Tantrism?
The idea of tantrism is found in all the paths of the East, from the Vajrayana path of the Tibetan Buddhists to the path of zen in Japan. China, India, Japan..., it seems that all Asian countries have developed this vision.
We can also study a being such as Abhinavagupta, one of the greatest masters of India (aesthetician, philosopher...), who lived in Kashmir at the end of the 10th and the beginning of the 11th century of our era, and who left us extraordinary texts on this vision, translated by Lilian Silburn (Research Director at the CNRS).
Among her translations is a text called the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra (The discrimination of ultimate Reality), which is the great text of tantrism and one of the oldest Tantra or Agama (revealed texts) of India.
Handed down orally from masters to disciples, few written traces of this text are found before our era.
Tantrism essentially aims at interiorisation and at stopping the dichotomous process of thought. It is centred on the experience of inwardness, an absolute inwardness of consciousness, as opposed to the dispersion of outwardness, which sets up a relationship between subject, object and observation.
The unity sought is total and without return; it is called Bhairava.
The notion of happiness does not, strictly speaking, exist in this vision. The world is suffering, and suffering comes from ignorance: the ignorance that makes me regard myself as an individual separate from the rest, and makes me see objects as separate from me. This discrimination gives rise to the psychological idea, and the whole psychological process sets in here through the coding and colouring that the observation of the object outside me takes on. This coding and these colourings come from my culture, my history, my persona in its history, and push me to love or reject this or that event that comes my way; from these moods arise all our troubles, which become fixed in the energetic structure of our body.
Tantrism then tries to make use of everything available to allow consciousness to recover its undivided state. It is not concerned with the psychological relationship, which remains completely sterile for reaching a utopian, psychological happiness, but sees the end of suffering in mastery of the mind, the breaths, the energies and the spirit.
It is greatly to be regretted that our world, lost in the frantic search for emotion linked to images, sees in tantrism only the part concerning sexual practices and completely obscures all the rest of this extraordinary path.
The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra contains 112 meditation techniques; only 3 speak of meditation within a sexual act, and one of these 3 concerns the imagination.
The hardest aspect to understand is that tantrism is an experiment of the present moment, within the act, and cannot be grasped by the intellect. Awareness must arise during the action (vimarsha); then the ongoing process disappears, giving way to absolute, undivided, luminous consciousness (prakasha). The energy of the act is not lost, or no longer burnt up in the act itself (through the sensation of pleasure or displeasure), but allows consciousness to rise, open and transcend the individual, who then recovers his reality.
To achieve this, the energies in the action must be completely set free, like a parent who throws himself under the wheels of a lorry to save his child.
Psychology therefore has no place here, for it calls on a consciousness that is not in the action and that leaves the individual in his story, with his lies, doubts, fears, inhibitions and frustration.
Consciousness before the action is morality; it inhibits the action
Consciousness during the action is frustration; it sets up the idea of competition.
Finally, consciousness after the action is psychology; it leads to the attempt to explain the action and brings guilt...
But then the action is never free, freed and freeing.
Finally, the feeling of happiness, if that is what we seek in our life, can be reached through the fullness (the opposite of depression) of our being, and can be quickly experienced and deeply established through conscious work on our breathing.
I will simply end by quoting these verses from the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra :
20-21. If the one who enters the state of energy realises that he is in no way distinct from it, his divinised energy (saivî) takes on the essence of Siva and is then called the 'opening'. Just as, thanks to the light of a lamp or the rays of the sun, one becomes aware of the various portions of space, so, O Beloved, it is thanks to his energy that one can know Siva.
22-24. The goddess says:
O God of gods, You who bear the emblem of the trident and are adorned with the garland of skulls, (tell me) by what means one can perceive the state that has the form of fullness proper to Bhairava, which escapes time and space and defies all description. In what sense is it said that the supreme Goddess is the opening that (gives access) to it? Teach me, O Bhairava, so that my knowledge may become perfect.
Bhairava answers:
One must exert an upward thrust on the supreme (Energy) formed of two points (visarga, which are) the out breath, above, and the in breath, below. The state of fullness (comes) from their being carried (or held) at their twofold place of origin
Commentary.
Just as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the out breath (prâna) rises in the heart and sets in the outer dvâdasânta, while the in breath (apâna or jîva) follows the reverse course. In the ordinary functioning of the breath, the dvâdasânta lies outside, twelve finger widths beyond the tip of the nose, the precise point where the out breath disappears. But in the great yogin, when his vital energy functions in the way designated by the term uccâra, upsurge, the breath, instead of making its way outwards, takes the middle path (susumnâ) to rise from the heart to the inner dvâdasânta, which at that moment merges with the bramarandhra located at the top of the brain. The energy then takes on its infinitely subtle aspect of kundalini, represented here by the visarga, which is written in devanâgarî as two points ( : ) and pronounced as a light aspiration of the breath. This visarga can only be properly understood in relation to the bindu: at the origin there is only one point, the bindu, which symbolises the one Siva; but since no movement can occur in undivided unity, the bindu must split into two poles, between which the specific movement proper to the visarga will take place.
The centripetal and centrifugal vital currents (prâna and apâna) function constantly and always together. A sloka states that, in the form of HA and SA, by merging into one point (bindu M), they produce the formula HAMSA, the middle state or emptiness in which the inhaled and exhaled energies unite and then disappear.
The breaths arise at two points: the lotus of the heart and the dvâdasânta, and it is there that they rest when breathing is suspended. Held in their respective space, they turn inwards (antharmukha) and acquire a certain fullness. The interval (madhya) during which the breath neither enters nor leaves is called visrânti, rest of the breath. Thus the fullness to which our verse alludes is that of the visarga, present everywhere and always charged with accumulated vital energy, because each of the points that make it up is alternately filled with energy. But even more, it is made of the bliss that accompanies the automatic and spontaneous functioning of the breaths, turned inwards and well balanced in samâna.
This practice may belong to one or other of the three paths, depending on how the term visarga is interpreted: if the two poles are identified with subjectivity (ahantâ) and objectivity (idanta), it will be the path of Siva. If they are taken as the energies of knowledge and activity, the yogin will follow the path of energy. On the other hand, for the one who advances gently on the path of the individual, these poles will represent only the in breath and the out breath. But whatever the interpretation, the yogin dwells in undifferentiated fullness, at the junction of these two poles, in the naked state of energy, the full state of Bhairava.
Denis
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