The Development of the Tantras in the Context of Buddhism and the Upanishads — a talk by Dr. Mark Dyczkowski at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, June 15, 2010
“The mother is glorious, she is the ever new creation, and her foundation the pure energy of consciousness that manifests manifoldly”
In this talk, after his introduction, Dr. Dyczkowski covered the first verse of the Tantrāloka, followed by short but fantastic readings on the Tantra of the Three-Headed Bhairava and the Twelve Kālīs, concluding with a Q&A.
In the introduction, he presented a bird’s-eye view of how the tantric traditions provided a philosophical system which ultimately became an exegetical model through which subsequent tantric traditions developed a theory of consciousness, a theory of self and a theory of deity that can be considered the most sophisticated analytical model developed in the Indian subcontinent.
To elucidate this, he presents how the Śaiva masters had to fully leverage the tools of classical Indian philosophy to tackle the objections of the Buddhists while accommodating the best of the Upanishads.
To sum up, the thinking can be categorized into process theories of reality and non-process theories of reality. We can associate the non-process theories (Upanishads) with space and the process theories (Buddhism) with time. Kashmir Shaivism bridges these two. On one side, the insubstantial indefinable that developed in some schools — a kind of streaming consciousness engaged in perception that constantly streams until it stills in a condition that is ineffable, and that is insight. On the other side, the view in which consciousness is a fundamental, empirically indefinable, pure witnessing consciousness that also ultimately escapes the relationship between subject and object and comes to rest in the ineffability of its absolute nature, transcending empirical definitions. Both of these views mostly led to understanding the world as transitory, phenomenal, its phenomenal nature inexplicable — in some way not fully real.
By the 6th–7th century AD, when these discourses had developed to quite a complex level and had been understanding, variously criticizing and stimulating one another, the Tantras developed. They presupposed an implied notion and perception of reality as dynamic and self-regenerating, manifesting perpetually in an amazing proliferation of forms, divine forms, while at the same time remaining, without contradiction, insubstantial, formless and non-empirically definable — both of these situations considered simultaneously to be deity.
ATK is delighted to present the first 35 minutes of the audio recording to fellow seekers.
Listen
Introduction at CIIS, San Francisco (37 min)
Email support: If you have questions of a more personal or individualized nature, please email info@anuttaratrikakula.org, and we will respond to your question confidentially and appropriately. For more advanced intellectual or content-related matters, we will forward your question to Dr. Mark Dyczkowski to respond to you directly.
We hope you enjoy this lecture and that you will join us for more as we go forward.
OM SAUḤ PARĀYAI NAMAḤ