Negotiations between continuity and discontinuity have characterized Srividya traditions for centuries; these are primarily studied through texts or the juxtaposition of textual prescriptions with ...observed practices, leaving the process of how Srividya practitioners negotiate esoteric and orthodox tendencies unexplored. Building on extensive fieldwork among practitioners of a contemporary South Indian Srividya tradition, I present the dynamics animating such transformations. Focusing on kalavahana, one of the tradition's central rituals aimed at identifying with Devi, I trace the underlying forces that gradually replace its most esoteric aspects (centred around the body and pleasure) with conventional worship (external or meditative practices), refashioning the tradition as part of mainstream Saktism. While some practitioners conform to the new canon, others, for whom the changes diminish ritual efficacy, secretly continue embodied practices. Through a Foucauldian archaeologico-genealogical analysis, I investigate which regimes of truth and ontological coordinates allow the ritual to change, and which diminish its efficacy. While at first negotiations between continuity and discontinuity appear driven by socio-political motives, ultimately they are governed and legitimized by fundamentally diverging modes of being. A pre-objectified worldview demands embodied experiences (including unconventional practices invoking pleasure) while a dualistic framework endorses representational practices (such as meditation and idol-worship).
The Sarvadurgatipariśodhana Tantra (hereafter SDP), or Purification of All Negative Rebirths, is a Buddhist yoga tantra that has long been associated with funerary practices in multiple Buddhist ...cultures. However, when it comes to ritual practice, the tantra itself, as with most canonical tantras, gives no practical guidance. Instead, this task falls to the genres of local ritual manuals and handbooks that have emerged around the text and evolved over the centuries. This dissertation examines...
This paper studies historical and literary constructions of deity-figures like Krishna and Kali, and the sects representing them, that is, vaishnavas and tantra-predominant shaktas, in Bengal. While ...the overarching historical lens posits these deities/sects as radically different, even antagonistic, with syncretic attempts following periods of intense strife; literary archetypes, developed in proximate association with regional philosophy, intuit the most subtle traditions of deity/sectarian equivalence. I focus on three kinds of texts of the early modern period and analyse varieties of divine correspondence represented therein: Krishna-Shiva sharing souls, Kali becoming Krishna, Krishna becoming Kali, Kali-Shiva as the same essential energy, Kali-Krishna sexual union, and this synthesis understood variously as Kali's/Krishna's play with herself/himself, etc. These divinities are equated essentially as transformations (prithak) of the original cosmic buzz (AUM/pranav), and complex practices of sonic philosophy ground these equivalent deities within esoteric bodies. These practices and texts thus fuse Kali/Shiva/Krishna, and this tantric-devotional, shakta-vaishnava, prakriti/purusha continuum encompasses a longue-durée ethical habitus including idols, songs, poems, proverbs, theatre, pictures, manuscripts, and bodies. This lifeworld of sacred interchangeability enables, responds to, as well as supersedes historical realities of sectarian difference, opposition, and syncretism, rather than only mirroring immediate temporal concerns. Literary ontology thus nestles and surpasses historical religious constructions in Bengal.
The Apabhraṃśa dohā is a literary medium from Indian antiquity, with early examples appearing in Kālidāsa’s plays around the 5th century and continuing in later Hindi-language Jain and Bhakti works ...in the early modern period. However, it was within Tantric Buddhist texts and traditions that the dohā truly came into its own as a literary genre. Particularly within the “Yoginī Tantra” strata of the Tantric Buddhist canon, Apabhraṃśa dohās appear in notable and formulaic ways, used within ritual contexts and other significant junctures, signaling the underexamined use of this literary form and its language of composition. This paper examines the use of dohās attributed to the mahāsiddha Saraha as they are used in the Hevajra Tantra, the Buddhakapāla Tantra, and some associated texts. In doing so, this paper demonstrates that as a literary genre, Apabhraṃśa dohās perform a similar function to mantras and dhāraṇīs, but are unique in their attention to phonology and discursive meaning. By examining the uses of these dohās during particular moments of Tantric Buddhist ritual syntax, this paper will then reflect on the later trajectory of these verses after the death of institutional Buddhism in India, and the reasons for their survival.
This paper outlines the richness and complexity of Gopīnāth Kavirāj’s (1887-1976) contribution to the Indological studies, in particular in the field of Tantric studies. Kavirāj was at the same time ...an important academic scholar acknowledged both in India and in the West, a traditional paṇḍit and a Tantric sādhaka. These three experiences were inextricably connected: for him the only valuable knowledge was the one that allows spiritual achievements. The focus is in particular on sūrya-vijñāna (solar science), a nearly unkown technique to materialize objects seemingly from nothing, strictly connected to Kavirāj’s guru, Viśuddhānand Paramhaṃs. In my opinion Kavirāj’s treatment of sūrya-vijñāna is an interesting example of the link between sādhanā world and critical thought in his work.
This article phenomenologically describes our ontological situation and our two modes of knowing. There is the knowing of mind as the knower of forms and the knower of awareness as the knower of ...Being. This paper links and integrates the tantric Dzogchen view of the mind - awareness distinction within the continental phenomenological view of the mind- awareness distinction as expressed in the work of Heidegger and Merleau Ponty. This distinction of mind and awareness allows us to clarify the confusion about our knowing of forms and our knowing of Being. The paper emphasizes the intertwining of awareness and mind. When mind and awareness are in oneness, then the knower can know the Being-ness of being through a being. The person can know the duality of beings within the non duality of Being. And the person can know the non duality of Being within the duality of beings.
The notion of effortlessness is central to the self-understanding of the Tibetan contemplative tradition known as Dzogchen. This book explores this key notion from a variety of perspectives, ...highlighting the distinctive role it plays in the Dzogchen approach’s doctrinal architecture and meditative programme. The book’s focus is on the early development of the Dzogchen tradition, especially as codified in a set of hitherto unstudied commentaries by the 10th-century scholar and meditation master Nubchen Sangye Yeshe. A full annotated translation of the commentaries is provided, along with an edition of the Tibetan texts on facing pages.
This paper discusses the healing practices of samayācāra Śrīvidyā, a Hindu Tantric tradition. This study is based on field research conducted in the Śrī Lalitāmbikā temple in Coimbatore, India. The ...tradition not only advocates inner ritualism, but also focuses on healing practices derived from Tantric sources. By using both emic and etic approaches, this paper attempts to show how the rituals and Śrīvidyā meditative practices became incorporated into this system of healing and well-being. A further aim of this paper is to indicate how various forms of embodiment and healing define the spiritual practice of Lalitāmbikā Śrīvidyā.
This article explores how twelve practitioners of a contemporary Western Śākta community relate to Devī, experience Her presence in their lives, embody Her through the practice of deity yoga, and ...find their manner of relating to self, others, and the world transformed by it. The narratives were obtained via semi-structured interviews and thus increase the ethnographic data in the field of tantric studies. Altogether, these testimonies suggest that deity yoga and its metaphysical framework, when interpreted through both a theistic and non-theistic lens, may enable a decrease in self-conscious emotions and negative affective reactivity, and an increase in positive affect and self-confidence or trust, as well as empathic or affiliative changes. The latter may result in changes in motivation or goals that are prosocial in nature and enable desirable changes in one’s interpersonal relationships and interactions. Additionally, it may potentially decrease the severity of the impact that neuroticism, mental disorders, substance use disorders, and negative affect can have on an individual’s life, or even assist in eliminating their presence, over time. Finally, it may effectively help some in navigating and overcoming grief or accepting the inevitability of death.
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