Tantra: Theory and Practice with Professor Gavin Flood (HinduismTantra, #1) by Gavin Flood

Author:Gavin Flood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Tantra, Kashmir Saivism, Shiva, Tantric Saivism, Vajrayana, Tantric Buddhism
Publisher: Wise Studies
Published: 2019-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

Session 4

Wise Studies presents Tantra: Theory and Practice with Professor Gavin Flood, Session four.

In this session Gavin discusses Tantric Saiva views of the self, the porous self, the gnostic self, and Tantric meditation.

Well, I'd like to speak about Tantric views of the self or the person. Now, there's a Western philosopher called Charles Taylor and he makes the distinction in one of his books "A Secular Age" between what he calls the porous self and the buffered self. The porous self is the conception of a person in which the boundaries between self and world are porous - so there are forces external to the self which can come into the self and dimensions of the person can go out from the body and into and affect others and affect the world. Now, the porous self is the traditional view of the self, which was a person within a certain religious cosmology. Now, Taylor contrasts the porous self with the notion of the buffered self, the buffered self is the self of modernity, in which we're buffered against the external world, in which we're buffered against others, and we are sort of self-enclosed in our own spheres if you like. And we don't have a conception of external agencies or powers coming into us, but rather, we are in control of ourselves, and we're isolated from each other and from world.

Now, the porous self is characterized by a person living within a cosmology, living within a cosmos, so this understanding of the self is one in which a person is part of a bigger system part of a larger unit. Now, it seems to me that Tantric traditions have such a conception of the self, that the person - we are as we are, because we're part of a larger entity, we're part of a cosmos and indeed, we're recapitulations of the universe itself. So as William Blake says, "see the universe in a grain of sand, hold eternity in the palm of your hand", that idea, the macrocosm contained in the microcosm is a strong element of the Tantric traditions.

So, as I said before, we have a hierarchical universe, and this world is a coagulation and

manifestation of the higher levels, and the person is contained within them - the whole universe in them in miniature as it were. And furthermore, we have the boundaries between our self and the world are porous. So, there are beings who are external to us can come into us, and we in turn can influence and affect the world outside of us. So, there are a number of different models of the self, there's if you like - I'll speak about three - one is the porous self, as open to possession in Tantric traditions, the other is the gnostic self, the self who knows, knows his or her identity with an absolute reality, and thirdly, the yogi, which I think is again a distinct understanding of the person. All of these may be united by something more common or more fundamental, but I'll leave that for the time being.

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