God is the unity of Shiva and Shakti.
Shakti is the operative principle and power of Shiva.
Shiva-Shakti is Emptiness richly adorned;
Emptiness is Shiva-Shakti stripped bare.
Without Emptiness, Shiva-Shakti cannot be;
Without Shiva-Shakti, Emptiness cannot dance.
With Emptiness, Shiva-Shakti comes to be in creative unity;
With Shiva-Shakti, Emptiness sports in effulgent bliss.
— Awarezen
This verse came spontaneously to my mind this morning, as I was travelling on the train into town to run an errand. At my neck of the woods, trains run efficiently, are very clean and punctual, and generally comfortable though packed with commuters especially at peak hours. Crowds throng the stations and malls, walkways and shops. But the more ferocious the city vibes due to the huge and dense numbers of bodies, the more my meditative awareness blazes in the white fiery splendour of creative witnessing. Aloof from it all yet immersed in the ocean of aware creativity. Words spontaneously form in the vista of pure witnessing. The heart is quietly savouring its own blissful depths. Consciousness dances in vibrant energy as it curls back upon itself in intimate reflexivity, contemplating its own nature and display.
The fruit of this downtown contemplation is the verse you read above. This verse crystalllises a view and perspective of the Divine that is at the heart of Tantra. Academically, Tantra is a pan-Indian paradigm of spiritual knowledge and praxis that spans millennia of meditative evolution in South Asia. But advocates of Tantra date its origins to the ancient past in the mysterious personality known as Sadashiva or Shiva, the primordial Yogi and Tantrika. Some say he lived 7,000 years ago in the Himalayan regions of northern India, hailing from the sacred Mount Kailash. Others claim he lived 10,000 years ago, if not 15,000. Whatever the case may be, we get the impression of a distant past and a long evolutionary history of Tantra from its point of origin.
For me, Tantra encapsulates the best of the spirituality and meditation of India, indeed of the world. The variety of teachings and practices, particularly profound effective techniques of meditation, is unmatched by any other tradition in the world. One can say that the Buddha Dhamma is part of this seemingly timeless stream of Tantra, in a lyrical and poetic sense. Originally a whole and integral system, Tantra branched off into its various strands of Yoga — Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Raja Yoga, Kriya Yoga, Kundalini Yoga — many of which overlap and meld one into another in some form or other. In later Indian spirituality, we see the sectarian formation of Shaiva Tantra, Vaisnava Tantra, Shakta Tantra, Saura Tantra, and Ganapatya Tantra, each with its own distinctive specialty. In Tibet, Buddhist Tantra can be categorised into Carya Tantra, Kriya Tantra, Yoga Tantra, and Highest Yoga Tantra. The pinnacled systems of Mahamudra and Dzogchen can be regarded as the acme of Highest Yoga Tantra, in terms of positioning and renown.
Indian and Tibetan Tantra are very similar in many ways though their underlying ontology and supra-aesthetic symbology (that is artistic expressions flowing from and oriented towards transcendent consciousness) may differ. Indian Tantric ontology tends towards more substantialist understandings (that is, atman = brahman) compared to Tibetan Tantric ontology of non-essentialism (that is, emptiness of inherency or sunyata). There are also differences in interpretation of the human spiritual biophysiology: energy wheels (chakra), channels (nadi), seed syllables (bija), spiritual potential energy (kundalini), vital energy (prana), winds (vayu), nuckear drops (bindu), and subtle body/mind-made illusory body (suksma kaya/manomaya kaya). These differences extend into the correlations of spiritual biophysiology with various layers of mind ranging from coarse through subtle to subtlest: that is, coarse body paired with coarse mind; subtle body with subtle mind (which itself has three sub-layers); and subtlest energy with subtlest mind of clear light. In short, Tantric psychosomatic theory is a rigorous, detailed, intense, rich, and deep phenomenology of the inner world in symbiosis with the external cosmos. An intricate microcosmic-macrocosmic parallelism obtains between self and the world, consciousness and cosmos in the paradigm of Tantra.
Theologically, Tantra offers a uniquely profound vision of the Divine that bears intimate relationship with inner experience. Tantra is essentially empirical and introspective in its meditative pedagogy and prophetically grounded and comprehensive in its social transformational outlook. Leaving aside Tantra's social transformational mission to explore its meditative dimension, we see how a panen-metatheistic vision of God emerges from careful observation, deep concentration, and rigorous introspective inquiry availed by Tantric methodologies. Mindful and profound meditation confers deep insights into the structure and nature of mind, resolving all appearances of physicality and mentality into the absolute ground of pure consciousness, variously termed pristine awareness (Tbt. rigpa) or primordial consciousness (Tbt. yeshe) equated ultimately with the dharmakaya (truth-body) ocean of all buddhas' enlightened mindstreams; or Self (Skt. atman) equated ultimately with the Great (Skt. brahman) or cosmic consciousness (Skt. bhumacaetanya) or supreme personality (Skt. parama purusa).
On surface comparison, it may seem as if the Buddhist concept of pristine awareness is understood to be thoroughly empty (Skt. sunya) of inherent existence (Skt. svabhava) and thus nondual from emptiness (Skt. sunyata), while the Indian concept of Self is seen to be saturated (Skt. purna) with the fullness (Skt. purnatva) of essential being (Skt. sat). But closer inspection aided by deep meditative experience will show that emptiness and fullness are not irreconcilable opposites but nondually complementary dimensions of a singular truth. For being empty of a fixed inherent identity means the same is full of infinite possibilities. Being empty of essence means the potential to manifest spontaneously as a diversity of appearances without obstruction. There is interpenetration and interbeing of all phenomena where everything and everyone belongs, and nothing and no one exists in autonomous isolation from everything and everyone else. Hence, the emptiness of the Divine is also its fullness, and vice-versa! One caveat: To properly realize divine fullness requires correct insight into emptiness and vice-versa. It is not sufficient to merely speak of fullness and claim fullness for the reality of consciousness without a prior unmistaken view of emptiness. In short, fullness is emptiness unfolded; emptiness is fullness enfolded.
In Tantra, the Divine comprises two nondual and inseparable aspects: consciousness (Skt. shiva) and energy (Skt. shakti). Consciousness is the cognitive principle or cognizance of reality as it is. Energy is the operative principle or power of reality as it is. Consciousness is never without energy and vice-versa. Energy is the primordial effulgent activity of consciousness in its creative and manifestive function. Consciousness is a primordial cognizant receptivity and sensitivity of energy in its quiescent and non-manifestive function. Consciousness is not inherently separate from energy nor is energy inherently separate from consciousness. Otherwise they would not be able to exist in tandem with each other and would have no relationship with each other. Rather, consciousness and energy are both empty and thus appearing distinctive while simultaneously nondual in nature, being a simple divine Whole without separate parts. Consciousness (shiva) and energy (shakti) are both nominally imputed realities that exist relatively but are empty of self-existence essentially. And it is precisely because they are empty in this way that they can appear and exist without impedance. Hence:
God is the unity of Shiva and Shakti.
Shakti is the operative principle and power of Shiva.
Shiva-Shakti is Emptiness richly adorned;
Emptiness is Shiva-Shakti stripped bare.
The first two lines of the verse are inspired by the teachings of my Tantric guru the late Shrii Anandamurti, whose Ananda Sutram is a powerful classic of contemporary spirituality. Seen from the perspective of emptiness, consciousness and energy are displays of the very fact of emptiness wherein their very emptiness of self-existence allows for them to appear unproblematically. If on the contrary consciousness and energy are inherently self-existing, there would be no possibility of change, evolution, and thus any relationship between them, for relationship inevitably requires change and evolution. Consciousness and energy would also be unable to function in any way as function requires change. A static entity that does not change cannot function! Hence, consciousness and energy as displays of emptiness can be poetically termed "adornments." Conversely, when we analytically inquire into consciousness and energy as to their final mode of existence, that is how they truly exist when stripped of all imaginations and thought constructions, we discover that they exist dependently — not on causes and conditions or on composite parts, but on imputation on a valid basis. Upon the valid basis of each moment of luminosity (potential for appearance-making) and knowing (witnessing and aware-ing capacity), a nominal imputation (name/designation) of "consciousness" can be applied to this basis. When this basis itself is analysed, it in turn is imputed upon a valid basis of another moment of luminosity and knowing. This imputation process continues ad infinitum. In effect, it is imputation and thus emptiness all the way down, world without end. Emptiness itself, in the final analysis, is also empty!
Without Emptiness, Shiva-Shakti cannot be;
Without Shiva-Shakti, Emptiness cannot dance.
With Emptiness, Shiva-Shakti comes to be in creative unity;
With Shiva-Shakti, Emptiness sports in effulgent bliss.
If we can understand the reasoning in the preceding paragraphs, we would be able to see that the very being of consciousness and energy is predicated on their emptiness of inherent existence. Their emptiness is what enables them to shine forth as consciousness and energy, nominally existing and causally effective as functioning processes. The creative functioning of consciousness and energy is thus compared to the "dance" of emptiness. Just as a good dance is generally non-linear and spontaneous in spirit, the dance of emptiness expressing as consciousness and energy in co-synergy and co-action is a sight of creativity and bliss. Reality thus is one that pulsates in creative bliss and radiant appearance. Reality is the Divine — as infinite consciousness and energy — dancing forth in their emptiness as the wondrous display of our "inner" and "outer" worlds, the totality of the cosmos encompassing all minds, bodies, and phenomena of enlightened (nirvana) and deluded (samsara) existence. Aligning this Tantric vision with the cosmotheandric principle, we can view this evolutionary process of creative effulgent display of the Divine (empty boundless consciousness and energy) as a process of Christogenesis. To me, this may well be a deeper dimension to the notion of incarnation — divinity becoming the cosmos and humanity in an integral seamless act of self-emptying love, in and as Christ Jesus who is timelessly nondual from all that was, is, and is to come. I offer this breathtaking vision of reality espoused by Tantra for your contemplation.
Image credit: Pixabay (Pexels)
