(PDF improved) R. Torella-Emotions in Indian Thought-Systems Chapter 1.pdf

PART I Tantrism Introduction 55 56 Amita Shah and Jharna Pathak from: P. Bilimoria, A. Wenta (eds.) Emotions in Indian Thought-Systems, London: Routledge 2015, pp. 57-101. 1 Passions and Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions RAFFAELE TORELLA Anyone enquiring into the status of passions and emotions in traditional India is surprised to find that the subcontinent, so avid for analysis in every field of knowledge, has never produced any science similar to Western psychology. As a first response, what comes to mind is the gymnosophist’s answer to Socrates who was questioning him about man’s nature: ‘But how can we deal with the human before knowing about the divine?’ Too busy contemplating the fearful symmetries of the supernatural, were the Indians consequently not particularly interested in untangling the developments of human behaviour? The absence of psychology, as an independent discipline at least, appears all the more surprising if one considers that the Indians have never lacked a capacity either for introspection or for cataloguing. With the former, they have achieved results never surpassed in research on the two realities which, since they naturally coincide with the observer–subject, lend themselves the more readily to eluding observation. I refer to breathing, the breath of life, literally dissected by yoga, and language, the subject of the most discerning analysis that humankind has ever devoted to this fundamen- tal and pervasive reality. The Indians have never been in short supply with regard to their cataloguing ability and, on the contrary, have raised it to even maniacal levels, so that it is rampant in all scientific, aesthetic, philosophical, and religious literature, and is often one of the prime reasons for making its reading so arduous. The first great philosophical Introduction 57  system to develop from Upaniṣadic and epic speculation was given the name Sāṃkhya, meaning (related to) ‘enumeration’, ‘listing’. It is in fact in philosophical texts, starting precisely from those of the Sāṃkhya school, that we should look for a thesaurus of human pas- sions and emotions, analysed and classified with obstinate accuracy and an absolutely neutral and scientific grasp, as in the classical texts of Vaiśeṣika, or else with a mixture of coldness and preoccupation, as often occurs in Buddhist and Jaina texts that describe them, keeping their gaze fixed on the meditating devotee who might be threatened by them. But the researcher into Indian passions and emotions will soon discover with equal surprise that he must delve into treatises on aesthetics and rhetoric perhaps even more than into philosophical and religious texts. Risking here, moreover, to lose both the reader and himself in labyrinthine systematics, in his investigation of the essence of poetry and the theatre, the Indian rhetorician must first tackle the basic human passions/emotions (bhāva), which the poet or actor must portray so that the reader or spectator can savour their essence, finally liberated from the restrictions of the individual ego. If, now satiated by descriptions — albeit often of great precision — the researcher of passions wishes to discover how they are assessed in the Indian world, things become even more complicated. Passions are differ- ently assessed according to the subject’s social position — his belonging to one or another of the four basic stages of life (āśrama) — and accord- ing to caste. While anger and disdain (manyu), as Minoru Hara (2001) has demonstrated in one of his seminal lexical analyses, are generally reprehensible in the man of the street, they are even obligatory for those belonging to the kṣatriya class of sovereigns and warriors. In examining the philosophical–religious texts of Hinduism on such themes, we must first be aware that the greater part of them comes from the Brāhmaṇical elite, which thus seeks to envelop the entire Indian real- ity in its coils. Our first impression after observing the central stream of Brāhmaṇical thought is of a considerable integration — mostly absent in the West1 — of the individual’s physical, psychic–emotive and intellec- tual dimensions. A single nature runs through them uninterruptedly: it passes fluidly from one level to another, gradually including the animal and vegetal worlds. In the words of Louis Dumont: Il n’y a pas de coupure entre l’homme et la nature. La chose est sensible dans le vêtement — le corps s’enroule dans une pièce d’étoffe — dans la simplicité de la 58  Raffaele Torella  vie matérielle et la forme des objets d’usage courant. En musique, l’heure de la journée prescrit le ton sentimental de la mélodie: impossible d’être nostalgique le matin et gai le soir. There is no hiatus between man and nature. This is appreciable in clothing — the body wraps itself in a piece of cloth — or in the simplicity of material life and the form of objects we use every day. In music, the time of day prescribes the sentimental mode of the melody: impossible to be nostalgic in the morning and gay in the evening (1975: 30, in Bouiller and Tarabout 2002: 18). Albeit deeply rooted in common opinion, such a view is, however, substantially a blunder: far from being absent, dualism is merely radi- calised to the extreme. In Sāṃkhya, for example — and Sāṃkhya with its cosmogenesis remains the model for much of the later Brāhmaṇical speculation (cf. Torella 1999) — an apparently unbridgeable abyss separates the world of nature (prakṛti), which comprises the body, senses, passions, and mental functions that form an integrated whole, from the world of the spirit, which alone is responsible for striking the spark of consciousness, without which the continual gross activity of the sensorial faculties, of the inner sense, of the I-notion, and the intel- lect could never finally shine as ‘knowledge’. An integrated monism of body, senses, emotions, and intellectual faculties consequently exists, but leaves out that very principle that alone can give meaning to the whole. The goal is not the final achievement of greater unity, but the recognition of an irremediable otherness, having reached which, the psyche–body–nature complex progressively withdraws from the scene, ‘like a dancer’, recounts a famous stanza of the Sāṃkhyakārikā (59), ‘having presented her performance to her audience’, leaving the spirit to shine in undisturbed solitude. The material, emotional and psychic universe thus comes into existence solely so that the soul can recognise itself as being foreign to it and isolate itself in its own self-identity. Even this recognition is made possible by the action of prakṛti itself, which thus finds in its own negation its ultimate reason for existence. Based on such a premise, two alternatives are possible: to accentuate the integrated and unitary aspect of the body–senses–psyche–intellect complex, or to concentrate on the otherness of the knower principle, the ‘spirit’. Brāhmaṇical philosophy — and, mutatis mutandis, Jaina and even Buddhist philosophy, despite a programmatic rejection of any substantiality of the subject — decidedly take the second alternative, the option that we might, somewhat roughly, term ‘ascetic’. The whole Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  59  fermenting energy potential of human drives, including the intellectual, which the West would place on the other side, is seen as troublesome ballast from which man must free himself. Solely over the desert of body and passions can the moon of the spirit rise. An incurable ontological weakness undermines the roots of whatever is tinted with pleasure or sorrow, or arouses desire or aversion. The whole human adventure may thus take on a fainter outline — or sometimes a more sombre one, as in the scenario depicted by the Vedāntin Sureśvara in his sub-commentary on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad, which explores man’s wretchedness right from his mother’s uterus, a place of ineffable delights for the West: anubhūtāḥ purāsahyā mayā marmacchido ’sakṛt | karambhavālukās taptā yā dahanty aśubhāśayān || jāṭharānalasaṃtaptāḥ pittākhyarasavipluṣaḥ | garbhāśaye nimagnaṃ tā dahanty atibhṛśaṃ tu mām || audaryakṛmivaktrāṇi kūṭaśālmalikaṇṭakaiḥ | tulyāni vitudanty ārtaṃ pārśvāsthikrakacārditam || garbhe durgandhabhūyiṣṭhe jāṭharāgnipradīpite | duḥkhaṃ mayāptaṃ yat tasmāt kanīyaḥ kumbhipākajam || Having entered this uterus [the foetus is speaking], I am suffering unbearable, devastating pain. Several times in past existences I have fallen into the scorching sands of hell that burn wicked souls, but these drops of bile superheated by the fires of digestion make my tender body suffer much more. Stomach worms with mouths as sharp as thorns torture me, already tortured enough by the bones of my mother’s body that cut into me on all sides. The miseries of the Kumbhipāka hell are nothing compared to the tortures I experience in the uterus, full of the most disgusting miasmas that burn owing to the stomach’s digestive fire (Taittirīyopaniṣadbhāṣyavārttikam, Brahmavallī, prathamaḥ khaṇḍaḥ, 191–94, in Taittirīyopaniṣadbhāṣyavārttika 1911: 86).2 Conception was achieved during a rude nocturnal encounter, all heavi- ness and no grace: nijāvidyāmahājālasaṃvītadhiṣaṇaḥ pumān | mohotthānalakāmākhyavaḍiśāpahṛtāśayaḥ || tamasā kāmaśārṅgeṇa saṃkalpākarṣaṇena saḥ | rāgākhyaviṣalepena tāḍito viṣayeṣunā || grahāviṣṭa ivānīśaś codito janyakarmaṇā | yoṣidagniṃ pataty āśu jyotirlobhāt pataṅgavat || 60  Raffaele Torella  The mind enveloped in the suffocating coils of innate ignorance, the heart dragged away by the hook of insatiable lust born of obnubilation, the father of the yet unborn is assailed by darkness, pierced by the arrows of the objects of the senses poisoned by passion and shot by the bow of desire drawn by his resolution. Deprived of all control as though a demon possessed him, driven by the karma of the creature yet unborn, [the father to be] plunges rapidly into the woman’s fire, like a moth avid for the flame (Taittirīyopaniṣadbhāṣyavārttikam, Brahmavallī, prathamaḥ khaṇḍaḥ, 166–68, ibid.: 81). In a manner no less atrocious than life in the uterus is presented the moment of birth and infancy and youth as they come along — tormented by sexual desire, blinded alternately by one passion or another, by love and anger — up to the rabid impotence of old age. The epilogue that follows is not exactly an apotheosis: hā kānte hā dhane putra krandamānaḥ sudāruṇam | maṇḍūka iva sarpeṇa gīryate mṛtyunā naraḥ || . . . viśrāmavṛkṣasadṛśaḥ khalu jīvalokaḥ || sāyaṃ sāyaṃ vāsavṛkṣaṃ sametāḥ prataḥ pratas tena tena prayānti | tyaktvānyonyaṃ taṃ ca vṛkṣaṃ vihaṅgāḥ yadvat tadvaj jñātayo ’jñātayaś ca || mṛtibījaṃ bhavej janma janmabījaṃ tathā mṛtiḥ | ghaṭiyantravad aśrānto bambhramīty aniśaṃ naraḥ || While weeping bitterly over his beloved, his wealth and the son he has to leave, the man is swallowed up by death, like a toad by a serpent . . . This world of mortals is indeed like a tree used for shelter. One evening birds perch on it in search of a haven for the night and next morning leave it and fly away each wherever he will. Similarly, men encounter, for a brief time, friends or strangers in this world and then disperse. Birth leads to death and death to birth: thus, men ceaselessly circle forever, like the wheel that draws water from the well (Taittirīyopaniṣadbhāṣyavārttikam, Brahmavallī, prathamaḥ khaṇḍaḥ, 212–21, ibid.: 89–90). Niṣkāma-karma (‘Action without Desire’) of the Bhagavadgītā versus Niṣkarma-kāma (‘Desire without Action’3) of Non-Dualist Śaivism The element around which the whole body–senses–emotions constel- lation seems to turn is attachment or desire. In any final analysis, it is Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  61  from its grip that man must free himself in order to rise toward the ātman or nirvāṇa. Even a text certainly not focused on asceticism, like the Bhagavadgītā, does not fail to launch a lengthy, venomous attack against desire: Arjuna uvāca: atha kena prayukto ‘yaṃ pāpaṃ carati puruṣaḥ | anicchann api vārṣṇeya balād iva niyojitaḥ || śrībhagavān uvāca: kāma eṣa krodha eṣa rajoguṇasamudbhāvaḥ | mahāśāno mahāpāpmā viddhy enam iha vairiṇam || dhūmenāvriyate vahnir yathādarśo malena ca | yatholbenāvṛto garbhas tathā tenedam āvṛtam || āvṛtaṃ jñānam etena jñānino nityavairiṇā | kāmarūpeṇa kaunteya duṣpūreṇānalena ca || indriyāṇi mano buddhir asyādhiṣṭhānam ucyate | etair vimohayaty eṣa jñānam āvṛtya dehinām || tasmāt tvam indriyāṇy ādau niyamya bharatarṣabha | pāpmānaṃ prajahihy enaṃ jñānavijñānanāśanam || Arjuna said: Moved by what does man do evil? By what is he driven almost by force, O Kṛṣṇa? The Blessed One replied: It is desire (kāma) that drives him, it is anger, arising from the rajas4 component. This is the great devourer, the great Evil One. Recognise in it your enemy. As fire is covered by smoke, as the mirror is covered by a spot and the embryo by the womb, so is our knowledge covered by it [desire]. By this reality that takes the shape of desire, a fire that nothing satiates, eternal enemy of the knower subject, knowledge is covered. Of desire, the senses, the mind and the intellect are the substrate. Through them desire, covering knowledge, beclouds the incarnate soul. Therefore, O Bull among the Bharatas, curb first of all the senses and then abandon this Evil One who destroys knowledge and spiritual science (3.36–41; Krishna Warrier 1983: 127–31). The Kashmiri recension of the Bhagavadgītā lays it on thicker, inserting, after the first verses of Kṛṣṇa’s reply, five further verses: Arjuna uvāca: bhavaty eṣa kathaṃ kṛṣṇa kathaṃ caiva vivardhate | kimātmakaḥ kimācāraḥ tan mamācakṣva pṛcchataḥ || śrībhagavān uvāca: eṣa sūkṣmaḥ paraḥ kṣatruḥ dehinām indriyeṣu ha | 62  Raffaele Torella  sukhatantra ivāsīno mohayan pārtha tiṣṭhati || kāmakrodhamayo ghoraḥ stambhaharṣasamudbhavaḥ | ahaṃkāro ’bhimānātmā dustaraḥ pāpakarmabhiḥ || harṣam asya nivartyaiṣa śokam asya dadāti ca | bhayaṃ cāsya karoty eṣa mohayaṃś tu muhur muhuḥ || sa eṣa kaluṣaḥ kṣudraś cchidraprekṣī dhanañjaya | rajaḥpravṛtto mohātmā manuṣyāṇām upadravaḥ || Arjuna said: But how is it born, O Kṛṣṇa, and how does it grow? What is its essence, what its operation? Answer, I pray you, this my question. The Blessed One replied: It is the subtle enemy, supreme, of bodily beings and the senses. It appears as an instrument of pleasure, O Kṛṣṇa, but in reality it obfuscates. Cruel, its essence being desire and rage, source of the evil pleasure of pride, cause of the ego, by nature presumptuous, only with difficulty can it be overcome by the wicked. First it takes pleasure from man and gives him sorrow and, that done, fills him with terror, obfuscating him increasingly. It is dark, vile, it spies on the weak points, O Arjuna; it is born of rubedo [rajas] and its essence is obfuscation: it is the plague of mankind (3.38–42, in Sankaranarayanan 1985: 55–56). One of the five major vows absolutely required by the highest Jaina ideal (the other four being non-violence, truthfulness, honesty, and absence of greed) is continence itself. It is defined in the following man- ner by Hemacandra’s Yoga Śāstra: divyaudārikakāmānāṃ kṛtānumatakāritaiḥ | manovākkāyatas tyāgo brahmāṣṭādaśadhā matam || The eighteen kinds of continence, in our tradition, consist of abandoning desires (kāma) with regard to heavenly, human and animal beings, in mind, word and body, whether one experiences them oneself, or approves their enjoyment, or ensures that others enjoy them (1.23, in Jambūvijaya and Dharmacandravijaya 1977: 200). Equipped with such readings, the first to filter through systematically in the West and to be firmly fixed in communis opinio, how often must the Western traveller, landing in India in the expectancy of an ascetic and disincarnate world, have been stunned by the untiring prolifera- tion of colours, odours and sounds of life in all its most splendid and ephemeral forms! Consequently, it seems that something is not right, or that there is at least a hiatus between the theories and prescriptions of traditional philosophical–religious texts and what then occurs in Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  63  real life. This, however, is only a part of the truth. Indeed, there exists a highly significant sector of Indian thought and religious experience — Tantrism — that became increasingly important until it imbued the whole spiritual life of India starting from the Middle Ages and literally turned the tables. With regard to Hemacandra’s passage on desire, what the greatest master of Tantrism, the Śaiva Abhinavagupta, says in one of his most difficult works, the Mālinīvijaya-vārttika, is in total opposition: kāmaḥ [kāmaḥ, in Hanneder 1985: 104; kāmaṃ, in Śāstrī 1921: 28] svīkartum icchaiva tadācchādanayogataḥ | viśvaṃ sādhayet kāmī kāmatattvam idaṃ yataḥ || Desire (kāma) is the will to take possession [of the other] (to make the other oneself). Veiling everything with his desire, the desirer can accomplish everything, since everything has as its ultimate principle desire itself 5 (1.281, in Hanneder 1985: 104). And again: kiṃ nākarṣati kiṃ naiṣa ca (ca em. Hanneder 1985: 104; na Sāstrī 1921: 27) bhāvayati yogavit | tata evocyate śāstre nārakto rañjayed iti || Whoever knows this path, what may he not draw to himself or realise mentally? For this very reason, traditional texts say, ‘He who is not impassioned cannot arouse passion [in others]’ (1.279, in Hanneder 1985: 104). The energy of desire, according to non-dualist Śaiva Tantrism, is what is manifested in the fruition and enjoyment of the senses, that which gives life to the ferment of the emotions, which has one of its peaks the passion of love. The whole universe is pervaded by this energy, the sole matrix of any form of dynamism and life, whose single thread crosses both the most extreme abstractions of thought and our modest daily round. The first worship that the devotee is bound to render is to the goddesses of his own consciousness (svasaṃvid-devīs), who are none other than the karaṇeśvarīs, the mistresses of his sensorial faculties.6 The sacrificial offering is, thus, made of everything within the bounds of ordinary life which, when all is said and done, is not all that ordinary. Neither clarified butter nor flowers are offered to the goddess’ icon, but 64  Raffaele Torella increasingly penetrating and intense enjoyments to those unbridled god- desses that ‘are’ our senses. As stated in a verse of the Mālinīvijayottara Tantra or Mālinīvijaya Tantra: bandhamokṣāv ubhāv etāv indriyāṇāṃ jagur budhāḥ | nigṛhītāni 7 bandhāya vimuktāni vimuktaye || The cause of both bonds and liberation are the senses: this is what the wise said. Fettered they lead to bonds, freed they lead to liberation (15.44, in Śāstrī 1922: 102; Vasudeva 1985: 112). This is echoed by Abhinavagupta in the Tantrāloka: antarindhanasaṃbhāram anapekṣyaiva nityaśaḥ | jājvalīty akhilākṣaughaprasṛtograśikhaḥ śikhī || bodhāgnau tādṛśe bhāvā viśantas tasya sanmahaḥ | udrecayanto gacchanti homakarmanimittatām || Perennially, whatever the fuel provided, burns within us the blazing fire of all our senses. The various knowable things, entering this consciential fire and increasing its radiance, thereby become the cause of oblation (4.201–02, in Śāstrī and Śāstrī 1918–38, vol. 3: 232). To yoga, which requires, firstly, detachment (vairāgya) and rep- etitious and gradual practice (abhyāsa),8 non-dualist Śaiva Tantrism responds by opposing to the former attachment and passion (rāga), and to the latter the silent vortex of the instant (kṣaṇa). But why attachment and passion and, first and foremost, what is in this word rāga whose semantic area is so evasive? Rāga, meaning ‘attachment, affection or desire’, as also ‘colour’ or ‘the fact of being coloured by emotions’ in Śaiva theology and psychology, constitutes one of the individual’s three innermost ‘cuirasses’, the complex and many-faceted concept of ‘cuirass’ irresistibly recalling Wilhelm Reich’s similar motif (Reich 1973).9 It is a fact accepted by all, say the Śaiva masters, that there is no action in ordinary life that does not proceed from an idea or expec- tation of pleasure. Furthermore, the most disparate philosophical schools and prescriptive texts coincide in considering rāga as the root of all feelings, emotions and mental activities. The Buddhists would object that this holds only for individuals in the grip of saṃsāra, while the Buddha is exempt from rāga. Thus, a debate, destined to continue Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  65  for centuries (see Dunne 1996; Franco 2004; Pecchia 2008; Taber 2011), started in the Buddhist community about a dilemma which might not sound that dramatic to us: did the Buddha have desires (rāga)? Or, is it possible to act compassionately, as the Buddha did, without some kind of inner emotional thrust, in other words, without some kind of rāga? In the main, Dharmakīrti’s solution will prevail: compassion may be the outcome of a purified form of rāga, quite different from ordinary rāga, which is imbued with misjudgments (viparyāsa), making it into abhiṣvaṅga ‘craving’.10 The desire without misjudgment (the belief in the self, the mine, etc.), and not turned to a corrupted object,11 of the Buddhists may in some way be likened to niṣkāma-karma of the Bhagavadgītā, in which the action obtains its dignification from the very absence of desire, or of desire for its result. By contrast, the need for such anesthetisation of rāga is by no means felt by the Śaiva Advaita. On the contrary, the meta- physical ancestor of human rāga is placed at the very heart of supreme Consciousness, just as kāma is by the Ṛgvedic hymn cited in the next sec- tion. While the most widespread Śaiva doctrine conceives of three main śaktis of Śiva: icchā-, jñāna- and kriyāśakti, a distinction into five śaktis is also well known. According to the seminal text of the Pratyabhijñā, the Śivadṛṣṭi by Somānanda, there are two more śaktis above or ‘behind’ the three aforementioned śaktis. Icchā is considered a higher śakti than jñāna and kriyā, for both knowing and acting rest on an act of volition. In its turn, icchāśakti has two parts, a previous and a subsequent one (tasyāḥ pūrvāparau bhāgau kalpanīyau, Śivadṛṣṭi 1.1.19cd, in Śāstrī 1934: 17). While the subsequent part is the full-fledged will (icchāśakti proper), the pre- vious part is the first outline of a dynamic wave stirring the surface of the quiescent bliss of Śiva consciousness (the first śakti), named after a concept that also has a strong aesthetic connotation: nirvṛti ‘lysis, con- tentment’, the deep sense of inner satisfaction that is associated with an intense aesthetic enjoyment; this dynamic wave represents the very first opening of a disposition to create, still in the form of undifferenti- ated striving towards creation of the universe (bodhasya svarūpaniṣṭhasya viśvaracanaṃ praty abhilāṣamātraracanāyogyatāyā yaḥ prathamo vikāsaḥ, Utpaladeva’s vṛtti on Śivadṛṣṭi 1.15, in Śāstrī 1934: 16). Such desiring state, still without a definite object (the second śakti), technically called aunmukhya ‘tension towards . . .’, will only later condense into icchāśakti (ibid.: tasyaunmukhyasyecchā kāryā). This divine desire is in its essence the same as the desire in individual soul. Just like aunmukhya is the first 66  Raffaele Torella expansion or blossoming of supreme Consciousness (tadāsthāpravikāsaḥ, Śivadṛṣṭi 1.15c, in Śāstrī 1934: 15; tadvikāsitā, Śivadṛṣṭi 1.20b, ibid.: 17), its energetic dimension, so is the indefinite desiring state emerging from the very root of individual soul: a subtle frenzy having neither outline nor horizon, a ‘desiring condition’ without any object or any action (Jayaratha on Tantrāloka 9.62: niṣkarmā . . . icchāmātrasvabhāvābhilāṣitā, in Śāstrī and Śāstrī 1918–38, vol. 6: 56), from which all activities — both mundane and ultramundane — will spring. Under the banners of niṣkāma-karma of the Bhagavadgītā and niṣkarma- kāma of the non-dualist Śaivism we can see two different worldviews confronting each other. In order to act on these profound structures, the traditional yoga seems to Tantrism like a blunted weapon: vastuto ’sti na kasyāpi yogāṅgasyābhyupāyatā | svarūpaṃ hy asya nīrūpam avacchedavivarjanāt || upāyo ’py anupāyo ’syāyāgavṛttinirodhataḥ | recanāpūraṇair eṣā rahitā tanuvātanauḥ || tārayaty evam ātmānaṃ bhedasāgaragocarāt | nimañjamānam apy etan mano vaiṣayike rase || . . . tathāhi gurur ādikṣad bahudhā svakaśāsane || anādaraviraktyaiva galantīndriyavṛttayaḥ | yāvat tu viniyamyante tāvat tāvad vikurvate || In actual fact, no member of yoga can really serve as a means of achieving [the condition of anuttara or ‘that which nothing transcends’].12 The means to it is, in fact, a non-means,13 since it comprises neither ritual practices nor the blocking of mental functions. It is a boat designed for a light breeze, without exhalation or inhalation,14 which thereby carries itself beyond the ocean of duality, albeit in the meantime the mind is immersed in the fluid of the objective world . . . This is what the master demonstrates in various forms in his treatise:15 the impulses of the senses can only be thrown off thanks to a highly special kind of detachment, a detachment practiced in elegant souplesse (anādaravirakti). On the contrary, if we try to subdue them, they end up becoming ungovernable (Mālinīvijaya-vārttika 2.106–12, in Śāstrī 1921). Passions and emotions are consequently allowed to flow freely without attempting to safeguard the mind from their impact. Not only: ‘Passion should not be extinguished by reason, but reason converted into passion’ (except that here it is not a Tantric master speaking, but the early-19th- century Italian poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi in his Zibaldone).16 Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  67  Indeed, Tantrism, especially in its most extreme forms, goes far beyond any instrumental acceptance of the emotive dimension (for the purpose of neutralising it). If the divine is, first and foremost, the energy that unites and overwhelms all provisional levels of being, it is in the tumult of the passions that we best meet it face to face. Emotional states, whether sexual excitement or fright, joy or terror, not only should not be obliterated, any more than they should be merely accepted, but they should also be cultivated, skilfully intensified, and then exploded and spread in order to create subtle rents in the veil of ordinary existence, through which we can contact the magma of universal consciousness/ energy. Liberation does not occur, therefore, in spite of human passions, but precisely by virtue of them. By way of a provisional conclusion, we may cite a passage from the Kiraṇa Tantra (4.29a, in Goodall 1998: 109), which ventures, if possible, even farther: ‘Without the body, there can be no liberation (na dehena vinā muktiḥ)’.17 Desire (kāma) Death consists of two syllables; the Eternal Brahman consists of three. Death’s two syllables are mama ‘mine’; the three syllables of the Eternal are na mama ‘not mine’. The Brahman and Death, O King, dwell unseen in the bosom of all creatures and stir them ceaselessly . . . If a man should conquer the entire Earth and all that moving and unmoving dwells within it, but within himself develops no idea of appropriation “this Earth is ‘mine’”, what will the Earth that he has conquered be for him? If, on the other hand, O Son of Pṛthu, a man living as a hermit in the forest, feeding on wild herbs, should develop a feeling of belonging toward his poor possessions, this man is living in the jaws of death . . . Men blame one who is penetrated by desire, yet no action is born from the absence of desire, neither generous giving, nor study of the Vedas, nor asceticism: the vedic rites are nourished by desire . . . Indeed, whatever a man desires for himself is dharma; dharma does not have restriction as its foundation.18 To this purpose the wise men of old quoted a few strophes that were sung by Kāma himself. Hear me, O Yudhiṣṭhira, while I now recite all those strophes to you. ‘No being may think of killing me without recourse to some means. If one seeks to kill me knowing the effectiveness of reciting mantras, in his very recitation I once more show myself. If one seeks to kill me with sacrifices and many offerings to the officiant, I reappear in him as action, as in the beings that move; if one seeks to kill me with the Vedas and the Upaniṣads that bring them to fulfilment, then I reappear in him in a quiescent form, 68  Raffaele Torella  as in motionless things. If one seeks to kill me with fearless perseverance, I show myself in him in his state of noble heroism, and he is not aware of me. If one seeks to kill me through asceticism, then in his ascesis I am reborn in the form of unshakable perseverance. If one, a sage, seeks to kill me by devoting himself wholeheartedly to liberation, I dance and laugh in him, in his passion for liberation. Of all beings, eternal am I alone and I cannot be killed’ (Mahābhārata 14.13.3–18, in Sukthankar and Karmakar 1960). The passage quoted does not come from just any text, but from the very source of Brāhmaṇical culture, the Mahābhārata. Traditionally, it is known as the Kāmagītā or ‘Song of Desire’, the umpteenth variation of an illustrious model, the Bhagavadgītā. To give a new vigour to the sovereign Yudhiṣṭhira, now weary and demotivated, Vāsudeva resorts to an injection of desire and who better than Kāma, the divine personi- fication of desire, could accomplish this task?19 He, therefore, recites to the king the verses that Kāma once composed in his self-exaltation. Swarms of similar passages spring to mind from literature throughout the world. One of the many, at the opening of the brilliant libretto of Monteverdi’s Incoronazione di Poppea, the work of Giovanni Francesco Busenello, is where Amore turns to Fortuna and Virtù, each convinced of being the power that drives the world: Che vi credete o Dee / divider fra di voi del mondo tutto / la signoria e ’l governo, escludendone Amore, / Nume ch’è d’ambe voi tanto maggiore? / Io le virtudi insegno, / io le fortune domo, / questa bambina età / vince d’antichità / il tempo e ogni altro Dio: / gemelli siam l’eternitade ed io. / Riveritemi, adoratemi, / e di vostro sovrano il nome datemi. Who do you think you are, Goddesses, / to divide between yourselves / the sovereignty and governance of the world / to the exclusion of love, / a divinity so much greater than the two of you? / I tell the virtues what to do, / I govern the fortunes of men. This childlike form of mine / surpasses in antiquity / time itself and every other God. / We are twins, eternity and I. / Revere me, / worship me / and acknowledge me as your sovereign.20 The Kāmagītā shows us the god of Desire (kāma, which originally meant just ‘desire’, progressively came to mean desire par excellence, i.e., erotic desire) boasting of lying concealed even in the bosom of what would appear to be his opposite: ascesis. At the same time, however, the opposite is also true, as revealed by the mythology of Śiva, the sov- ereign creator/destroyer god, at the centre of the spiritual experience Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  69  of Tantrism, supremely ascetic and simultaneously supremely erotic, whose sexual embraces may last thousands of years. When we seek the source of his sexual energy, we unfailingly come up against tapas, ascesis. The terrible austerities that Śiva can bear — here too, for thousands of years — often include among their results, and sometimes even as their purpose, the regeneration of sexual energy: the contrary is also possible, i.e., that sexual activity produces tapas as its fruit. In iconography, Śiva is usually represented with the attributes of the ascetic: he wears the skin of a black antelope, his head is strewn with ash, he wears a garland of skulls, ornaments made of human bones, and is substantially described as an ascetic by the most ancient texts. He — the yogin par excellence (yogīśvara) — withdraws to the most inaccessible solitudes and drives his tapas to such extreme levels that the force generated thereby yet again, as with sexual power, risks overturning the universe. Only after enormous difficulties does Pārvatī, the daughter of the Himālaya, fall- ing in love with the god, manage to lead him to marriage, i.e., only after she, too, has practiced tapas. Ordinary life and sensual pleasures seem to Śiva irreconcilable with his nature: his tapas would be hindered by them. Whenever this occurs, his wrath, always primed, explodes. The one who pays for it, in a famous myth cycle with abundant variations, is, of course, Kāma, the main antagonist of the ascetic Śiva. He attempts to disturb his concentration with one of his amorous darts, now exploiting the inexhaustible desires of Pārvatī, now causing fascinating nymphs to appear. Śiva’s reaction is lethal: the fire from his vertical third eye that opens immediately in his forehead reduces Kāma to cinders. The result is that the whole universe enters upon a spiral of death: colours fade, plants start to languish, all begins to fade away as in a long twilight, to the point that Śiva is obliged to bring Kāma back to life. The total negation of the desire-polarity is unexpected and seems to reduce Śiva to much more circumscribed dimensions. It suffices to consider the sequel of the tale to see that Śiva, to please Pārvatī or Rati (Kāma’s consort), resurrects the god; or that the fire of the third eye destroys only Kāma’s body, and even bodiless he still exists, becoming even more fearsome owing to his invisibility. Significant too is the gist of the gods’ protests to Śiva against his action: they accuse him of kill- ing one of his creatures and, in so doing, of inexplicably depriving of desire a universe that he himself had created as pervaded (I mean: the universe is pervaded by desire, because Śiva himself created it as such) by desire. The circle then closes with the consideration that, in Indian mythology — where the phoenix theme is very much alive — death by fire never means a final end, but is always a prelude to resurrection. 70  Raffaele Torella  The Kāma of the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas has, however, a very long history behind him, both as an abstract principle and as a divine incarnation. The cosmogonic hymn of Canto 129 of the 10th maṇḍala of the Ṛgveda, as celebrated as it is mysterious, constitutes Kāma’s first archaic apotheosis: Then Non-Being did not exist, and not even Being. Aerial space did not exist, nor the firmament beyond it. What is it that moved so powerfully? And where? And controlled by whom? Was it the waters, unfathomably deep? At that time neither death, nor non-death existed: there was no distinguishing sign for night and day. The One breathed with its own vital force, without there being breath. Beside this, nothing else existed. Originally the darkness was hidden by the darkness. This universe was nothing but an indistinct wave. Then, through the power of tapas, the One came into being, empty, covered with vacuity. Desire (kāma) was its primordial development, [Desire] that constituted the original seed of Consciousness. Inquiring within themselves, Poets knew through their reflection how to find the link of Being in Non-Being. Their cord was stretched between. What was there beneath: what was above? There were the procreators; there were powers. Inherent Power (svadhā) was beneath; Exertion (prayati) was uppermost. In truth, who knows, who could proclaim whence this secondary creation was born, whence it comes? The gods were born later, through the secondary creation of our world. But who knows whence this creation arose, whether it was He who brought it into being or not, He who watches over this world in the highest firmament, He alone knows. Or perhaps even He knows it not.21 So, long before the birth of the gods, when neither being nor non-being existed, but only darkness and chaos, there began to issue forth a ‘heat’ or tapas, i.e., the same heat that is born of and coincides with ascesis. The form that then first takes shape is that of Desire (whose heat is, moreover, the same as that of ascesis). Whereas the later Brāhmaṇical culture sought to maintain an unbridgeable opposition between desire and consciousness, in the aforequoted passage from the Ṛgveda not only are they not presented as antithetical, but desire is identified as the very matrix of consciousness and ontologically ranked before it.22 Amongst the many other instances of praise of Kāma, at least another passage of the Vedic literature deserves to be quoted, the so-called Hymn to Desire, in the Atharvaveda. Kāma was born first, him neither the gods, nor the Fathers, nor men have equalled. To these art thou superior, and ever great; to thee, O Kāma, do I Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  71  verily offer reverence. As great as are the heavens and earth in extent, as far as the waters have swept, as far as fire; to these art thou superior . . . Not, surely, does the wind equal Kāma, not the fire, not the sun, and not the moon. To these art thou superior. With those auspicious and gracious forms of thine, O Kāma, through which what thou willst becometh real, with these do you enter into us, and elsewhere send the evil thoughts! (9.2.19–25, trans. Bloomfield 1987: 93). The same thread is conspicuously present, some centuries later, in a famous passage of the Manusmṛti: Being governed by desire is not recommended, yet there is nothing devoid of desire in this world. For even for the study of Veda and for the performing of vedic rituals desire is necessary . . . There is no action whatsoever in one who is without desire, for whatever may be done is accomplished due to desire (2.2–4, in Jolly 1887: 14). These and many other quotations demonstrate that the force and value of desire are deeply rooted in the Indian culture from its very origins. Under the banner of ‘desire’, we place — with risky but neces- sary simplification — the entire human energy and drive dimension, as manifest, first and foremost, in sensory activities, in the emotions and passions.23 The mainstream of Brāhmaṇical thought, as well as most of the texts aimed at regulating the socio-religious dimension of the ideal Hindu man, tend to draw an absolute line of demarcation between desire–senses–passions and the intellectual–spiritual element. Consciousness must be ‘pure’ (śuddha), transparent and weightless, and any activation of the ‘desire’ pole can only muddy its necessary clarity, preventing it from being itself, from ‘functioning’.24 Statements of this kind, in the Brāhmaṇical as also in the Buddhist and Jaina literature, are innumerable. For its exemplary nature, as well as the consequences that derive from some of its assertions, we will examine at least one other text, belonging to the set of so-called Middle Upaniṣads (certainly prior to the Common Era), the Kaṭha Upaniṣad. The setting is a sublime and tormented dialogue between the young Naciketas and Death, to which he is driven by an imprudent statement of his father’s, the Brāhmaṇa Vājaśravasa. Naciketas descends to the realm of Yama, the God of Death, and goes straight to his dwelling. Yama is not at home (Death, as we know, is always extremely busy here and there). The young man stays waiting for him on the threshold for three nights, neither eating nor 72  Raffaele Torella drinking. On his return, Yama, admiring the young man’s constancy and austerity, grants him three wishes. For his first wish, Naciketas asks for permission to return to earth and find his father calm after his anger and well-disposed toward him; for his second, he requests that Yama teach him the ritual way of reaching heaven. While Yama benignly grants his first two wishes, he does everything possible, without success, to escape from the third: Naciketas asked him to reveal man’s destiny after death. Yama’s teaching essentially concerns man’s true nature as coinciding with the Universal Being, the Brahman — the path to realise it neces- sitates the death of desire. When all desires harboured in man’s heart have been expelled, only then can the mortal become immortal and experience the Brahman here (Kaṭha Upaniṣad 2.3.14, in Īśādidaśopaniṣadaḥ śaṅkarabhāṣyasametāḥ 1978, vol. 1: 103). Since the senses embody the subject’s projection toward the world, it is necessary to block their course and force them inward. The Kaṭha Upaniṣad goes on: The Self-Begotten Lord has pierced the cavity of the senses toward the outside, so that the individual looks outward and not within himself. But the sage, aspiring to non-death, will turn his eye inward and see his inner self (2.1.1, ibid.: 85). According to the commentator Śaṅkara, ‘pierced’ does not simply mean ‘opened’, but contains a punitive implication, an act of aggression against the senses, so as to castigate them for their impudent vitality (ibid.). And the Kaṭha goes on: ‘Fools follow their desires; they fall into the snares of vast Death’. (2.1.2ab, ibid.: 86). In order to outline the taxonomy of man’s faculties, Yama uses an ancient simile, that of the chariot, also well-known in the West:25 Know that the self is the master of the chariot, whereas the body is the chariot itself. Know that the intellect is the charioteer and the mind the reins. It is said that the senses are the steeds and the objects of the senses the tracks (1.3.3–4ab, ibid.: 79–80). At first sight, the Kaṭha seems to set out an integrated view of the human character but, in the verses that follow the aforecited ones, a Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  73  further element emerges: the elements identified are not placed on the same level, but are subject to a rigorous hierarchy in ontological terms: Superior (parāḥ)26 to the senses are the objects of the senses; superior to the objects of the senses is the mind; superior to the mind is the intellect; superior to the intellect is the Great Self27 (1.3.10, Īśādidaśopaniṣadaḥ śaṅkarabhāṣyasametāḥ 1978: 81). The senses have a value only to the extent to which they are dominated by the intellect and the mind: If one is not united with his intellect and his mind is not always properly subjugated, his uncontrolled senses will be for him like skittish horses for the charioteer (1.3.5, ibid.: 80). Such a categorical message from the very heart of the Brāhmaṇical world leads us back antiphrastically to the Tantric text Mālinīvijaya-vārttika partly quoted in the previous section: nāntarārdratvam abhyeti niścchidraḥ tumbakaḥ yathā | svaṃ panthānaṃ hayasyeva manaso ye nirundhate || teṣāṃ tatkhaṇḍanāyogād dhāvaty unmārgakoṭibhiḥ | kiṃsvid etad iti prāyo duḥkhe ’py utkaṇṭhate manaḥ || sukhād api virājyeta jñānād etad idaṃ [tv iti] | tathāhi gurur ādikṣad bahudhā svakaśāsane || anādaraviraktyaiva galantīndriyavṛttayaḥ | yāvat tu viniyamyante tāvat tāvad vikurvate | Consider what is involved when one decides to put the natural course of the mind under control, i.e., when one wishes to put a bit on a wild horse. Owing to the violence of the procedures, the mind — like the horse — will start running here and there, taking many wrong directions. Why does this occur? We all know that the mind can even delight in pain and, conversely, retreat disgusted from pleasure and knowledge. This is what the master demonstrates in various forms in his treatise: the impulses of the senses can be made to cease thanks to a highly special kind of detachment, a detachment practiced in elegant souplesse. If, on the contrary, one attempts to subjugate them, they end up becoming ungovernable (2.109–12, in Śāstrī 1921: 114). In the background a world view is outlined, marked, as it were, by healthy realism. Instead of issuing precepts (often, as in the Brāhmaṇical śāstras, with a fair dose of wishful thinking), it prefers to accept the evidence, at 74  Raffaele Torella least as a starting point. Significant in this connection is what we find in a 10th–11th-century-CE treatise, the Mahānayaprakāśa or the ‘Light of the Great Method’, belonging to one of the more extreme Tantric schools, the Krama: prāyo hi maithune madye māṃse ca paridṛśyate | āsaktiḥ sarvajantūnāṃ viśeṣāt kasyacit kvacit || yadi tattyāgasaṃrambhaḥ pūrvaḥ teṣāṃ vidhīyate | upadeśo na sa manāg api citte prarohati || janmāntaraśatābhyastā viśayeṣu matir nṛṇām | jaradgaur iva sasyebhyaḥ sā hi duḥkhena vāryate || iti saṃvādatas teṣāṃ parityāgo hi duṣkaraḥ | abhyasūyanti te yasmād upadeśakarāya ca || yathāsthitopabhogātma pūrvaṃ yat tūpadiśyate | tatrādhirūdhir lokasya śraddhāpūrvaḥ prajāyate. Common experience shows us that all creatures, broadly speaking, are addicted to sex, meat and alcoholic drinking; some are more addicted to one of them, some to another. If, from the very beginning, they are asked immediately to proceed to the abandonment of all this, the teaching will not in the least take root in them. Human mind is turned towards these objects since hundreds of previous existences, and it is hardly possible to turn it away from them, just like to turn an old cow away from the fields. There is a general agreement on this: the abandoning of such things is hard to obtain, also because men would end up by hating those who put forward such a teaching. If, on the contrary, a teaching is such as preliminarily to leave their enjoyments intact, common men will adhere to it with faith (9.4–8, in Śāstrī 1937: 48–49). Passion (rāga) as One of the ‘Cuirasses’ The novelty of the worldview proposed by Tantrism is not, however, con- densed in this pragmatic attitude, as articulated by the Mahānayaprakāśa. Behind it, there is a profound and articulated analysis of the human character in all its complexity, accompanied by an equally penetrat- ing and original development of the spiritual tools that can lead to its emancipation, to ‘liberation’ (mokṣa). Of the many cues that the Tantric literature provides, I have chosen one that seems to have central importance. Once more, we find our- selves within the world of the Tantric Śaiva schools, which developed in Kashmir starting from the 8th–9th century CE: here, philosophical and aesthetic speculation and spiritual wisdom reach the highest peaks — simultaneously elegant and extreme — of Indian culture as a whole. Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  75  Among the basic principles (tattva) that form the structure of the universe according to the Śaiva Tantric tradition, the group named kañcukas certainly do not constitute a mere doctrinal detail among many others, but the theorisation, also translated into ritual, of a central point of Tantric thought, which may tell us very much about its concept of man and his life. The word kañcuka is taken for granted in all sources and, no doubt, belongs to a common layer of teachings. On the contrary, the same can- not be said of its meaning, the number of the kañcukas and their genesis. The two principal meanings of kañcuka, ‘cuirass, armour’ and ‘a kind of dress, bodice’ both fit the main function of these principles, which is that of ‘covering, sheltering’ the individual soul, destitute of its full powers because of maculation (a kind of innate and primordial ‘contrac- tion’ of the spiritual substance of the soul), but the texts constantly also refer to their ‘hardness’ or ‘force’ and ‘strengthening power’ (udbalana). Therefore, let us take the meaning ‘cuirass’, which, perhaps, may be better assumed in an ‘organic’ sense, as the thick skin of an animal, i.e., as something able to protect and strengthen, not being superimposed from without but being an integral part of the individual it protects. This would fit well the very tight, almost inextricable, connection with the individual soul which the texts assign to the kañcukas, and particularly to some of them. The only one to state it explicitly is the dualist Śaiva philosopher Rāmakaṇṭha (10th–11th century CE) when he compares the kañcukas to the snake’s skin (Vṛtti on Mataṅgapārameśvarāgama, Vidyāpāda, in Bhatt 1977: 334). Their number varies (six, five, four, or three), but according to the most common conception they are five: Energy, Knowledge, Passion, Time, and Necessity. However, among them there is a group of three that enjoy a privileged status, so that sometimes the appellation kañcuka applies to them only.28 They are kalā, vidyā and rāga, or ‘Energy, Knowledge, and Passion’. Our considerations will be mainly devoted to them. Among the kañcukas proper, kalā (commonly translated as ‘energy’, ‘[limited] power to act’) is the one which is unanimously considered the most closely linked to, or rather intertwined with, the subject — a ‘second consciousness’ as it were, as Bṛhaspati says.29 The individual soul, whose powers of knowledge and action have been blurred by an innate ‘maculation’ (mala), finds its deepest support in kalā, a kind of injection of basic energy (indeed, the very ‘inciting power’ of the Lord is acting in it), which, at least partially, revives the powers of the soul. An objection comes spontaneously to one’s mind: why does the Lord’s 76  Raffaele Torella power not intervene directly but resorts, in order to release the soul, to something which is in itself a bond? This objection indirectly reveals the paradoxical nature of kalā, and of human dimension as a whole. The scriptures reply that the intervention of the Lord’s power would entail the immediate manifestation of the soul’s powers in their fullest glory, viz., liberation, whilst the question here is to fit out the soul for its worldly adventure, to which the ripeness of mala and the karmic impulses direct it (Mataṅgapārameśvarāgama, Vidyāpāda, 9.25cd–26ab, in Bhatt 1977: 302; Tantrāloka 9.182, in Śāstrī and Śāstrī 1918–38, vol. 6: 141). As in the nice simile found in a Śaiva Siddhānta text Śivajñāna-siddhiyār, kalā is like the club Śiva (or the guru) makes use of in order to awaken the adept, who would not be able to stand his direct touch (Devasenapathi 1960: 47).30 Kalā and individual soul (aṇu) can never be seen as separate from one another, they seem to be one single entity. ‘Just as a clay pot, once heated by fire, can absorb shellac, so the aṇu, permeated by kalā, can receive the fruitions obtained by him with great joy’. And again: ‘Kalā brings about fruition and is the abode of the individual soul. Resting on kalā, imbued with karma, the individual soul cannot leave it anymore and becomes attached more and more’ (Mataṅgapārameśvarāgama, Vidyāpāda, 9.28–29a, 9.31cd–32, in Bhatt 1977: 303). But if kalā is the most internal and important factor leading the soul towards the world of experience, it is not the only one, however. Just as, by virtue of its swelling, due to union with substances such as water or the sun’s heat, fire becomes the cause of the sprout’s birth, so kalā is the cause of the union with Knowledge and of the awakening brought about by Passion with a view to promoting the fruition in the soul.31 In the soul made active by kalā, the process of knowledge cannot take place yet, owing to the lack of a specific instrument. The latter cannot be represented by the senses or the mind (buddhi), since they do not figure in all kinds of knowledge; the mind itself, though having a role of its own in all forms of everyday life, is not able to cognise itself. Since it fully belongs to the material world, it is not enabled to be anything more than a mirror in which equally material things are reflected. Vidyā or ‘Knowledge’ is the necessary link between the knowing subject — exclusively represented by the individual soul (aṇu) — and object images (and the respective organs of cognition). Everything is now ready for the subject to begin having experiences, but for a factor, subtly noted by the Śaiva scriptures, the absence of Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  77  which would make the entire process actually motionless or merely virtual: the desire to have experiences, the longing for them. Or, as the Mṛgendra Tantra, Vidyāpāda, 10.11 (Śāstrī 1930: 210) puts it, now the soul can cognise objects thanks to the manifestation of the power of consciousness, but he does not turn to seize them; for this reason, the Lord creates rāga. Rāga, i.e., ‘attachment, passion, affection, the fact of being coloured by emotions’ is the last of the three cuirasses proper. In fact, it is difficult, if not impossible, to establish an absolute priority of order between rāga and vidyā (Passion and Knowledge), i.e., to say whether he who knows then desires or vice-versa, so intimately do they refer to each other. As Abhinavagupta says in his long commentary on the most important philosophical text of Śaiva Tantrism, Utpaladeva’s Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā, referring to the kañcukas as a whole: ‘These cui- rasses mingle with each other, in the sense that they support each other in their functions. They are like the various flavours and ingredients in a sweet’ (Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vivṛtivimarśinī, in Śāstrī 1938–43, vol. 3: 92). It is a given fact that there is no action in ordinary life that does not proceed from an idea or expectation of pleasure. Moreover, the various philosophical schools and authoritative texts agree on considering rāga as the root of all feelings, emotions and activities of the mind.32 As in the case of vidyā, the rāga-principle should not be mistaken for what is only a particular epiphenomenon of it. To begin with, rāga is not the craving for objects but what lies behind it (cf. Vṛtti on Mṛgendra Tantra, Vidyāpāda, 11.16ab, in Śāstrī 1930: 236). Nor is it to be mistaken for a ‘disposition’ to attachment, such as avairāgya (‘the absence of renunciation’), which is a quality of the mind and, therefore, essentially belongs to the sphere of objects. Indeed, in everyday life, man continuously experiences disaf- fection after fruition is accomplished, but rāga rises again immediately afterwards, with a different object. This rāga that never ceases in ordi- nary life — in the sense that it is continuously actualising itself in the various specific rāgas as actual experiences and feelings (pratyayas) — is precisely the rāga made of latent impregnations (vāsanārūpa).33 At the root of both kinds of rāgas lies, finally, the rāga ‘pertaining to the knowing subject’ (vedakagata) — the rāga as an ontological principle.34 If the single episodes of passion in the individual can drive him towards particular experiences, this is only due to their being supported by the inner energy of such a root-rāga, i.e., rāga as cuirass. It is not pleasure that directly moves rāga, as Mataṅgapārameśvarāgama 11.13ab (Bhatt 1977: 328) states shrewdly, but it is rāga that creates pleasure with respect to the particular object it turns to.35 In this way, we can account 78  Raffaele Torella for attachment to their own status that even those which belong to the lowest strata of being (dogs, worms, etc.) show. This does not mean that the adept who has overcome this individual rāga is cut off from pleasure. Instead, he enjoys a particular form of pleasure in all actions. The very existence of the vītarāga or ‘the one who has transcended passions’ is one of the recurring arguments in all the texts to prove that rāga rests in the depths of the subject, not in objects, for in the latter case the mere existence of objects would suffice to keep rāga alive. Therefore, like vidyā ‘science, knowledge’, rāga or ‘emotion–pas- sion–attachment’, too, is both a complex and an elementary reality, which is all the more difficult to define the more internally it abides in the structure of the ‘I’. Let us take into account, again, the insightful considerations made by Abhinavagupta in his magnum opus, Tantrāloka (9.61–64, in Śāstrī and Śāstrī 1918–38, vol. 6: 55–58).36 The universe has been created in order to satisfy the souls in which a frenzy, a feverish craving for fruition, has been aroused. This frenzy (lolikā) leads to no definite action. It is, so to speak, just a ‘desiring state’ (abhilāṣitā, 9.62b), free from limitations as it has no specific object (Jayaratha thereon: pratiniyataviṣayābhāvād avacchidojjhitā); a state of indefinite, passion- ate expectation. Hence the thinking of oneself as imperfect, a kind of nescience, in a word: the basic impurity, mala. This is only the readiness to assume future limitations, which is why it does not constitute a tattva, as on the contrary rāga does. Rāga is essentially this same frenzy once it has been limited by a still indistinct object. The individual avairāgya or ‘absence of renunciation’ is only a qualification of the mind, and consists of its being continuously modified and ‘coloured’ by the various objects. The cuirasses constitute the most internal and concealed structure of individual personality. In establishing their existence, the Tantric traditions in general, including even those grounded on dualistic pre- suppositions, seem to have been driven by a twofold need: to overcome the dualism and basic incommunicability of the purely spiritual and the purely material components — puruṣa–prakṛti or puruṣa–buddhi in the Sāṃkhya outlook — and to single out a boundary within the human being where the two components touch one another, as it were. What the Tāntrikas’ thought and action seem most interested in are precisely borderlines, rather than the definite states of being. In particular, the monistic schools of Kashmir end up seeing borderlines everywhere or, in other words, infinite potential openings, which make the spiritual/ material dichotomy more and more problematic, and finally overthrow it altogether. Attention is obviously focused primarily on the human being, Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  79  no doubt the most paradoxical being in the universe. Of all possible sub- jectivity levels, the most crucial is, after all, the lowest one, the level of human beings, since it is the only one — as the Mataṅgapārameśvarāgama and its commentator state (10.23a–c, in Bhatt 1977: 318) — that has the privilege of containing in itself the whole path of the universe, from Śiva down to the earth. And, in the human being, paradoxical par excellence are the cuirasses, which, on the one hand, partially restore the power of the spiritual principle and, on the other, embrace it so tightly that they may prevent it from expanding in all its potential glory. Thus, the individual gains weight and a definite structure from the cuirasses, but at the same time he also sacrifices his fluidity or, in other words, his free pervasiveness and sovereignty. In presenting sometimes one aspect, sometimes the other, the texts do nothing but refer to the two sides of the same coin. This also has a probably involuntary correspondence at a lexical level, in the recurrence of two almost identical terms (that look totally identical in most Indian scripts) having an opposite meaning: ([ud]balita–valita ‘reinforced–surrounded/encircled/limited). The essentially ambiguous nature of the cuirasses is indirectly highlighted by the hint at their also having a ‘pure’ form. For example, pure kalā brings about a series of actions which, though still limited in themselves (adoration of Śiva, meditation, etc.), enable the individual soul to rid itself of saṃsāra. There is a pure form of rāga, too, which arises in those who are detached from bonds; by virtue of it, the limited soul experiences a drive to the summum bonum, the search for a guru and passionate devotion to Śiva. This structure supporting the ‘I’ has one more characteristic, which is not explicitly mentioned but occasionally hinted at in the texts. This characteristic is directly connected with the deep level where the cuirasses are located and act, always behind any visible manifestation: the fact that they are subliminal and escape perception. The secrecy of the cuirasses is precisely that peculiar to any real borderline, in which one may find oneself without knowing it in advance, as it were. In fact, as it seems, the moment when the cuirass is fully cognised is also the moment when it becomes incapable of performing its task, thus opening the way to going beyond it. This overall conception of the cuirasses is basically shared by the dualist and non-dualist Śaiva tradition, too. For its part, the latter seems particularly interested in developing two aspects, viz., the direct corre- spondence of cuirasses with the highest powers of Śiva, on the one hand; and their being ‘intermediate’ (or, in a sense, also ‘mediating’) realities 80  Raffaele Torella and ‘supports’, on the other. As to the first point, we can limit ourselves to pointing out that the cuirasses of Energy, Knowledge, Passion, Time, and Necessity are considered to be the contracted forms of the divine powers of Consciousness, Bliss, Will, Knowledge, and Action, respectively; or, in different contexts, Māyā (also a cuirass), Energy–Knowledge (taken together), Time–Necessity, and Passion are taken as the contracted forms of the Pure Principles, viz., Anāśrita-Śiva, Sadāśiva, Īśvara, and Sadvidyā; or, yet again, a homology is established between sarvakartṛtva (‘absolute power of action’) and kalā; sarvajñatva (‘absolute power of knowledge’) and vidyā; pūrṇatva (‘fullness, perfection’) and rāga; nityatva (‘eternity’) and kāla; and vyāpakatva (‘pervasion’) and niyati. But it is the second point which deserves closer examination. Among the Śaiva scriptures that have come down to us, the Parātrīśikā presents a different designation for this group of principles, i.e., dhāraṇā or ‘support’. Thus says Abhinavagupta in his commentary, the Parātrīśikā-laghuvṛtti:37 yad vedyarāśer eva atyaktavedyabhāvasya bhinnavedyavedakaikīkaraṇaṃ tadvyāpṛtāni [em.: °vyāvṛttāni, in Śāstrī 1947] tattvāni . . . tā etāś catasraḥ śaktayaḥ puruṣaṃ dhārayanti madhye triśaṅkuvad viśramayanti. Though the specific nature of these principles does not cease to belong to the realm of the object, their function is to bring about the unification of the knower and the knowable, differentiated as they are in the sphere of māyā . . . These powers “hold up” (dhārayanti), that is, make the soul stand midway (madhye), like Triśaṅku38 (Śāstrī 1947: 6–7). If these principles did not exist, Abhinavagupta goes on, either the indi- vidual soul would become insentient, like a stone, or it would directly enter the sky of supreme Consciousness, like Parameśvara: in both cases, however, the knowable would equally cease to be, since it presupposes the existence of a māyic knowing subject.39 From this short immersion into the metaphysics and psychology of Śaiva Tantrism, we emerge with a few ‘strong’, highly peculiar ideas (of course, necessitating more extensive and in-depth research), which can be summarised as follows: (a) Identification, deep within the individual subject, of a sustaining/ limiting structure acting as a link between the material sphere and the spiritual sphere. Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  81  (b) This structure consists mainly of three ‘cuirasses’ — kalā, vidyā and rāga — apparently very different from each other, responsible for the energetic, intellectual and passional/emotional dimensions respectively. (c) These three dimensions are not viewed as watertight compart- ments, but as strictly intertwined realities, communicating with and feeding each other. (d) They are the very playground where human adventure is played out, and can act as a means of bondage, as well as of liberation. Again, the Senses In one of the early chapters of the Bhagavadgītā, we read: After creating the creatures and also the sacrificial offering, of old Prajāpati said, ‘Increase yourselves through the sacrifice; may it be for you the cow that fulfils all your desires. Through the sacrifice, you feed the gods and the gods in turn feed you. Feeding each other, you will achieve the supreme good. The gods, fed by the sacrifice, will provide you with all the enjoyments you seek. Who so enjoys such experiences without offering them back to the gods that have provided them, that man is none other than a thief’ (3.10–12, in Sankaranarayanan 1985: 45–46).40 For us, the interest of these verses is rather indirect, lying wholly in the way in which they were commented on by Abhinavagupta, totally revo- lutionising their meaning. Thus speaks the Bhagavadgītārthasaṃgraha (‘Compendium of the Meanings of the Song of the Blessed One’): The gods, i.e. ‘those used to taking pleasure’,41 are the sensorial functions, the Goddesses of the Senses, deities well-known to the secret traditions [i.e., the Krama]; those you must satisfy with the [sacrificial] act; in other words, you must devour the objects of the senses as much as possible. Once satisfied, in your self these goddesses will bring about supreme bliss in accordance with what is their own nature, they being naturally inclined to resting in the self. In such a way, incessantly, that is, by the alternating of moments of ordinary consciousness and of perfect absorption, reciprocal nourishment is achieved, characterised by the [joint] satisfaction of the senses and identification with the self, by virtue of which you will rapidly obtain the supreme good, the brahman in whom all reciprocal differentiations dissolve. Satisfied by this sacrificial act, the senses take up their abode in any object of meditation, etc. . . . The general meaning of the sentence is thus as follows: ‘Whoever aspires to achieve 82  Raffaele Torella  supernatural powers and liberation with slight effort must devote himself with abandonment to enjoyments as they occur, aiming, as his only goal, to make the febrile restlessness of the senses cease’ (Sankaranarayanan 1985: 46).42 It is not a question for the senses to be pure or impure — as is, i.e., from the Buddhist standpoint — which may accept rāga or desire only on condition that it is not imbued with misjudgements and not addressed to defiled objects, which would make it into abhiṣvaṅga or ‘craving’. In the Śaiva outlook, merely their ‘neutral’ dynamic power is emphasised. The Mālinīvijayottara Tantra even adds that they can become a means of liberation if they do not restrain their activity but, on the contrary, if they expand it towards more and more ‘pervasive’ objects: etāni vyāpake bhāve yadā syur manasā saha | vimuktanīti vidvadbhir jñātavyāni tadā priye || yadā tu viṣaye kvāpi pradeśāntaravartini | saṃsthitāni tadā tāni baddhānīti pracakṣate || When these senses, along with the mind, focus on a pervasive reality, then, O Dear, they are called ‘liberated’ by the sages. When, on the contrary, they exercise their activity on any localised object, then they are called ‘fettered’ (15.45–46, in Vasudeva 2004: 112). Thus, when the Siddhayogīśvarīmata (Mālinīvijayottara Tantra 15.47, ibid.: 112–13) divides the senses into pure and impure, it does so only having in mind their power: the more powerful they are and to a wider horizon they open the more ‘pure’ they are. In order not to remain with the suspicion that the aforecited pas- sage is merely the result of a capricious and momentary virtuosity of Abhinavagupta — an attitude, moreover, that would be anything but alien to the Kashmiri masters of supreme non-duality, who call them- selves ‘upholders of freedom’ (svātantrya-vādin) — we should extend our research to other texts of Tantric Śivaism. We find the same concept outlined even in one of the sūtras (1.11) of the Śiva Sūtra, enigmatic but, fortunately for us, aptly clarified by Kṣemarāja: tritayabhoktā vireśaḥ (‘Enjoyer of the triad, lord of the heroes’). Kṣemarāja’s commentary Śivasūtravimarśinī on is as follows: Mixing the three states of wakefulness, sleep and deep sleep with the bliss of the fourth by virtue of meditation on the Wheel of Powers, he who, Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  83  thoroughly pervaded by such cogitation, manages to see every karmic impression of duality dissolved in them, now reduced to the continual flow of the essence of bliss, that man is the enjoyer of the triad, the one who tastes it with wonder (camatkartā).43 Consequently, according to the principle expressed in the verse that says, ‘There is in the three states what is called the enjoyer and what is called the enjoyable; but he who knows them both, he, albeit enjoying, is not stained [by the enjoyment]’, such a yogin is, in the Great Traditions [the Krama], described as the uncontested dominator of himself, full of supreme bliss, the lord of the heroes (vīra)44 intent on devouring the differentiation of beings — the lord, that is, of the senses — imbued by the being of Manthāna Bhairava. He who does not manage to achieve such a condition is none other than the common herd, the enjoyed by [and not the enjoyer of ] the three states of wakefulness, etc. He who has not raised himself to this peak — even if he is a yogin — does not deserve the name of lord of the heroes: he is in actual fact nothing but befuddled. This is said. This is demonstrated in detail in various texts, such as for example the Svacchanda,45 where we read: ‘Thanks to free (svatantra) yoga which moves on the free path, the yogin united with the plane of the Free [Bhairava] achieves identification with the Free’ (Torella 2013: 123–24, emphasis mine).46 Once the adept identifies with what is his true centre, sensorial experi- ence will cease to be a tie and can be used as an instrument of liberation. Suitably saturated by extreme intensification, accompanied by release from all individual yearning, the senses are restored to their nature as an expression of the Power. Again, in commenting on Śiva Sūtra 1.12: ‘The stages of yoga are amazement’, Kṣemarāja, states: Just as one who sees something out of the ordinary experiences a feeling of amazement, so the feeling of amazement in enjoying contact with the various manifestations of knowable reality is continually produced in this great yogin with the whole wheel of the senses increasingly expanded, motionless, fully disclosed, by virtue of penetrating into its most intimate nature, the compact union of consciousness and ever-renewed wonder, extreme, extraordinary (Torella 2013: 126–27).47 Powers themselves (we should not forget that the most common term for ‘sense’ is indriya, whose original meaning is ‘[power] of Indra’) are nourished and increased — as Abhinavagupta states in the passage from the Bhagavadgītārthasaṃgraha quoted earlier48 — by the objects of the 84  Raffaele Torella senses themselves in a context of ‘purified’ enjoyment, in turn sustain- ing and strengthening the individual on the path toward liberation. A hymn by Abhinavagupta is entirely devoted to this theme, the Dehasthadevatācakrastotra (‘Hymn to the Wheel of the Deities Residing in the Body’, Pandey 1963 [1935]: 952–53). The supreme god in the form of Ānanda-Bhairava (‘Bhairava-Bliss’),49 embracing his consort Ānanda- Bhairavī who represents his energy aspect (if Bhairava is consciousness in his form as pure light, Bhairavī is the projective–cognitive drive inherent in consciousness), is visualised at the centre of an ideal eight- petalled lotus flower. On each petal is seated a deity, portrayed in the act of rendering cult to the god (or the divine couple) who is in the middle. The deities are the eight Mātṛs (or Mātṛkās), a group of powerful and dangerous goddesses who, despite their apotropaic name of ‘Mothers’ or ‘Little Mothers’, are unhappily known to the nocturnal frequenters of the cremation grounds, and are considered as a sort of emanation or double of the Supreme Goddess. The procedures and ingredients of this imagined pūjā are rather unusual: Vaiṣṇavī as the sense of hearing offers, instead of the prescribed flowers, sounds; Vārāhī as the sense of touch offers tactile sensations; Indrāṇī as the sense of sight offers the most beautiful forms and colours; Cāmuṇḍā as the sense of taste offers delicious tastes; and Mahālakṣmī as the sense of smell offers rare scents. And that is not all. The remaining three Mothers are linked to the intel- lectual functions: the haughty Śāmbhavī as the sense of the ‘individual ego’ offers Bhairava, instead of flowers, acts of ‘presumption’;50 Kaumārī, the capricious adolescent goddess, as mind (manas), offers fantasies and mental constructs (vikalpa); and the solemn Brāhmaṇī, as intellect (buddhi), offers Bhairava acts of final ascertainment (ascertainment or niścaya constitutes the final phase of the cognitive process). It should be said, by the way, that these eight elements often constitute the so-called puryaṣṭaka, the ‘eightfold body’ or, according to another interpretation, the ‘ogdoad that lies in the body’, a kind of bearing structure within the human being that sums up the cognitive and emotional aspects; it is the eightfold body that constitutes the transmigratory nucleus of the individual at death. Yet again, we see that Tantrism responds to the Brāhmaṇical separation into ‘high’ intellectual functions and ‘low’ senso- rial functions not only in terms of integration and affirmations of equal dignity, but even deification. The energy that makes them function is none other than the energy that coincides with supreme Consciousness or, in religious terms, with Śiva himself. Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  85  In truth, the Śaiva masters thrust much further. The intrinsically unbridled and only superficially trainable nature of the senses actually places them in a privileged position as compared to the mind which, on the other hand, is for its own part more at risk of becoming a sort of blanket that every day smothers the fire of the individual’s deepest identity that, in any final analysis, coincides with God himself. The same is true of the emotions, the more so the stronger and more uncontrol- lable they are. Within Śaiva non-dualistic traditions, there thus arises a school of teachings aimed at enrolling the senses, passions and emotions against the mind. The duration–continuity of the mind is maliciously contrasted with the instant of the emotion. As an antecedent and also theoretical presupposition of such a position, a laconic sūtra (3.23) of the Śiva Sūtra may be invoked, a text to whose programmed obscurity we are by now habituated: ‘In the middle the lower birth is produced’ (madye ’varaprasavaḥ). To try to unravel this statement, we once more have recourse to the commentator Kṣemarāja: For him who only at the initial and final extremes tastes the essence of the fourth, ‘in the middle’, in the intermediate area, ‘the lower birth is produced’, wretched, the lowest creation, the ordinary way of living (Torella 2013: 234).51 What is certain is that here our commentator risks being even more obscure than the sūtra he wishes to elucidate. What the Kashmiri master has in mind is the well-known distinction of human experience into four conditions (avasthās), already encountered in the Upaniṣads. The first three (wakefulness, sleep with dreams and dreamless deep sleep) together constitute the modality of ordinary experience, whereas the fourth corresponds to the status of the liberated. According to the spiri- tual tradition from which Kṣemarāja draws his inspiration, experience of the fourth state in actual fact also occurs within the other three, but solely at two special moments of each act: the initial instant, in which the very first vibration of the still wholly undifferentiated will comes directly into contact with the energy of consciousness; and the final instant, in which the initial impulse, having completed its outer curve (in which it has become other than itself), fades away once more in the vibrating light of consciousness. The whole intermediate zone is the māyic sphere of differentiation. The median zone is, thus, the canoni- cal locus of the ordinary mind, in which the instant falls asleep into duration. The author of the other major commentary on the Śiva Sūtra, 86  Raffaele Torella Bhāskara, in two passages of his Vārttika, further elaborates on this theme: the privileged moments represented by the ‘extremities’, both initial and final, also concern human passions and emotions, and the sounds of language. At the very first and last moment of a feeling of joy, anger, love, greed, etc., the ātman manifests itself (Śivasūtra-vārttika, in Chatterji 1916: 49). In our ordinary speech, each phoneme is composed of three parts: the first and the last have the nature of Śiva, while in the middle the phoneme is debased to ordinary sound, losing its divine nature (ibid.: 64). The instant is ‘wakened’ by the teachings — experiential rather than theoretical — that we find in particular in three texts: the first, the Vijñānabhairava Tantra (‘Bhairava-as-consciousness’), is of a scriptural nature and is attributed to Śiva himself, who is portrayed, in his terrify- ing and absolute form as Bhairava, in dialogue with his divine consort; the second is the Spandakārikā by Vasugupta or Bhaṭṭa Kallaṭa; and the third is the Svabodhodayamañjarī (‘The Little Bunch of Flowers of the Rising of One’s Intimate Awareness’), a brief 10th-century-CE work (45 ślokas) by the Kashmiri Vāmanadatta (Torella 2000a). It is worth our while to focus our attention at least on the latter, the teachings of the Vijñānabhairava Tantra and the Spandakārikā being comparatively more well-known. The central teaching of the Svabodhodamañjarī, thus, concerns how to dissolve the mind ‘effortlessly’. The method proposed is extremely subtle: the mind (for which the terms manas and citta are used indiffer- ently) is never attacked frontally, but is, so to speak, outflanked, taken from behind, exploiting its normal functioning in order to block it. For example, the adept is instructed to let his mind focus with special inten- sity on an object presented by the senses until it is totally occupied by that object. Then, when its object vanishes naturally, the mind is still too closely linked to it to be able to withdraw once again within itself and ends up dissolving itself after the object. This occurs in the case of an adept who focuses his attention fixedly on the noise of thunder, a pleasant sound or music; or else on the beauty of an object seen. In other cases, the same result is obtained without the object vanishing, but hinging on the natural, progressive fading away of the sensation itself. Here, Vāmanadatta refers to the enjoyment that comes from tasting choice food, smelling the scent of jasmine or reaching orgasm. As we see, to dissolve the mind even the ‘minor’ sensorial faculties can be used, such as touch, taste or smell, largely overlooked by the Vijñānabhairava and Spandakārikā. Following Vāmanadatta’s discerning examination, we Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  87  face a third situation: when the mind is totally and suddenly invaded by a sensation or emotion, creating as it were a vacuum around itself, for example, when a person remembers something he thought he had forgotten; when a person finally manages to identify with certainty something that he has seen only vaguely from a distance; or when a person gives himself over to any sensual pleasure. Or again, when it is not the fullness of presence, but on the contrary an absence, an empty space — whether caused deliberately, or occurring on its own — that takes over the mind and finally brings about its dissolution. Let us, however, take up, at least, a few of these verses, as terse as they are astonishing, of the Svabodhodayamañjarī. In the past, the Masters have taught the means to dissolve it [the mind]. Being afraid that this authoritative teaching should decay, I will illustrate it. (4). The ancient masters have shown how to block it through detachment and repeated practice.52 [Instead], we will teach how to obtain the blocking [of the mind] with no effort. (12). This is just like what happens when a rumbling thunder gradually vanishes: once the thunder has completely vanished, the mind too, due to its resting on it, becomes extinguished. (14) The adept should fix his exclusive attention on any pleasant sound coming to his ears, till the moment in which the sound, having disappeared, becomes the cause of the blocking [of the mind]. (15). In this practice, the sensorial faculties, which are the instruments of perception, are to be brought to a state of ‘equality’. Equality comes from the escaping from attachment, as well as from the extinction of aversion. (18) One should escape from all attachment, and from all aversion as well. Attached to all, just like the fettered man, is Bhairava, and averse to all.53 (19). Sensorial faculties, when bereft of perceptible objects and void, are dissolved into the Self. The happiness of isolation arises in him, who attains the dissolution of the sensorial faculties. (20). If one is running without being determinately aware of his own efforts in making steps, and, consequently, has his mental activity free from intentions and constructs, the supreme Self shines in him. (24). Whatever longing he may experience for any object, like food and so on, he should satisfy it as far as possible. Thus, he will become full and without support. (28). 88  Raffaele Torella  At the end of coitus, the adept should project his mind into the place between the navel and the sexual organ. When the love bliss dissolves, he becomes waveless in one instant. (38). If, in the manners outlined so far, instant by instant he brings about the dissolution of the mind into the Self, he attains the essence of consciousness. He is called ‘liberated-while-living’. (24)54 (Torella 2000a: 402–06). Desire: A Tantric Invention? At the end of this excursion into the lesser known folds of Hindu Tantrism — a journey that does not follow straight paths, but is necessarily wind- ing and uncertain — we have at least managed to understand the title of the last section correctly, itself not a little ambiguous. Does India really owe to Tantrism the invention (understood in its etymological meaning of inventio) of desire? As we have seen, the reply is certainly negative: neither its invention, nor even its re-invention after a period of eclipse. India has always been fully aware of the centrality of the body55 and the drives of the psyche, in a single word, of the ‘desiring’ dimension of man. The fact that this is not clear externally is due to the work of containment erected by the Brāhmaṇical elite over the almost 2000 years of its grandiose attempt at dominating the Indian world as a whole. Lacking any direct power, it has replaced it by successfully imposing, as an alternative, an opposition between purity and impurity that has marked every aspect of Indian culture: purity of spirit, purity of philosophy, purity of rites, purity of language, purity of social and religious conduct, etc. On the impure side, all ‘power’ (excluding its own) is tacitly placed, any reality that, owing to its intrinsic nature, tends to escape control and standardisation: most of all, the tumult of the body, and of the sensorial–emotional–passional sphere. In the latter, special importance is given to eros. Although eros has only been dealt with fleetingly in this essay, it has been so done not in order to undervalue it, but, on the contrary, to react against its overvaluation (the congeries of studies on Tantric eros, for the most part generally of inferior quality, end up leaving in the shade the rest of the emotional sphere, much less documented and perhaps even much more hair-splitting to investigate) on the one hand, and not to over-burden what is intended to be only a preliminary study on the other. A last blunder would be to see in Tantric teachings the sophisticated result of a protest by subtle theologians inclined to private transgres- sions. On the contrary, Tantrism represents an open response to the Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  89  Brāhmaṇical world, just as grandiose as the challenge that triggered it and with goals just as vast. The counter-attack occurs precisely at the central point, i.e., questioning the legitimacy and the very basis for the division between pure and impure, destined to crumble progressively beneath the thrust of a deliberate ‘non-dual’ behaviour (advaitācāra), in which the more authentic meaning of Tantric transgression can be sought.56 But who and what takes responsibility for this ‘response’? To speak, as has commonly been done, of popular incitement that includes the re-emergence of ancestral doctrines and non-Aryan, or even pre- Aryan, motifs, means, first and foremost, an unawareness of the profound cultural unity of the Indian subcontinent, albeit with its thousands of variations. It means, furthermore, not being aware that many of the Tantric ‘rebels’ are themselves Brāhmaṇas, neither more nor less than their antagonists. In Tantrism, it is not another India coming to the fore- ground, but the only India feeling, within a part of its own Brāhmaṇical elite, that the moment has come to reformulate itself in order to guar- antee its own future survival in a historically changed world. Notes All translations of excerpts from Sanskrit texts cited in this chapter are by the author. 1. Among the most conspicuous exceptions is Aristotle. 2. Similar passages can be found in Garuḍa Purāṇa, Pretakalpa, Adhyāya 6 (Abegg 1956 [1921]: 91–99), as well as in several other Purāṇas (ibid.: 93n6). I thank K. Preisendanz for this reference. 3. Or: ‘without object’. Of the two possible meanings of karma in this context, the latter is certainly the one meant by Abhinavagupta (niṣkarmā yābhilāṣitā, Tantrāloka 9.62b, in Śāstrī and Śāstrī 1918–38, vol. 6: 56). However, the parallel between niṣkāma-karma and niṣkarma-kāma can be maintained, since, as Jayaratha explicitly says in commenting on this passage, the absence of an object in this desiring condition is linked to the absence of any definite action in it (niṣkarmā kriyārūpatvābhāvāt). 4. Desire and anger are deemed strictly as a pair, or rather as two aspects of the same reality. As Śaṅkara says in his commentary on this passage, it is frustrated desire that is transformed into anger. Rajas, along with sattva and tamas (a doctrine belonging to Sāṃkhya, significantly present in the Bhagavadgītā) are at the same time psychic states and cosmic forces — an ambiguity that is unresolved in classical Sāṃkhya, which inherits and unites highly differentiated ancient doctrines. Sattva is characterised by joy and light: it is gentle and illuminating. Rajas is characterised by an absence of joy and by dynamism: it is unstable and stimulating. Tamas is characterised by inertia and restriction: it is heavy and obstructive. Passions and emotions 90  Raffaele Torella  are, of course, expressions of the rajas component. 5. My translation of the phrase kāmatattvam idaṃ yataḥ significantly differs from Hanneder’s (‘for this [world] is the reality of desire’, in 1998: 105). 6. See particularly the Dehasthadevatācakrastotra (‘Hymn to the Wheel of Deities Residing in the Body’) in Pandey (1963[1935]: 952–53; cf. p. 85). 7. I read nigṛhītāni instead of vigṛhītāni, as found in both editions of the text by Śāstrī (1922) and Vasudeva (2004). The reading nigṛhītāni, strictly required by the context, can be found in the quotation of this passage in Tantrāloka 17.112c. 8. Yoga Sūtra 1.12: abhyāsavairāgyābhyāṃ tannirodhaḥ (‘The blocking of the mental functions is caused by repeated practice and detachment’). 9. On the doctrine of the ‘cuirasses’ in Tantrism, see Torella (1998). Also, see the section titled ‘Passion (rāga) as One of the ‘Cuirasses’ in this essay. 10. See particularly Pramāṇavārttika 1.12 and svavṛtti p. 9.3–18 (Gnoli 1960: 9), examined and variously translated in the aforementioned articles (Dunne 1996; Franco 2004; Pecchia 2008; Taber 2011). 11. sāsravadharmaviṣayam (Pramāṇavārttika-svavṛtti, in Gnoli 1960: 9.5–6); sāsravaviṣayam (Sarvajñasiddhi, in Thakur 1975: 23.25). 12. On anuttara, see Bäumer (2011: 67–90). 13. On the ‘non-means’ (anupāya), see Torella (2000b: 121–22). 14. This is a clear allusion to yoga practices focused on breathing. 15. Here, Abhinavagupta is possibly referring to Vāmanadatta’s Svabodhodaya- mañjarī. On this interesting, and very peculiar, text see Torella (2000a). See p. 87. 16. It is worth presenting the full passage (Leopardi 1937: 173–74) in which the sentence quoted above is contained: Ma la ragione non è mai efficace come la passione. Sentite i filosofi. Bisogna fare che l’uomo si muova per la ragione come, anzi più assai che per la passione, anzi si muova per la sola ragione e dovere. Bubbole. La natura degli uomini e delle cose, può ben esser corrotta, ma non corretta. E se lasciassimo fare alla natura, le cose andrebbero benissimo, non ostante la detta superiorità della passione sulla ragione. Non bisogna estinguer la passione colla ragione, ma convertir la ragione in passione; fare che il dovere la virtù l’eroismo ec. diventino passioni. Tali sono per natura. Tali erano presso gli antichi, e le cose andavano molto meglio. Ma quando la sola passione del mondo è l’egoismo, allora si ha ben ragione di gridar contro la passione. Ma come spegner l’egoismo colla ragione che n’è la nutrice, dissipando le illusioni? E senza ciò, l’uomo privo di passioni, non si muoverebbe per loro, ma neanche per la ragione, perchè le cose son fatte così, e non si possono cambiare, chè la ragione non è forza viva nè motrice, e l’uomo non farà altro che divenirne indolente, inattivo, immobile, indifferente, infingardo, com’è divenuto in grandissima parte (22 ottobre 1820)’. The translation of the passage is as follows: ‘But reason is never as effective as passion. Listen to the philosophers. Men Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  91  should be led to act in accordance with reason as much as, indeed much more than, out of passion; in fact their actions should be determined solely by reason and duty. Nonsense. The nature of human beings and other things can easily be corrupted but not corrected. And if we let nature take its course, things would run very smoothly, despite the said dominance of passion over reason. Rather than extinguish passion with reason, it would be better to turn reason into passion: to make duty, virtue, heroism etc. become passions. So they are in nature. So they were among the ancients, and things were much better. But when the only passion in the world is egoism then it is right to cry out against passion. But how can selfishness be eliminated by reason, which fosters it by destroying illusions? And without it, a man deprived of passions would not be motivated by them, or by reason, either, because things being like that, and unable to change, reason is neither a living nor a motive force, and man will do nothing but become lazy, inactive, immobile, indifferent, uncaring, as in large parte he has (22 Oct. 1820)’ (Caesar and D’Intino 2013: 191). 17. It is also worth noting what Kṣemarāja says in his Vimarśinī on Śiva-sūtra 3.26 (Chatterji 1911: 54; Torella 2013: 239): ‘Living in the body: this is the religious observance’ (śarīravṛttir vratam); ‘[t]he compenetration with Śiva is achieved only by the yogin who resides in the body, the prāṇa, etc.’ (dehaprāṇādyavasthitasyaiva śivasamāviṣṭatvam uktam). 18. My interpretation is diametrically opposed (see note 3, this chapter) to that given by the principal commentator of the Mahābhārata, Nīlakaṇṭha (16th century CE). 19. I must admit that my interpretation of the meaning of the entire passage (the textual transmission of which is, however, uncertain at several points, with various differences between the vulgata and the Pune critical edition) is not at all in line with the current Brāhmaṇical interpretation, which tends to consider it as a warning against the subtle snares of desire. Whatever be the case, even if one admits the ‘ascetic’ intent of its original composer, the entire passage resounds as a paradoxical celebration of the ineludible presence and power of desire. 20. English translation of the libretto by Avril Bardoni, 1989, included with the 1990 Virgin Classics recording VCT 7 90775-2-4. 21. Translation partly based on Renou (1956: 125–26). 22. Interestingly, the idea of the centrality of desire survives precisely in the Mīmāṃsā, the school of Vedic exegesis that later developed into a darśana (philosophical system) proper. The self as the ritual agent hinges on desire (kāma): without the desire for a certain fruit no individual would engage in sacrificial activity, or more in general, in any kind of activity, the disappearing of desire only occurring on the way to liberation (Freschi 2007). This may be likened to the Śaiva concept of the self as kartṛ (doer) as 92  Raffaele Torella  opposed to the akriya (inactive) self of Vedānta. 23. Here we are supported by the authority of the Bhagavadgītā which, in the verse 3.40ab, states: ‘Of desire, the senses, the mind and the intellect are the substrate’. 24. By way of an antidote, I quote the strong words of Remo Bodei (2003: 8–9): ‘Nothing prevents us, however, from thinking of the “passions” (emotions, feelings, desires) as states that are not added from the outside at a zero level of indifferent consciousness, to excite and confuse it, but are ingredients of the tone of any psychic state of being and even of any cognitive orientation . . . Despite everything, the passions cannot be reduced just to conflict and mere passivity. They tint the world with lively subjective colours, accompany the unravelling of events, shake experience from inertia and monotony, and make existence flavoursome, discomfort and pain notwithstanding. Would it be worthwhile living if we felt no passion, if tenacious, invisible threads did not bind us to what — in various ways — we are “fond of”, whose loss we fear?’ (‘Nulla impedisce tuttavia di pensare le “passioni” [emozioni, sentimenti, desideri] quali stati che non si aggiungono dall’esterno a un grado zero della coscienza indifferente, per intorbidarla e confonderla, ma che sono costitutivi della tonalità di qualsiasi modo di essere psichico e persino di ogni orientamento cognitivo . . . Malgrado tutto, le passioni non si riducono però soltanto a conflitto e a mera passività. Esse tingono il mondo di vivaci colori soggettivi, accompagnano il dipanarsi degli eventi, scuotono l’esperienza dall’inerzia e dalla monotonia, rendono sapida l’esistenza nonostante disagi e dolori. Varrebbe la pena vivere se non provassimo alcuna passione, se tenaci, invisibili fili non ci avvincessero a quanto — a diverso titolo — ci sta “a cuore”, e di cui temiamo la perdita?’). Yet again, referring to Spinoza, Bodei (2003: 58) states: ‘Conditionings of all kinds mould him [man] indeed like “clay in the potter’s hands”: to escape them, without prejudice to the laws of this world, appears just as absurd and undesirable as living under an eternally serene sky’ (‘Condizionamenti di ogni genere lo [l’uomo] plasmano infatti al pari della “creta nelle mani del vasaio”; immaginare di sfuggirvi, ferme restando le leggi di questo mondo, appare altrettanto assurdo e indesiderabile quanto vivere sotto un cielo eternamente sereno’). 25. In analogous terms, this motif recurs, e.g., in the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus (Yunis 2011, sections 246a–247c). 26. The Sanskrit term para- may mean ‘superior, supreme’ and ‘other’ as well. All the ancient commentators of the Kaṭha agree in taking it in the sense of ‘superior’ in ontological terms (Īśādidaśopaniṣadaḥ śaṅkarabhāṣyasametāḥ 1978: 81–82), glosses it by sūkṣmatara — or ‘more subtle’, meaning that it possesses a higher ontological rank. The verse of the Kaṭha Upaniṣad is taken up again in Bhagavadgītā 3.42 (Krishna Warrier 1983: 133) almost literally, and even in that case all the commentators take it in the same way (Śaṅkara, Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  93  if possible, is even more explicit: para- means prakṛṣṭa — ‘more elevated’ [in the hierarchy of being]). There is only one exception: the Tantric Abhinavagupta, who in his Bhagavadgītārthasaṃgraha (Sankaranarayanan 1985: 59) impassibly glosses para - by anya-: ‘The mind is not “superior” to the senses and the objects of the senses, it is only “different” from them’. 27. Immediately after the verse 1.3.10, things get complicated and one realises that the Upaniṣad is moving into an unequivocally Sāṃkhya scenario, albeit far from the form of classical Sāṃkhya. The Great Self of the previous verse is yet another intermediate dimension: ‘Superior to the Great Self is the Unmanifest; superior to the Unmanifest is the Spirit (puruṣa). Superior to the Spirit there is nothing. It is the deadline, the supreme goal’ (1.3.11, Īśādidaśopaniṣadaḥ śaṅkarabhāṣyasametāḥ 1978, vol. 1: 82). 28. See, for instance, Mataṅgapārameśvarāgama, Vidyāpāda, 14.2 (Bhatt 1977: 362): ‘Permeated by the triad of the cuirasses, softly pushed by Time, enveloped by Necessity, this principle proceeds with the quality of ‘individual soul’, pertaining to the Self’. 29. No work of Bṛhaspati, the old Śaiva master (certainly earlier than the 10th century CE), has come down to us. The sentence attributed to him is quoted by Abhinavagupta in Tantrāloka 9.208c (Śāstrī and Śāstrī 1918–38, vol. 6: 168) and by Nārāyaṇakaṇṭha in his commentary on Mṛgendra Tantra (Śāstrī 1930: 208). 30. The simile is likely to be from Śivāgrayogin’s commentary on the Śivajñāna- siddhiyār. 31. Rāmakaṇṭha’s commentary on Mataṅgapārameśvarāgama, Vidyāpāda, 9.11cd et seq. (Bhatt 1977: 298). 32. abhidharmādau bhāratādau ca darśitaś cittavṛttigaṇo rāgamūla eva (Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vivṛtivimarśinī , in Śāstrī 1938–43, vol. 3: 291). 33. Here, the Śaiva philosophers refer to the Sāṃkhya doctrine of the eight bhāvas and 50 pratyayas. The bhāvas are the basic predispositions of the human mind: righteousness, knowledge, detachment, and sovereignty, along with their opposites; and the pratyayas represent the totality of the psychical processes of human life (cf. Torella 1999: 557–60). 34. Cf. Rāmakaṇṭha’s commentary on Mataṅgapārameśvarāgama, Vidyāpāda, 11.4cd–5ab (Bhatt 1977: 326). 35. A passage by Spinoza comes to mind: ‘Toward nothing do we strive, nothing do we want, we crave and desire because we judge it good; but, on the contrary, we judge something good because we strive toward it, we want it, we crave it and we desire it’ (Etica, III, prop. 9, scolio, in Bodei 2003: 61). 36. See p. 67. 37. Abhinavagupta’s authorship of the Parātrīśikā-laghuvṛtti has recently been questioned (Sanderson 2005: 142). 38. King Triśaṅku, who wanted to ascend to the heaven with his physical body, was hurled down from the heaven by the gods and then arrested midway by 94  Raffaele Torella  Viśvāmitra, thus remaining suspended in the sky; he was then transformed into a constellation. The story of Triśaṅku, so popular in India, is narrated in many texts (and with many variants); see, for instance, Rāmāyaṇa, Bālakāṇḍa, Chapters 57–60; Skanda Purāṇa, Nāgarakāṇḍa, Chapters 2–6, etc. This story also reached the West, and we can even find it condensed in a lovely poem Viswamitra the Magician by Henri Wadsworth Longfellow (1878: 63): ‘By his spells and incantations, / Up to Indra’s realms elysian / Raised Trisanku, king of nations. Indra and the gods offended / Hurled him downward, and descending / In the air he hung suspended, / With these equal powers contending. / Thus by aspirations lifted, / By misgivings downward driven, / Human hearts are tossed and drifted / Midway between earth and heaven’. 39. anyathā pāṣāṇādivat jaḍabhūmim evāpatet parameśvaravad vā saṃvidgaganam evāpapet | ubhayathāpi māyāpramātṛtābhāve vedyam api na kiṃcid iti (Parātrīśikā- laghuvṛtti, in Śāstrī 1947: 7). It is worth noting that in the many descriptions of the emanation of the universe in the form of the gradual emanation of Sanskrit phonemes found in the Śaiva scriptures, it is always the semi-vowels that are related to the cuirasses! These very subtle arguments elaborated by the Śaiva doctors are explained in Torella (1998: 55–86). 40. sahayajñāḥ prajāḥ sṛṣṭvā purovāca prajāpatiḥ | anena prasaviṣyadhvam eṣa vo ‘stv iṣṭakāmadhuk || devān bhāvayatānena te devā bhāvayantu vaḥ | parasparaṃ bhāvayantaḥ śreyaḥ param avāpsyatha || iṣṭān bhogān hi vo devā dāsyante yajña- bhāvitāḥ | tair dattān apradāyaibhyo yo bhuṅkte stena eva saḥ ||. 41. One of the traditional ancient etymologies for the word deva (‘god’) makes it derive from the root div- in the sense of ‘to take pleasure, to play, to act freely and gratuitously’. Here, Abhinavagupta is, of course, utilising this etymological artifice to introduce his daring metaphorical interpretation (gods = senses). 42. devāḥ krīḍāśīlāḥ indriyavṛttayaḥ karaṇeśvaryo devatā rahasyaśāstraprasiddhāḥ, tāḥ anena karmaṇā tarpayata, yathāsaṃbhavaṃ viṣayān bhakṣayatety arthaḥ | tṛptāś ca satyas tā vo yuṣmān ātmana eva svarūpamātrocitāpavargān bhāvayantu svātmasthitiyogyatvāt | evam anavarataṃ vyutthānasamādhisamayaparamparā- yām indriyatarpaṇatadātmasādbhāvalakṣaṇe parasparabhāvane sati śīghram eva paramaṃ śreyaḥ parasparabhedavigalanalakṣaṇaṃ brahma prāpsyatha . . . yajñatarpitāni hīndriyāṇi sthitiṃ badhnanti yatra kvāpi dhyeyādāv iti . . . ato ’yaṃ vākyārthaḥ yaḥ sukhopāyaṃ siddhim apavargaṃ vā prepsati tena indriyakautuha- nivṛttimātraphalatayaiva bhogā yathopanatam āsevyā iti ||. 43. The theme of wonder, which appeared earlier in the Śiva-sūtra as vismaya or ‘amazement’ (see below *), was destined to undergo major developments in subsequent philosophical and aesthetic speculation with the synonymous term camatkāra, used, perhaps, for the first time in a pregnant sense by Utpaladeva. ‘Wonder’ is the condition of the enlightened subject, his becoming aware of the Self and of everything under the sign of a perpetual Emotions in the Indian Philosophical–Religious Traditions  95  and infinite ‘wondering enjoyment’, as opposed to the restricted nature and automatism of ordinary consciousness. The essence of camatkāra may be identified in the act of opening oneself to experience of the all in the most intense and penetrating manner, while firmly maintaining the centre of gravity on the subject that perceives rather than on the object perceived. 44. It should be noted that the term vīra (‘hero’) is commonly adopted to designate the most famous type of Tantric adept, inclined to practices centred on energy, often consisting in tackling reality (sex, inebriating beverages, meat, etc.), whose ‘negative’ nature has to be dominated and overturned. 45. Svacchanda Tantra 7.260, in Dvivedi (1985, vol. 2: 57). 46. etajjāgarāditrayaṃ śakticakrānusaṃdhānayuktyā turyānandācchuritam yaḥ tatparāmarśānupraveśaprakarṣād vigalitabhedasaṃskāram ānandarasapravāhamayam eva paśyati, sa tritayasyāsya bhoktā camatkartā | tata eva triṣu dhāmasu yad bhogyaṃ bhoktā yaś ca prakīrtitaḥ | vedaitad ubhayam yas tu sa buñjāno na lipyate || iti nītyā niḥsapatnasvātmasāṃrājyo ’yaṃ paramānandaparipūrṇo bhavabhedagrasanapravaṇānāṃ vīrāṇām indriyāṇām īśvaraḥ svāmī, śrīmanthānabhairavasattānupraviṣṭo mahāmnāyeṣūcyate | yas tu evaṃvidho na bhavati, sa jāgarādyavasthābhir bhujyamāno laukikaḥ paśur eva | yogy api imāṃ dhārām anadhirūḍhona vīreśvaraḥ, api tu mūḍha evety uktaṃ bhavati | etac ca “yogī svacchandayogena svacchanda-gaticāriṇā | sa svacchandapade yuktaḥ svacchandasamatāṃ vrajet” ityādinā śrīsvacchandādiśāstreṣu vitatya darśitam (Chatterji 1911: 27–28). 47. yathā sātiśayavastudarśane kasyacit vismayo bhavati tathā asya mahāyogino nityaṃ tattadvedyāvabhāsāmarśābhogeṣu niḥsāmānyātiśayanavanavacamat- kāracidghanasvātmāveśavaśāt smerasmerastimitavikāsitasamastakaraṇacak- rasya yo vismayo ’a’navacchinānande svātmani aparitṛptatvena muhur muhur āścaryamāṇatā (ibid.: 29). 48. See also p. *, where other relevant passages are quoted. 49. The God Bhairava embodies the terrifying form of Śiva and represents the upsetting of all individually limited forms. 50. A strange offering in a world apparently so depersonalised as the Indian one. In actual fact, abhimāna, although meaning ‘presumption, pride’ in everyday language, is used in the philosophical lexicon to designate, within the cognitive process, the moment at which the cognition taking shape connects with a given individual ego (‘I’ perceive this vase). 51. pūrvāparakoṭyos turyasamāsvādayato madhye madhyadaśāyām avaraḥ aśreṣṭaḥ prasavo vyutthānātmā kutsitaḥ sargo jāyate (Chatterji 1911: 107–08). 52. See above*. 53. Regarding the text of this verse there is a notable fluctuation in the manu- scripts and old quotations (Torella 2000: 398, 405). 54. tasyaiva vilayopāyaḥ pradiṣṭo gurubhiḥ purā | tadāgamaparibhraṃśabhayāt spaṣṭīkṛto mayā || 4 || pūrvair nirodhaḥ kathito vairāgyābhyāsayogataḥ | ayatnena nirodho ’yam asmābhir upadiśyate || 12 || yad yan manoharaṃ kiṃcic 96  Raffaele Torella  chrutigocaram āgatam | ekāgraṃ bhāvayet tāvad yāval līnaṃ nirodhakṛt || 15 || grahaṇānīndriyāṇīha samānīti prabodhayet | samatvaṃ rāgahāneḥ syād dveṣasyopakṣayāt tathā || 18 || sarvarāgāt sahāniḥ syāt sarvadveṣāt tathaiva ca | baddhavat sarvarāgī syāt sarvadveṣṭā ca bhairavaḥ || 19 || agrāhyam indriyaṃ śūnyaṃ svātmany eva pralīyate | pralīnendriyavṛttes tu kaivalyābhyudayodayaḥ || 20 || dhāvataḥ padavikṣepaprayatnānavadhāraṇāt | niḥsaṃkalpamanovṛtteḥ paramātmā prakāśate || 24 || yatra yatra bhaved vāñchā bhojanādiṣu vastuṣu | pūrayet tāṃ yathāśakti bhavet pūrṇo nirāśrayaḥ || 28 || nābhimedhrāntare cittaṃ suratānte vinikṣipet | līyamāne ratānande nistaraṅgaḥ kṣaṇaṃ bhavet || 38 || itthaṃ pratikṣaṇaṃ yasya cittam ātmani līyate sa labdhabodhasadbhāvo jīvanmukto ’bhidhīyate || 44 ||. 55. In this connection, I would like to recall a personal experience. In the summer of 2004, I was at Helsinki for the World Sanskrit Conference. I was listening to a paper by Rama Nath Sharma, the illustrious scholar of Sanskrit grammar and the language sciences, when I was struck by a quotation, apparently taken from the Dharmaśāstras, the vast corpus of texts that have always governed the socio-religious behaviour of the orthodox Hindu. In this quotation, the body is mentioned as the prime tool in achieving dharma. Inquisitive, at the end of the conference, I approached my Indian colleague to ask him the specific source. Sharma replied (accompanying his answer with a vague smile of understanding): ‘But everybody knows’. 56. Another major challenge is represented by the universalistic approach to revelation as preached by non-dualistic Śaivism against the strict control performed by Brāhmaṇical élite (Torella 2013). 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