Utpaladeva: I Do Not Want Liberation, I Want This

What he had to answer

Kashmir in the tenth century was an argument. The Buddhist logicians, particularly the Vijnanavada or consciousness only school, had produced an extremely sophisticated position, and the Shaiva scriptural tradition had no formal reply to it.

The Buddhist position, stated fairly:

• There is no permanent self. What appears as a self is a stream of momentary mental events
• Each moment of consciousness arises, does its work, and ceases
• There is nothing underneath the stream holding it together
• The sense of being a continuous somebody is a construction

And it was argued rigorously, by Dharmakirti and others, and it was winning.

Utpaladeva's answer

Two moves, and they are worth having because they are still good arguments.

One. Memory.

The argument: consider remembering something.

You saw a thing yesterday. Today you remember it. In the act of remembering, there is a connection made between the past perception and the present moment: this thing now is the thing I saw then.

Who makes that connection?

• The past moment of consciousness has ceased. It cannot make it
• The present moment never had the original perception. It cannot make it either
• And a series of moments, each of which knows only itself, cannot make it, because a series is not a thing that knows anything; only a knower knows

Therefore: there must be a single continuous knower, present at both times, doing the joining.

And that knower is what he calls the self, and it is not a series.

Two. Prakasha and vimarsha.

This is his central technical contribution and it is the term the whole later tradition uses.

Prakasha means light, manifestation, the fact that anything appears at all.

Vimarsha means self referential awareness: not just appearing, but the appearing knowing that it is appearing.

The argument: the Buddhist analysis gives you prakasha. Things appear. But mere appearance, with nothing that is aware of itself appearing, is:

• Indistinguishable from a mirror, in which things appear and which knows nothing
• Unable to account for memory, since it requires a knower who persists
• Unable to account for agency, since choosing requires somebody who chooses
• Unable to account for the word I, which everybody uses and which refers to something

Consciousness is therefore prakasha plus vimarsha: light that is aware of itself as light.

And svatantrya

Freedom, and it follows from vimarsha.

A consciousness that is aware of itself is not determined by anything outside itself, because there is nothing outside itself. It is free, absolutely, and that freedom is what it does with itself.

Which is why the world exists. Not by necessity, not by a fall, not by error, but because a completely free self aware consciousness plays.

And what that means for you

The individual self is that same consciousness under self imposed limitation.

Not a fragment of it, not a reflection of it, not something separate that resembles it. The same thing, having contracted itself, freely, and having forgotten that it did.

Which is why the whole system is called recognition.

How hard is this to read

Very. The Ishvara Pratyabhijna Karika is compressed philosophical Sanskrit, arguing against positions you have to know in order to follow the argument, and it is normally read with Abhinavagupta's commentaries, which are longer than the text.

Which is why the hymns matter, and why he wrote them.

What it is

Around twenty hymns, arranged into a collection by Kshemaraja, Abhinavagupta's student, who also wrote the standard commentary on it.

They are completely different in register from the philosophy and they are what Kashmir actually reads.

The central request

And this is the thing worth taking from him.

He asks for bhakti itself.

Not for what devotion might get him. Not for liberation, not for knowledge, not for any state or any outcome.

He asks to be given devotion, as the thing itself, and says repeatedly that if he has it he wants nothing else, including release.

In substance, across many verses:

I do not want liberation. Let me have this. Let me go on wanting you. If you offer me freedom from rebirth and it costs me this, keep it.

Why that is a real position and not a flourish

Because of what the philosophy says.

If the individual self is Shiva under self imposed limitation, then the relationship between devotee and deity is a relationship the one reality has arranged with itself, deliberately, out of freedom, for the sake of the relationship.

And in that case the relationship is not a means to anything. It is what the freedom was exercised for.

So asking to keep it, rather than to be dissolved into an undifferentiated unity, is philosophically coherent and not sentimental, and Utpaladeva is the figure in whom the technical and the emotional case for it are made by the same person.

The other themes

One. Madness.

He asks, repeatedly, to be made unmatta, mad, intoxicated. Several verses request the state in which a person dances, sings, weeps and shouts without being able to account for it.

And he is asking for it as a philosopher, in full knowledge of what he is asking for, which is what makes the verses strange.

Two. Everywhere.

A recurring position: for a person in that state, every place is a place of practice, every condition is the condition, and there is nothing to arrange.

Wherever my mind goes, let that be worship of you.

Which removes the whole apparatus of correct time, correct place, correct posture and correct condition, not by rejecting it but by making it unnecessary.

Three. Asking.

The hymns are full of requests, and he is not embarrassed about it. He asks for attention, for company, for the state, for the ability to keep asking, and, in several verses, for the removal of the interruptions that come between him and it.

Four. When.

A large group of verses begin with kada, when. When will the day come. When will I be like that. When will it happen to me.

Which is the same structure as Narottama Dasa's songs six hundred years later in Bengali, and for the same reason: a verse in the future conditional can be sung honestly by somebody who has not arrived.

Five. The paradox.

Several verses deal directly with the strangeness of praising somebody who is yourself, and of asking for something from a person who is the one asking, and he does not resolve it. He notes it and continues.

Reading it

• English translations exist, including by Constantina Rhodes Bailly and others, and Kshemaraja's commentary is translated in places
• Hindi and Sanskrit editions are available
• The hymns are recited in the Kashmiri Shaiva tradition and recordings exist
• They are short, and one at a time is the right pace

One. The same person wrote both.

The hardest philosophy in the tradition and its most unguarded devotional poetry, by one man, with no sign of strain between them.

Which disposes of an assumption a lot of people carry: that thinking rigorously about something and loving it are activities in tension, and that you have to pick.

His answer: if the object of both is a single self aware consciousness which is also you, then argument and love are two things done with the same material, and there is no conflict to manage.

Two. He asked for the devotion, not for what it gets you.

This is the most useful single idea in the entry.

Most religious asking is instrumental: give me this so that I get that. Even the higher forms are usually instrumental at one remove: give me devotion so that I may be liberated.

Utpaladeva asks for the relationship as the thing itself, and says explicitly that he would rather have it than be released.

Applied: it is worth noticing what you are actually asking for, and whether the practice is a means to something you want more.

And the philosophical basis is not sentimental: if the whole arrangement was set up by a free consciousness for the sake of the relationship, then the relationship is the point, not a stage.

Three. The memory argument.

You remember something. In the act of remembering, a connection is made between a past perception and the present moment. The past moment has ceased and cannot make it; the present moment never had the perception and cannot make it; and a series cannot make it, because a series does not know anything.

Therefore something continuous is doing the joining, and that is what he means by the self.

It is a thousand year old argument and it is still a good one, and it is worth having for its own sake.

Four. Prakasha and vimarsha.

Light, and light knowing it is light.

The general form: the difference between a mirror and a person is not that things appear in one and not the other. It is that in one case the appearing is aware of itself.

And the practical application: in any practice, the question is not only what is appearing, but whether there is noticing of the noticing.

Five. Wherever my mind goes, let that be worship.

Which removes the requirement for correct time, place, posture and mood, without abolishing them for people who want them.

Six. Kada. When.

A large part of the Shivastotravali is in the future conditional, asking when this will happen, and it is written by the man who established the philosophical foundations of the whole school.

Somebody at that level of understanding was still asking when.

A daily practice from this entry:

• Om Namah Shivaya
• One hymn from the Shivastotravali, in translation, one at a time
• The memory question, once, as an exercise: when you remember something, what is doing the joining
• And his request, tried honestly: to be given the wanting, rather than the thing the wanting is for

A closing thought

A man in tenth century Kashmir wrote the argument that turned a scriptural tradition into a philosophy capable of standing up to the best logicians of the age, on the ground that a series of momentary experiences cannot remember anything and therefore something continuous must be doing the joining.

And the same man wrote twenty hymns asking to be made mad, asking that wherever his mind wandered should count as worship, and asking, over and over, that if liberation was on offer and the cost of it was this, then he would rather not.

Who: Utpaladeva, roughly 900 to 950, a Kashmiri philosopher and poet who sits in the middle of the Kashmir Shaiva lineage: student of Somananda, teacher of Lakshmanagupta, who taught Abhinavagupta.

His philosophy: the Ishvara Pratyabhijna Karika, the hardest and most rigorous text in the tradition, which turned the Kashmir Shaiva position from a set of scriptural claims into a formal darshana capable of arguing with the Buddhist logicians on their own terms. He wrote his own short Vritti on it, and Abhinavagupta wrote two long commentaries.

The memory argument: when you remember something, a connection is made between a past perception and the present moment. The past moment has ceased and cannot make it, the present moment never had the perception, and a series of momentary experiences cannot make it because a series does not know anything. Therefore something continuous must be doing the joining.

Prakasha and vimarsha: prakasha is light or manifestation, the fact that anything appears; vimarsha is self referential awareness, the appearing knowing that it is appearing. The Buddhist analysis gives prakasha only, which is indistinguishable from a mirror and cannot account for memory, agency or the word I. Consciousness is light that knows itself as light, and from that follows svatantrya, absolute freedom, and the world as free self expression rather than as necessity, fall or error.

The Shivastotravali: around twenty hymns, arranged and commented on by Kshemaraja, and completely different in register from the philosophy. Their central request is for bhakti itself rather than for what it might get him: he asks not to be liberated if liberation costs him this. Other themes are the request to be made mad, the position that wherever the mind goes should count as worship, and a large group of verses beginning kada, when.

Why the two halves fit: if the individual self is Shiva under self imposed limitation, the relationship between devotee and deity is one the single reality arranged with itself, freely, for the sake of the relationship, so the relationship is the point and not a means. Argument and love are two operations on the same object.

A short map, since this batch covers several figures in the same lineage.

The foundational texts

• Shiva Sutras, seventy seven sutras in three sections, associated with Vasugupta, ninth century, and the root text of the tradition. Short, aphoristic, unreadable without commentary, and the standard commentary is Kshemaraja's Vimarshini
• Spanda Karika, around fifty verses on the pulsation, attributed to Vasugupta or his student Kallata
• Pratyabhijnahridayam, twenty sutras with Kshemaraja's own commentary, which is the best short summary of the whole system and the standard place to begin

The philosophical development

• Somananda, Shivadrishti, the first systematic statement
• Utpaladeva, Ishvara Pratyabhijna Karika, which makes it a formal darshana
• Abhinavagupta, the two Pratyabhijna commentaries and the Tantraloka

The devotional material

• Utpaladeva's Shivastotravali
• Abhinavagupta's stotras: the Bodhapanchadashika, Anuttarashtika, Anubhavanivedana and others
• Lal Ded's vakhs, fourteenth century, in Kashmiri
• Rupa Bhawani's vakhs, seventeenth century, in Kashmiri

The practice texts

• Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, a hundred and twelve meditation techniques presented as a list, requiring no initiation, and one of the most practically useful texts in Indian religion
• Tantrasara, Abhinavagupta's own abridgement of the Tantraloka

A suggested order for somebody starting

One. Pratyabhijnahridayam, with Jaideva Singh's translation and commentary. Twenty sutras.

Two. Shiva Sutras and Spanda Karika, same translator.

Three. Vijnana Bhairava, and try a few of the techniques.

Four. Utpaladeva's Shivastotravali, which is the devotional counterpart and is much easier than the philosophy.

Five. Abhinavagupta's Paramarthasara, a hundred and five verses.

Six. Then, if you are going on, the Tantrasara and the Ishvara Pratyabhijna Karika with commentary.

Modern access

Swami Lakshman Joo, 1907 to 1991, of Srinagar, is the figure through whom nearly all modern access to this tradition runs. His lectures, translations and transcripts are widely available and he taught in English as well as Kashmiri and Hindi.

Scholarly work in English by Jaideva Singh, Alexis Sanderson, Mark Dyczkowski, Bettina Baumer, Lilian Silburn, Navjivan Rastogi and others is substantial and mostly accessible.

And a caution about what is marketed under this name: a great deal of contemporary material claiming to teach Kashmir Shaivism or tantra has no relationship to any of the above. The tradition's own texts are available in translation, they are not secret, and anybody charging significant money for access to teachings that exist in published books is selling you something you can get for the price of a book.