365bet娱乐

CHAPTER II UNITY, POLARITY, MULTIPLICITY. The absolute unity%;B Siva as power and possessor of power; Sakti as instrument of manifestation. Maya, the realm of multiplicity. It is assumed that the pre-Aryan Indian deities were absorbed into tue Brahmin pantheon or, more precisely, any popular god became identified with a genuinely Brahmin deity, whose features or functions were not too dissimilar. This mythological syncretism appear 5 obviously in the case of Siva, who embodies a synthesis between an aboriginal and predominant god and the vedic Rudra. In fact, even in the vedas the deities are revealed in a certain dynamic, their attributes are enriched or diminished from one set of hymns to another. And such a phenomenon does not seem to take place independent of the autochthonous pantheon and its influences. On the other hand, resuming a discussion started earlier by Max Weber about geographical influences on religious spirit, Mircea Eliade presumes a certain correlation between topography and the foremost deity. Hence, goddess Durga is a native Bengali divinity who appeared in a culture where water cycles was the main element in the environment, while Siva has nis mythological abode in the Himalayan region and possesses characteristics of a continental and solar god. This distinction concerning the genesis connected with the moon's

P-44But what about the South? of the main Hindu deities - 1.e. a powerful male principle imagined as the universal master and the "Great Mother" who is the matrix of the whole cosmos existed from very old times. However, some scholars suppose that, due to the geographical position of the indian subcontinent, the cult of the Great Goddess prevailed over that of the male principle (N.B. Mohenjodaro and Harappa are predominantly continental). An important religious revolution occured when the Aryan population came with their continental and solar culture. Thus, in India the vedic (continental) patrifocal sacerdotalism clashed with a powerful native matrifocal environment, and the former subdued the latter on the doctrinary level. In later days, when what might well be called the tantric revolution took place, the supremacy of the male principle was reaffirmed strongly a mountainous zone -, while the remale principle reasserted in Kashmir itsell in Bengal. it Now, Saiva monistic philosophy considers the whole universe a mere manifestation of the Universal Self or Parama Siva. The universe is in its essence the same as that irom which rises, just as the waves OI the ocean are essentially identical with the ocean itself. Farama Siva, the ultimate reality, is conceived as "prakasa vimarsamaya". The prakasa aspect manifests as substance, while vimarsa as speech. The ultimate reality is called Para when its vimarsa aspect is emphasized. This conception reminds of the theory of the Logos which precedes and organises the whole objective reality as its very essence. rara reiers to the Absolute when in the state of periect unity 2

- 45 - 01 consciousness, containing potentially all the entities. The Absolute is free from any limitations 01 time and space, name and 1orm. it is Aham identical with the universal Self. It is the state of perfect unity or all kind of powers and the ultimate source of them all; hence, there is not the 鈧乤intest expression of diversity on this plane. The primordial unity is a moetic identity of self-consciousness, A=A. It is selfsufficient in so iar as it is the unpronounced word, viz. the great uncreated. There are three names with aistinctive implications to denote the ultimate in its immanent aspect, that 18 the relationship of universal Counsciousness with the manifestable. The state of absode unity of both is called anuttara and appeares, 1or instance, at the time of total and universal disolution (manapralaya). At the time of pure creation it is spoken of as Siva, and the term Mahasvara is applied only when the manifestable assumes distinct existence. The Pratyabhijna branch of monistic Saiva philosophy of Kashmir is primarily concerned with proving or establishing the existence of Mahesvara. The Pratyabhijna Vimarsini deals, on more than four-fifths of its content, with the exposition of Mahesvara's two powers, Jnana (knowledge) and Kriya (action). The main presupposition both for Saiva philosophy and for tantra, as we have seen, is based on the homologation of the individual self with the Universal Self, their identification, that is ultimately, their equivalence to an all pervasive consciousness. All that has been manifesting, i.e. from Siva down to earth, exists within the Ultimate much in the same way as do our ideas within ourselves. The Absolute

Male 46manifests externally at will, independently of all extraneous causes. It is this Universal Self which sees and knows through the innumerable bodies (Ishvara-pratyabhijna-vimarshini, I, 111) and, as such, it is called the "individual. The Pratyabhijna holds that the distinction between the power and its possessor is imaginary and the former is the very beeing of the latter. Although the power manifests differently (for instance, fire's power of burning, or baking, etc.), as a multitude of powers, all of them are mere aspects of the same all-inclusive power called Svatantrya Sakti. Thus, Saiva tantrism visualises its noumena (i.e. the absolute as the correlative of the "phenomenon") as a supreme non-duality which becomes manifest only through a diametrical polarity. This is due to the common supposition that the supreme is inexpressible and incommunicable in itself, that is, totally transcendent. The tantrics have chosen the only paradigm which is, no doubt, the most suitable (both from a psychological and a mythological angle) to illustrate this polarity: man and woman in their cosmicized form as a divine couple, god and goddess, Siva and Sakti. Hence the creative function of the Ultimate is polarized into the dynamic aspect and its substratum or possessor. Saiva tantra has a peculiar place among tantras, owing to an undoubted dynamism of the mail principle which contains and disposes of power through his own will. It does not reduce the antinomic tension but it rather offers the possibility of a synthetical triad. Only the Saivite outlook conceives the supreme Lord as having not only his own male characteristics but those of Sakti's also. All over India, but nowadays especially in the South, we find the

- 47 hermaphrodite representation of Siva as Siva and Sakti at the same time, the Ardhanarisvara, i.e. "the Lord who is half woman" or "the androgynous". The Saundaryalahari says that the goddess belongs entirely to Siva, viz. both as the cosmos and as the process of its evolution, as well as her female form as personal consort. The verse reads: "Thou art the body of Siva with the sun and the moon as your breasts; I liken thy self to the flawless self of Sambhu (i.e. Siva), o Glorious Goddess; hence as ye realize each other as the essence and the accessory, this union exists between ye both experiencing supreme bliss with equal savour" (Saundaryalahari -there is W. Norman Brown's translation, Harvard Oriental Series, vol.43, 1958, vs. 5.34, and that issued by the Theosophical Publishing House, Madras, 1977). The Tibetans invariably assigned the dynamic function to the male and the static to the female metaphysical principle. In the Saivite tantric literature there are some instances when the dynamic function is openly assigned only to Siva (the male principle) as, for instance, in the Periyapuranam, a canonical text of Tamil Saivism; also static function is assigned to the female principle in the at least two passages in the Markandeya Purana, Candipatha. But, as I have pointed out already, the characteristic feature of Saiva tantra remains the male and female activism together, when the polar differentiation of the whole occurs. The tantric Saivite aims to merge into the Para Siva (the supreme Siva), which is the state of complete quiescence and nondiscrimination. For reaching this target, the practitioner uses Sakti

Excedent - 48 as his main intermediary%;B Sakti herself merges into Parasiva at the 1 point of the cosmic dissolution. The Buddhist follower does grasp fully the meaning and the utility of the intermediate stage, i.e. the practitioner's identification with Sakti as a means and not as an end in itself. The Vajrayana tantrika stresses the synthetical moment of opposition from the very beginning of his practice, while the Hindu will reduce firstly the phenomenal multiplicity to an essential polarity and only afterwards he reaches the supreme understanding. I will render in the sequel the manner in which Lama Govinda puts the problem of polarity in the Buddhist and Hindu tantras: "...the conception of Sakti of divine power, of the female-creative potentiality of the suprime god (Siva) or of one of the many subordinate gods plays no role of any sort in Buddhism. Whereas the notion of power (Sakti) is the pivot of interest in Hindu tantrism, the central idea of tantric Buddhism is realization: prajna (ses rab) joined to upaya (thabs). (...) to incorporate oneself into the driving forces of the cosmos and to utilize them for one's purposes, may be an objective of the Hindu tantras, but it is none of the Buddhist ones. The Buddhist has no desire whatever to incorporate himself into any driving forces, but to rid himself of them, as they keep driving him about in the Samsara (the phenomenal realm)... 'From the union of Siva and Sakti unfolds the world (sivasaktisamayogad jayate srstikalpana)', says the Kulacudamani Tantra. But the Buddhist does not seek the unfoldment of the world, rather he seeks its regression into the 'unborn, unformed' which is at the basis

- 49 of all unfoldment -the "sunyata" (ston pa nia), the Void..." ( Lama Anagarika Govinda, Foundation of Tibetan Mysticism, London, 1959, pp.99-10 The Lama analyses also the fundamental sexual pattern of the tantric imagery. Even the left-handed tantric exercises have to rule out any physical implications%3B "sexuality is acted out pm 5 cally " only in order to help the understanding of universal polarity and to pass beyond it. " We must not forget that these iconological representations (i.e. the yao yum images) are not representations of ordinary numan beings, but that they emerged from meditative imagery. in this state there is no longer anything "sexual" in the conventional sense of the term, but there only exists the supraindividual polarity of all that occurs, to which both the mental and the physical (which is but an aspect of the mental anyway) are subordinate%3B this polarity, has reached the highest level of absorption or integration - once it the thing is cancelled and becomes sunyata We call illumination (viz. bodhi) (ston pa nid). This is the state called "mahamudra" (the "great mudra") " (Lama A. Govinda, op.cit., ibidem). I think it would be necessary to bring here a specification, in my opinion fully entitled. It is somewhat a further parallelism with negelian thought. We have considered the different levels of existence as basically identical. Unity, polarity and multiplicity are real but they are regarded rather as quantitative stages which have appeared by successive grossification or subtler principles. The tantric tecuniques reveal to us the qualitative structure of the universe.

50All the sadhanas deal with qualitative systems, which require and subordinate quantitative levels and also are closer to the all-pervasive and spiritual essence. The Saktis' disposal in the phenomenal world expresses a qualitative gradation of the existent accessible only to the mystical understanding. The tantric techniques could be characterized in other terms as a leap from the quantitative understanding of the reality (in the profane state material multiplicity prevails) to the understanding of qualitative stratification of the existent. 嗉� In the tantric iconography, the basic polarity is represented by two complexions. Ferociousness as the first complexion usually symbolizes the dynamic principle. Thus Sakti is always shown in a ghora (fierce) attitude, while Siva appears with a serene and quiescent complexion, the representation of the bhava attitude of mind. Heinrich Zimmer explains the polarity in this way: "On the one hand, the candidate is to meditate on the female portion as the Sakti or dynamic aspect of eternity and the male as the quiescent but activated. Then, on the other hand, the male is to be regarded as the principle of the path, the way, the method (upaya), and the female, with which it merges, as the transcendent goal; she is then the fountainhead into which the dynamism of enlightenment returns in its state of full and permanent incandescence" (H.Zimmer Philosophies of India, New-York, 1958, p.557). ' The This point of view expresses the Sakta tendency, because the Saivite tantrika meditates on Sakti as energy and on Siva as mystical syncretism of quiescent wisdom and dynamism. Thus, Saiva tantra takes both of them as ontologically one and consequently it is as monistic as a doctrine can be. There is dualism on the level of

Is this time of the recogni qualists? Saive 1.e. - 51mystical practice, on the level of a heuristic polarity, and there is monism on the metaphysical level. In point of fact, the Saivite tantrika is not as much a metaphysician as one might suspect from the above analysis. Metaphysics (ontology) is of secondary concern for him, admitted at best by courtesy. The fact is very well exposed by Mircea Eliade: "...the tantrist is concerned with sadhana (spiritual practice); he wants to 'realize the paradox expressed in all the images and formulas concerning the union of opposites, he wants concrete, experimental knowledge of the state of non-duality... Tantrism multiplies the pairs of opposites (sun and moon, Siva and Sakti etc.), and attemps to "unify" them through techniques combining subtle physiology with meditation" (M. Eliade Yoga, Immortality and Freedom, New-York, 1958, p.269). The Saiva tradition with its corresponding branch of tantra is centred on such pairs of oppositions. I shall try to list some of the most important for the Saivite outlook in general, although only a part of them are commonly used in Saiva tantric practice. Right side means of knowledge Left side knowable reality descendant breath (apana) ascendant breath (prana) point (bindu) sound (nada) pingala male semen (sperm) ida female semen (menstrual blood) sun germ (vowels) possessor of power day moon womb (consonants) power night

52 91may he light Isvara Right side ordinary alphabet transcendent emission syntesis (contrahunting born). Equally, may "it panthe), ie abiding Left side thinking Sadasiva garlended alphabet immanent emission The unifying synthesis gives a new quality to the polarity transcending contradiction. In this third plane could be included; the knowing subject, the vertical breathing (udana), susumn fire, the unifying emission, the twilight, the final cakra, theunion of man and woman and so on. It must also be added that the stage whic balancing creates equilibrium between opposites, would occupy the central space (madayastha, madhyamain a graphical scheme. The synthesis representing a new quality, tom the alteration acquires new functions, hence it could be considered as a relation. From the practical point of view, the tantrika and the yogi will realise, for instance, the confluence of the two opposite breathings - prana and apana in the central canal where a third breathing, udana or vertical breathing, circulates. Udana represents the dissolve fire burning all the antinomies which weave the transmigration (Siva and Sakti, sun and moon, seed and matrix etc). In connection with the relationship between Siva and his power, Abhinavagupta quotes from the Trisirobhairavatantra : "The supreme plane which has the supreme knowledge as its own nature, contains inside itself the power (saktigarbha) by virtue of power contained in itself" (Tantraloka, II, 32). Then the power is found in Siva's very nature. And Abhinava adds: "He (Siva) is neither a being (bhava),

- 路 53 路 nor a non-being, nor both of them, (and) transcending the realm of words, he is firmly settled in the ineffable feeling, based throughly upon power and without power" (Tantraloka, II, 33). Even the idea of Ego has a certain duplicity according to Ishvarapratyabhijna-vritti-vimarshini, I, 1,4,5,6, whereas it may be pure or impure. The pure idea is beyond duality and contrariety. It is applied to the true self, to the Siva, while the impure Ego has as its object the knowing subject with a body, a soul etc. Abhinavagupta analyses some antinomic injunctions found in the Malinivijayatantra concerning the tantric follower's right behaviour (samacara). There is neither purity, nor impurity; not adoration of linga (Malinivijaya-tantra, XVIII, 74), not use of colours, ash etc (ibidem, 75), neither observance nor disobedience of prayers (ibidem, 76) etc. Abhinava shows that each of the injunctions can be in accord with a certain stage of spiritual evolution. The affirmations must not be taken literally forever but one has to introduce degrees of light and shade into the interpretation. Looking down at prescriptions and prohibitions from the summit of self-realization, the sage will take them all with equanimity ( nisedhavidhitulyatvam ). This new perspective is achieved because "the prescriptions and their denials are seen as the Lord's own nature, where the whole is his body, (and) they are not able to sever the unity " (Tantraloka, IV, 272). And further on: "The suitable means for entering the supreme reality are those regarded by someone as the most adequate to his purpose. The other (means) have to be left. There is no limitative norm (yantrana) concerning them" (Tantraloka, IV, 273). From what we have presented above, two conclusions could be pointed out: a) the Is this all Synthesis just mathy am panther. of his nature

- 54 identity of the whole with itself (within Parama Siva) gives the universale equivalence; b) the manner in which the individual approaches this identity, i.e. the manner in which he understands it, gives the criterion for truth. Then we do not face an ethical relativism but rather a liberty of the Hegelian type wherein the real understanding of the aim leads to the adequate choice of means and not vice versa. The Lord acts in virtue of his liberty transmuting himself into "particles". He is himself again recovering his pure nature by a reversible process (Tantraloka, XIII, 105). To ask why it happens would be infantile behaviour because the true nature of things is "unquestionable". Somananda, in his Sivadrsti says: "Siva is he who effects the live operations. Such activity pertains to his own nature. Then what is the reason to look for the motives that impelled him to act this way?" (Shivadrishti, 1, 12b, 13a). Instead of an irrational answer, Hegel replied to the same question on a rationalist ground which made the keystone of his system: the phenomenology of spirit aims at the self-cogultion of the Absolute idea. According to Saiva thought, Sakti, on her multiIarious aspects, gives rise to the manifestation of the whole world which is synthetically presented through the thirty-four categories (tattvas) from Sadasiva to earth. This way, the absolute manifests as finite (L.N.Sharma Op. cit. p.278). Maya is a result of Sakti's formation. Although Saktis are countless, Kashmir Saivism arranges them into five main entities: cit (self-consciousness), ananda (bliss), iccha (will), jnana (knowkedge) and kriya (action). Bindu is the state of

- 55their fusion as the third eye or Siva, Irom which the whole multiplicity springs. Maya is associated with time in its action or negation and darkening of consciousness. Duration and succession of events obscure the knowledge of reality which otherwise would be unitary. harma brings the individual into the realm of maya. lattvas can be classed as pure or impure according to their affiliation to two kinds of creation. The first live categories represent the five powers or aspects of the Ultimate Reality and thus the pure mode of creation. The categories following iron maya to earth, form the impure way. The world of multiplicity is the realm of maya. 1.e. gross, subtle and supreme - to There are three aspects or planes through which maya manifests itself. These mayic planes correspond also the three successive bodies that the Saivite tantrika aims to master: physical, subtle and mystic. The inferior maya is the so-called "knot" of visnu and is usually tantamount to the heart or, sometimes, with the throat cakra. The intermediate aspect of maya is the principle maya. The knot is called the cavity of maya (mayabilam) and it is conceived asaving six attributes which are embodied by six Rudras residing in six cavities. The knot of maya is thought to be the main way of access towards higher existential levels, when the path of powers is followed (Matangatantra, 1, VIII, 67-88). In lact, this is a cakra (i.e. a wheel of power) placed about the cardiac plexus on the subtle body and the adept must meditate and worship it. The mayaprinciple is imagined as

6l - a cave (guha) which is the matrix of the whole material universe. Therefore, all the other principies that make up the world of multiplicity bear, in one way or another, its mark. As a principle, maya is projected on the physic body up to the throat or palate. This is way in saiva tantra the skull was a particular significance, as representing the pure world of principles, beyond the mayic realm which is the whole body from the lower jaw bone down to the feet. In this upostasis the skull is worthy of tantric warship and it is considered the main symbol by kapalikas who are Saiva followers. NOW and then, the adept will perform the sexual act into the occipital foramen or the skull, unifying this way is vital force (i.e. his semen, with the pure world of powers which resiue inside the cranial cavity. The highest aspect of maya 15 quentified with vagisvari, the Goddess of Speech, in so far as "the Speech has created all the worlds (Tantraloka, AVII, Bb).