Is there a practice in Non-dual Śaivism equivalent to the Yamantaka practice (Vajrabhairava, Manjusri)?

I guess I'm looking for a śāktopāya equivalent where the practice becomes less ritualistic and more cognitive.. if there is one such thing.

Hi there,

Been lurking for some time here. I have gotten more involved in meditation and meditative traditions this year but I have always been interested in meditation ever since I was a kid.

Started learning about Kashmir Shaivism and it has been very fascinating to me and the idea of a living guru who can guide me has been on my mind passively for a month now.

Now I come to my question, which is, the importance of dreams and the signs you see in them. To preface, I am sceptical by bent of mind, but also lean towards experiential spiritually, which is what drew me to meditation in the first place.

Does the tradition have any answer when it comes to dreams (and the images and signs you see in them) and how seriously one should take them? Dreams also seem like a state of consciousness where your subconscious surfaces some hidden things (and also things that have occupied one's mind while awake, logically speaking) so I am hoping to know how seriously I should take my dreams haha.

Recently I had two dreams, one in which someone was pointing me to the name and location of a living guru, which I ended up forgetting about upon waking, but the 2nd dream I had some lucidity so I managed to follow some signals in that dream and even remembered some details upon waking up. I wrote down the location of the "sign of the location of a living guru". Now, I live outside of India and the location is in india lol this might sound a little insane which is why I suppose I am looking for some clarity on what you guys think?

Should I follow the rough location I received in the dream or just chalk it up to my mental preoccupation with Kashmir Shaivism just showing up in unrelated ways in my dreams? And if it's the latter, when do you know when you've received the right sign worth following?

is Kashmir Shaivism fine with theory of evolution? how does it fit into the framework?

Dear all,

Have any of you heard of this institute and of its director Dr. R. Ramanand? It appears to be a very legitimate educational institute and Dr. Ramanand a solid academic but I am wondering if there is a connection to the lineage as well. Because I see Dr. Ramanand also teaches courses on Tantra... With sincere respect to academic research, I have come across previous cases of teachers with rigorous academic credentials but no connection/belonging to the lineage who start teaching meditation & practice - in my experience it usually doesn't go well. So without implying anything I just wanted to ask if any of you know of this institute and whether it is worth following courses here even when they touch on and discuss the core practices.

This Photograph was taken at IAT, New Delhi. Late Shri Mark S. G. Dyczkowski
Was felicitated with the 1st Acharaya Abhinavgupta Samman! There are 3 more Legends who have contributed to KS . They are also in the frame. Late Dr M.L. Pandit ji, Late Sh. Shashi Shekhar Toshkhani ji( was felicitated with Acharya Abhinavgupta Samman last year) and Late Kukilooji .

The photo was taken just 3 -4 yrs back!

Pls help me understand this iconography and identify the deities shown in it

I found this YouTube video regarding Kashmir Shaivism and it covers a pretty good topic ranges from Kashmir Shaivism.

The video also gives practical application of the same

@TheThirdHighExperience on YouTube

The same channel has a video on Shiva Tattva and Enlightenment

Dear All, I am a Shakta with a Vedantic background, and very new to Kashmiri Shaivism. I came across a Kashmiri Shaivism teacher called something Suyash. What are your views on him? I read that he is self-initiated but is he knowledgeable or just blabbers?

Many thanks!

Does anyone know if somebody is currently working on an english translation of this text?

1. is the entire divine play scripted outside of time and place, or is it ad hoc updated while the play is being played? in other words, are we seeing in linear time what already is/was outside of time and space?
2. is the universe simultaneously manifested while also remaining in the potential, or is while manifestation is active the whole potential is manifested and Shiva is entirely the universe with no remainder? not sure if I formulated this precisely as I wanted... is there a period of manifestation and period of rest and we are currently in manifestation period, or do both coexist?

Will that day ever come to me when I reside in your abode and exert my life in working for you?

Hail to Him, whose hand shines with the sharp trident symbolizing the three powers. Hail to the one whose adorable feet fulfil a desire the moment it arises.
Hail to him having transcendental form emitting manifold beauty. Hail to Thee rejoicing in the offerings of emotions steeped in the bliss of love. Hail to Thee, propitiated by hymns and dancings of devotees maddened by the intensity of love.

How fortunate are Swamiji’s disciples having taken birth during his appearance on this Earth. They basked in his presence and saw his spiritual form with their own eyes. Their ears carry vibrations that came out of Swaiji’s mouth within moments of Him first uttering those vibrations. It’s just hard to believe that such a perfect and unique gentleman like Lakshmanjoo really existed in this world not too long ago.

If yes, please suggest books for it. I recently got into astrology and got to know about trika shaivaism and it aligned so much with Advaita vedanta that I wanna study it more and I wanna know what it talks about astrology. I wanna go deeper into this subject. Thank you in advance!!!

I saw an experiment dividing life into environment, body, and mind to test if there is any distance between what is observed and what observes it.

Words like "the experiencer" or "consciousness" turn everything into static nouns. In Kashmir Shaivism, Shiva is not an object or an observer. Shiva is Experiencing itself.

Testing that across those three areas:

• The world: When a sound happens, is there an observer separate from it, or is there just hearing? Is there any space between the sound and consciousness of it?
• The body: Feeling the pressure of your feet on the floor. Is there an experiencer separate from the sensation, or just feeling?
• The mind: When a thought arises, is there a thinker, or just thinking?

There is no person having an experience. There is only Experiencing—and that is what Shiva and consciousness are.

Is it best if I keep Shambhavi Mudra(Eyes open looking upward to the point between both eyebrows) while practicing mantra japa or it doesn't change anything?

I seem to swing between Brahman/Shiva and no-self. sometimes I dont even see a difference between the two. sometimes I am clear on true Self. But if you were to ask me now, I would not be able to make a good case on why I prefer Shiva over no-self.

how does Kashmir Shaivism argue this point?

A question recently appeared in this group asking how a Śaiva can reconcile the enormous amount of suffering in saṃsāra with the recognition that everything is Śiva—and, more personally, whether witnessing the suffering of animals and children can interfere with bhakti. The original question

I wanted to answer it separately, because for me this is not really an abstract philosophical problem.

I have been in a pediatric oncology ward. It remains one of the most terrifying places I have ever been.

There are places in which certain kinds of spiritual language become almost unbearable. It is one thing to discuss līlā, nonduality, contraction, or the transcendence of opposites while sitting with a book. It is another thing to spend hours in a place where children are seriously ill and their parents are standing beside them.

After seeing something like that, I find it almost impossible to take seriously the cheap version of nonduality which says: “change your perception”; “from the highest standpoint there is no suffering”; “everything is Śiva, therefore everything is perfect.”

Perhaps some of these sentences contain a metaphysical truth when properly understood. But they can also become spiritual gaslighting. They can protect our philosophy from reality by asking the suffering person—or the person who cannot bear witnessing another’s suffering—to correct their vision.

I do not think this is what Abhinavagupta is doing.

In the Parātrīṃśikā-vivaraṇa, while discussing pleasure and suffering, he uses an example that is far more visceral than an abstract statement that pain and pleasure are ultimately one.

He speaks of the very same inner force which had existed as the happiness connected with one’s beloved, one’s child, and what is dear, and which in suffering becomes agitation, weeping, and the terrible recognition:

punar na bhaviṣyati —

“It will not be again.”

He says:

duḥkhe ’pi eṣa eva camatkāraḥ —

“Even in suffering, this very same camatkāra is present.”

Camatkāra here is difficult to translate. “Wonder” is too pleasant in English. It is closer to the intense self-savoring or vividness of experience—the moment in which consciousness is completely struck by what is occurring. Abhinava is not saying that grief is secretly enjoyable. His own example is a beloved or child, crying, and the knowledge of irreversible loss. The point is almost the opposite: pain can be so terrible precisely because the same power with which we loved is still alive in the grief.

This matters to me. Abhinava does not begin by telling the grieving person that the grief is unreal. He enters into the structure of grief itself.

And elsewhere in the Vivaraṇa he goes even further.

He describes the condition in which the supports upon which embodied life has rested—body, vitality, external possessions and enjoyments—collapse, and consciousness touches within the heart what he calls asamā glāni: an unequalled exhaustion or depletion.

This is already very far from “just change your perception.”

But Abhinava does not leave the human being there.

Immediately the movement reverses:

praviṣṭā ced ... parā devī hanta pravilasatu pūrṇaṃ havir iva

“If the supreme Goddess has entered within—ah! may she blaze forth like a full oblation.”

I find this one of the most beautiful movements in the Vivaraṇa.

The answer to devastation is not that devastation was secretly pleasant. Nor is it that the things which destroyed us were somehow “for our own good.” Abhinava has already allowed glāni to reach the heart.

But the heart is not exhausted by its exhaustion.

Parā Devī—the living power from which the entire universe arises—can enter precisely there. Not as positive thinking, and not as an intellectual correction of perspective. The image is violent and beautiful: the emptied heart becomes an altar, and the Goddess blazes through it like an offering thrown into fire.

A few lines later Abhinava makes the image even fiercer:

bījaṃ tadeva bhavajīrṇataroḥ ... dahate kṣaṇena

“That very seed of the worn-out tree of becoming is burned in an instant in the sharp fire of supreme consciousness.”

That, to me, is much closer to Abhinava than telling somebody merely to “see things differently.”

The suffering is not retrospectively declared good. The illness does not become good. The death does not become good. The loss does not become good.

What Abhinava refuses to grant them is the final word.

There is also another side of this which I think is essential, because otherwise nonduality can become morally grotesque.

At the very opening of the Īśvarapratyabhijñā, Utpaladeva says that after somehow attaining servitude to Maheśvara, he wishes also to help living beings:

kathaṃcid āsādya maheśvarasya
dāsyaṃ janasyāpy upakāram icchan...

Abhinavagupta pauses over this. He describes jana, living humanity, as

anavarata-janana-maraṇa-pīḍitasya —

“afflicted by ceaseless birth and death”

and then says:

kṛpāspadatayā upakaraṇīyatvam —

because they are the objects of compassion, they are to be helped.

That sentence is enormously important to me.

The consequence of recognition is not: “Their suffering is only Śiva, therefore why interfere?”

It is kṛpā.

And Abhinava immediately connects this with nonduality itself: the word api reveals the non-difference of the other from one’s own Self. Having reached fullness, there is no private deficiency left demanding to be filled; action can move toward parārtha—the good of another.

So if my nonduality makes me less disturbed by a suffering child or animal, I would distrust my nonduality.

I would be much more inclined to say that recognition should make the wall around “my suffering” and “their suffering” thinner.

And then there is bhakti.

Here I think Utpaladeva himself gives perhaps the most honest answer possible.

Near the end of the Śivastotrāvalī, he makes an almost outrageous declaration: on the path of Śaṅkara, even suffering becomes happiness, poison becomes nectar, and saṃsāra itself becomes liberation. (Śivastotrāvalī 20.12.)

One could easily extract that verse, place it on a beautiful image, and produce exactly the kind of spirituality I distrust.

Except that Utpaladeva immediately writes the next verse:

mūle madhye ’vasāne ca nāsti duḥkhaṃ bhavajjuṣām |
tathāpi vayam īśāna sīdāmaḥ katham ucyatām ||

“At the beginning, in the middle, and at the end, there is no suffering for those devoted to You. And yet, O Lord, we are sinking in suffering. How is this to be explained?” (Śivastotrāvalī 20.13.)

The word sīdāmaḥ is strong: we sink, languish, collapse, become overwhelmed. And katham ucyatām—“how is this to be explained?”—does not sound to me like somebody who has solved the problem and is now teaching the correct metaphysical answer.

It sounds like prayer reaching the point where theology can no longer protect itself.

And perhaps this is where I would leave the question.

I do not know how to reconcile the suffering of children with Śiva in any way that completely satisfies me. I do not think saying līlā solves it. I do not think saying “everything is consciousness” solves it. And I certainly do not think bhakti requires us to look at horror and persuade ourselves that it is beautiful.

But neither do I think that the inability to reconcile it necessarily destroys bhakti.

There may be a kind of devotion in which one can love Śiva and still say to Śiva: I cannot accept this. Explain this to me.

Utpaladeva apparently knew that place.

He could say that poison becomes nectar—and one verse later:

tathāpi vayam īśāna sīdāmaḥ katham ucyatām.

And yet, O Lord, we are sinking in suffering. How is this to be explained?

I do not know that this is a problem which should be made to disappear.

Perhaps some questions before Śiva are closer to koans than propositions.

They are not necessarily answered.

They are lived.

My guru in Śrī Vidyā Tradition passed away more than a decade ago. I still have deep love, gratitude, and respect for him, and I do not want this question to be understood as criticism of him personally.

But there is something I have been trying to understand in myself.

Over the years I have spent a great deal of time studying Abhinavagupta, particularly his writings on Trika and Kaula. Gradually I began to encounter places where what I was reading did not quite fit what I had previously been taught. Sometimes the difference was relatively small; in other places - particularly around Kaula practice, ritual, embodiment, and the different upāyas - Abhinavagupta's treatment simply seemed more complete and more convincing to me.

For a long time I did something strange with this. I did not exactly reject what I was seeing, but neither did I allow myself to look at the contradiction directly... there was almost a blank space around it. I think love and loyalty to my Guru had something to do with that...

Only recently have I become more willing to say: I can remain deeply grateful to my guru and still conclude that, on a particular question, I think Abhinavagupta was right. Following that judgment does not necessarily erase what I received from my guru.

But emotionally I am not sure this has completely settled.

So I am curious how others who take the guru principle seriously understand this.

What happens when sincere study, experience, or one's own discernment leads to a conclusion different from one's guru's teaching? Does Guru-bhakti include the freedom eventually to disagree? How do you distinguish genuine discernment from simply following your own preferences?

And perhaps especially for people whose Guru is still living: have you ever encountered a point where a text or another teacher seemed to you substantially deeper or more convincing than what your own Guru had said? How did you hold that without either suppressing your judgment or turning against the person from whom you had received so much?

Namaste,

I’m wondering about “ya” when chanting “om namah shivaya.” I have had progress in my sadhana by focusing on the interpretation of the letters as the five elements, although I’m having difficulty of how to incorporate ether when it seems the chanting is actually said “shivay.”

My thoughts are that the Y itself could be its own syllable (rather than pronouncing “va” as “vai). Or, maybe that symbolically the omission of the final ‘a’ sound represents the ether/void/empty space and is to be pondered in the silence after “va,” although I had also thought the silence was a chance to try for/allow a moment of nirvikalpa. The nirvikalpa-in-silence has been my approach so far, and I do experience a great silencing of the mind with it as-is.

How is “ya” realized externally or internally within this mantra?

Thanks everyone,
Har har Mahadev

I’ve often heard it said that Abhinavagupta had gurus of a bunch of different traditions, including Buddhism. Do we have any writings from him where he talks extensively about Buddhism or compares it to his systems?

9-Week Exploration of the Devī Atharvaśīrṣa

Join Ācārya Dr. Sthaneshwar Timalsina for a nine-week exploration of the Devī Atharvaśīrṣa.

Starting October 11 - Every Sunday
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM ET
Free & open to everyone

Register / Learn More: https://vimarsha.org/devi

The Devī Atharvaśīrṣa is a brief yet profound text of just 27 mantras, standing at the confluence of Vedic, Tantric, and Purāṇic traditions. It presents Śakti as the supreme principle, bringing together bīja mantras, ritual practice, devotion, and nondual philosophy.

The course will be accompanied by two new, freely available publications:
• An original translation by Dr. Ravi S. Kudesia, with commentaries by Dr. Kudesia and Ācārya Dr. Sthaneshwar Timalsina
• An extensive commentary by Ācārya Maheshanandagiri Ji Maharaj, Pontiff of Shri Dakshinamurti Peetha in Varanasi, India

View the schedule in your local timezone: https://vimarsha.org/schedule

"N.B. With the disappearance of most of the Shiva-Shastrās the world became engrossed in spiritual darkness, Shiva took pity on men (mankind) and, appearing on the Kailasa mountain in the form of Shri Kanthā, commanded the sage Durvasa to spread in the world the knowledge of these Shastras again. Durvasa created by the power of his mind three sons — Tryambaka, Amardaka & Shrinatha by names — whom he charged with the mission of establishing spiritual order and of teaching men again the ancient and eternal Shaiva faith and doctrine in their three aspects of Abheda, Bheda and Bhedābheda — of unity, diversity and diversity-in-unity. Tryambaka was to teach the first, Amardaka the second and Srinathā the last. It is this Abheda — or Advaya Shaiva teaching, thus taught to the world by Tryambaka, which [is] spoken as Trika."

I’ve been thinking about the five skandhas and the Buddhist analysis of the person as changing processes: form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness. No single aggregate seems to provide a permanent owner, and yet continuity, memory, and recognition still occur.

A river retains a recognizable course without retaining its water. A melody remains recognizable even though no individual note persists. A living pattern can continue while its components change.

So I wonder whether saying “the self is an illusion” sometimes collapses two different claims:

There is no permanent, independent personal entity underlying experience.
The continuity we call a person is therefore unreal.
The first doesn’t seem to entail the second.

From a Kashmir Śaiva / Pratyabhijñā perspective, this becomes especially interesting, because recognition (pratyabhijñā) does not simply reinstall the ordinary ego as an eternal substance. The limited “I” is itself contracted and changing, while aham points toward something much deeper.

So how would you distinguish patterned continuity, the constructed personal self, and the deeper recognition of Self?

Or, more mischievously:
If the skandhas are eating the popcorn, who recognizes that this is the same bowl? 🍿

A new biography of Swamiji entitled "Swami Lakshmanjoo: The Journey Divine" by Sh. Atal Dulloo has been launched and should be available from bookstores in the near future. You can watch some video clips from the book release event here. There's much about Swamiji's life that is not yet well known and so this book may help bring more of his life and teachings to the world.

Estou lendo o livro Kashmir Shaivism "The Secret Supreme" em PDF e tentando traduzir pro português.

As imagens que aparecem no livro eu tento pesquisá-las, mas sem sucesso com Google Lens/IAs.

Alguém pode me ajudar a encontrar essa?