The Doctrine of Vibration

The Doctrine of Vibration An Analysis of the Doctrines and Practices of Kashmir Shaivism MARK S. G. DYCZKOWSKI MOTILAL BANARSIDASS Delhi Varanasi Patna Bangalore Madras First Indian Edition: Oil hi, 1989 MOTILAL BANARSIDASS Bungalow Road, Jawahar Nagar, Delhi 110 007 branches Chowk, Varanasi 221 001 Ashok Rajpath, Patna 800 004 24 Race Course Road, Bangalore 560001 120 Royapettah High Road, My la pore, Madras 600004 This edition is for sale in India only. © 1987 State University of New York. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsover without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dyczkowski, Mark S. G. The doctrine of vibration (SUNY series in Kashmir Saivism) Includes index 1. Kashmir Saivism—Doctrines. I. Title. II. Series. BL1281.l545.D93 1986 294.5'513'09546 86-14552 ISBN: 81-208-0596-8 PRINTED IN INDIA BY JAINENDRA PR A K ASH JAIN AT SHR1 JAINPNDRA PRWK, A-45 NARAINA INDUSTRIAL AREA, PHASE I, NEW DELHI 110 028 AND PUBLISHED BY NARENDRA PRAKASH JAIN FOR MOTILAL BANARSIDASS, DBLHI 110 007. This book is dedicated to m PARENTS For you every vision has become like the words of a sealed book. You give it to someone able to rcud and *uy, "Read that." He replies, 4i cannot, because the book is scaled." Or else you give the book to someone who cunnot read and say, "Read that." He replies, "I cannot read." Isaiah 29/11-12. CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 The Land of Kashmir The Saivism of Kashmir and Kashmiri Saivism Abhinavagupta and the Flowering of Trika Saivism Tantra, Kashmiri Saivism and Kashmiri Society in the Eleventh Century The Philosophy of Recognition and the Doctrine of Vibration The Doctrine of Vibration Notes on Methodology and Synopsis of Contents Chapter I The Integral Monism of Kashmiri Saivism 33 Saiva Idealism Kashmiri Saiva Realism Chapter II Light and Awareness: The Two Aspects 59 of Consciousness Prakasa: The Light of Consciousness Self-Awareness and Consciousness Awareness and the Integral Nature of the Absolute Chapter HI Spanda: The Universal Activity of Abnolutt 11 Consciousness Three Moments in the Vibration of Connciouimcss The Conative Power of Consciousness The Cognitive Power of Consciousness The Power of Action Chapter IV Siva and Sakti 99 Sankara The Nature of Sakti Chapter V Sakti Cakra: The Wheel of Energies 117 The Wheel of Vamesvari The Wheel of the Senses Chapter VI The Divine Body and the Sacred Circle 139 of the Senses Chapter VII The Path to Liberation 163 The Means to Realisation No-Means (Anupaya) The Divine Means (Sambhavopaya) The Empowered Means (Saktopaya) The Individual Means (Anavopaya) Abbreviations 219 Notes 221 Bibliography 269 Index 281 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book was originally researched and written in Oxford. I will always be grateful to Richard Gombrich, at present Boden professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University, who gave me the opportunity to do this work. I also wish to thank Mr. G. S. Sanderson, at present lecturer in Sanskrit at the same university, whose zeal and scholarship inspired me. My gratitude also extends to a close disciple of the Late Maha- mahopadhyaya Gopinatha Kaviraj, Professor Heman Chakravarti with whom I read my first Kashmiri Saiva works in India before going to Oxford and the late Pandit Ambikadatta Upadhyaya who taught me Sanskrit. Above all I cannot be thankful enough to my parents whose support has been constant and unremitting, both through my stay in Oxford, and for more than fifteen years in India. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the help of Giovanna, who has been both a wife for me and a mother for our children. Introduction The Land of Kashmir The ancient Himalayan kingdom of Kashmir is now part of the province of Jammu and Kashmir situated in the extreme northwest of India. The heart of modern Kashmir is, as it was in the past, the wide and fertile valley of the river Vitasta. Set at an altitude of five thousand feet, the valley's beautiful lakes and temperate climate nowadays attract tourists in large numbers during the summer months when temperatures rise high into the forties Centigrade on the North Indian plains. Although most of the population is at present Muslim, before the advent of Islam in the thirteenth century, Kashmir enjoyed an unparalleled reputation as a centre of learning amongst both Buddhists and Hindus. Kashmiris excelled not only in religious studies but also in the secular fields of Sanskrit literature, literary criticism and grammar as well as the sciences, including medicine, astronomy and mathematics. They had a uniquely realistic sense of history clearly evidenced in Kalhana's twelfth century chronicle of the kings of Kashmir, the Rqjataranginl, which is virtually the only history of its kind in India. Remarkable as Kashmir has been as a seat of Hindu spirituality and learning, it was no less so as a centre of Buddhism. Possibly introduced into Kashmir as early as the third century B.C., Buddhism had already developed there to such a degree by the first century of our era that the Kushan king, Kaniska, chose Kashmir as the venue of a major Buddhist Council. It was a huge gathering, attended by more than five 2 THE DOCTRINE OF VIBRATION hundred Buddhist monks and scholars. The previously uncodified portions of the Buddha's discourses and the theoretical portion of the canon (the Abhidharma) were codified and the rest extensively revised. The entire early canon, the Tripifaka, was then inscribed on copper plates and deposited in a stupa. In the centuries that followed most forms of Indian Buddhism flourished in Kashmir. Of the early schools the Sarvastivada was particularly well developed. Similarly, the schools of the Great Vehicle, both those of the Middle Way and the idealist Yogacara, were taught and practiced extensively. Kashmir also produced many fine Buddhist logicians in the line of Dirinaga and Dharmaklrti, amongst whom Vinltadeva and Dharmottaracarya, who lived in the eighth century, are the most famous. The borders of Kashmir at that time extended further west beyond the roads to Asia which ran through the Swat and Chitral valleys in Gilgit. For this reason Kashmir was the first to make a substantial contribution to the spread of Buddhism in Central Asia, which began about the fourth century A.D. and travelled along these routes. Many Buddhists, attracted by Kashmir's reputation, came from distant lands to learn Sanskrit and train as translators and teachers. One of the earliest and most brilliant was Kumarajiva (334-413 A.D.). Born into an aristocratic family of the Central Asian kingdom of Khotan, he came to Kashmir in his youth and learnt there the scriptures of the Great Vehicle from Bandhudatta. He then went to China, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life, translating Buddhist scriptures. The Kashmiri Buddhabhadra, his contemporary, did the same. Yoga teachers like Dharmabhiksu attracted a large number of Chinese and Kashmiri students at the end of the fifth century when there was a growing foreign interest in Buddhist Yoga. It was also during this period that the Kashmiri Buddhasena translated a major work of the idealist Buddhist Yogacara school—the Yogacarabhumi—into Chine.se for the first time. In 631 A.D., Hsiian Tsang, one of China's most famous Buddhist pilgrims, came to study in Kashmir leaving us an account of his two-year stay which eloquently testifies to Buddhism's popularity and influence. Such was Kashmir's reputation that it was from here that Tibet originally chose to receive its religion. The first king of Tibet, Srong-bcan- sgampo, sent Thon-mi Sambhota to Kashmir during the reign of Durlabhavardhana (616 A.D.). He learnt Sanskrit from Devatltasimha and returned to Tibet with a modified thirty-letter version of the Kashmiri script.1 Kashmir continued to play a role in the transmission of Buddhism from India into Tiber although other routes (particularly through Nepal) later became more important. By the eleventh century, when the Kashmiri Saiva schools were reaching the peak of their Introduction 3 development, Kashmir was also, as Tucci says, "one of the places where Buddhism prospered most, even if not as state religion, certainly as the home of the greatest scholars and exegetes of the time."2 The rich spiritual and intellectual climate of Kashmir helped to foster an important and far reaching development that affected every aspect of Indian religious life, namely, Tantra. About the middle of the first millennium of our era, Tantra began to assume a clearly defined, although immensely varied, identity through the emergence of vast corpuses of sacred literature that defined themselves specifically as Tantric. There can be no doubt, despite the fragmentary and as yet poorly researched evidence, that Kashmir was an important centre of a wide range of Tantric cults, both Hindu and Buddhist. Many famous Buddhist Tantric teachers lived in or near Kashmir at that time. Naropa and even Padmasambhava (who is said to have introduced Tantric Buddhism into Tibet) sometimes figure in Tibetan sources as Kashmiris.3 Ua'tfiyana (Tibetan: U-rgyan), important as Padmasambhava's birth- place and as a major centre of Tantric Buddhism and Hinduism, may well have been located in the nearby Swat valley. Both of Tantra's major Hindu streams, one centred on the worship of Visnu and the other on Siva, evolved a bewildering number of Tantric cults, some large others small. Kashmir contributed substantially to these

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