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Michael Taft: Welcome to , the podcast for meta-modern mutants eager about meditation, hardcore Dharma, neuroscience, the Ministry for the Future, predictive processing, Vajrayana, nonduality, awakening, and far, rather more. My name is Michael Taft, your host on the podcast, and on this episode, I’m speaking with Christopher Wallis. Christopher Wallis, also generally known as Hareesh, is a Sanskritist and scholar-practitioner of classical Tantra, with thirty years of experience. He was initiated by a standard Indian guru on the age of 16 and received education at yoga ashrams each in India and the West. He holds several degrees, including an MPhil in classical Indian religions from Oxford, and a PhD in Sanskrit from UC Berkeley. Hareesh is the writer of and in addition of a translation, and commentary on a 1000-year-old masterpiece on experiential recognition of oneself as a direct expression of universal divine consciousness. And now, without further ado, I offer you the episode that I call “Exploring Nondual Shaiva Tantra, with Christopher Wallis,” aka Hareesh.
Michael Taft: Hareesh, Welcome to the Deconstructing Yourself podcast.
Christopher Wallis: Thanks.
MT: I’m so glad to have you ever here. In fact, most individuals probably in the event that they know of you’ll know you by your English name, which is Christopher Wallis. But I’m, in fact going to call you Hareesh for this interview.
So I first discovered about your work hearing through various students and fellow practitioners and so forth just a little bit about it. But eventually, I got my hands on a replica of , which was a tremendous experience, really a cool book. But then I saw you had one other one called . And it was like, Well, I like Christopher Wallis’s books so let’s do this out. And I got a replica of and it quite literally blew my mind. I had no idea such a text existed. From , I had heard of it, and I knew that there have been Nondual Shaiva Tantra traditions. But still, I used to be unprepared for just how amazing that’s.
So I’m just going to throw it on the market and say, are you able to give a private background of what Nondual Shaiva Tantra is and what are? Or the text is? I do know, that’s a big topic, but are you able to type of orient us to what we’re talking about here?
CW: Yeah, so I’ll summarize it this manner: Tantra is a spiritual movement, which began within the five a whole lot or the sixth century, in our Western calendar, and spread throughout all of South Asia, initially, in addition to later East Asia and Southeast Asia. And I call it a spiritual movement because Tantra itself isn’t a faith, but quite a way of doing religion, one might say. So all the key religions in South Asia at the moment developed a tantric component, that’s to say, Tantra first appeared inside the religion called Shaivism, which is the faith of Shiva and Shakti, now subsumed into Hinduism, and that’s been true for the last seven or eight hundred years. After which it propagated from there into Buddhism and Vaishnavism, and so forth.
So all of those religions instantiated the Tantric component. Intending to say, one might be a practitioner of those religions in a non-Tantric mode or in a Tantric mode. So simply to be clear, one might be a Buddhist or a Tantric Buddhist, and the difference there involved taking a type of higher level of initiation that gave one access to teachings and practices, that were beyond the common core of faith. And what’s interesting is that the Tantric practices have much the identical form in whichever religious tradition they seem. So though Buddhism and Shaivism, for instance, have many alternative doctrines, and philosophies, the Tantric practices themselves are sometimes even almost equivalent in these two different religious contexts. And that’s why it’s appropriate to think about Tantra as a spiritual movement that spread through these various religions.
MT: Let me just interrupt for a moment and say, as you recognize, I actually have a background in Hindu Tantrism, and did loads of practices in that style. And I used to be shocked, truthfully, I used to be used to doing all those practices in Sanskrit and, and going through the order of practices and so forth. And once I got involved in Vajrayana, so Buddhist Tantra, I already understood all the pieces they were doing, no less than on the ritual level, possibly the philosophy behind it’s different, however the practices were virtually equivalent. I used to be just shocked.
CW: Exactly. And over time, a few of those similarities became just a little bit less obvious. There have been certain divergences within the last seven 800 years. But on the period Tantra was flourishing–which was in regards to the 12 months 800 to 1200 of our calendar when it was maximally influential. Then yeah, we see the identical exact ritual technologies, not only ritual, but by way of the inner yogas, the inner practices of visualization and deity yoga and all this type of thing were really equivalent, but with different names and forms, right? So, in fact, a Buddhist is invoking Vairocana, or Akshobhya, or a Buddhist Bodhisattva, and a Shaiva is invoking Shiva under various Tantric names, or the goddess, you recognize, so the names and forms are different, but the precise practice, the ritual technology, we’d say whether inner or outer, was the identical.
So it’s fascinating, and Tantric studies is a reasonably recent field. It’s been flourishing in academic circles for the last 50 years. And the outcomes of that research can be making its way little by little to the practitioner context, which is very important because loads of Vajrayana practitioners, for instance, didn’t even realize that there was this common ritual syntax as scholars sometimes call it. And that a lot of these Tantric practices, if not most, actually derived from the Shaiva tradition, to make use of the right Sanskrit adjective.
So, Nondual Shaiva Tantra is something that emerged within the mid-Ninth century. That’s to say, a type of Tantric practice that was embedded in a nondual philosophy. And this developed over time until it became really quite a classy vision of reality, by which all these deities that you just work with in Tantric practice weren’t seen anymore as supernatural individuals that one could transact with, but quite as icons of essence. Where each of the deities instantiated some aspect of our universal essence nature, that’s to say, of the character of consciousness itself. So the deities were understood to specific points of that consciousness by which all conscious beings are conscious, that consciousness which instantiates as the notice of each sentient being.
So Nondual Shaiva Tantra eventually developed right into a form which some scholars say is even atheistic within the sense that there isn’t any God separate from this consciousness. But this consciousness is known to be trans-individual, and subsequently, different from how people would ordinarily conceive of consciousness. Since the extraordinary perspective, you recognize, it’s my consciousness versus your consciousness. And here we’re understanding that there’s one trans-individual consciousness. The metaphor is usually used, that each one things are seen by the sunshine of the sun, even when it’s at some remove, right, because if a lamp is lit, the fuel of that lamp is the stored energy of the sun. And so actually, all illumination is that very same fundamental energy, and that’s used as a type of analogy for this vision of reality, by which consciousness is singular.
And yet we still invoke these deities because we don’t know ourselves in our true nature or in our deepest nature. And the deities serve to illustrate to us in various ways, something in regards to the vastness, the ability, the depth of that consciousness, which we’re, and which gets ignored insofar as we’re identified with the bodymind or other type of adventitious features of embodied experience.
So, Nondual Shaiva Tantra then ended up being quite influential all the way in which all the way down to the current day, even when the source of the influence isn’t any longer remembered. So in modern yoga, for instance, people will invoke concepts that they don’t realize originally come from this tradition of Nondual Shaiva Tantra: concepts of oneness; or the universality of consciousness; or the notion that the body is the temple of the deity. This can be a teaching present in this tradition.
MT: Yeah, let’s just pause there for a moment, because in fact, we’re calling this Nondual Shaiva Tantra, and nowadays that will be lumped together in the overall category of Hinduism. But we’ve got one other big nondual tradition lumped together in Hinduism, which is, in fact, Advaita Vedanta. And each of those are “Hinduism.” And each of those are nondual, but in fact, they’re very different. And I’m just curious if, in a transient way, you can assist us to disambiguate these two types of nondual practice.
CW: Yeah, and this can be a complex query due to the indisputable fact that Advaita Vedanta, over the past eight hundred years, absorbed loads of Tantric influence. So the shape of Vedanta that individuals engage with, no less than in India–setting aside for the moment the sometimes called Neo Advaita of Western practitioners. Indian Advaita Vedanta is deeply influenced by Tantra because it appears today and has for a whole lot of years. And that obscures the elemental differences between these two types of nonduality.
And a thousand years ago, those differences were stark because Advaita Vedanta posited a singular absolute consciousness called Brahman, which didn’t have any Shakti. That’s to say, it didn’t have any dynamism. It didn’t do anything, it was a pure witness, right? So that is the way in which that the Tantrikas criticized it, they’d say, Oh, your notion of consciousness is devoid of Shakti, whereas, within the Tantric conception of consciousness, it has inherent powers, energies, or potencies called Shaktis, reminiscent of the Power of Bliss, the Power of Knowing, the Power of Will, the Power of Acting, and so forth.
And so based on Tantra then, the One Consciousness actually does transform itself into the substance of each experience. And this can be a dynamic process by which it contracts into the shape of an experience, after which expands once more into its full potential, after which contracts into the shape of the subsequent experience, though this oscillation or spanda isn’t fully perceptible to most conscious agents without deep reflection. Whereas within the Vedantic view, there isn’t any activity in consciousness, and the perception that there’s activity is an illusion. So, subsequently, the world isn’t real. It’s an appearance, very similar to a mirage in a desert or mistaking a rope for a snake, there actually isn’t any snake and there never was a snake. It’s only a cognitive error. Whereas in Tantra, the world is real. It’s an actual transformation of consciousness. It’s nothing but consciousness, and yet it’s an actual transformation of consciousness.
So in this manner, Tantrikas venerated diversity, and Vedantans dismissed diversity, which is a fairly stark contrast that had real-world implications, because Tantrikas were non-renunciate, because they were world-embracing of their attitude because all the pieces on the earth is a type of the One and deserves to be venerated as such. And for Vedantans, the One never actually becomes anything aside from its transcendent, absolute nature.
So it’s actually a bit hard to elucidate because for the Tantrikas, in the method by which consciousness transforms itself into the substance of any experience, it never actually loses its transcendent character. It doesn’t grow to be less divine by transforming itself into the substance of experience. However it does create these possibilities for misunderstanding. So though all the pieces that appears inside experience is solely a distinct vibration of the sameOne, due to diversity, we will mistake it for being something separate.
So there’s some commonalities, but in addition some distinct differences that like I say, have mostly been obscured. So if you happen to refer to a contemporary practitioner in India, of Vedanta, also they are reading Tantric texts, but calling them Vedantic texts, for instance, the Soundarya Lahari. They claim was written by the founding father of Advaita Vedanta, they usually claim it for themselves, though actually, it wasn’t written by Shankaracharya. It’s a Tantric text. That’s only one example of what we’d call the of Vedanta.
MT: It’s so interesting, there’s actually quite an extended thread, we could go on there. And possibly we’ll do it later on this talk. But thanks for making that distinction. So, Nondual Shaiva Tantra isn’t Advaita and particularly early on, they’re very different. So now you were about to inform us about this particular text from the Nondual Shaiva Tantra tradition, .
CW: Yes, . In Sanskrit, the title is , which accurately means the Heart of the Teachings on Recognition. It’s a text that teaches this exact Tantric nondual doctrine that I used to be just indicating, and it does use the word Advaita. Or it’s close synonym, Advaya in Sanscrit. And actually, when this tradition names itself, you recognize what we’re calling Nondual Shaiva Tantra it calls itself , which suggests the way in which of the supreme nonduality of divinity. Okay, Parameshwar Advaya, which suggests Advaita, Vada. And what they mean by that expression is something very interesting that as a substitute of this nondual view that excludes duality and says duality is fallacious, this can be a nondual view that features duality, as a legitimate level of experience, though, not an absolute one. So the difference here is that this nondual tradition validates practice in a dualistic mode, as a type of stepping stone for many individuals to a truer or more all-encompassing nondual awareness.
So if we put this in on a regular basis language that everybody can understand, if you happen to experience that the One universal consciousness is something larger, wider, or deeper than yourself, since you’re still identified as a bodymind more often than not, then it is smart to venerate that as a better power, to make use of a typical phrase, until you realize that that’s, actually, what you might be in your deepest nature. So in other words, on this nondual tradition, you’re not purported to fake it till you make it and pretend to an experience that you just don’t yet have. And that truly, the worship of this higher power can result in the conclusion that you just yourself are that, in stages which are rigorously prescribed in that tradition. That you just start to acknowledge that your personal consciousness has the very same capacities and potencies of this supposed higher power, that you just’ve been venerating as something beyond yourself. And so the sense of limited or separate self dissolves into that greater context, which you realize is what you may have, actually, been all along.
In order that’s why it’s the way in which of upper nonduality, a nonduality that features duality and various levels of duality inside itself, subsumes them, in addition to ultimately transcends them.
So this doctrine is explained at length on this text, which we call since it consists of twenty sutras, with commentary by the writer of the unique sutras. So it’s one whole text, and to take the sutras out of that context is fallacious, and a few authors have done that. But really, they need to be taken in light of the commentary on the sutras composed by the writer of the sutras. So he composed all of it as one singular text. And though it’s incredibly profound, this text is definitely a summary of much more abstruse philosophy.
So you recognize, there’s a convention in Nondual Shaiva Tantra called the Recognition School, the varsity on how you can recognize yourself because the deity that you just were previously worshipping, as if almost separate. So means recognition, the popularity of your consciousness because the universal consciousness. So this summary is definitely far easier to read than the vast body of labor that it relies on, and, importantly, includes practices. So in the interpretation I’ve done, , if you happen to make it to chapter 18. That’s where you get all these wonderful practices. And that is type of counterintuitive for some modern readers who want practices more upfront, but in the standard view, you may have to grasp the context by which these practices make sense. And so the view is laid out first after which comes the practice towards the tip of this sublime text.
And by the way in which, this text was composed within the Kashmir Valley 1000 years ago, and lots of people consider it a component of the literature called Kashmir Shaivism. And Kashmir Shaivism, is a little bit of a misnomer, since it implies a convention that was specifically endemic to Kashmir, when actually, this tradition was absolutely pan-Indian, not confined to Kashmir in any respect. However the name Kashmir Shaivism got here about within the twentieth century, to indicate the really amazing works of literature written by masters of Nondual Shaiva Tantra who happened to live in Kashmir. But they themselves very much knew that they were commenting on and elaborating a pan-Indian Tantric tradition that we call Shaiva Tantra.
MT: It’s also fascinating that these texts almost didn’t make it all the way down to the fashionable day. It’s a fairly fascinating story how they even got here to know of them. Are you able to share just a little little bit of that with us?
CW: Yeah, it’s interesting, because plainly Buddhism, or Tantric Buddhism, particularly, survived the colonial period a lot better, when actually, Tantric Buddhism, like the remainder of Buddhism was worn out in India with the Muslim conquests. And the explanation people know of Tantric Buddhism under the name Tibetan Buddhism today is since it got exported to Tibet, and other regions as well, before those conquests. So it’s necessary to grasp that the Tantric Buddhism that we all know in its Tibetan form, existed in almost equivalent forms in India prior to that, and in fact, the Tibetans know this because they know that their texts in Tibetan are nearly all translations of Sanskrit originals, though, in fact, they added their very own commentaries in Tibetan as well.
So just as Tantric Buddhism was flourishing in India, so was Tantric Shaivism. And when the Muslim conquest got here, Tantric Buddhism was no more in India. It was worn out more easily since it was more institutionalized, you may say, and Shaiva Tantra was a bit more grassroots. The practice context for Shaiva Tantra was primarily not institutions, but homes of homeowners just like the (24:19) Kula would gather in the house of the guru or another senior practitioner. And never only in these institutional contexts.
So Shaiva Tantra survived the Muslim conquests, but in an attenuated form, and continued to be attenuated over time because within the context of Muslim rule, previously disparate groups that we now call Hindu type of glommed together into the development we call Hinduism. It’s an organic construction, right? That actually got here together only within the last 800 years.
And in fact, this can be a whole can of worms because people in India get very upset at Westerners saying this because they wish to say, well Hinduism is 1000s of years old. And in fact, the component parts of Hinduism are 1000s of years old, a lot of them, however the notion of a Hindu identity, which is common to Vedic Brahmins and Vaishnavas and Shaivas, that only got here about under Muslim rule.
So, the purpose is, though, that this strategy of attenuation continued until the Tantric tradition was fragmented, where to type of simplify it, the philosophy of Tantra survived primarily in Kashmir and a few other places. A few of the yogic practices of Tantra survived in another regions like Rajasthan. And the ritual practices of Tantra survived primarily within the deep south of India, like Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and other places. And a few of the sexual practices of Tantra survived only in Eastern India, Bengal and Assam.
And so the tradition fragmented because all of those components I’ve just mentioned, philosophy and yoga and ritual and embodied or sexual practices were all a part of one tradition, but survived in several regions, and gave rise to those misperceptions that now we understand it was one tradition. And it’s once we bring these disparate elements back together again, that we see the true power of the Tantric revelation.
And someone might say, But don’t we see it in Tibetan Buddhism as well? Well, Yes, and no, because Tibetan Buddhism is a highly monasticised, and institutionalized version of Tantra, which doesn’t preserve all of those elements, actually.
So each query you ask is, you recognize, potentially, I could go on for an hour, but they’re attempting to get these order responses. But yeah, these texts did survive. There’s a continuous tradition, even when it barely survived, right? Still, there’s a continuous tradition of study of and a variety of other texts all the way in which all the way down to the current day. Though, as the nice Tantric scholar Alexa Sanderson says the tradition passed through the attention of a needle, where it really almost died out about 100 years ago, and ever since has been slowly sort of constructing a comeback on this recent global context.
MT: Good. So that you’ve been mentioning the similarities between Nondual Shaiva Tantra and Vajrayana Buddhism. And we talked in regards to the ritual similarity, or we could almost call it the technique similarities, and so forth. But what do you see as a few of the key differences, like necessary differences? Probably most people listening to this are involved in some Buddhist tradition or one other. And as you will have seen, I’ve been talking about Vajrayana-style stuff, or Vajrayana practices, i.e. Buddhist Tantra practices, on this system recently quite a bit. So what are some really necessary things which are different about these practices or traditions?
CW: Well, that’s an interesting query, since it type of depends which lineages you’re taking a look at; which lineages of Shaiva Tantra, and which lineages of Buddhist Tantra because in some cases, it’s hard to search out any significant differences. In other cases, you possibly can. So the range is actually from lineage to lineage quite than between these two very similar Tantric traditions. Nonetheless, if we’re just painting in quite broad strokes, one big difference that usually obtains is the role of bhakti or devotionalism, because in Shaiva Tantra it very much has a spot. Again, though it’s a radically nondual tradition, no less than in some lineages, still, the role of devotion was honored and emphasized because as I said, if you’re experiencing yourself as a person bodymind, you experience that your personal ultimate nature is in some way something higher than oneself, right, even when in other modes of practice or nondual, mystical states, that difference completely evaporates. So anyone might move between these different poles of experience for quite a while before they finally get established in continuous nondual awareness.
And so, we see, for instance, an incredible authority within the sphere of Shaiva Tantra: the nice master Utpaladeva wrote radically nondual philosophy by which again, he strongly asserted that what you’re calling divinity or god or Shiva or whatever name you place is totally nothing but your personal true nature, that there isn’t any real distinction there. And yet the exact same writer wrote devotional poetry to Shiva. So this appears to be a paradox. But from his own perspective, it wasn’t. And he even says in his poetry, things like, to paraphrase: Oh Shiva, let me proceed to have this experience of apparent separation from you in order that I can taste the sweetness of this total love and devotion of me for you, and also you for me, though I do know that you just are me, and I’m you.
So that may be a feature that isn’t entirely absent from Vajrayana. But devotional modes of expression are much less frequent within the Vajrayana tradition, let’s imagine. Regardless that in fact, Vajrayanists do perform rituals as if a separation or difference of self and deity were real, on some level. So you recognize, that’s one difference.
But once we’re taking a look at the philosophy, there may be no noticeable difference, especially if we’re comparing certain lineages. So if we’re comparing the teachings of Dzogchen, for instance, with the teachings of the Krama lineage, a few of which appear in , then it’s hard to see any real difference within the view in any respect. Let’s imagine there’s difference within the practice, in fact, since the institutionalization of Tantric Buddhism within the Tibetan context, signifies that you may have to undergo these stages of practice which are very strict. Meaning everyone has to do the preliminary practices before they get access to the following initiation that permits them to do different practices and so forth. Whereas within the Shaiva context, all the identical preliminaries are there, but anyone who has sufficient aptitude could skip certain steps or stages or preliminaries, you recognize, they don’t necessarily need to do 1 million repetitions of whatever mantra or 100,000 prostrations or whatever. Because in Shaiva Tantra, it’s recognized that the aim of those practices is to bring a couple of certain understanding or state of consciousness or experience. And if that’s already there, then there’s no point in doing the practices that serve to bring that about.
So this isn’t, in fact, something which you could determine for yourself. But quite you wish a guru. Traditionally, your guru says, Okay, you possibly can skip this step because I can see you have already got the insight or the non-conceptual awareness that this step is supposed to bring about. And so possibly that also happens in Vajrayana. But so far as I’ve seen, it’s rather more rigid, I suppose, by way of the stages of practice that one has to undergo.
MT: Yes. And interestingly, traditions like Dzogchen and Mahamudra that come from these deep Tantric roots talk in regards to the same stories of their earlier incarnations of those lineages, took place in villages in a non-monastic setting and a rather more fluid practice situation where the teacher is giving the scholar exactly what they need, quite than following like a prescribed route of practice, just as you’re describing. So I believe they recognize that early on, it looked more like what you’re saying the situation was in Nondual Shaiva Tantra, so interesting.
This to me is fascinating, if you happen to’re in Dzogchen, or Mahamudra, or Vajrayana normally, and even Mahayana Buddhism, let alone Vajrayana Buddhism, the absolutely central core concept that should be realized is emptiness, right? Together, in fact, with compassion, but emptiness plays this totally central role in all the pieces. And yet, we don’t see an excessive amount of speak about emptiness in Nondual Shaiva Tantra, no less than not using that word. And so I’m curious how does Nondual Shaiva Tantra type of approach that very same understanding? Since these two are so similar Buddhist Tantra and nondual Shaiva Tantra, I assume that they’re talking about it another way, and yet still addressing the identical idea.
CW: Yeah, well, actually, what you simply said isn’t true. (Laughter) Intending to say that the usage of the term emptiness, that within the Krama lineage—which can be generally known as Mahartha, Mahanaya—has many names. That is probably the most radically nondual lineage of Shaiva Tantra. And it’s really probably the most fascinating historically speaking, as well, for all styles of reasons. But within the Krama lineage, you do have language of emptiness; , , always.
MT: I didn’t see loads of that in .
CW: Right. Because is weaving together teachings from multiple lineages, primarily the Trika and the Krama. And so the Krama is there as a type of esoteric core of the teaching. But he’s also, you recognize, writing for an audience that isn’t necessarily fully initiated into those teachings. So it’s not totally apparent, but if you happen to read Krama sources on their very own, then the emphasis on is constant and you possibly can even read some passages that you just would think if a Vajrayana person read them he can be like, Oh, this might be from Vajrayana Tantra.
So what’s the difference? This is very important because, well, again, sometimes possibly there isn’t any difference, but sometimes there appears to be a difference in that these Shaiva Tantrikas criticized the Buddhists as those that venerate the void as absolute, whereas we Shaiva Tantrikas, they are saying, are those that recognize that the last word realization is that of the total void, that of the emptiness which is concurrently full, or the fullness which is concurrently empty. And so, from the angle of Shaiva Tantra, you experience this radical void of pure consciousness, which is totally empty of all particularity, empty of all qualities, et cetera, et cetera. But then you definately’re purported to transcend that, to the last word realization, which is that very same void, but now realized as pregnant with infinite possibility. And the term pregnant is usually even used when there’s a goddess-worshipping context within the background.
And so the way in which Kṣemarāja puts it in is that we should always realize this emptiness as concurrently, absolutely full, absolutely empty, each, and neither vibrating in absolute simultaneity. And so the language there is nearly harking back to Nagarjuna’s Madhyamika Path. Because, you recognize, it’s, he says each and neither, because he doesn’t want you to grasp it merely as a coincidence of apparent opposites. That it’s, actually, the true nature of reality completely escapes the mind, and is totally non-conceptual. But once we enter into the mind and take a look at to articulate what’s been realized, then we must use this paradoxical language of the emptiness which is full and the fullness which is empty. And in fact, here the fullness in query is that this sense of sublime presence that spills over into any and all experience in any respect. Now, possibly you possibly can tell me are there teachings on the Vajrayana side, that echo this? That in some way say that the true nature of emptiness can be perfect fullness? Do you see that type of language somewhere there?
MT: I’m unsure in regards to the language of perfect fullness. But the concept that–to talk in a really rough way, very crude way–that the void or emptiness is giving birth to the whole universe, and that the shape of the world isn’t in any way separate from this pristine purity of the transcendental void. That’s the central teaching. And actually, we will call that the primordial purity and things like that, the void aspect, but one other word for it’s , which you recognize, perfectly well, means a womb. So giving birth is a central image. And the concept that form and emptiness should not in any way separate is, in fact, central. So I believe that if I’m not running roughshod over the differences in language, I believe these are very similar understandings.
CW: Yeah, absolutely. The purpose, no less than from the Shaiva Tantra perspective, is that the masters of the tradition don’t want practitioners to assume that the last word reality to be realized is wholly transcendent.
MT: Exactly.
CW: Yeah. So if you may have , as your ultimate thing, you possibly can imagine that because the void which transcends all embodied experience. And in fact, it does, but it surely also instantiates as all embodied experience, and so there’s this invitation to experience the luminous void, right, in a deep samadhi state where there’s no sensory experience as per normal, that if you happen to realize that that void, that emptiness is, actually, luminous, not with literal light, but with the potentiality to grow to be anything, then if you enter back into sensual experience, you may have the opportunity of recognizing that each one that you just’re experiencing is that very luminous void appearing as form.
MT: That’s right, and this can be a central teaching in Vajrayana. And what to me is so exciting about these deep nondual traditions. They’re not transcendent only. For those who get into, for instance, early Buddhism or if you happen to get into Advaita Vedanta, they’re strictly transcendent. The world is a nasty thing, it’s a delusion, and you must only hand around in that transcendent . Yeah, right. Like that’s the tip goal. Whereas these Tantric traditions are like, No, you’re taking it further, just as in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, take it further and see that the world is that this exuberant, completely energized expression of that void and isn’t separate from it in any way. So quite than rejecting the world and going into some type of transcendent monkhood, we reengage with experience, reengage with all the pieces, reengage with the exquisite brocade of creation. Which leads me to what I believe is so interesting, also, with these nondual Shaiva Tantra practitioners and historical figures is that they’re very involved with art and literature. And actually, they write treatises, on aesthetics, and so forth. The actual stuff of creation and expression is centrally interesting, no less than as I understand it.
CW: Absolutely. And before entering into that just a little bit deeper, let me just also mention that, you recognize, if we’re talking about shunyata, or emptiness, also within the purely philosophical sense of denoting a doctrine of interdependence, in fact, within the philosophy of Buddhism, emptiness and are intimately linked, that all the pieces is empty of its own inherent essence, since it only exists in relation to all of the phenomena that it’s interdependent with. And if we’re talking about that version of the word emptiness, which is in fact, not unrelated to other usages, but when we’re talking about that version, that too appears in these Shaiva Tantra teachings, especially again, of the Krama lineage, where they are saying exactly because the Buddhists say, they are saying nothing has its own independent essence, though other Hindus, and that is in fact, again, the issue with the designation Hindu, because others which are put within the Hindu basket, say the other, that every thing has its own essence, that there’s a cow-ness that each one cows share, and so forth. But these Shaiva Tantrikas of the nondual stream were saying that all the pieces has just one essence and that’s consciousness, not independent essences. But all the pieces also expresses a distinct aspect of that one, as a result of the way it’s embedded in all the assorted interrelationships and causes and conditions.
So the very reason that an object appears as an object and appears to have a distinct quality from another object isn’t since it has a distinct essence but because its position within the matrix of relationships is different. But the entire matrix of relationships itself is emanating from this timeless space of pure awareness, that emanates, holds, and reabsorbs all phenomena.
In order that also pertains to what you were just saying about being engaged within the aesthetic world, within the sensual world. Because on this higher realization, you don’t must enter right into a transcendent state to experience the transcendent. You really experience the transcendent in every sensual experience. So for the Shaiva Tantrikas, that’s the last word; to be engaged in sensual experience and savor the individuality of every sensual experience, while a hundred percent feeling the reality of the indisputable fact that what exactly you’re experiencing, in that moment, is the Supreme Absolute manifest as that.
So once we use language like Supreme Absolute, it sounds so removed, but indirect experience, there’s no contradiction. Whatever you touch, taste, smell, hear, feel, take into consideration, sense, is the Oneappearing in that form. So the revelation of the simultaneous universality and particularity is type of where it’s at, for the proponents of this tradition. And that’s why you don’t must resign the world and so forth. Regardless that in fact, you do must do practices that assist you to take a step back from the assorted misunderstandings that get triggered if you don’t yet experience the underlying transcendence. So it’s type of like, and possibly this is analogous in Vajrayana, but it surely’s type of such as you learn how you can experience the transcendent, after which learn how you can experience the transcendent in the upcoming. So it’s type of very broadly speaking, a two-stage process: transcendence followed by the experience of the pervasion of the transcendent in all that was previously transcended. If that is smart.
MT: It makes perfect sense. That is a very important point that one type of nondualism we were describing, what I in my very own colloquial language, called Nondual 1, remains to be true, the transcendent sense of the void, or pure consciousness or whatever it’s something that we will contact, and actually, is required, as a way to recognize what I’d call Nondual 2, which is that this imminent quality that you just’re describing. For most individuals, not everyone, but for most individuals, it’s going to be a two-stage process. First letting go of a naive grasping across the form world first, before we will then re-engage with the world of form on this radically transformed way. So I believe it is smart. Again, it’s not seen that way often, or all the time…
CW: You already know, we’re crystallizing something very necessary here because that’s a very powerful critique that these nondual Tantric traditions have of other types of South Asian spirituality is that followers of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra or earlier Buddhism or early Advaita Vedanta, they simply take the one step to the transcendent, absolute, after which that’s their goal to only stay there, transcended. And the Tantrikas are taking the second step of the whole collapsing of the excellence without losing the relevant features of every that’s to say, the experience of the whole oneness of the transcendent and imminent, but not by reducing either to the opposite, but by experiencing concurrently that the entire is in every part is one technique to put it. But in fact, whatever way we put it, it doesn’t capture it perfectly, because this is solely beyond the categories that the mind can take care of.
MT: Superb. So let’s come on back to this aesthetic feature, the engagement with the creation, that’s such a signature for these Nondual Shaiva Tantra traditions.
CW: Absolutely. Yeah. The best Tantric master in Shaivism, or the one who history has kind of decided was the best Tantric master, was this figure Abhinavagupta, who lived in Kashmir 1000 years ago. And he’s famous for not only writing voluminous works on Tantric philosophy, ritual, and practice, but in addition for writing voluminous works on aesthetics, poetry, dance, and drama. And actually, on the earth of Sanskrit studies, many scholars know him primarily in that domain. And these are sometimes seen by scholars as separate domains. But in fact, for Abhinavagupta and a few of his associates, they weren’t separate domains in any respect. And this brings us to a very necessary point, which is that the entire–from this Shaiva Tantra perspective anyway–the entire point of getting the conclusion, that we’ve been talking about in somewhat philosophical terms, is that it makes accessible to the practitioner the direct experience of a type of sublime beauty in all things.
And the way in which I like to elucidate this, as you recognize, within the Tantric tradition, once we say all the pieces is God, and we do have that expression on the Shaiva side of the Tantric tradition, specifically , nothing exists which isn’t God. But the issue is when Westerners hear this, they think we’re saying all the pieces is nice since the Western conception of God is a lot related to the nice. And, in fact, that will be a crazy thing to say that all the pieces is nice, war is nice, and so forth, but that’s not what they’re saying. And so what do they mean, after they say all the pieces is God? Well, they mean that, in fact, that all the pieces is a type of consciousness, as we’ve been saying. But additionally they mean that there’s the chance for the experience of sublime beauty, anywhere and in all places. And that this isn’t easy to have until you may have nondual realization. And then you definately find that beauty exists in forms that you just’ve never suspected, that there’s a beauty in decay and death, in addition to in birth and growth. That we will actually experience aesthetic rapture in virtually any experience of on a regular basis life, nevertheless mundane or nevertheless difficult.
And so that is the meeting point of this aesthetic philosophy and this spiritual philosophy on this tradition. And so within the aesthetic works, they’re called in Sanskrit you get this teaching that Abhinavagupta was an enormous fan of, of nine different types of beauty. The so-called , the nine rasas where rasa means aesthetic savor, nine ways to savor beauty, right? Because rasa is said to words that mean yummy taste, juiciness, and things like that sweetness also, but here it means aesthetic savor.
But what’s interesting about this teaching of the nine rasas is that it includes categories which are counterintuitive to Westerners, or most of them anyway. Because there’s the aesthetic savor possible in romantic modes of experience, and of poetry and dance and drama, and so forth. And there’s also the aesthetic savor possible within the experience of fear,
MT: The fear rasa.
CW: Yeah, exactly. Now, I need to be very clear, though, because almost everyone who talks in regards to the subject or tries to speak about it, confuses and conflates rasas with emotional states, they usually should not. So the underlying emotional state is named the . However the rasa is the experience of beauty, in association with that emotional state. So in other words, if the artist transforms terror into art, then we are going to experience a few of that fear through the art but in a transfigured way. So it’s the experience of aesthetic savor, this ability to savor the attractive inside the frightening or inside the romantic or inside the heroic or inside the comedic or inside even probably the most surprising of all of the rasas perhaps, is the disgusting. That which repels us may be experienced as a type of the fascination that consciousness has of itself appearing in that form.
So this contemplation of the nine rasas could be a very nondual contemplation that there’s this possible experience of astonishing, well, beauty possibly isn’t quite the appropriate word since it’s more like aesthetic rapture,, in Sanskrit, the fascination that consciousness has with itself appearing in that form. And that fascination has a component of what we’d call love. And that’s necessary, since it’s not that we like frightening experiences or disgusting experiences, but in a way, we love them. And this theory is definitely proven by even all our modern art forms, right? Because if you happen to’re going to the films, or if you happen to’re taking a look at modern art of varied kinds, then you definately see, oh, wow, all these rasas are to be found there. And we as humans like to be frightened in an aesthetic way. Not that each one horror movies are aesthetic. Some are only, you recognize, they’re not art by any standard that I could consider, but some , right?
And Abhinavagupta makes that distinction. He says it’s only true art if it elevates you into this sublime state, which is cathartic, which is expansive. But that elevation can happen on the idea of any of those underlying emotions. So I’d actually argue removed from a distinction of aesthetic and spiritual philosophy that we want the one to grasp the opposite. And to grasp what this tradition means when it says, . And by the way in which, within the Sanskrit phrase there, the word which means God may mean blessing, right? So nothing exists which isn’t potentially a blessing if you happen to’re capable of find the sweetness in it. And that makes rather more sense than trying to say that truly, all the pieces’s really good to know.
So we’re not purported to superimpose a positive story onto suffering, we’re purported to find the sweetness in suffering. And indeed, we all know that’s possible, because a lot great art and poetry has come out of suffering. And the teaching here is you don’t need to be a poet, to search out the sweetness in suffering, you would possibly should be a poet to articulate it. But you don’t should be a poet to search out it and experience it. And I believe that’s a really, very powerful teaching. And possibly that’s one which is exclusive to Shiva Tantra. I don’t know if there’s anything comparable in Buddhist Tantra. I haven’t seen it no less than.
MT: There definitely is, although I don’t think it takes such a outstanding place. But you’ve ignited my curiosity in a technique, which is, do you recognize of any, let’s say, poetry from this era, from the Abhinavagupta or Kṣemarāja eras that speaks to people in the fashionable West, that you may recommend? That isn’t just so removed, that it could possibly only be enjoyed with great effort at adapting it and translating it not only linguistically, but culturally?
CW: Absolutely. So there’s Utpaladeva’s poetry, all these various hymns he wrote were collected right into a form called . There’s a pair of fine translations of that on the market. But much more can be the poetry which isn’t yet published in good translations, but which is coming and persons are working on it, myself and other scholars like Ben Williams and Hamza Stainton are working on this. And we hope to bring these out more. This poetry again from this Krama lineage I keep mentioning because I come to see it because the crown jewel of Shaiva Tantra, though it also accommodates much material that may be disturbing, in certain ways to some practitioners. And we will cover that if you happen to want.
However the Krama has this sublime poetry, which weaves together devotion and spiritual or philosophical insight. And on this sense, the poetry is nearly unique since it’s very wealthy in spiritual insight and reference to philosophical concepts. However it’s not heady poetry, it’s very evocative and exquisite and devotional at the identical time. So you recognize, eventually, I need to bring out a book with multiple translators involved called , which presents this poetry of the Krama lineage. So bits and pieces of it are already on the market, here and there in the general public sphere, but not collected yet and readily accessible. In order that’s one other big topic to get into. And I wish there have been good translations of all these materials already available, but simply to understand it’s there and more of that might be coming out.
MT: And I just need to ask, what’s it that we’d find disturbing in a few of these poems?
CW: Not within the poems, but within the lineage which produced them. So the Nondual Krama lineage can be probably the most radically transgressive of all of the Shaiva Tantric lineages. And people things go hand in hand from the angle of Shaivism and I do know from Buddhism as well in some forms, that the more nondual you might be, the more willing you might be to transgress social norms. And that each one is smart, but in addition the Krama included type of quasi-shamanic practices. Now, some authorities interpret these by way of entirely interior modes of consciousness exploring itself. But this can be a type of interiorization of practices that actually were done at one point anyway, quasi-shamanic practices of intense practice for a lot of, many hours and invoking yoginis and dakinis and making blood offerings, often from one’s own body, you recognize, cutting open the left arm to make a blood offering to the yoginis so which you could grow to be certainly one of their gang because it were, and receive their blessings and realize that these yoginis express potencies of consciousness which exist inside you as well. And these yoginis appear in these theriomorphic forms, these part animal, part human forms. And I’m just scratching the surface of this type of amazing, weird, and wild aspect of the tradition which actually has these shamanic roots, which deals in helpful possession, which some types of Buddhist Tantra do as well.
MT: That is , not only simply . Am I correct?
CW: More the opposite way around, refers to a possession and refers to a mystical experience of immersion. The excellence isn’t quite so clear-cut. That’s principally the excellence.
MT: Interesting. This leads to a different topic earlier, you mentioned how Tantrism is a movement that appears kind of at the identical time in a bunch of various religions. It’s a form that appears and this begs the query was the shape pre-existing in, say, ritual magic or shamanic practices of underclasses in India or something? And so I need to ask that query. Do you may have any sense or does scholarship have any good sense of where this Tantric mode got here from in the primary place?
CW: Yeah, this was a matter that preoccupied a variety of scholars for many years, and what Sanderson finally was capable of show–you may have to read some a whole lot of pages to review all of the evidence and grasp the argument–but he was capable of show that Tantra emerged organically inside Shaivism after which propagated in a short time to Buddhism and to other religious traditions. But that it’s a type of logical and organic outgrowth or further development, I should say, of some themes and trends that were already there in Shaivism, including these practices with shamanic roots. So there’s these proto-tantric practitioners called .
MT: The skull carriers.
CW: Exactly. They flourished, especially around 12 months 600, and for just a little while after that, too. Yeah, they carried skull bowls, they’d eat and drink out of skull bowls. They were ascetics, though they weren’t householders. Right, and that’s, in fact, an enormous difference. When Tantra developed, it developed as a householder, primarily a householder tradition. But these proto-Tantrikas called Kapalikas–they usually went by other names as well–their practices actually had a few of these quasi-tribal quasi-shamanic roots. And interestingly, the features of those Kapalikas, they usually were a hundred percent, you recognize, Shaiva, but all of those features migrated into Tantric Buddhism as well. So, the wearing of the bone ornaments comes from these Kapalikas, and a variety of other features that loads of people think, are very much particular to Tibetan Buddhism. But they really come from this very early type of Shaivism. That’s not yet Tantric, but as proto-Tantric, and did include some type of sexual ritual or consort practice. It didn’t yet have this sophisticated nondual philosophy, it didn’t yet have key aspects of Tantric practice, like deity yoga. So it’s not yet Tantric. There’s so much more that might be said about that.
But Buddhists who’re type of dogmatically committed to their vision of Buddhism really get uncomfortable and even upset when this argument is presented that the Tantric practice they hold so dear was originally borrowed by Buddhists from Shaivas. However the evidence is actually abundant. And it’s to not say that they simply copied–I mean, they actually did copy some practices–but they re-instantiated those practices in a Buddhist mode. They made them into very much Buddhist versions of those practices over time, you recognize, so one could argue that they were open-minded enough to appreciate, hey, what these Shaivas are doing over here appears to be working. Let’s give it a try too.
But we all know from the historical record that Tantra moved through the Buddhist sphere in India very rapidly because we’ve got records of two different Chinese pilgrims who got here to India only two generations apart. The primary one doesn’t mention Tantra within the early six a whole lot after which the second within the late six a whole lot says, oh, all of the monasteries in India are doing these mandala initiations, they’re doing these Tantric teachings, they’ve these Tantric mantras. And, you recognize, he’s like, Wow, what’s this recent thing? And that is just within the space of fifty years, almost every major monastery in India began practicing Tantra. And this isn’t just monasteries, but that’s where we’ve got records.
MT: Excellent. So Hareesh, Christopher Wallis, where can people learn more about your work?
CW: Yeah. You already know, though our conversation has been very philosophical, and historical, in some ways, I just wish to mention that, for me, all of that’s so fascinating, but none of it might have value if it wasn’t for the ability of practice. And as a teacher, you recognize, I can sometimes teach in academic modes, but I’m most eager about teaching in these practitioner contexts. What’s most enjoyable for me is seeing people have these realizations in an embodied and nonconceptual way. Just if you speak about them in words, in fact, it’s gonna sound terribly conceptual and philosophical. But as you recognize, the direct experience isn’t heady in any respect. It’s not within the intellect. It’s in awareness, becoming aware of itself. And the embodied experience of that. That’s where the true juice is, you recognize.
So I just wish to mention for whoever’s listening that my teaching once I’m working with practitioners is definitely quite practical, I believe my students would say, and so if anyone’s eager about exploring Nondual Shaiva Tantra as a practice, not only a philosophy, then I actually have numerous resources and tools for people. Mainly on my website, tantrailluminated.org, which has a learning portal, we call it, that introduces you to all these courses and teachings, including practice teachings that go fairly in-depth. So I’d say, you recognize, I actually have a variety of projects and books within the works and different web sites also. But that one tantrailluminated.org is the predominant place for delving into these teachings.
MT: Beyond the books, the little little bit of your material that I’ve encountered on the net has been really, really prime quality and really cool. So I’d highly recommend that. All right. In order that’s it for today. Thanks for coming on the podcast, Hareesh. Really, really appreciate you taking the time.
CW: And I appreciate your podcast a lot. I’ve listened to possibly a dozen episodes. And I believe it’s a implausible cut above the standard within the podcast world. And I hope we will talk more because I do know there’s many, many other topics we will explore and customary interests that we’ve got and you recognize, might even be interesting to explore our practice history just a little bit respectively, for instance, amongst many other topics.
MT: Absolutely. Let’s make a date for that.
