Welcome to the Tantrāloka Home Study Program course on Tantrāloka Chapter Thirteen.
This course covers the verses of the thirteenth chapter of Abhinavagupta’s Tantrāloka .
For the background on this text and its relationship to the larger topic of Kashmir Shaivism, please see the Program Overview on this site. You may also like to listen to the free course on Locating Trika, which provides historical overview.
In chapter thirteen Abhinava goes on talk about Śiva’s grace in accord with the teachings of his Trika master Śambhunātha. He deals with the basic concepts and problems regarding the descent Śiva’s power of grace (śaktipāta). The highest grace is the liberation attained by the realization of one’s own unconditioned Śiva nature as the ultimate nature and source of all things. This takes place when Karma comes to an end. Abhinava tackles the main questions in relation to this doctrine to establish that Śiva is free to grace whoever he chooses whenever he likes. Although he agrees with the Siddhāntin that the occasion for this purifying grace is initiation, he refutes his view that it takes place when the postulant’s good and bad Karmas balance out or binding impurity ‘matures’ enough to be removed. If the occasions for grace where to be such, Śiva would be constrained to wait for them to arise. This, Abhinava points out, would imply that he is not free to act as he wishes and would be as constrained by causes and conditions as is any fettered soul. For Śiva to be Śiva, that is, free, complete and unconditioned, he cannot be confronted with some other alien reality that could limit him. Thus, ultimately, we must admit that it is Śiva who both illumines and obscures himself.
Abhinava then goes on to talk about the varieties of the descent of grace (129cd-132) and how they are distinguished from one another by the degree of the capacity for insight (pratibhā) they evoke. This leads him to outline a hierarchy of teachers based on the degree of the power of intuition (pratibhā) they possess (132cd-139) and to discuss its nature and how it operates (142-187ab).
Information on content and pricing:
| Content | Price | Buy | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tantrāloka Chapter XIII | 30 lessons, approx. 40 hours in length | 100$ |  |
Course materials:
- PDF verses of Chapter 13, translated by Dr. Mark Dyczkowski, printed in the original Sanskrit (both Devanagari script and transliterated to English), and English translation.
- Streaming videos of Dr. Dyczkowski teachings — not downloadable.
- Audio links — downloadable.
- Email support: If you have questions of a more personal or individualized nature, concerns about the course, or complex intellectual questions that go beyond the scope of the Facebook group, please email anuttaratrikakula3@gmail.com, and we will respond to your question confidentially and appropriately. For more advanced intellectual or content-related matters, we will forward your question to Dr. Dyckzowski to respond to you directly.