"Songs of the Ultimate" (Eric Baret) - Hymns from Shankaracharya and Abhinavagupta [WITH COMMENTARY]

[toyin adepoju]

It seems it would be useful to clarify   the earlier post under this heading in relation to the focus of the post  on  the Shaivite ( identified with the deity Shiva/Śiva branch of Hinduism, which the post is centred on.

The post is centred on veneration of the Hindu God Shiva by two great adepts of Indian philosophy and spirituality, Shankaracharya and Abhinavagupta.

The post celebrates, not their philosophical expositions, for which they are also famous, but their poetic expressions of religious faith. The post alludes to the fact that Shankaracharya and Abhinavagupta are  famous for their  contribution to non-dualist philosophy, which does not recognize a distinction between the Absolute, the source of existence, and the totality of being.

Both philosopher's however, at times controversially with Shankaracharya, but definitely so with Abhinavagupta, are understood to have composed works that describe this philosophy in terms of the unity of a particular deity, a specific   personification of ultimate being, with  the human being.

 The focus of this post is on Abhinavagupta's devotion to the deity Shiva, whom he understood to be identical with the fundamental self of the human being as well as being the source of the process of expansion and contraction through which the cosmos comes into being and goes out of existence only to remerge into being   in a recreative process within vast cycles of time.

I represent the post, explaining some references, placing my explanations in square brackets.

 
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam 
Date: 16 July 2011 21:10
Subject: [Hindu-Buddhist] "Songs of the Ultimate" (Eric Baret) - Hymns from Shankaracharya and Abhinavagupta

 The self is Yourself.

My thought is Your consort, Pārvatī.
My vital breaths are Your companions.
My body is Your abode,
my sleep Your ecstasy.
My walk is the accomplishment of Your circumambulation,
and all my words are hymns in praise of You.
Whatever action I perform, O Śiva,
is but for Your adoration.

Bhairavastava, Abhinavagupta (translated by Eric Baret)

[In the lines above Abhinavagupta identifies all aspects of his bodily existence with Shiva in a passion of devotion. Pārvatī being the consort of Shiva, the devotee describes his thoughts as consorts of the God, like the Goddess is Shiva's consort].

 

Shankaracharya and Abhinavagupta stand out like two equally shining stars in the firmament of India. Recognized in their own lifetimes as full incarnations of Shiva himself, these teachers, through their writings and their traditional lineage, remain radiantly present in the hearts of many.

If their commentaries on classical texts, as well as their own treatises, impress by their inner quality, it is in the hymns that their total immersion in the ultimate reality finds its most striking reflection; the perfume of the intimate experience freely pervades them.

These hymns can be broached in several ways. Lovers of metaphysics and philosophy may marvel at the subtlety of the non-dual approach. Admirers of classical yoga [Yoga understood as a school of Indian philosophy which develops a range of  methods through which the human being may achieve  union g with ultimate reality] may be astonished by the conciseness and clarity of the formulation of that which is difficult to formulate: the most hidden secrets of yoga are to be found there. But only poets, seers in the ancient sense of the term, those living in non-reference, free from expectation, will have the inner freedom to let these hymns spiral upward, ever expanding, to vanish in their openness. They alone will be truly sustained by their magical flow.

For Shankaracharya, Shiva, as for Abhinavagupta, Bhairava, [Bhairava is one of the names of Shiva] is no other than the Absolute itself. The Shiva of whom they speak is beyond the classical trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva[ Hinduism is at times described as unified in terms of a trinitarian understanding of deities- Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer or transformer]. He is the eternal present, the continuum in which the three worlds [the image of three worlds is a recurrent one in Indian thought that may refer to the three states of waking, sleeping and dreaming, three principal manifestations of consciousness, consciousness being a primary point of expression of ultimate being in the contingent being represented by  human existence] appear to come and go.[Shaivite schools of thought may elevate Shiva above the other deities and describe him as unifying their functions in himself. This also happens with devotees to other deities, a process particularly striking in devotion to the the various forms of the feminine principle, known as Devi or Shakti, leading to the view that Hinduism is composed of distinct but intimately interrelated  religions].

 

Eric Baret, “Introduction,” Songs of the Ultimate

 

(Hymns from Shankaracharya and Abhinavagupta collected and edited by Éric Baret
Absent Crocodile Publication, Athens, 1994, 148 pages, ISBN 960-85292-0-4)

 

 

antaka mām prati mā drśam enām krodha-karāla-tamām vidadheehi

śankara-sevana-cintana-dhīro bhīshana-bhairava-śakti-mayo’smi

 

"O Death!  Do not cast such furious glances at me.  
Steadfast in serving and meditating on Śankara, I am the terrible power (śakti) of Bhairava.”

Abhinavagupta, Bhairava-Stotra

 

 

Friends,

 

Which is the greater self-sacrifice to (Śiva-) Bhairava: offering one’s head for embodied enlightenment or simply becoming the empty receptacle for his plenitude (pūrnatā-prayabhijñā)?

 

Sunthar

 

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (15 July 2011) at

 

“Bhairava Bhakti - was Abhinavagupta a Christian or Jesus an adept of transgressive sacrality?”

 

 

From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2011 2:13 PM
To: Abhina...@yahoogroups.com; 'Hindu-Buddhist'; 'Ontological Ethics'; TheHeathenIn...@yahoogroups.com
Cc: 'Akandabaratam'; 'Indo-Roma'; Indo-...@yahoogroups.com; Jerusale...@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Bhairava Bhakti - was Abhinavagupta a Christian or Jesus an adept of transgressive sacrality?

 

 

[…] The Kāla Bhairava Octet—attributed to the triumphant Śaṅkarācārya, philosophically defeated and obliged to surrender his brahmin head to the Fierce-Bhairava (Chalier-Visuvalingam 1989)—glorifies his suzerainty over Kāśī (Banaras). Popular all over India, his polyglot hymns are going viral through eclectic remixes on YouTube, where virtual pilgrims to remote shrines pay homage to multiplying scenes of his local worship (Chalier-Visuvalingam 2011). Classical renderings of Abhinavagupta’s celebrated “Hymn to Bhairava” (Bhairava-stotram) are illustrated with word-by-word exegeses from Western scholars, who systematically interpret his tantric legacy. This Brahmin par excellence exultantly identifies himself as the terrible Death-defying power of the Untouchable god: the fullness of his existence is recognized as but a “Hymn to Bhairava” (bhairavastava). The Pratyabhijñā is a sustained apologetics for devotion towards the supreme non-dual God, identical with the Self as Consciousness: hence the variegated emotional outpourings of the Stavacintāmaṇi (Silburn 1964; Marjanovic 2011) and the Śivastotrāvalī (Bailly 1995). […]

 

Elizabeth Chalier-Visuvalingam, “Bhairava Bibliography” (2011)

 

Friends,

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shvxMj6hPDo (10 verses of the Bhairava-Stotram sung by Ashwini Bede Deshpandey with images of the triśūlābja-yantra, Śiva, Abhinavagupta, and Swami Lakshman Joo)

 

Boris Marjanovic’s exegesis of the first 5 verses of Abhinava’s Bhairava-Stotram:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1LJnyCFZzk (1)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjdCvVHgOL0 (2)

 

> 

 

Sunthar

 

> 

 

 

 

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V.

 

“Ciruttondar, Kannapan, Vicâra Sharma, etc. - Bhairava in the Shaiva Siddhânta bhakti of the Nâyanmârs” (14 July 2011)

 

and

 

“Bhairava and the Goddess - is the 'phallocrat' (ûrdhva-linga?) a superfluous feminine mutation?” (06 July 2011)]