The challenge of unpacking quite possibly the most intricate of Indic metaphysical systems is com... more The challenge of unpacking quite possibly the most intricate of Indic metaphysical systems is compounded by the exegetic invocation of ostensibly compatible yet notably distinct hermeneutics. Within the Trika tradition of Kashmir Śaivism (KŚ), supreme consciousness is commonly represented in optic terms as the light of awareness (prakāśa) that emanates and illuminates all stages of reality by means of reflective realization (vimarśa). The timeless phasing of manifestation and withdrawal is the aperture-like shuttering open (unmeṣa) and closed (nimeṣa) of transcendent awareness. The foregoing does not, however, obviate a linguistic interpretation of supreme consciousness as the highest form of cognizant speech (parāvāk), whose prepotent phonemes (varṇa) and propositional blueprint are formulaic for creative unfoldment. Manifest existence corresponds to linguistic expression derived from the supreme Word principle (Śabdabrahman), whose evolutes are the spoken utterances that structure experience. This exercise draws freely on both optic and linguistic paradigms by way of illustrating how the functional crux of this metaphysics arguably lies precisely at the intersection of illuminating awareness and embedded cosmogrammatic encoding.
Something of an outlier within the Vedānta tradition, Madhvacarya's dualist (dvaita) posture and ... more Something of an outlier within the Vedānta tradition, Madhvacarya's dualist (dvaita) posture and the radical nondualism of Kashmir Śaivism (KŚ), aptly characterized by Mark Dyczkowski as integral monism, share surprising alignments. God is real. The world is real. God is creator of the world and sovereign agent. No cause takes effect, no action bears fruit, no individual soul gains liberation (mokṣa),
All-being as well as all-knowing, unitary awareness is in the integral monism of Kashmir Śaivism ... more All-being as well as all-knowing, unitary awareness is in the integral monism of Kashmir Śaivism (KŚ) the bountiful and dynamic wellspring of the objective world. Ours is the last stop on a continuum of creative descent of and by consciousness, ever more contracted and fragmented in its unfoldment. Thus, consciousness as degraded in everyday experience operates in the form of determinate cognitions by individual subjects of differentiated objects. The delimiting of such cognitions with regard to agency, space, time, form, and cause effectively cuts them off from one another, so they express discretely. This profoundly transactional world can function only by means of elaborate connections among them. That is the crux of the argument for the necessity of unitary awareness as the substratum of objective reality put forward by Utpaladeva in the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā (ĪPK) and Abhinavagupta in the Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī (ĪPV). How can this collective actuality, delusory as it may be, even appear to coalesce and operate absent some medium for integrating circumscribed manifestations? No sooner do these momentary cognitions arise, after all, than they perish. What keeps them from passing forever into oblivion and ceding to entirely novel arrangements in the next moment? How do they cohere and sustain as they do in temporal experience? This exercise lifts from the polemical context and examines pertinent metaphysical tenets in an effort to gain insight into this controversial point of contention among Indic schools. Self-Aware Cognition The notion of self-apperception held by many Buddhist schools and accepted by KŚ takes cognition to be a circumscribed reflective relation in which its object refers back to its subject. Regardless of the content of the cognition, no object is perceived without the accompanying awareness that it is being perceived. The cognition is thus self-aware. KŚ departs notably, however, by holding that this awareness is no momentary byproduct of or contingent reaction to direct experience, but rather the abiding underlying driver integral to all experience. Consider the correlation between awareness and presence. Your awareness that I am here now validates your presence as such. (Recall the Cartesian cogito.) Yet the awareness of
Śrī Gauḍapāda in his seminal work the Māndūkya Kārikā [MK] wraps his gloss on the Māndūkya Upaniṣ... more Śrī Gauḍapāda in his seminal work the Māndūkya Kārikā [MK] wraps his gloss on the Māndūkya Upaniṣad in a manifesto of Advaita Vedānta tantamount to a wholesale sacrifice of diversity on the altar of unity. Any concession to plurality in the Upanisads must be understood from an enlightened perspective as nothing more than a didactical device en route to the exclusive and unequivocal embrace of unity. Later Kashmir Śaiva [KŚ] formulations as exposited by Utpaladeva in the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā [ĪPK], for example, build on key alignments and seize on metaphysical tensions in Gauḍapāda to reclaim and re-legitimize the pluralistic world, consonant with a more unreservedly explicit embrace of the Upaniṣadic dialectic of difference and nondifference.
Citi (universal consciousness) itself descending from (the stage of) Cetana (the uncontracted con... more Citi (universal consciousness) itself descending from (the stage of) Cetana (the uncontracted conscious stage) becomes Citta (individual consciousness) inasmuch as it becomes contracted (Sankocini) in conformity with the objects of consciousness (cetya). Pratyabhijñāhṛdayam Sūtra 5 1 In Brahmanical schools the unqualified subject, or Self with a capital "s," is the progenitor and seer of all. The qualified subject, or lowercase self, fettered by finite existence and fragmentary awareness, is but a poor relation. Embodied souls may strive to recover the Self within the self, or redeem their essential nondifference. A ubiquitous theme in Indic thought, the reconciliation of ultimate unity and cosmic diversity is largely the project of the Brahma Sūtras, a canonical text that famously waxes dialectic on identity and difference. Perhaps no other school provides a more inspired or elegant integration than Kashmir Śaivism as modeled in associated Trika, Spanda and Pratyabhijñā articulations. In this holistic systematization of reality and experience, the kinship and identity between the universal and particular subject is explicitly and deftly drawn. The central focus of this paper is the necessity, priority and supreme pedigree of subjectivity at all stages of consciousness as depicted in Kashmir Śaivism (KS). Here creative proliferation is a dynamic and spontaneous effulgence of supreme being (Śiva), and a descent of consciousness from and via unconditioned universal awareness (citi) to radically contracted awareness (citta) as it operates on the plane of ordinary experience. This stands in marked contrast to the view shared by some prominent Buddhist schools that consciousness, as a byproduct of contact between sense organs and sense objects, cannot claim a loftier inheritance but emerges in fleeting momentary cognitions unmoored to anything prior and higher. (Going forward, I shall characterize this generally as the Buddhist position.) Subjectivity in any form is an epistemic figment with no real bearing on awakened consciousness. This clash of perspectives remains a highly constructive contretemps for any related inquiry. I shall lean heavily as an academic outlier on likeminded ruminations set forth by Catherine Prueitt of George Mason University in her doctoral thesis. 2 Prueitt discloses surprising alignments and key discrepancies between the Yogacarin Dharmakīrti and the Kashmir Śaivist Abhinavagupta. She looks for insight to cognitive psychology, primarily Allan Allport, who points out the complex interplay of top-down and bottom-up signals of neural networks in how we
In the Trika ideology of Kashmir Śaivism (KŚ), māyā is the sixth in the hierarchy of thirtysix ta... more In the Trika ideology of Kashmir Śaivism (KŚ), māyā is the sixth in the hierarchy of thirtysix tattvas, or ontological (and in this formulation equally epistemological) principles. It is the stage in the creative descent at which consciousness assumes the existential mantle that eclipses its essential unity and sovereignty, and governs everyday experience. That mantle is comprised of five husks (kañcuka-s), each of which imposes a specific limitation with respect to the following: 1) authorship, or efficacy (kalā); 2) knowledge (vidyā); 3) inclination (rāga); 4) time (kāla); 5) space and cause (niyati). Thus are the powers of universal consciousness by its own doing fragmented and diminished in the individual personal experient, alienated in embodiment from the boundlessness of supreme Self. There is nothing abstruse generally about the KŚ theory of limitations imposed by the kañcukas. The sovereign agency, absolute knowledge and fulfillment, eternal and all-pervasive presence enjoyed by supreme consciousness are veiled and vitiated in the empirical subject. Somewhat enigmatic, however, is the association of "space" and "cause" in the fifth kañcuka niyati. This pairing is puzzling enough to draw attention and interest. Insofar as it points to the radical understanding of causality in Śaivāgama, it may also be more broadly instructive. Niyati means "restriction," and refers in this case the circumscription of finite existents. Certainly, restriction in space is a salient feature of phenomenal reality. Every object is subject to the spatial confines of determinate extension and position. Causation as an objectively determinative process and circumscribed operation is likewise constrained to a finite set of objects or properties. That by our usual reckoning cause is effected in both space and time, however, begs the question of why it is here associated with the former, and not the latter, or not assigned a kañcuka of its own.
The challenge of unpacking quite possibly the most intricate of Indic metaphysical systems is com... more The challenge of unpacking quite possibly the most intricate of Indic metaphysical systems is compounded by the exegetic invocation of ostensibly compatible yet notably distinct hermeneutics. Within the Trika tradition of Kashmir Śaivism (KŚ), supreme consciousness is commonly represented in optic terms as the light of awareness (prakāśa) that emanates and illuminates all stages of reality by means of reflective realization (vimarśa). The timeless phasing of manifestation and withdrawal is the aperture-like shuttering open (unmeṣa) and closed (nimeṣa) of transcendent awareness. The foregoing does not, however, obviate a linguistic interpretation of supreme consciousness as the highest form of cognizant speech (parāvāk), whose prepotent phonemes (varṇa) and propositional blueprint are formulaic for creative unfoldment. Manifest existence corresponds to linguistic expression derived from the supreme Word principle (Śabdabrahman), whose evolutes are the spoken utterances that structure experience. This exercise draws freely on both optic and linguistic paradigms by way of illustrating how the functional crux of this metaphysics arguably lies precisely at the intersection of illuminating awareness and embedded cosmogrammatic encoding.
Something of an outlier within the Vedānta tradition, Madhvacarya's dualist (dvaita) posture and ... more Something of an outlier within the Vedānta tradition, Madhvacarya's dualist (dvaita) posture and the radical nondualism of Kashmir Śaivism (KŚ), aptly characterized by Mark Dyczkowski as integral monism, share surprising alignments. God is real. The world is real. God is creator of the world and sovereign agent. No cause takes effect, no action bears fruit, no individual soul gains liberation (mokṣa),
All-being as well as all-knowing, unitary awareness is in the integral monism of Kashmir Śaivism ... more All-being as well as all-knowing, unitary awareness is in the integral monism of Kashmir Śaivism (KŚ) the bountiful and dynamic wellspring of the objective world. Ours is the last stop on a continuum of creative descent of and by consciousness, ever more contracted and fragmented in its unfoldment. Thus, consciousness as degraded in everyday experience operates in the form of determinate cognitions by individual subjects of differentiated objects. The delimiting of such cognitions with regard to agency, space, time, form, and cause effectively cuts them off from one another, so they express discretely. This profoundly transactional world can function only by means of elaborate connections among them. That is the crux of the argument for the necessity of unitary awareness as the substratum of objective reality put forward by Utpaladeva in the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā (ĪPK) and Abhinavagupta in the Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī (ĪPV). How can this collective actuality, delusory as it may be, even appear to coalesce and operate absent some medium for integrating circumscribed manifestations? No sooner do these momentary cognitions arise, after all, than they perish. What keeps them from passing forever into oblivion and ceding to entirely novel arrangements in the next moment? How do they cohere and sustain as they do in temporal experience? This exercise lifts from the polemical context and examines pertinent metaphysical tenets in an effort to gain insight into this controversial point of contention among Indic schools. Self-Aware Cognition The notion of self-apperception held by many Buddhist schools and accepted by KŚ takes cognition to be a circumscribed reflective relation in which its object refers back to its subject. Regardless of the content of the cognition, no object is perceived without the accompanying awareness that it is being perceived. The cognition is thus self-aware. KŚ departs notably, however, by holding that this awareness is no momentary byproduct of or contingent reaction to direct experience, but rather the abiding underlying driver integral to all experience. Consider the correlation between awareness and presence. Your awareness that I am here now validates your presence as such. (Recall the Cartesian cogito.) Yet the awareness of
Śrī Gauḍapāda in his seminal work the Māndūkya Kārikā [MK] wraps his gloss on the Māndūkya Upaniṣ... more Śrī Gauḍapāda in his seminal work the Māndūkya Kārikā [MK] wraps his gloss on the Māndūkya Upaniṣad in a manifesto of Advaita Vedānta tantamount to a wholesale sacrifice of diversity on the altar of unity. Any concession to plurality in the Upanisads must be understood from an enlightened perspective as nothing more than a didactical device en route to the exclusive and unequivocal embrace of unity. Later Kashmir Śaiva [KŚ] formulations as exposited by Utpaladeva in the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā [ĪPK], for example, build on key alignments and seize on metaphysical tensions in Gauḍapāda to reclaim and re-legitimize the pluralistic world, consonant with a more unreservedly explicit embrace of the Upaniṣadic dialectic of difference and nondifference.
Citi (universal consciousness) itself descending from (the stage of) Cetana (the uncontracted con... more Citi (universal consciousness) itself descending from (the stage of) Cetana (the uncontracted conscious stage) becomes Citta (individual consciousness) inasmuch as it becomes contracted (Sankocini) in conformity with the objects of consciousness (cetya). Pratyabhijñāhṛdayam Sūtra 5 1 In Brahmanical schools the unqualified subject, or Self with a capital "s," is the progenitor and seer of all. The qualified subject, or lowercase self, fettered by finite existence and fragmentary awareness, is but a poor relation. Embodied souls may strive to recover the Self within the self, or redeem their essential nondifference. A ubiquitous theme in Indic thought, the reconciliation of ultimate unity and cosmic diversity is largely the project of the Brahma Sūtras, a canonical text that famously waxes dialectic on identity and difference. Perhaps no other school provides a more inspired or elegant integration than Kashmir Śaivism as modeled in associated Trika, Spanda and Pratyabhijñā articulations. In this holistic systematization of reality and experience, the kinship and identity between the universal and particular subject is explicitly and deftly drawn. The central focus of this paper is the necessity, priority and supreme pedigree of subjectivity at all stages of consciousness as depicted in Kashmir Śaivism (KS). Here creative proliferation is a dynamic and spontaneous effulgence of supreme being (Śiva), and a descent of consciousness from and via unconditioned universal awareness (citi) to radically contracted awareness (citta) as it operates on the plane of ordinary experience. This stands in marked contrast to the view shared by some prominent Buddhist schools that consciousness, as a byproduct of contact between sense organs and sense objects, cannot claim a loftier inheritance but emerges in fleeting momentary cognitions unmoored to anything prior and higher. (Going forward, I shall characterize this generally as the Buddhist position.) Subjectivity in any form is an epistemic figment with no real bearing on awakened consciousness. This clash of perspectives remains a highly constructive contretemps for any related inquiry. I shall lean heavily as an academic outlier on likeminded ruminations set forth by Catherine Prueitt of George Mason University in her doctoral thesis. 2 Prueitt discloses surprising alignments and key discrepancies between the Yogacarin Dharmakīrti and the Kashmir Śaivist Abhinavagupta. She looks for insight to cognitive psychology, primarily Allan Allport, who points out the complex interplay of top-down and bottom-up signals of neural networks in how we
In the Trika ideology of Kashmir Śaivism (KŚ), māyā is the sixth in the hierarchy of thirtysix ta... more In the Trika ideology of Kashmir Śaivism (KŚ), māyā is the sixth in the hierarchy of thirtysix tattvas, or ontological (and in this formulation equally epistemological) principles. It is the stage in the creative descent at which consciousness assumes the existential mantle that eclipses its essential unity and sovereignty, and governs everyday experience. That mantle is comprised of five husks (kañcuka-s), each of which imposes a specific limitation with respect to the following: 1) authorship, or efficacy (kalā); 2) knowledge (vidyā); 3) inclination (rāga); 4) time (kāla); 5) space and cause (niyati). Thus are the powers of universal consciousness by its own doing fragmented and diminished in the individual personal experient, alienated in embodiment from the boundlessness of supreme Self. There is nothing abstruse generally about the KŚ theory of limitations imposed by the kañcukas. The sovereign agency, absolute knowledge and fulfillment, eternal and all-pervasive presence enjoyed by supreme consciousness are veiled and vitiated in the empirical subject. Somewhat enigmatic, however, is the association of "space" and "cause" in the fifth kañcuka niyati. This pairing is puzzling enough to draw attention and interest. Insofar as it points to the radical understanding of causality in Śaivāgama, it may also be more broadly instructive. Niyati means "restriction," and refers in this case the circumscription of finite existents. Certainly, restriction in space is a salient feature of phenomenal reality. Every object is subject to the spatial confines of determinate extension and position. Causation as an objectively determinative process and circumscribed operation is likewise constrained to a finite set of objects or properties. That by our usual reckoning cause is effected in both space and time, however, begs the question of why it is here associated with the former, and not the latter, or not assigned a kañcuka of its own.
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