I’d been flirting with Shaivism during the past few trips to India. It’s difficult not to, especially if one is a tantric Buddhist. For one finds overt connections such as third-eye meditations, Hathaway Yoga, the wearing of cemetery accoutrements taken from corpses, plus sexual rituals, vow-bound spiritual disciplines, and Indic gods and mythologies, suggesting a Hindu or Indic-ism shared by both. Having recently found my way into the inner sanctum of Babadam’s Jyotrilingam and participated quite fully in its strenuous puja I thought I might read up some on the Lord Shiva. Unexpectedly my biggest takeaway studying the Shiva Sutras is some insight into why Shaivist commentators have critiqued Buddhism as being “overly conceptual.” But I think what they really mean is that it’s rigorously logical.
Theory:
The Shiva Sutras, Wisdom for Life, text presented and copyrighted by Ranjit Chaudhri, 2019, is indeed easy to understand for readers reared on Scientism, Western Philosophy, and Christian Theology. That’s because its Philosophy is largely idealism and lacks Buddhism’s dialectical rigor. For example, according to this source, Kashmiri Shivaism touts itself as being nondual. But then we find out, inThe Shiva Sutras, by ‘nondual’ they mean ‘oneness.’
One of the first things I took note of, after taking Buddhist refuge in the 1970’s, were Buddhists critiquing hippies, New Age enthusiasts, and spiritualists for talking about how living beings and phenomena are ‘all one.’ The problem was beyond it being merely a cliche. It was seen as a wrong view from the standpoint of our religion’s philosophical point of view. Meaning, how one will functionally see things once Buddhist training is completed. It signaled to the well-versed Buddhist, and even me, then a neophyte, that these “all is one” people knew nothing about what was original in Buddha’s teachings. That it required a dialectical-truth telling that’s necessarily unparalleled because of its unique answers to the existential problems all beings face once born in this world. In Buddha’s day, especially during what’s called the Axial Age (see ‘Sarnath’ in this blog), the meaning of life became topical and the oppressive awareness of endless rounds of death and rebirth a staple concern of wandering sages. Buddha, after his Enlightenment, uniquely analyzed the cause of these concerns: impermanence(uncontrollable change), dissatisfaction (incessant sensuous intake), and soullessness (lack of self substantiality; fears of insignificance and ‘I’ annihilation).
The religious faith we call Buddhism is realistic, providing a system of logic, built on the established Indian logic of the Nyāya Sūtras, the Sanskrit grammar rules of Pānini (c. 5th century BCE); Vaisheshika school's analysis of atomism (c. 6th century BCE to 2nd century BCE); and the analysis of inference by Gotama himself.
One could argue—in relation to the mixing of the two tantric religions—that Buddhist logicians investigate the kind of reasoning leading to a knowledge that initiates the practice of ‘self-realization,’ a major objective of Shaivist practices, poplar in Vedantism, and prioritized in the Shiva Sutras. It’s in this superior utility that at times Buddhist logic and philosophy find its way into ‘Hinduism.’
“Buddhist logicians hold that, for inference to be a valid means of acquiring knowledge, the reason (hetu) we give to infer a conclusion must have three characteristics (trirupahetu). These characteristics are: (1) The reason must be applicable to the case we are reasoning about. (2) The reason must hold in some case similar to the case in question (sapaksa). (3) The reason must not hold in any case dissimilar to the case in question (vipaksa). Characteristic two and three are called vyapti, often translated as pervasion. They ensure that the reason has certain properties in relation to what we conclude about the case in question. Buddhist logicians are, thus, concerned with the question of what counts as valid reasons just like their contemporary Western counterparts. However, there are a couple of important differences. First, Buddhist logicians are mainly concerned with cognition and how it transitions. That is, they are concerned with a series of thoughts arising one after the other in such a way that knowledge [cum wisdom] is generated as a result.”
This is because the mind’s content, from a wider point of view is insignificant, and it’s the fact of mentation itself, once observed, that becomes significant.
“Importantly, they [Buddhist logicians] do not recognize formal principles or rules [as in Aristotelian logic] that are independent of cognition or thought involved in making an inference. For Buddhist logicians, logical inquiries are about the nature of inferential cognition and how they generate [self] knowledge.” (philarchive.com)
It should be remembered that the peerless dialectician and linguistic semanticist, Chandrakirti (seen in Tibetan Buddhism as the most faithful commentator of ‘the second Buddha’ Nagarjuna’s teachings on emptiness) followed in the great tradition of Dignaga, Dharmakirti and other original Indic logicians and Buddhist philosophers, and was also considered a Bodhisattva of the Middle Way. Both Dharmakirti and Chandrakirti writings have been appropriated by Kashmiri Shivaists.
Concerning the Shaivist tenet that “all is one” found in The Shiva Sutras commentary, it’s fair to reemploy Buddhist dialectics here which, analyzing language to discern logical truth, tells us one is already two. This is because for a thing to exist as one, there has to be a second thing, a referent, bywhich the first thing’s oneness is apprehended. Given the existence or identity of an oppositional descriptor (e.g., one as opposed to two) depends on the co-existence of at least two conditions which are opposite to each other (e.g., singularity versus plurality and, numerically, divisibility versus indivisibility) Yet, they also must depend on each other and presuppose each other (e.g., ‘the one and the many’) so as to share a common ground upon which to differentiate themselves. This is their positive aspect while the first two requirements, two opposing conditions, are their negative, opposing aspects. So while one and two are ‘one third’ mutually positive dependents, one and nothing (or emptiness, the true meaning of nonduality) have no common ground. As nothing (or emptiness) is, in a conventional sense, groundless. It is, as Buddha’s emptiness, wholly negative, with no implication of even an absence. For, again, to be in absence something has had to have been present, which the Buddha’s emptiness has never been. Nonduality without any sameness (which is also a oneness requiring an ‘other,’ or twoness, to apprehend it) can only be properly designated by a Buddhist term like emptiness, meaning all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature (svabhava). Thus its philosophical uniqueness which sets it apart from the so-called ‘nonduality’ of The Shiva Sutras.
In Nagarjuna’s Philosophy, as well as its Western equivalent, the invalidity of a oneness and revelation of an emptiness is demonstrated in the analysis of ‘wholes and parts.’ The argument concludes where one part begins and the other part ends can’t be logically discerned, even by attempting to establish ‘borders’ through shadows or an infinite regress of atomic and subatomic boundaries. (And so it also goes for the inseparability of beings, as Shantideva demonstrates in his The Bodhisattva’s Way, chap. 8, v. 91). It’s concluded then that these two concepts are mutually dependent upon each other, ultimately indistinguishable, and substantively unestablishable. Over half a millennium after Buddha taught his Doctrine on Emptiness, the above Arya Nāgārjuna reframed it logically and philosophically. Especially with his famous tetra lemma, or Four Point Analysis. Succinctly put, it says: neither this, nor that, nor both, nor not both. That ‘everything is one’ falls into the third pitfall: the unification of subject and object. This is essentially the idealist philosophical point of view which even Buddhism has entertained and expressed as in the Yogacarin school.
But then, Chandrakirti later critiqued the Yogacarin ‘view’ of their “definitive Buddhist teaching” that all is mind (citta-matra) or ideal impressions (vijñapti-matra)—later characterized as the Mind-only orConsciousness-only school—as also being provisional and not conclusive, saying, the Buddha only taught this to help people understand that suffering mainly arises due to the way we misunderstand our experience. Chandrakirti argued it was a mistake to take this literally as an ontological and phenomenological statement, and come to the conclusion that only consciousness exists—even if deemed a ‘God Consciousness,’ as in The Shiva Sutras. For, according to the Buddha’s Doctrine of Dependent Origination, even a super consciousness is dependent upon the arising of grosser consciousnesses and their phenomenon, sharing a common ultimate ground, even while being both the same and not the same. Therefore, not being substantively different, a God Consciousness, or even a oneness, would not be logically independent and thus arguably ‘superior’ or above anything else.
Practice:
That being said, as a yogi and ritualist, Shaivism is compelling and so prevalent and active throughout India and Nepal, it’s all too easy to join in and perhaps understand how Guru Rinpoche got his trident.
Bodhgaya to Deograh, pronounced Devagrah, is a less than six hour drive from Bodhgaya, relatively short for one of my Indian destination, which is one reason I initially picked it. But what I had in mind was to go see the discovery of a new Buddhist site where there’s some caves with carvings that the alltrails.com site attractively promote, saying there’s “another ancient set of temples nearby Deogarh. They have a long history associated with many spectacular sculptures carved on the walls of these cave systems. These caves lie deep within the Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary and the hike to the caves is filled with lush green surroundings that are not only green but highly biodiverse as well, with many different species of animals, birds, and plants to observe.” Of course this formidable hike was never going to happen once we decided to do puja at the Shiva Mandir there known as ‘Babadam,’ among other holy epithets.
I first visited a Jyotrilingam temple while visiting the Ellora Caves and staying at Hotel Kailas. I first heard the temple’s unusually captivating chanting, and then a friendly guide escorted me next door to what turned out to be the twelfth, and final, Jyotrilingam temple. It’s said Parvati, Shiva’s wife, named the linga there ‘Grishneshwar,’ meaning God of Friction, because it was created out the friction of rubbing her two hands. While it’s advertised anyone can enter the temple and its inner chambers, to enter the Garbhagrha of the temple, local Hindu tradition demands men are segregated from the women and must go bare-chested. I witnessed this energized, bare-chested devotional fest via CCTV just outside the inner quarters of the Mandir. At that time, I was not exactly excited to engage in such an intimate devotional exercise, especially in a religion which may not be wholly accepting of me. Non-Hindus (or people obviously non-national) are often excluded from such temple privileges. I’ve limited or excluded before. But then again, as advertised, maybe I could’ve entered after simply removing my shirt. In any event, I could see plenty by the TV screen, and observed the lingam, made from black basalt stone, was exceptional. Also a specialty there, is that the lingam, as I witnessed, is smeared with ashes by its devotees.
This voyeuristic exposure to the Jyotrilingam pilgrim’s circuit, as it turned out, was just foreplay. For on my next trip back to India, just three months later—where my original goal was to complete visiting all the major Shakyamuni and Guru Rinpoche pilgrimage sites—I was to enter the garbhagriha (sanctum santorum) at Deograh and achieve what some pilgrims never do. That’s to actually touch the sacred lingam, representative of Shiva’s secret member he compassionately severed (as the divinity tale goes) for the sake of all living beings to practice worshipping. So a third, impromptu pilgrimage—a crown jewel of Shiva’s holy places—came to me out of the blue.
I initially wrote about this challenging pilgrimage—to the Jyotrilingam temple at Deograh—to an American friend, a Muslim, who also lives in Siem Reap:
“This is something like the Haj and requires fasting and walking barefoot along an elevated covered bridge, emptying into several large queuing rooms for a distance of two kilometers or so, the whole thing spanned 7 or 8 hours. The danger of being trampled was very real, as some would sit and then have to jump up when the crowd surged. Also, heat prostration dangers, and such, were present. Thankfully it was only a medium hot day. The puja culminated within a sanctum santorum where one has to fight their way to the middle to squirt sweet milk and water collected from the Ganges onto a 3000-plus year old lingam. The object is to touch the lingam for as long as possible before they literally throw you out. At that time the primordial nature of Shiva, or Shivanatha experience, is transferred. One is initiated in many ways during this puja because of its austerity, and then, violent communion with the primordial. Also, it’s a total submersion into Indic ‘manners’ with all its moles and freckles. There’s a current internet meme that says ‘India is not for beginners.’ Even with all the trips I’ve made there, starting in 1980, I felt very much like that beginner. As an observant outsider, Indians seem all of one mind, but also of many, as they appear at times to be stubborn, contrary individualists. When they communicate it can often be mistaken as a squabble. While they are influenced and linked by spiritual principles such the Vedanta Oversoul and ‘the Brahmin in the Atman,’ it seems, as there’s so many of them (now the world’s largest population) that when they talk they’re trying to break down or through the other person's superable ‘otherness.’ It’s a very confrontative style, reminiscent of New York City denizens. Only, that singular but many-minded nature is every where you go there. Interestedly, one of the smartest people I’ve met in Cambodia, an Austrian, called India a multiverse, though he hadn’t been yet. This is astute. No doubt I’ll be writing a piece entitled something like Inside the Joyti Lingam (sic) experience, and I’ll push it your way.”
Testimonial:
As a religious experience the pilgrimage to Babadam was entirely original to me. Mostly because it was entirely social, especially when compared with Vajrayana practices which promote isolation of body, voice, and mind. Functionally, that could mean an isolated ngong dro retreat on foundation practices, where one spends one or two months taking refuge in the Guru, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, accompanied with a full prostration. These are done 500 to 1000 repetitions each session, three or four sessions a day. Equally popular, a retreat where you observe 8 or more prati moksha (liberation) vows restricting one’s customary and usual, habituated behavior.
While the Jyotrilingam pilgrimage is done en masse, in numbers with many digits, every day for weeks at a time, many austerities are built in and taken for granted. Some devotees will walk to and from the Ganga River for days, perhaps weeks, to obtain holy water they then carry back in decorative clay or ordinary plastic containers to deposit upon the lingam. A lingam some believe was cleaved from Shiva’s own incarnate body, and then embodied—similar to a Nirmanakaya emanation—into twelve or more millennia-lasting basalt or hard-stone representations. Taken from the Shiva Purana (literature), the origin of the lingam, known as Shiva-linga, was first manifested in front of the gods Brahma and Vishnu as a beginning-less and endless cosmic pillar (stambha) which is the cosmic, ur causes of causes, establishing Shiva’s supremacy.
About the Jyotrilingams in particular, there are many origin stories. For example: “It is said that Ravana, an ardent devotee of Lord Shiva from the Ramayana, attempted to carry the sacred lingam to Lanka and, while doing so, Lord Shiva crushed the lingam to thwart his efforts, leaving behind the fragments. These fragments are believed to have become the ‘Mahakaleshwar Jyotirlinga’ and are enshrined in the temple.” Also, “legends suggest that Lord Shiva himself chose to reside in the form of the ‘Mahakaleshwar Jyotirlinga’ (lingam of light) at Ujjain to bless his devotees. The lingam is known as “Swayambhu,” meaning self-arisen or self-manifested, underscoring its divine nature.” (shivshankartirthyatra.com/blog/mahakaleshwar-temple-ujjain)
And they appear to compete—in the minds of the adherents—with each other: “The most sacred of these, according to some, is at the Kashi Vishwanath (Vishweshwar) Temple in Varanasi, which is home to the Vishwanath Jyotrilingam shrine, which is perhaps the most sacred of Hindu shrines.” (wiki.org)
Concerning the procreative prowess of Shaivism in general, there’s a shastra circulating—with uncertain credibility—that after Shiva’s compassionate, self-castration to save the world by offering up the Shiva-linga as an object of worship, Shiva reincarnated as a mare so he could mate with a well-endowed stallion. There is admittedly a level of overt sexual energy—shakti—penetrating the entire puja, that builds the closer one gets to releasing their holy water upon the lingam.
My flirtation with Lord Shiva, as mentioned above, suddenly became quite a commitment once I found myself at Babadam (Deograh) Jyotrilingam. There I ended up standing barefoot (with bad feet) in a jam-packed, seven hour, slow moving line—each one of us conspicuously holding a container—of sacred Ganga water, mostly taken from Sulganath some ways away. We were all eagerly waiting—hours upon hours—to pour out our esteemed offerings over the 3000-plus year old Shiva Lingam within the Shiva Mandir’s garbhagriha. It took all the mental discipline I could muster to rise above the physical and mental duress from exposure to hot weather, no food and little intake of water, and the deprivation of any ‘personal space,’ whatsoever.
Fortuitously, or not, the first leg of our journey above the city streets within a wire mesh covered walkway, had numbered signs, starting with a countdown number in the sixties or seventies. These painful placards, marked the distance to the first cueing room, about one kilometer away. I remember after an hour or two we started to approach number 49–of which I’m slightly superstitious—and I recoiled some, thinking things could get rough from here on out. An hour or so later we approached number 17 and I felt even more distressed, as it too resonated, but with even more unlucky dates and significations. But being no stranger to challenging and rigorous Buddhist practices, I recognized the mental negativity as curative signs of mental purification.
Once we coursed through all the numbered segments, we arrived at a cueing room. Just before entering, I started to relax by leaning up against the wire mesh confine of the walkway. This was a mistake as it drained me of some determined strength. Then, as we began funneling into the room, which I thought was a holding space before entering the temple, I began to get badly shoved in a raucous rush that ended up stranding me some distance from my friends. As it turned out, there would be two other such cueing rooms, where hundreds or more people were confined by chrome bars, forming a dozen or more rows, in which we first walked one way and then came back the other, over and over again. Adding to the torment, I kept passing by my friends, two lanes away, taking pictures of them, and feeling more discouraged and alienated each time. This happened many times, until two lanes merged at a turning point and they were suddenly adjacent to me. So we asked others’ forgiveness and I jumped the bars and joined them. I immediately felt a thousand percent better. I commented at this time, concerning our purgation, that my mind was starting to leave my body. My new travel companion smiled, as she was experiencing something similar. She also said most of the people in line were disciplined devotees of Shiva, probably practicing various forms of renunciation like not smoking, drinking, and observing the puja’s mandatory fasting.
In my case, by the time I reached the inner sanctum, my bare feet were throbbing. And while disappointed to find out I wasn’t as nice of a person as I’d like to be, at least my ego was impressed by having shoved people back, sending five or six shovers stumbling willy-nilly at a time. I was out of shape and ill tempered with such close-quarters contact as I used to encountered daily riding the New York City’s subways. But even there, at least everyone attempted to some personal space. Here, there was none. It’s the same with Indian driving habits—some very close calls! Like one motor bike’s handlebar mirror passing just under another’s while one driver overtakes another.
In any event, herein lie one of the purifying austerities, as any participant could at times also be angered by the constant invasiveness. Fights would start to break out but reflexively the calming voice of an emotionally centered participant’s reason would quell it. In this way, the yatra, or procession, with thousands of people seemed to police itself. But for me, as a foreigner, and a racial anomaly in the yatra, this kind of anger-purging was amplified. As a purifying, ascetic exercise, it seemed much more potent than hundreds of prostrations a day, after which one could at least pride themselves, if in nothing else, in a spiritual athleticism.
It’s said the present yuga or age we live in, the third of four—the last being when a wrathful Shiva destroys the universe—is one of intense social contention. If so, then the yatra at a Jyotrilingam temple would be the right ascetic purifier—with everyone pressed together and having to practice compassionate self-discipline. Both to receive their god’s blessings and also to observe the yatra’s impromptu, but strict self-policing by the other pilgrims in line.
Like crossing any highly desired border under strict police control, migrants often employ human smugglers to get inside. So too, after shuffling in a slow moving line for up to twenty-four hours, once at the Shiva Mandir garbhagriha, a room that at Babadam can squeeze-in up to around 20 or 30 adherents, one is approached by a guide just before entering and often hired to insure a successful puja experience. This means depositing one’s offering of Ganga water, flowers and such, upon the lingam, and most importantly actually to touch or make as much physical contact with the holy stone as possible!
Once inside Babadam’s inner sanctum, it seemed there was for many nothing left but a riven drive to have spiritual intercourse with an all powerful, living god-legend of 108 popular names (with over a thousand attributed). As my friend later commented, I want more of whatever was in that room. I had to agreed, though I wasn’t sure why. For me, almost the entire puja had been done under physical and emotional duress. She also commented, outside the garbhagriha, when I obviously appeared out of sorts to her, that I was use to doing a quiet samadhi in a calmer environment—if not a wholly isolated one. Conversely, inside that people-packed room was an elementally untrammeled energy, like a hot electrical socket—shakti and primordiality—the faithful could plug into just by touching the millennial charged lingam.
My experience of Jyotrilingam reminds me in some ways of the ‘hard shelled’ Baptist church meeting, where I ended up accepting Jesus Christ as my personal savior, was washed in the blood of the lamb, and then ended up speaking in tongues. Similarly, I had also attended that religious gathering because my then friends (college roommates) converted to Pentecostals while I was away for the summer and then, upon my return, enlisted me to attend. At the time, I considered myself a lapsed Catholic, practicing Jungian Phycology, keeping a dream journal as a ‘transcendent function,’ and having it read by one of my college professor who’d graduated from the Jungian Institute in Zurich. In other words, I was actually ‘bewildered and confused,’ according to Buddhist Doctrine.
Here however, at Babadam, I was way beyond confused and bewildered, and started to become belligerent. Especially after having been forcefully shoved twice while inside the chute anterior to the inner sanctum. It’s lowered tin ceiling is loudly banged upon whenever a new person or group enters. It’s here I was rudely shoved inside and I actually turned around and considered punching the person-stuffing policemen in the face. But our wrangler, whom we hired outside the inner sanctum, coaxed me instead toward the crowded center. Once there, I got a brief glimpse of a wetted be-flowered protuberance, glistening, sticky, and worn down by millennia of having been mauled. Stretching my arms out, competing with others elbows and shoulders, I hastily poured my Ganga water on the Shiva lingam, taking little joy in it, while at the same shouting praises like everyone else. My participation to me at the time seemed compulsively social and strictly ritualistic. Later, however, it struck me we’d all played a significant role in the Jyotrilingam puja. For while we poured out our sacred substances, making holy offerings to Lord Shiva, it was also as if we were the consecrating deities—both inner and outer, like those who give Abhiśeka during tantric initiation—sprinkling consciousness blessings upon our own selves.
All too soon however I got shoved away from the center and stumbled back toward my handler. He attempted to focus me, and then pointed to a sudden opening in the crowd, saying, “Touch it, touch it!” So I stumbled—my bruised bare feet hobbled at that point—toward a breech in the frothy pilgrims’ rush. And then, pressing my right thumb down upon my little and ring fingers (a hand gesture often made as a twelve year old Boy Scout) I bent over and rubbed my two extended fingers resolutely over the granular surface of the ancient phallus.
At that point, being of two religions—Hindu and Buddhist—it was then as if I was of neither.
Yet, according to the true tenet and pith of Lord Buddha, that comes from the guru’s mouth, I was not neither as well. A confirmation of Nagarjuna’s Four Point Analysis. So the truth was there, too, but in this people-saturated setting it seemed rudely so. If this was a test of my Buddhist faith, then it held and was amplified.
Standing up unsteadily, I was then met by incoming touchers who rudely knocked the glasses on my fully bearded face askew. And propelled toward the exit—a foreign baba completely discombobulated—I was a sight of a seemingly wild devotion, registering concerned looks of two Shaivist women as I came hurdling their way.
The End
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