Śākta-Śaiva Meditation as Expanded Awareness in Medieval Kashmir

Abstract

Contemplative traditions focused on Śiva and the Goddess developed during the medieval or post-Gupta period in Kashmir, although not limited to that region. In this paper I present textual accounts of a kind of meditation and its accompanying doctrine geared towards liberation conceptualized as an expanded awareness described in Śākta-Śaiva scriptures. This Śākta-Śaiva tradition has scriptural authority in revealed texts and its vision is articulated in the philosophical discourse of the Śākta-Śaiva philosophers, Abhinavagupta and Kṣemarāja. It is the Śākta-Śaiva idea of meditation as the realization of an innate purity of awareness which is also an expanded awareness that I wish to examine.