmission (dakṣiṇāmnāya) forming the Śrīvidyā tradition focused on the gentle Tripurasundarī; and the northern transmission (uttarāmnāya) of the Kālīkula, focused on Kālī.[22] There is an earlier reference to the Krama as going beyond the uttarāmnāya as the ‘union’ or ‘meeting’ (melāpa).[23]

This identification of expanded awareness with the Goddess is also found in the post-scriptural hymn of praise to the Goddess by Śrīvatsa, the Cidgananacandrikā (“The moon in the sky of consciousness”), composed between 1100 and 1300 CE,[24] that begins by extolling, not the Goddess directly, but the expanse of consciousness: “The sky of consciousness (cidvyoma) is [like] an ocean of milk, like the full moon, a glittering wave, an expansive sound, a garland of undulating waves with drops of shimmering and spreading light” (Cidgananacandrikā 1: kṣīrodaṃ paurṇamāsīśaśadhara iva yaḥ prasphurannistaraṅgaṃ cidvyoma sphāranādaṃ rucivisaralasadbinduvakrormimālam). This sky of consciousness is the essence of the primal vibration (ādyaspandasvarūpaḥ) that spreads out (prathayathi) as the syllable OṂ. Furthermore, the sky of consciousness is identified with the Goddess who calms the fire of the cycle of repeated birth and death (Cidgananacandrikā 3: “May the Moon Goddess in the sky of consciousness cool the heat of the fire of cyclic existence for us”; cidgaganacandrikābdheḥ śamayatu saṃsāradāvadavathuṃ vaḥ). On the one hand we have the sky of consciousness, the supreme expanse that is also a wave-like vibration and a sound that expands or extends through it. Here the ocean of milk is a standard image that denotes the nectar of immortality (amṛtam) that in microcosmic or yogic terms is located at the crown of the head (Netra-tantra chapter 7; Wernicke-Olesen 2018), but in this Krama text it is not particularised in that way. On the other hand, the expanse of consciousness is identified with the Goddess, the moon deity Candikā, who calms the fire of cyclic existence. This vision is of a cosmological structure where the Goddess, who is the supreme reality, manifests as powers. The text continues:

Those powers/goddesses who are your instruments, who open [themselves] to the condition of externality (mukhabāhyapada-), move in the sky whose nature is consciousness, O Goddess, for you stand on the elevated path (Cidgananacandrikā 3: yāś caranti tava khe cidātmake śaktayaḥ karaṇalakṣaṇāḥ śive / muktabāhyapadajṛmbhaṇodyamāḥ tvaṃ hi tiṣṭhasi tadūrdhvage pathi).

The powers, that are also deities, that move in the sky of consciousness are ‘open’ (jṛmbhaṇa-) to externality, which we might take to mean that the universal, inner condition that is the sky of consciousness becomes externalised through the powers who are in a condition of facing outwards (mukhabāhyapada-). The cosmological dimension of this doctrine is brought out in the address to the Goddess (Śivā) as being elevated on the path that is the cosmos itself. The cosmos is understood as a path, characterised as the six ways (ṣaḍadhvan, verses 6, 182, 269) that are the paths of emanation and dissolution, which are also paths of redemption for the practitioner to retrace the emanation through the practice of withdrawing the cosmos to its source within the body.[25] It is this Goddess who, in the end, reabsorbs the universe:

You are the eternal shining light that consumes the universe, although difficult to behold, you are the habitation of truth, you are the cremation ground, dwelling in the heart of the spiritual hero, without fluctuation, to be honoured in the Karavīra cremation ground (Cidgananacandrikā 82: nityabhātaruci viśvaghasmaraṃ durnirīkṣamapi sanniketanam / tvaṃ śmaśānam asi vīrahṛdgataṃ kṣīṇavṛtti karavīramijyase).

The text continues its identification of the Goddess with light and not only with creation but with destruction too. The Goddess manifests the universe and consumes it, and so the universe is identified as a cremation ground, yet she is present microcosmically in the heart of the spiritual practitioner: the hero who treads the path of the Goddess.

The Krama literature taught a system of four categories or circles (cakram), namely the creation of the universe, its maintenance, its destruction, and the Nameless (anākhyam), although as Sanderson notes in his explanation of the system, a fifth phase of pure light (bhāsākramaḥ) is added in the Old Kashmiri Mahānayaprakāśa.[26] The Nameless, Sanderson observes, is the deeper identity of the Goddess that is expressed as a cycle of thirteen Kālīs, with the thirteenth identified as the nameless one, a tradition that regarded itself as transcending the lower revelation of even the non-dualist Śaiva tantras of Bhairava. This system is a tradition of meditation that influences Abhinavagupta and especially his student Kṣemarāja. It is a system focused on the Goddess understood as a primordial consciousness who expands as the universe and contracts; a condition that can be realized as innate within the self, its true identity, and also the identity of the highest Lord, Bhairava.

The Phenomenology of Expanded Consciousness

In these textual descriptions we have a doctrine of the cosmos conceptualized as a process of emanation and contraction from the Goddess Kālī and this process being identified with consciousness. We also have the idea that meditation upon this is an existential cognition that is salvific: this is not simply a doctrine but is regarded as an embodied philosophy and a liberating experience. The Sanskrit terms used, translated by the English word ‘consciousness,’ are varied. In the textual material presented above we have cit, citi, cetana, saṃjñā, saṃvitti, saṃvit, and vijñāna. There is also use of the term manas, ‘mind’ (Flood 2021). A study of the specific contexts in which these terms appear has not explicitly been done to my knowledge, but we can assert with some confidence that cit, saṃvit, and vijñāna are used synonymously to refer to the supreme reality identified in theistic language as Śiva or the Goddess. Cit is a masculine noun and refers to the pure consciousness of Śiva whereas citi is a feminine noun, referring to the pure consciousness identified with the Goddess. Cetana refers to the individual, embodied consciousness as we find in Kṣemarāja’s Pratyabhijñāhṛdaya where cetanā is citi particularized or contracted in the individual (Pratyabhijñāhṛdaya 4: citisaṃkocātmā cetano). We have also seen the identification of the elevated or expanded consciousness with light (prakāśaḥ) and sky (gaganam, vyoma, kha), which is our true or deepest nature (svabhāvaḥ).

Translating this structure into a different terminology we have the vertical axis of expanded consciousness – the sky of consciousness in the terminology of the Krama – intersecting with the horizontal axis of temporality comprising the tradition of textual revelation and practice. These traditions are themselves developed within wider social and political structures codified as law; a socio-cultural comportment that ritual and meditation practices assume. The practices of the Krama involving meditation as expanded consciousness, that itself is built upon a ritual procedure, is a practice interfused with textual revelation: the verticality of expanded awareness is generated, or at least brought into view, by the fusion of text with practice. The text articulates an embodied philosophy. But the intersection of the verticality of expanded consciousness with the horizontality of tradition and, we might add, social location and temporal power relations or dharma, can be disruptive. Where the verticality of the sky of consciousness intersects with the horizontality of socio-cultural practice or dharma, there is a rupture. The expanded consciousness of Krama verticality, while being within world as sky, transcends socio-cultural patterns of life while at the same time being given access by them.

We might see expanded consciousness as an ontological category, as foundational or as the necessary condition of existence. While by implication those who experience the sky of consciousness, the ‘sky-goers,’ are within time, there is a description of this expanded consciousness as being outside of time and being identified with the Unnameable one, the Goddess who is ineffable. The Unnameable one, who is articulated as extended consciousness, disrupts the temporality of law or dharma, and this disruption is the realisation of freedom because it is the totality of being beyond constraint. If dharma describes what we might call the ontic structures of life – the way people are in their everyday world – then extended consciousness as the sky of consciousness and as light describes an ontological structure that is more fundamental and upon which the ontic structures depend. In terms of the Śaiva-Śākta categories we might say that the ontic categories of the levels of the hierarchical universe, the tattvas, are disrupted by the ontological reality of expanded consciousness of the unnameable. But this ontological structure of the cosmos, the expanded consciousness, is more densely real (cidghanaḥ, ‘the mass of consciousness’) than the lower ontic levels and more intensely real than social obligation or caste, for unlike the Śaiva Siddhānta, the expanded consciousness of the Krama shatters the inhibition of ordinary everydayness and limited identity. There are levels of description more adequate to the real than others, and for the Krama, the Nameless is the most apposite because it expresses apophasis as the most adequate way of expressing this reality; namely that it is beyond expression.

Footnotes

The full version will appear as ‘Śaiva-Śākta Meditation’ in Entangled Religions vol. 14, ‘Contemplation and Non-Doing’, edited by Dylan Esthler. I am indebted to Alexis Sanderson for making known, describing, and analysing the Krama and other Śai- va-Śākta forms of religion to the scholarly community. Without his work we would be in the dark about them.
Hélène Brunner. Importance de la Littérature Agamique pour L’étude des Religions Vivantes de l’Inde. Torino: Edizioni Jollygrafica (1977); Gavin Flood. 2020. ‘Implicit Anthro- pologies in Pre-Philosophical Śaivism,’ Journal of Indian Philosophy, vol. 48 (4): 675-701. DOI: 10.1007/s10781-020-09435-0.
Alexis Sanderson. “The Śaiva Exegesis of Kashmir.” In Dominic Goodall and André Padoux (eds.). Mélanges Tantriques à la mémoire de Hélène Brunner. Pondichéry: Institut Français (2007: 231- 582).Sanderson 2007: 290)
Somadeva Vasudeva. The Yoga of the Mālinīvijayottaratantra. Pondichéry: Institut Français (2004: 430).
Netra-tantra 8.3-6. ‘The Yogi] becomes ageless and deathless having attained that [state] through identification with it. It is that eternal which speech cannot express, that cannot be seen by the eye, that cannot be heard with the ears, that the nose cannot smell, that the tongue cannot taste, that the sense of touch cannot feel, that cannot be thought by the mind, freed from all colour and taste [yet it is] endowed with all colour and taste, immeasurable, [and] beyond the senses. When that is attained, O Goddess, the Yogis become free from old age and death through their exalted practice and su- preme detachment;’ yaṃ prāpya tanmayatvena bhavate hy ajarāmaraḥ yan na vāg vadate nityaṃ yan na dṛśyeta cakṣuṣā // 3 // yan na saṃśruyate karṇair nāsā yaś ca na jighrati na cāsvādayate jihvā na sparśeta tvag indriyaṃ // 4 // na cetasā cintanīyaṃ sarvavarṇarasojjhi- tam / sarvavarṇarasair yuktam aprameyam atīṃdriyam // 5 // yaṃ prāpya yogino devi bha- vanti hy ajarāmarāḥ tad abhyāsena mahatā vairāgyena pareṇa ca // 6 //. 3a. yaṃ] N1 N2: yat] K1; prāpya tanmayatvena] N2 K1 : prāpya te tanmayatvena N1. 3b. bhavate] N1: bhavati K1 N2. 4a. yan na saṃśruyate N2: yac ca na śrūyate K1. 4b. yaś ca] N1: ya ca N2; yac ca K1. 4c. na cāsvādayate] N1: na ca svādayate N2; yan nāsvādayate K1. 4d. na sparśeta] N1 N2: na spṛśed yat K1. 5c. sarvavarṇṇarasair] N1: sarvavarṇarasair N2 K1. 6a. yaṃ] N1 N2: yat K1.
Netra-tantra 8.26. ‘Having known him [the yogi] is released in an instant from the terrible bondage of the cycle of reincarnation, freed from the three categories, eternal, unmoving and stable;’ taṃ jñātvā mucyate kṣipraṃ ghorāt saṃsārabandhanāt / tat[t]va- trayavinirmuktaṃ śāśvataṃ hy ācalaṃ dhruvam // 26 //. 26a. taṃ] N1 N2: taj K1. 26c. tatva-] N1 N2: tattva- K1. 26d. hy ācalaṃ] N1 N2: cācalaṃ K1.
Vijñānabhairava-tantra 47-48: 47. ‘He should meditate every substance within the body, pervading it, O deer-eyed One, then his meditation will become firm. 48. He should meditate on the skin part over the body, [as] a wall, meditating that there is nothing within him; he comes to know there is no object of meditation;’ sarvaṃ dehaga- taṃ dravyaṃ viyadvyāptaṃ mṛgekṣaṇe |vibhāvayet tatas tasya bhāvanā sā sthirā bhavet || 47 ||dehāntare tvagvibhāgaṃ bhittibhūtaṃ vicintayet | na kiñcid antare tasya dhyāyann adhyeyabhāg bhavet || 48 ||.
Vijñānabhairava-tantra 59: ‘He should cast his sight in the place of a pot and such like, abandoning [perception of] division; having become dissolved there in an instant, he becomes that reality because of being dissolved in that;’ ghaṭādibhājane dṛṣṭiṃ bhit- tīstyaktā vinikṣipet |tallayaṃ tatkṣaṇād gatvā tallayāt tanmayo bhavet || 59 ||.
Vijñānabhairava-tantra 60: ‘He should cast his sight in a place without trees, or on a mountain, or on a wall etc. He will [then] achieve the destruction of [mental] fluctuation when the mind is dissolved;’ nirvṛkṣagiribhittyādi deśe dṛṣṭiṃ vinikṣipet / vilīne mānase bhāve vṛttikṣīṇaḥ prajāyate.
Vijñānabhairava-tantra 115: ‘Having stood above the hole of a well and such like, he may gaze [into it]: the mind [then] comes to be completely without thought construction [and] in an instant there occurs the dissolution of consciousness;’ kūpādike mahāgarte sthitvopari nirīkṣaṇāt / avikalpamateḥ samyak sadyaś cittalayaḥ sphuṭam.
Vijñānabhairava-tantra 76: ‘When [one gazes] in the space of a place where there are variegated light beams from the sun etc., right there where the sight enters in, one’s own true nature manifests itself;’ tejasā sūryadīpāder ākāśe śavalīkṛte |dṛṣṭir niveśyā tatraiva, svātmarūpaṃ prakāśate.
N Rastogi. The Krama Tantrism of Kashmir. Delhi: MLBD (1979).
Sanderson (2007: 265-66, 276).
Sanderson (2007: 267-69).
Ibid, 260.
Ibid, 309.
Translated by Sanderson (2007: 309-310).
Ibid, 290.
Ibid.
Ibid, 260-61.
Ibid, 284-87.
Ibid, 342, note 363; André Padoux. Le Coeur de la Yoginī: Yoginīhṛdaya avec le commentaire Dīpikā d’Amṛtānanda. Paris: de Boccard (1994: 9-10); M. S. G. Dyzcowski. The Cult of the Goddess Kubjikā: A Preliminary Textual and Anthropological Survey of a Secret Newar-Goddess. Stuttgart: Steiner (2001).
Sanderson (2007: 342, note 363) where he cites the Mahānāyaprakāśa 9.63 that refers to the Krama as the Melāpa.
Ibid, 412.
Flood, 2002.
Sanderson (2007: 306).