International Journal of Tantric Studies: Volume 1 Number 1 by Enrica Garzilli

Author:Enrica Garzilli [Garzilli, Enrica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781500713355
Google: 21TgoQEACAAJ
Publisher: Createspace
Published: 2014-08-02T23:49:14.317813+00:00

5. The Concepts of Effort, Amazement, and Strength in Spanda

Many concepts of the Spanda are also important because of the subsequent developments in other schools. One of the most important one among them, as underlined by Gnoli,67 is stated in the Śivasūtra-s as the concept of Bhairava in terms of special effort.68 Kṣemarāja explains that the Lord is nothing but the jump of consciousness —that is by its own nature expansion and thought —the coming forth of the supreme intuition as a sudden springing forth. This is implied in the concept of spanda as a special movement or motion of the thinking I, who can never be thought, and as inner initiative, as searching. The I is the thinking thought, it is movement as effort (udyoga) and strength (bala), as stated in the Spandasaṃdoha.69

Another important concept of the Śivasūtra-s and the Spandakārikā-s, developed by Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta,70 is that of amazement or wonder (vismaya).71 This amazement is experienced by the individual as religious and aesthetic experience, it is amazement caused by the break of the empirical world and the intrusion of another reality. This status belongs to the awakened, and underlines the break of ordinary limits of the empirical consciousness and the mechanicness of the ordinary world. Amazement was later expressed by Abhinavagupta by the term camatkāra.72

The Spandasaṃdoha represents the philosophic and theoretic counterpart of the Śivasūtra-s. This work is a commentary by Kṣemarāja on the first kārikā of the Spandakārikā-s. He wrote it because, as the author himself says, the content of the entire treatise is a single sentence that includes everything, and this sentence includes the meaning of the entire work (just like the Spandasaṃdoha itself includes all the main concepts of the Spanda school).73 Therefore, in only twenty-five pages, Kṣemarāja explains exactly, but in rather cryptic words, the nature of spanda, and of all the philosophic features of monistic Śivaism. He explains the non-duality of consciousness that is svātantrya and ānanda, pure freedom and beatitude; the identity of our Self with Śiva; the absolute immanence and at the same time transcendence of Śiva; the atemporality of the Lord, etc. He explains the theory of Ābhāsa-s as nothing but images, yet very real images reflected in the mirror of consciousness.

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