Abstract
“My first raising of the kuṇḍalinī was hearing Ma [her teacher] speak about art.” The experience of the awakening of śakti within practitioners in contemporary cultures occurs both in traditional religious settings and within novel circumstances. Traditional situations include direct transmission from a guru (śaktipāta), self-awakening through the practice of kuṇḍalinī-yoga or haṭhayoga, and direct acts of grace (anugraha) from the goddess or god. There are also novel expressions in hybrid religious-cultural experiences wherein artists, dancers, and musicians describe their arts explicitly in terms of faith/devotion (śraddhā, bhakti, etc.) and practice (sādhanā). They also describe direct experience of grace from the goddess or describe their ostensibly secular teachers as gurus. In contemporary experience, art becomes sādhanā and sādhanā becomes art. Creativity and artistic expression work as modern transformations of traditional religious experience. This development, while moving away from traditional ritual and practice, does have recognizable grounding within many tantric traditions, especially among the high tantra of the Kashmiri Śaiva exegetes.
Highlights
A contemporary artist from Karnataka states, “My first raising of the kun.d.alinıwas hearingMa speak about art.”1 She is not alone in establishing direct interpretive links between religious experience, aesthetic experience, and the creative arts
There is a blurring of boundaries between “religious” experience and aesthetic experiences
Śaiva-Śākta philosophy, and it provides an instructive example of how religious insiders might have some sophisticated— in some ways secularized or modernized—perspectives on their own experiences. For these tantric practitioners, religious experience broadens to include a greater range of other “experiences” while simultaneously retaining aspects of its “religious” character
Summary
A contemporary artist from Karnataka states, “My first raising of the kun.d.alinıwas hearing. Śaiva-Śākta philosophy, and it provides an instructive example of how religious insiders might have some sophisticated— in some ways secularized or modernized—perspectives on their own experiences Phrased differently, for these tantric practitioners, religious experience broadens to include a greater range of other “experiences” while simultaneously retaining aspects of its “religious” character. Śākta devotion (bhakti), through being given by one’s guru via direct transmission (śaktipāta), through the kun.d.alinıraising practices of hat.hayoga or similar practices, through mantras and yantras, or through spontaneous and direct acts of grace (anugraha, prasād) from the goddess or god It takes on novel expressions in hybrid of religious-cultural experiences where artists, dancers, and musicians describe their arts explicitly in terms of faith/devotion (śraddhā, bhakti, etc.) and practice (sādhanā). He called the farther side of this M ORE God or the divine and this has a variety of explicit and subtle connections to Tantrism’s own self-reflections and articulations, especially in the high tantra synthesis of Abhinavagupta and the other Kashmiri Śaiva exegetes. We will return to this theme in the conclusion
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