DOYOGANEWSLETTER. Progress in Yoga As Therapy The Role of Marma Therapy. October 2009

Transcription

1 October 2009 Progress in Yoga As Therapy The Role of Marma Therapy By Doug Keller From the outset of my work on yoga as therapy, I derived a lot of guidance and inspiration from the work of Thomas Myers and others for a biomechanical approach and will continue to do so. It initially provided an anatomically specific myofascial approach to health and well-being in terms of posture and movement. And when it comes to issues of posture and movement, the health of muscles, joints and connective tissue as well as addressing issues of stress, circulation and promoting the healthy functioning of the nervous system with reduced physical impingement, this approach has proven to be quite helpful, especially in matters of assessment. My initial intention in using the Myers framework as a starting point for my Yoga As Therapy manual was to provide a useful meeting point between the realms of contemporary physical therapy and all that hatha yoga has to bring to the table. This is a time for convergence between these fields, especially when simple, effective and inexpensive health care is at the forefront of our national awareness. And we know that there is much more to yoga, beyond the biomechanical issues, beyond the physical or postural aspects but not entirely disconnected from them. We do need to look to the roots of yoga itself in addition to looking outside of it. Ayurveda is the practical foundation to yoga in its concern for health, and it extends to the deeper levels of healthy functioning extending into the healthy functioning of organs and systems as being tied intimately to matters of the physical energies of the doshas as well as to mind, emotion, breath and even spirit. You can t help but feel that at present there still remains a gap between the contemporary physical practice of asana and these deeper health issues, a gap that is not adequately (and specifically) addressed just by emphasis upon generalized principles of alignment, faith in the asanas themselves, or in exhortations and appeals to the spiritual heart of practice. It s not that these are wrong or misguided. It s just that more is needed to make the connection between our intentions for health and the means of fulfilling our intentions. Is there a missing link? There is an aspect of Ayurveda that has only very, very recently begun to receive specific attention. It is a fundamental field of knowledge that provides a link between the physical and the subtle aspects of health. 1

2 This is known as Marma therapy, which I have already begun to incorporate into my Yoga As Therapy book. The awareness of marma extends back into the Vedas, appears in many references in the Mahabharata, and plays a significant role in the development of Ayurveda, particularly as the influence of Buddhism and its emphasis upon nonviolence propelled a shift away from surgical techniques. Awareness of marma has also played a role in the Siddha systems of yoga (where in South India the word was varman rather than marma ), with its tradition of alchemical transformation that centered around the science of the chakras. Here too, marma provided a practical link between the physical body and these subtle energies. Marma is a Sanskrit word for a vital energy point (you might think of it as a pressure point ) at the outer surface of the body. It is defined as an anatomical site on the body where muscles, ligaments, nerves, circulation through veins and arteries, tendons and bones meet or intersect. Though these points are quite concrete and physical, actions upon a marma point has a direct and often profound effect upon the functioning of deeper organs and systems. The word itself means mortal or vulnerable point, suggesting that these areas of the body may be found to be tender, weak or sensitive to the touch. When we suffer an injury, the degree of injury to the marma point in the affected area can make the difference between and injury from which we can recover, and an injury that causes lasting damage or can even be fatal. The same applies in medicine: surgery that does harm to vital marma points will be less effective or even counterproductive, and possibly even fatal or debilitating. Hence surgeons were required to have a knowledge of marma. continued on page 3... Panchakshari is my new chanting CD. I sought to capture the feel of all-night chants under a starlit sky in the Ganeshpuri ashram in India where I practiced for several years. A mixed group chants Om Namah Shivaya as a steady, soothing accompaniment for meditation or relaxation. All proceeds go to Oxfam, and nearly $1000 have already been donated from sales of this CD. To hear a sample, or to purchase it, go to Kashmir Shaivism and the Roots of Tantra By Doug Keller Only a few decades ago beginning around the 1970 s tantra arrived in the West with an almost revolutionary force. This revolution was brought about mainly by the work and teachings of Swami Muktananda and Swami Lakshmanjoo, who began touring the West around this time, and has accelerated with the work of scholars particularly those who had some contact with these teachers and their successors. The Tantric perspective begins with the insight that everything that exists is made of and is energy. Moreover, this energy is consciousness: it is creative consciousness, constantly giving rise to new forms. This article draws heavily and extensively upon Mark Dyczkowski s book The Doctrine of Vibration particularly the Introduction, pages 1-25 It was only a matter of time before the quite uplifting message of the most refined tantric schools of thought found its way into the form of yoga that is most familiar to Westerners hatha yoga. This message spread in a number of ways through a number of teachers, each emphasizing his or her own particular perspective on the essential message at stake. The broad outlines of the message of tantra or tantric philosophy are fairly easy to summarize. The Tantric perspective begins with the insight that everything that exists is made of and is energy. Moreover, this energy is consciousness: it is creative consciousness, constantly giving rise to new forms. This perspective is hard to simply dismiss, since we in our very awareness of ourselves (which is at work even as you read this) are prime examples of what is meant by this creative consciousness. Tantra calls this consciousness and all forms of consciousness divine, so far as it is at the heart of and is the source of all things. This Consciousness is, moreover, intrinsically divine, even if we ourselves experience our own consciousness as limited and self-serving and thus not obviously or apparently divine. The goal of tantra, through its practices, is to increase our awareness and deepen our experience of consciousness as divine and limitless until that sense of limitation and thus of the sense of separateness that is the source of our own suffering dissolves into absolute consciousness: the living awareness, fearlessness and freedom that comes of experiencing from moment to moment that everything that we experience, inside and out, is that same divine, eternal consciousness. Swami Muktananda summarized this continued on page

3 Marma Therapy continued... It s fair to say that contemporary surgeons do have a practical and intuitive, if not necessarily complete, sense of marma: that s the difference between a hack and a master surgeon. The same holds true for talented, knowledgeable and intuitive body workers; knowledge of marma points is closely related to our understanding of trigger point pain, and the syndromes of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue associated with these points of myofascial stress. Yet regardless of what we already know, there is more to be known. The very word marma, which has connotations of mystery, suggests that there is always a deeper level of understanding to be discovered about their influence upon health. Ayurveda sets forth a framework for understanding the many levels of action through marma, setting the stage for deeper exploration. There are 117 principal marma points (some systems identify 107) documented by Sushruta and others. Of these, 75 have been found to correspond to accupoints in traditional Chinese medicine so there is certainly a relationship, though not necessarily an exact correspondence between the two systems. The Chinese system works according to meridians, while the Marma system describes many layers of interrelated srotas or flows of energy, from the very concrete in the muscle tissue to the very subtle through the vayus or energies of the prana, and even movement or flow on the level of mind or thought. It s also worth noting that the marma points line up quite well with the myofascial meridians identified by Thomas Myers in his Anatomy Trains. At the same time, the marma system provides more information on the effects of myofascial stress and misalignment along these lines upon deeper organs and systems than a purely myofascial account would suggest. This is directly relevant to hatha yoga as a practice of asana and pranayama because the asanas are recognized as acting directly upon marma points, whether by the pressure of the floor upon the affected marma points, parts of the body pressing against each other (as in twists or even bound poses), through activation or firming of muscles, or even through the intention to open a flow of energy in and through a specific stretch or pose. Pranayama is involved inasmuch as the action upon marma points facilitates or opens the breath, while awareness of the breath in turn facilitates the flow of energy through the marma system. Marma is implicit or built in to the very logic of hatha yoga asanas and sequencing. It stands to reason that a more specific or explicit knowledge of marma points and their effects would make the practice all the more effective, refining the power of intention behind the practice. Knowledge of marma provides a link specifically to Ayurveda because the functioning of the marma points is directly tied to the doshas (the familiar Kapha, Pitta and Vata ) and the specific systems and organs governed by these energies. This kind of knowledge of marma provides a much clearer understanding of the actions of the asanas upon the doshas (for instance, why exactly do some poses act upon Kapha, stimulating the flow of the lymphatic system, while others act upon Pitta, affecting heart rhythm or the digestive system? How does a single pose act simultaneously on the various doshas, yet in different ways?), as well as the effects of the pace and sequencing of hatha yoga asanas. Marma therapy is not necessarily the whole of yoga as therapy, but I d like to suggest that knowledge of it is a useful, perhaps even vital addition to what we already know of yoga in its therapeutic applications. Why don t we already know plenty about it? A good part of the reason is historical: marma therapists have in past centuries been actively persecuted because their knowledge was considered dangerous (especially in martial or military applications). Thus knowledge of marma therapy went underground for a long time. It is only recently that detailed, clear explanation has begun to emerge in the literature of Ayurveda available in the West, first through the work of David Frawley and then much more extensively through the work of Vasant Lad in his encyclopedic Marma Points of Ayurveda. As this information has come out (Dr. Lad s book came out only a few months ago), I have begun to incorporate into the first volume of my Yoga As Therapy book, and am working in my trainings and workshops to integrate this understanding more seamlessly into my contribution to the field of yoga as therapy. What is as yet missing from available resources is the more practical and experiential side of working with these points, both directly and through asanas. This is where the trainings are invaluable, as teachers share with me their experiences of taking this knowledge back to their students and incorporating it into their work with them. One teacher shared after the Ohio therapy training in August: I really do think the marma therapy adds another dimension to the practice of yoga. The practice of pressing upon the sensitive points during a pose seems to teach students more awareness of pinpointing their discomfort; and then directing their own [intention] of going deeper into the pose, into the pressure upon the marmas and [use of the] breath, resulting in a deepening [of the experience]. It's an amazing practice... Student's feedback on marma points: A student with edema of the legs, reports that at first the marma points were very sensitive and felt a lot of heat arising; she said said she felt so much heat in her feet from the foot marma points that her feet were sweating in the standing postures; and now with continued practice, she finds the points are less sensitive and the swelling has gone down...the response of the students from the two classes I taught yesterday were: one student said she left feeling very energized after the class. Two other female students said they had been experiencing some sciatica when they came into the class and left feeling relieved of any sciatica pain. Other students in marma-related trainings have used what they learned in other simple (but equally important) ways, for instance massaging points in their child s feet to help them go to sleep. One student remembered that as a child herself, she used to ask her sister to squeeze on her big toe to help her go to sleep (a recognized marma point for relaxation and for overcoming headaches). As I understand it, if you re a parent, this kind of knowledge is by no means trivial! 3

4 Awareness of marma is practical, takehome knowledge that students can use and apply, both within and to the benefit of their yoga practice, and in general for day-to-day life off the mat. I think it will prove to be a significant addition to our knowledge of yoga as therapy if we are collectively willing to pursue it. I do look forward to studying this more deeply, incorporating it into my work, and to hearing the experiences of everyone who works with it, as well as from everyone out there who already have a working knowledge of this system and would like to share their experiences of applying it. This is how knowledge grows, and how yoga as a system of health and healing can take another step forward in the new millennium. National Monument Park in Grand Junction, Colorado Marma is implicit or built in to the very logic of hatha yoga asanas and sequencing. It stands to reason that a more specific or explicit knowledge of marma points and their effects would make the practice all the more effective, refining the power of intention behind the practice. Kashmir Shaivism and the Roots of Tantra continued... experience as the awareness that God dwells within you, as you, for you, and added that, therefore, we should see God in each other. The message of Tantra is clear: the world is not to be shunned as less than the divine, or regarded as a place of punishment into which the soul has fallen, or the unfortunate result of some original sin or evil. This divine consciousness is something we are meant to embody, because it is who we are. But once we move beyond that initial message, how we are meant to respond to it is less clear, and the approaches to tantric practice become diverse, especially as we trace its history. In various ways, the message of tantra has been interpreted to be an embrace of life rather than a renunciation or rejection of life. We are meant to embody and to celebrate life; and this is certainly implicit in the tantric emphasis upon the creative power of Shakti. Yet the message does also imply a warning; if what we hear is that all that we need is to celebrate this understanding, we risk being a bit presumptuous. We risk assuming that we have already fully achieved that experience and state of awareness, and in a way that consistently overcomes our more limited and divisive way of seeing differences. Our celebration might prove to be rather premature, if the hard work of truly overcoming our habitual ways of thinking have not been overcome or at least tamed through practice. The problem and challenge that Tantra identifies for us is not just ignorance (not knowing the Truth ), but delusion (thinking we know it, when we don t, really.) When we trip over our more earthbound concepts and find ourselves succumbing to competition, conflict and selfish behavior, how do we go about pulling ourselves once again out of this state that tantra very forthrightly calls ignorance and delusion? Delusion essentially means thinking you re something that you re not, such as thinking that you re a divinely conscious, life-embracing, egofree being...who nevertheless reacts otherwise when your buttons get pushed. Grace certainly has a role to play, but its effect is lasting only with the support of practice and practice has to be more than a practice of asking for grace. Tantra is all about practice, and this is where the meaning of tantra can get especially confusing, particularly because tantra has a long and varied history. I just set forth the outlines of the philosophical vision of Tantra, but the finely reasoned concepts that provide the underpinning for this vision were actually developed by a particular set of philosophers who did not even necessarily constitute the mainstream of tantra as it has largely been known and practiced. It is really not enough to appeal loosely to tantra as if it were a single uncomplicated spiritual vision of life as it is. Like grace, a sense of Tantra has the power to truly transform and overcome delusion when we truly understand the foundations of what we re talking about, know how to bring it into our practice, and are aware of the subtle pitfalls of even tiny delusions about our understanding of what Tantra has to say. A first step is to look to its history. Kashmir A particularly important area of India for the development of tantra was and is the land of Kashmir, located in the extreme northwest of India. Although most of the population is at present Muslim, following the advent of Islam in the 13th century, Kashmir was historically a premier center of learning for both Buddhists and Hindus excelling not only in religious studies, but also in the secular arts of literature and Sanskrit grammar as well as the sciences, including medicine, astronomy and mathematics. Because of its rich spiritual and intellectual climate, Kashmir played a central role in the flourishing of Tantra, which came to touch every aspect of Indian religious life. Around the middle of our first millenium, Tantra began to be clearly 4

5 defined in sacred literature that specifically identified itself as Tantric. Yet the forms of Tantra that emerged were immensely varied, and Tantra is not a term that was even limited to the Hindu religion. Kashmir was the center for a wide range of Tantric cults, both Hindu and Buddhist. Buddhism was introduced to Kashmir as early as the 3rd century B.C., and in the centuries that followed, most forms of Indian Buddhism flourished in Kashmir. Through trade routes, it became a principal center for the spread of Buddhism, and Tibet in particular received its religion from the Buddhists of Kashmir. Thus, even as the Hindu schools of Kashmiri Shaivism were reaching the peak of their development in the 11th century A.D., Kashmir was one of the places where Buddhism prospered most, as the home of the greatest scholars of the time. From that emerged powerful forms of Buddhist Tantra, which as we know, particularly took hold in Tibet. Which is to say that Tantra by itself does not denote any particular religion; rather, within a religious tradition, whether Buddhist or Hindu, the approach to practice and worship came to be identified as Tantric and scriptures or texts that described ways of practice and worship were called tantras. In other words, Tantra is not a religion, but rather we might say, a way of religion, and a way of practice not necessarily tied to any particular religion. Its foundation is basically the conviction that the Divine can be accessible to the individual experientially (and not just as a belief) through practice. Because of our interest in its relationship to yoga, we re going to focus on the Hindu version. Both of Tantra s major Hindu streams 1, one of which centered on the worship of Vishnu, and the other on Shiva, gave rise to a bewildering number of Tantric cults, some big and some small. On the whole, Shaivism remained the dominant form of Hinduism, and we ll focus on the Shaivite aspect. In general, Shaivism refers to the focus upon the Shiva aspect of divine consciousness and grace: Vishnu is the aspect of divine consciousness that creates and sustains the world; Shiva is that aspect that protects by bringing an end to suffering often regarded as suffering in the form of endless transmigration of the soul from birth to birth. Shaivism and the Agamas We know little of the origins of Shaivism in Kashmir, except that it is truly ancient. By the time that the first Kashmiri Shaiva works began to appear in the early 9th century A.D., there were already many established Shaiva groups in the valley The goal of tantra, through its practices, is to increase our awareness and deepen our experience of consciousness as divine and limitless until that sense of limitation dissolves into absolute consciousness. of Kashmir, some of which came to form a part of the system we have come to know as Kashmir Shaivism. What all of these groups had in common was that they accepted the Shaiva Tantras also known as Agamas as their scriptural authority. Typically each group would focus on a certain aspect or section of the Agamas, and the specific lineages of Tantric masters would develop from that selective focus, initiating disciples into the prescribed rituals and practices of their chosen Tantras. These Agamas themselves were scriptures or texts that were considered to be divine revelations and thus eternal; nevertheless, the Shaiva groups not only studied but contributed to these works, and so we might say that they evolved and also fell into a kind of order in relation to each other over time. To give a sense of their rich variety, we can organize these according to a system of classification that is found in the Agamas themselves: Shaivasiddhanta: The cults arising from the Siddhantagamas, of which there are 28 principle Agamas (and about 200 Shaiva scriptures) were mainly concerned with rituals connected with the worship of Sadashiva. These were conducted in public temples, and centered around the Shivalingam, the familiar upright phallic symbol of Shiva. They gave little attention to philosophical matters or even to yoga. Though their overall philosophical perspective began as a kind of tempered dualism, over time these Agamas developed into a well-defined dualism separating the soul from God. Though some of the authors of Kashmir Shaivism quote the Siddhanta with reverence, they don t always agree with them, and generally reshaped the Siddhanta along nondualist lines. Bhuta and Garuda Tantras: These Agamas have been almost entirely lost, and they dealt mainly with magical cures (especially for snakebite), exorcism of ghosts and spirits, the protection of children from these spirits, and the acquisition of magical powers. These groups were on the decline by the 9th century. The Vamatatantras: Each group of the Agamas of this tradition represented a current or srota of the scriptures spoken by one of Shiva s five faces. Though these cults never quite caught on in India and practically disappeared by the end of the first millennium, these Tantras did spread to Southeast Asia and appeared in such places as Cambodia and Bali. They did not survive much beyond the 11th century. The Bhairavatantras: These were especially (but not exclusively) concerned with the worship of Bhairava an important form of Shiva whose name means the Terrible One who is wrathful and frightening, but also peaceful and auspicious. Abhinavagupta, who is perhaps the principle teacher of Kashmir Shaivism, expounded upon this name in various ways: Bhairava protects those frightened by the rounds of rebirths or transmigration and is born in the heart of those who call on Him for help when terrified by transmigratory existence; he is also known as terrible because he calls a halt to 5

6 transmigration, and by His grace arouses the very fear of transmigration. He is also the light that shines in the minds of yogis intent upon assimilating time into the eternal presence of consciousness, and is the Lord of the powers of the senses. There are countless forms of Bhairava. In general, the Bhairava cults shared the view that liberation is essentially freedom from the opposites of good and evil; the adept must break through these concepts to reach a higher state of expanded, blissful -- even inebriated consciousness that encompasses both good and evil and is affected by neither. The rituals by which this is achieved are almost the opposite of the rituals of Siddhanta: rather than public rituals, they are performed in lonely places such as cremation grounds for the benefit of a few select initiates. And they famously involve highly disciplined rituals involving the offering of meat and wine to the deity (which is anathema to orthodox Hindu beliefs), as well as ritual intercourse with a chosen consort (other than your spouse). The Bhairavatantras were not the only Tantras to advocate these practices, and not all of these Tantras necessarily considered these practices to be important. But you get a sense from this of how strongly Tantra often pushed the envelope of conventional beliefs, often earning a pretty unsavory reputation, while offering a fairly radical application of the phrase, It s all good. Though consumption of meat and wine (and a little ritual fornication) may not seem like such a scandalous matter to us these days, the point was to actively defy and thus overcome or transcend all conventional sense of good and bad, right and wrong. This attitude, especially when accepted rather uncritically and a little too enthusiastically, is obviously a recipe for abuse and possibly some morning-after spiritual regrets. As we ll see, this was as true then as it is now. The way in which Kashmir Shaivism eventually cleaned up, absorbed and reshaped this tradition was to interpret Bhairava as the divine form of the Absolute which we experience as the exertive force (udyama) that drives the mind at our current individual or microcosmic level; this same force can be realized as that which drives the whole universe at the macrocosmic level. Much of the Kashmiri Shaivite practices particularly those of the Spanda or Doctrine of Vibration tradition center upon how we might experientially lay hold of this power in events as they happen to us, and identify with that power, thus transcending our ordinary experience. In its fullest expression, this involves arousing the spiritual and cosmic energy latent within the individual soul known as Kundalini through an expansion of consciousness brought about by yogic practice as well as the practice of certain rituals. Kashmir Shaivism did not necessarily exclude the graveyard practices of the Bhairavas, but (thankfully) neither did they consider them to be necessary or required. Other Shaiva Groups: The Pashupatas were important precursors of the Agamic Shaiva groups, and though we don t have any of their original texts, we know of them through references in the early portions of the Mahabharata (the epic poem in which the Bhagavad- Gita is contained) as well as in Patanjali s commentary on Panini s grammar (2nd century A.D., no relation to the sandwich) We do have the Pashupatasutra from sometime before the 10th century A.D., which has as its aim to overcome the ego and gain magical powers through transgression particularly through behaving contrary to accepted social norms. Thus in keeping with the Great Vow (Mahavrata) of the Pashupatas, they were told to laugh and cry like madmen, make lewd gestures at young women, and abuse whoever attempts to approach them. Similar extremist Shaiva sects included the skull-bearing ascetics of the Kapalika order and other votaries of the Higher Path (atimarga). Other important groups were the Kaulas. They were, in a sense, successors of the early extremist Shaiva sects belonging to this Higher Path, and were closely affiliated to other Shaivagamic groups, especially the Bhairavatantras. These groups played an important role in Kashmir Shaivism, once largely divested of their outer rituals. The Kaulas were monist in outlook (i.e. there is only one essential reality), and while they were consistently Shaivite, they stressed the worship of female deities and were thus the precursors of the later Shakta Tantric tradition. Kaula is derived from Kula, which denotes the feminine power of Consciousness (Shakti), who is the emission (Visarga) of the Absolute, through whom the universe is created. Of the many Kaula schools, the most important for Kashmir Shaivism were the Krama and Trika schools. Kula the root of Kaula is a larger, more blanket term than the more specific Krama and Trika. It is not so much a Tantric school or system in itself, but rather a broader generic term for a number of systems or traditions; thus Trika and Krama are found within it as sharing roots in the Kaula understanding of practice. 1. The Krama School The Krama school held the most secret doctrines and practices, involving the worship of Kali. While basing its concepts upon those found in the original Tantras, Kashmir Shaivism elevated the worship of Kali beyond outer ritual. Ritual came to mean an inner process of realization through which the initiate discovered his or her essential identity with the flow of the power of consciousness (deemed Kali ) through the polarities of subject, object, and means of knowledge that appear with the rise and fall of each act of perception. The experience of this flow of consciousness was coupled with the awakening or arousing of the Kundalini and the expansion of consciousness that comes with this awakening. 2. The Trika School The Trika school came into full flower as the culmination of Kashmir Shaivism through the work of Abhinavagupta, who lived in Kashmir from the middle of the 10th century into the 11th. Trika essentially means triad, and triads figure prominently in Trika systems things are usually described in threes, notably in the form of the triad of Supreme (Para), Middling (Parapara) and Inferior (Apara) 6

7 goddesses, which form the basis of our approach to the divine according to our abilities or level of awareness, from dual (lowest) to dual-nondual (middling) and finally nondual (highest). Though Abhinava did not necessarily learn his Trika in a Kashmiri form, he essentially made Trika the focal point of non-dualist Kashmir Shaivism. Abhinava s career had stages as he worked to place the Trika approach to practice through the threefold levels of understanding at the center of Kashmir Shaivism. In the first stage of Abhinava s career he worked to establish Trika as superior over all of the other schools of Agamic Shaivism in his work, Tantraloka the Light of the Tantras. Here he provided an exposition of Shaivagamic ritual and practice set in the monistic philosophy of Kashmiri Shaivism (the Pratyabhijna or Doctrine of Recognition ). By doing so, he essentially pulled together the varied (and sometimes ritualistically jungly) tradition of the Shaiva Agamas, working to provide philosophical respectability to a tradition that actually had, as we ll see, a rather checkered history. The second stage of Abhinava s career was famously devoted to Poetics and Dramaturgy, focusing essentially upon the arts and its Rasas or the sentiments communicated through the arts poetry and drama in particular. The last phase of his career was devoted to philosophy, during which he especially elucidated the Doctrine of Recognition (Pratyabhijna) that is the monistic heart of Kashmir Shaivism. Trika emerges through the work of Abhinava as the culmination of the entire Shaivagamic tradition, encompassing all of it. But Abhinava requires or perhaps assumes that to really understand Kashmiri Shaivism, it is not only necessary to have studied grammar, logic and the orthodox philosophical systems, but also to already have a sound knowledge of the Shaivagamas. Which is a tall order. The Funkiness of Tantra There are some historical reasons for that requirement. What we now call Kashmir Shaivism was never a religion of the masses, or even popularly known. Those who dedicated themselves to this system were in a decided minority among the followers of Agamic Shaivism the Kaulas and the Bhairavas, who were themselves probably a minority among the Hindu population, though they were an acknowledged feature of Kashmiri society. of a popular philosophy. Abhinava himself lived a life away from the Kashmiri political scene, never attaching himself to the court in the way that other scholars did, despite his reputation among his contemporaries. We have an excellent historic source through the work of Kalhana, who in the 12th century chronicled the kings of Kashmir in the Rajatarangini virtually the only history of its kind in India. And Kalhana never refers to Abhinavagupta, interested as he was in the history of the Kashmiri courts where Abhinava apparently never made an appearance. But while Kalhana was silent about the refined intellectual authors of Tantra represented principally by Abhinava he does have plenty to say about the Tantra at the time from which Abhinava drew his inspiration. Tantra at that time was a lightning rod for scandal (especially in the courts of the kings) and even the object of active repression. Kalhana himself thought little of these hierophants of Tantra and was unsparing in his ugly description of the corrupting influence that Tantric cults had in encouraging depravity and licentiousness. Mark Dyczkowski draws the following contrast in the two depictions of Tantra at the time: Abhinava, for his part, wrote eulogies of the land of Kashmir as a place where Tantric adepts, male and female, met to drink the wine for which his beloved land was famous and inspired timid lovers with confidence to play in this garden strewn with saffron flowers growing as an offering to the Three Goddesses of Trika Shaivism. Kshemendra, a well-known Kashmiri poet and young contemporary of Abhinava, on the contrary, was struck by the hypocrisy, greed and lasciviousness of the masters of the Tantric cults belonging to the culture from which Abhinavagupta drew inspiration. He felt it his moral duty to write biting satires on this and other aspects of what he considered to be the corruption that afflicted Kashmiri society in his day. (Doctrine of Vibration p. 15) Kshemendra, like Kalhana, is unsparing in his description of the unsavoriness of these characters as well as their seductive powers over the weak-minded, lustful and dissolute. A Jain monk in the south of India named Somananda provides a similar commentary on the Trika Kaulas, thus giving us a hint that Trika was a distinct school that ranged far beyond the area of Kashmir and moreover that the followers of Trika by and large were a far cry from the refined spirituality of the Kashmiris such as Abhinava who were refining the system. Abhinava himself declares that it is hard to find even one person who is qualified to follow the Shaivism of his Light of the Tantras (echoing Hegel, who supposedly on his deathbed said that Of all of my students, only one ever understood me, and even he doesn t understand me. ) -- not the makings Marienplatz in Munich, Germany What are we to take from this? First, perhaps, that although the word Tantra is thrown around rather easily these days as suggesting a refined, uplifting and eminently palatable world vision that easily suits our contemporary mindset, the refinement of that 7

8 vision took a considerable amount of work, contemplation and disciplined insight. Tantra is an historically mixed bag of considerable funkiness; it tended to encourage practitioners to take some poetic license with its message in a way that looks less and less savory the closer we look into the details. While we have sages like Abhinava to thank for penetrating to the heart of Tantra, reaching deep into its roots for a profound and inspiring vision to guide and inform practice, Abhinava in particular expects us to know what we re talking about, and to be aware of the practical pitfalls of these schools and traditions before we throw around the term Tantra too easily, projecting our assumptions upon it. This is especially a problem in the current popular explosion of interest in yoga and tantra, in which quite a few are more interested in inspiration than in the details. This tendency can lead to one of two things: either a rather superficial appreciation of the message of tantra that does not deeply inform our practice, or it leads to a good deal of confusion when we attempt to put it into practice. Or both. The result can easily be greater delusion, which nevertheless feels like freedom. The Essence of Tantra in Kashmir Shaivism There are two essential ideas and schools of Kashmir Shaivism that do not extend back directly into the Agamic traditions, and which speak directly to overcoming delusion. In other words, these ideas represent something new in Tantra ideas that didn t really exist in this form and significance before. In the process of setting them forth the Kashmir Shaivites also referred back to Agamic traditions as a way of developing practical applications for these ideas through practice, without necessarily tying themselves to these older ways of practice. In this way, we might say that they sought to enlighten Tantra itself with a more rigorous, well-thought-out understanding that was rooted more in their philosophical tradition of yoga than in their Agamic religious traditions of ritual. The first is the Philosophy of Recognition (Pratyabhijna), which represents the fullest (and most rigorous) intellectual expression of Shaiva monism, systematically worked out into a fully rational philosophy of absolute consciousness. As such it is not a religion in the way that the Shaiva cults of worship were, but rather belongs to the realm of philosophy, which presents and understanding of spiritual consciousness that is fully reasonable to adopt and pursue, regardless of the specifics of one s own religious beliefs. The school takes its name from the Stanzas on the Recognition of God written by the Kashmiri sage Utpaladeva toward the beginning of the 10th century. The unique and fundamental ideas that he and his teacher Somananda introduced which were previously unknown or poorly understood have to do with the pure I at the root of self-consciousness. While the precedents for this idea appear in previous Indian philosophies rather than the Agamas, it s hard to overstress how much this was an almost entirely original idea that played a huge role in later monistic philosophies through which the Tantras were interpreted. There are some philosophical roots to this idea in the Shaivasiddhanta, which, although it was dualistic insisting upon a real distinction between God and the individual soul stresses both that the world is quite real (rather than illusion or Maya), and consciousness is the essential nature of both God and the soul despite their very real differences. Consciousness is the direct perception of things as they are in themselves, so far as our experience (anubhava) is free from thought constructs. Somananda in particular used this understanding of consciousness to refute the traditional intellectual enemies of the Hindu schools the Buddhists. A principle experience of the pure I is recognition to know or recognize something that we have known before which Somananda uses to refute the Buddhist doctrine of no-self (i.e. that our concept of self is a momentary construct built out of a collection of perceptions there is really no self there, beyond these perceptions). The experience of recognition shows that the self cannot be a momentary phenomenon; the same self has to be present to recognize what was known by that self before; there has to be a fundamental unity underlying the perceptions that links them together. Somananda does not include in this the notion that consciousness is able to intuitively grasp its own nature in the moment of that flash of recognition: that idea will come with the Spanda doctrine, the second idea. But the notion and experience of Self that he introduces here is fundamental for the movement from dualistic Tantric thought toward a wellthought-out monistic Shaivism, in which the self and the Divine are one in Consciousness. Thus the second fundamental idea is the Doctrine of Vibration outlined in the Spanda Karikas, from which the Spanda school derives its name. The philosophy of Pratyabhijna focuses on the liberating recognition of the soul s true identity as Consciousness as Shiva while the Doctrine of Vibration focuses instead upon the importance of experiencing Spanda, the vibration or pulsation of consciousness in every act of perception. The two ideas turn out to fit together quite well, two sides of the same coin, again based upon an entirely new and evolving spiritual conception of consciousness. Spanda essentially teaches that every activity in the universe every perception, thought, emotion or sensation ebbs and flows as part of the universal rhythm of one Reality who is Shiva, the Divine Absolute, Who is both the Cause or Agent of all of this, and the Perceiver. We realize our true nature and fully experience our own being to be Shiva by experiencing Spanda as Spanda the dynamic, pulsating, creative activity of absolute Consciousness in every experience. Every experience is not just an experience of Being (i.e. of real things through perception) but more truly an experience of Consciousness. Our notions of Being have to do with how we conceptually think about God as the Being who is the source of all Being; here we focus instead on our own experience of consciousness as the experience of Divine, 8

9 Absolute Consciousness. It is in this experiential awareness that Pratyabhijna and Spanda meet. Thus our consciousness is not just a consciousness that witnesses events or perceptions: our consciousness actively knows or perceives itself, through and as each act of perception. This throws some additional light on the statement of Swami Muktananda with which we began, that God dwells within you, as you, for you as your very own Consciousness. And it echos the statements of many of the great mystics, such as St. Francis, who is said to have declared The one you are looking for is the One who is looking. When you put the two together the experience of Spanda with the awareness of recognition within the Spanda of the God or Consciousness whom you are seeking, you essentially have Kashmir Shaivism as a philosophical foundation for spiritual seeking through practice. As such, it marks a culmination of Tantra and the Tantric traditions. The advent of the school of Spanda in particular marks the beginnings of Kashmir Shaivism in the modern sense of the term and of Tantra in our modern understanding. What are we to take from this? First, we have these days a very contemporary urge to give a tantric reading of older texts such as Patanjali s Yoga Sutras. But if we truly appreciate how new and original the concept of Consciousness is in Kashmir Shaivism, we realize that this is about as valid and helpful as giving a reading of Isaac Newton from the perspective of Quantum mechanics. We would neither understand Newton any better by doing this, and certainly we would not come to any better understanding of Quantum Mechanics either except by comparing them with full awareness of the differences between them. (Why do we have this compulsion to interpret Patanjali as a Tantric? ) It is far more useful to go ahead and read how the Tantric authors themselves incorporated the insights of Patanjali and others into their evolving experience of Consciousness. That s something we can learn from, rather than assuming that Patanjali implicitly held or agreed with or even understood the fundamental ideas of Kashmiri Tantra, any more than Newton would have understood a Quark! I do want to be very clear about what I mean here. To Patanjali, consciousness is witness consciousness the subject s awareness of it s object, with which it identifies. When the self or Purusha does not identify with its object the vrittis of the mind are calmed or suppressed the self rests within itself. But does that mean that the self is aware of itself in its fullness, or simply that its object-awareness activity ceases, thus achieving peace? Notions of self-recognition, self-awareness, or simply reflective awareness have not been developed yet, just as Isaac Newton had not given any consideration to the theory of relativity, or Bohr s principle of indeterminacy. For this reason, you just won t find Tantric consciousness or meditation or any Tantric sense of the Self or Absolute in Patanjali, and you don t learn anything from assuming that it is there, any more than reading Newton will give you a deeper understanding of Einstein. A lot of effort has gone into making Patanjali more contemporary, relevant and even a little more likable, but it takes away from and distracts from the genuine contribution of Kashmir Shaivism. While we learn from each sage or teacher, we only confuse ourselves by throwing them into a blender to make a yoga smoothie! Second, if we mainly define and emphasize the significance of Tantra in terms of its life-embracing or life-accepting inspiration, we risk concealing and confusing the very message of Tantra as a path of self-inquiry that is most appealing to us. The point of the Tantra of Kashmir Shaivism is to know the Self and in knowing the Self, embrace and affirm life as the expression of that Divine, Creative Self. To emphasize the embrace life part first is to put the cart before the horse, and to leave the cart rather unhinged to boot! More than any form of Agamic Tantra that preceded it, Kashmir Shaivism sought to give clear specific answers and guidance, and based this on its new and quite original conception of Consciousness. What is radical and revolutionary in this Tantra is its exploration of our own Consciousness, with the tools for awareness provided to us, principally through the schools of Recognition and of Spanda. If our celebration of Tantra is to get us anywhere and beyond the confusion that afflicted Tantra even in its own heyday in Kashmir it needs to come from application of this fundamental understanding of Consciousness to illumining our own experience, particularly in the practice of meditation. Tantra is not defined so much in terms of our attitude toward the world, or even toward our own eventual fate (liberation? Alvaneu Switzerland 9

10 bondage? attainment?), but rather toward our own awareness as it is here and now. When it comes to more specifically describing the means or practices of this Tantra, in typical Trika fashion, Kashmir Shaivism offers 3 levels of practice that we can apply: 1. The individual means, by which we use the body and breath in practices to experience consciousness as prana and thus move beyond our limited or contracted experience of self. 2. The empowered means empowered principally by mantra, overcoming the power of language or Matrika that promotes confusion and distraction in the mind. This allows you to find the center, the Madhya, between the rising and falling of thoughts and perceptions, laying hold of the Spanda or flash of pure creative Consciousness that lies in that space and permeates all thought and perception. 3. The supreme means which, by an act of will, focuses single-mindedly on the pure understanding, I am Consciousness, I am Shiva pure, infinite, supreme self-awareness. To paraphrase Mark Dyczkowski, it is the awareness that our very awareness is God reflecting on Himself, God knowing Himself through my awareness, as me, for me. We can choose to be aware of this (or not) but it takes practice, illumined with wisdom. This is the essence of Tantra, which managed to transcend its roots in the Agamas and its earlier traditions, while yet maintaining the essence of its inspiration. All photography in this newsletter is by Doug Keller except: Hummingbird by my wife Kelly mountains on p. 2 rendered in Vue7, ecosystem by Erin Dinur for Vue Workshops Remaining in 2009 Date Location Description Contact October 9-11 Columbus OH Pranayama TT/Workshop October Seattle WA Therapy TT & Workshop Oct 30-Nov 1 Little Rock AR Workshop November 3-8 Fort Walton Beach FL Therapy TT & Workshop November Indianapolis IN Workshop Nov 28-Dec 2 London UK Yoga as Therapy TT December 3-6 Utrecht Netherlands Therapy TT & Workshop December Asheville NC Yoga as Therapy TT 10

11 DOYOGANEWSLETTER 11