#tantra

"Lời cuối cùng ông nói với con trai là, "Hãy lắng nghe: tiền không phải là tất cả và con không thể mua mọi thứ bằng tiền. Có những thứ vượt lên tiền, và một mình tiền không thể khiến ai hạnh phúc."

Bhairava Stotra

Śiva Stuti of Śrī Abhinavagupta

vyāpta carācara, bhāva viśeṣaṃ

cinmayam ekam, anantam anādim |

bhairavanātham, anātha śaraṇyaṃ

tanmaya citta, tayā hṛidi vande || 1

I, Abhinavagupta, with one point devotion, am praying to that supreme all-pervading Lord Śiva,

who is himself present in each and everything that exists, and who through realization reveals

himself as the one limitless Bhairavanātha the protector of the helpless.

tvanmayam etad, aśeṣam idānīṃ

bhāti mama tvad, anugraha śaktyā |

tvam ca maheśa, sadaiva mamātmā

svātma mayaṃ mama, tena samastam || 2

By the energy of your grace it has been revealed to me that this vibrating universe is your own

existence. Thus, O Lord Śiva, this realization has come to me that you are my own soul and as

such this universe is my own expression and existence.

svātmani viśva, gate tvayi nāthe

tena na saṃsṛiti, bhīteḥ kathāsti |

sat svapi durdhara, duḥkha vimoha

trāsa vidhāyiṣu, karma gaṇeṣu || 3

O possessor of everything, through your devotees, bound by karma and conditioning of mind, are

caught in the net of destiny that arouses troubles and bondage, still they are not afraid of the fret

and fever of this world. Having realized this universe as your own existence they are not afraid

of worldly difficulties, because fear exists only when there is some else to inflict it; but where is

none other than you how can fear arise. antaka māṃ prati, mā dṛiśamenāṃ

krodha kārala, tamāṃ vida dhīhi |

śaṃkara sevana, cintana dhīro

bhīṣaṇa bhairava, śakti mayo smi || 4

O angel of death, do not look towards me with wrathful and frightening eyes as I am always

absorbed in the worship of Lord Śiva. Through constant devotion, meditation and reflection, I

have become steadfast and courageous, one with the energy of the terrifying Bhairava. Thus,

your dreadful and frightening looks can do me no harm.

ittham upoḍha, bhavan maya saṃvit

dīdhiti dārita, bhūri tamisraḥ |

mṛityur yamāntaka, karma piśācair

nātha namostu, na jātu bibhemi || 5

O Lord Bhairava, I offer salutations to you who has awakened me to the realization that

everything in existence is you alone. As a result of this awakening the darkness of my mind has

been destroyed and I am neither frightened of the evil family of demons nor am I afraid of Yama,

the fearful Lord of death.

prodita satya, vibodha marīci

prokṣita viśva, padārtha satatvaḥ |

bhāva parāmṛita, nirbhara pūrṇe

tvayy aham ātmani, nivṛittim emi || 6

O Lord Śiva, it is through your existence, revealed to me by real knowledge, that I realize all

attachments and all that exists in this universe is activated by you. It is by this awakening that my

mind becomes saturated with immortal devotion and I experience supreme bliss. mānasa gocaram, eti yadaiva

kleśa daśā tanu, tāpa vidhātri |

nātha! tadaiva, mama tvadabheda

stotra paṛāmṛtita, vṛiṣṭi rudeti || 7

O Lord, sometimes I feel misery which arouses torment in my mind, but at the same moment,

blessed by a shower of your grace, a clean and clear vision of my oneness with you arises, the

impact of which my mind feels appeased.

śaṇkara satyam, idaṃ vrata dāna

snāna tapo bhava, tāpa vināśi |

tāvaka śastra, parāmṛita cintā

sindhyati cetasi, nir vṛitti dhārā || 8

O lord Śiva, it is said that through charity, ritual bath and the practices of penance the troubles of

worldly existence subside, but even more than this, by remembrance of the sacred śāstras and

your words alone the current of immortality like a stream of peace enters my heart.

nṛityati gāyati, hṛiṣyati gāḍhaṃ

saṃvid iyaṃ mama, bhairavanātha |

tvaṃ priyam āpya, sudarśanam ekaṃ

durlabham anya, janaiḥ sama yajñam || 9

O Lord Bhairava, through my utmost faith I have perceived you in the unique sacrifice of

oneness, which otherwise is not possible through performing mountains of rituals. Being filled

with your presence my consciousness intensely dances and sings, enjoying its own ecstasy. vasu rasapauṣe, kṛiṣṇa daśam yām

abhinavaguptaḥ, stavam imam akarot |

yena vibhur bhava, maru san tāpaṃ

śamayati jhaṭiti, janasya dayāluḥ || 10

O compassionate Lord, under the influence of your glory and for the benefit of your worshipers,

I Abhinavagupta have compose this hymn. By meditation and recitation of this hymn within a

moment that merciful Lord Bhairava destroys the torments and sufferings springing from this wilderness of samsara.

Translation: Mark Dyczkowski

God is omniform as well as transcendent to all forms.

His relationship to forms is kindred to that between the water and the mirror..And thus is indicatory of His pervasion of the entire world both mobile and immobile.

Walk into any devotional shop in India and you can buy a calendar. Lakshmi on a lotus, coins falling out of her hand at a rate that would alarm a central banker. Saraswati, white, serene, veena across her knee. Kali, if the shop is feeling brave, tongue out, standing on her husband, but printed in a palette that somehow makes it look festive.

What you will not find on the wall of the shop is Dhumavati. Nobody prints a Dhumavati calendar. She is old. She is a widow. She is the colour of smoke, she rides a crow, her chariot has no horses, and she carries a winnowing basket, which is a tool for separating what you keep from what you throw away. The texts call her tall, trembling, hungry, dishevelled and, translating politely, bad-tempered. She is explicitly inauspicious. Hanging her above your shop counter would be a statement.

And yet she is one of the ten. Not a marginal figure the tradition tolerates. Enshrined, named, given a seat, given a mantra, given a place in a formal list that a great many serious people have organised their inner lives around.

THE TEN MAHAVIDYAS

The Das Mahavidya, the ten wisdom goddesses, are Kali, Tara, Tripura Sundari, Bhuvaneshvari, Bhairavi, Chinnamasta, Dhumavati, Bagalamukhi, Matangi and Kamala. Most people meet the set through its two friendliest members. Kali has become a global export, printed on tote bags by people who would be startled to learn what a cremation ground actually smells like. Kamala is Lakshmi wearing a different hat: lotus, elephants, gold, the goddess everyone is comfortable inviting home.

The other eight are where it gets strange, and where it gets interesting.

Chinnamasta has cut off her own head. She stands holding it in one hand, and from the stump of her neck three streams of blood arc outward: two into the mouths of her attendants, and one into the mouth of her own severed head, which is drinking. She is standing on a copulating couple. Whatever you were expecting from a wisdom goddess, this is probably not it.

Bagalamukhi is turmeric yellow, and her defining gesture is that she has a demon by the tongue. Her power is stambhana: stopping. Not killing, not defeating. Arresting. She is the goddess of the sentence that dies in your enemy's throat. People petition her for lawsuits.

Matangi is the outcaste. She is worshipped, deliberately and doctrinally, with polluted offerings, the leftover food that orthodox practice treats as untouchable. In a civilisation that spent millennia building elaborate architecture around purity, someone sat down and installed the goddess of ritual pollution inside the canon and gave her the veena. She is the tantric Saraswati. Speech, music, and the specific power of the word that comes from outside the sanctioned mouth.

Bhairavi is heat, the scorch of practice itself, the discomfort of actually doing the thing rather than reading about it. Tara is the one who catches you mid-fall. Bhuvaneshvari is space, the world as a body you are already inside. Tripura Sundari is beauty so complete it functions as an argument.

WHAT THE LIST IS ACTUALLY CLAIMING

The standard origin narrative has Sati, refused permission to attend her father's sacrifice, multiplying into ten forms and surrounding Shiva in every direction. A domestic argument that escalates into a cosmology. It is a wonderful story and, as an account of how a canon forms, it is also probably a piece of retrofitting, an attempt to hold a set of very old, very local, mutually inconvenient goddesses inside one narrative frame. I wrote about how those seams show here: https://musinara.com/das-mahavidya-origin-story/

But the more interesting question isn't where the list came from. It's why nobody quietly dropped the difficult ones.

Every tradition prunes. Awkward gods get demoted, absorbed, relabelled as demons, or simply forgotten because nobody kept building them temples. Dhumavati should have gone. Chinnamasta should have gone. Matangi, by any calculation of respectability, should certainly have gone. Instead they were kept, ranked, ritualised, and each given her own seed syllable with real precision: https://musinara.com/beej-mantras-of-the-goddess/

You do not build that kind of infrastructure around a goddess you are embarrassed by.

The ten are not ten aspects of a nice thing. They are ten refusals to pretend.

What the set asserts, quietly and without ever quite saying it in prose, is that wisdom and auspiciousness are different categories, and that confusing them is the mistake. Widowhood, disgrace, hunger, paralysis, decapitation, social pollution: these are not obstacles on the road to knowledge. They are, the list insists, knowledge. Dhumavati knows something Lakshmi structurally cannot know, because Lakshmi has never lost anything. Chinnamasta knows what it costs to feed something. Matangi knows what the sanctioned circle looks like from outside it.

A tradition that only sanctified prosperity would have nothing to say to most people most of the time. Somebody, a long time ago, understood that, and built ten seats instead of two.

Experience a guided Rahu Mantra Meditation with the sacred chant:

AUM RAAM RAHAVE NAMAHA

This meditation invites you to connect with the vibration of the Rahu Mantra while bringing awareness to clarity, intuition, and inner peace.

Enhance your intuition and dissolve mental confusion by chanting the Rahu Mantra. Let the North node of the Moon support your forward momentum in your life and help you make good decisions.

These invocatory verses are from the first chapter of Tantrāloka, composed by the illustrious teacher Abhinavagupta (950-1045 CE).

Recitation

vimala kalāśray-ābhinava sṛṣṭi mahā jananī

bharita tanuśca pañcamukha gupta-rucir janakaḥ |

tadubhaya yāmala sphurita bhāva visargam ayaṁ

hṛdayam anuttar-āmṛta kulaṁ mama saṁsphuratāt ॥ 1

naumi cit-pratibhāṁ devīṁ parāṁ bhairava yoginīm |

mātṛ-māna-prameyāṁśa śūlām-buja kṛtās-padām ॥ 2

naumi devīṁ śarīrasthāṁ nṛtyato bhairavākṛte |

prāvṛṇ megha ghana-vyoma vidyullekhā-vilāsinīm ॥ 3

dīpta jyotiś chaṭāpluṣṭa bheda bandha trayaṁ sphurat |

stat-jñāna śūlaṁ satpakṣa vipakṣotkartan-akṣamam ॥ 4

svatantrya śaktiḥ krama saṁsisṛkṣā

kramātmatā ceti vibhor vibhūtiḥ |

tadeva devā trayam antarāstām-

anuttaraṁ me prathayat svarūpam ॥ 5

tad-devatā vibhavabhā vimahā marīci-

cakreśvarā yitanija sthitir eka eva |

devīsuto gaṇapatiḥ sphurad indu kāntiḥ

samyak samucchalayatān mama saṁvidabdhim ॥ 6

itthaṁ sva-śakti-kiraṇau-ghanuti-prabandhān

ākarṇ-ya deva yadi me vrajasi prasādam |

tenāśu sarva-janatāṁ nija-śāsan-āmśu-

saṁ-śāntitākhila-tamaḥ-paṭalāṁ vidheyāḥ ॥

Translation

vimala kalāśray-ābhinava sṛṣṭi mahā jananī

bharita tanuśca pañcamukha gupta-rucir janakaḥ |

tadubhaya yāmala sphurita bhāva visargam ayaṁ

hṛdayam anuttar-āmṛta kulaṁ mama saṁsphuratāt ॥ 1

Salutations to the divine Mother in the form of supreme energy (parā śakti).

O divine Mother! From your abode of supreme purity you create this entire universe in an ever refreshing way. Salutations to Bhairava, the great father, whose nature is filled with the five energies of creation, protection, destruction, concealing and revealing. And my own mothers name was Vimalā, because she was residing in the purity of God consciousness, and my birth was a great festival not only for her, but for all my ancestors. So let the essence of my Being, which has come forth by the union of my mother and father, and which is filled with the supreme nectar of God consciousness (anuttara aṁṛta), blossom and vibrate in this whole universe.

naumi cit-pratibhāṁ devīṁ

parāṁ bhairava yoginīm |

mātṛ-māna-prameyāṁśa

śūlām-buja kṛtās-padām ॥ 2

Salutations to that Bhairava yoginī! The supreme energy (parā) which is the light of God consciousness and which is one with supreme Bhairava. To that supreme bhairava yoginī, established and seated on the central lotus which rest on the central spike of triśūla, I offer salutations!

naumi devīṁ śarīrasthāṁ

nṛtyato bhairavākṛte |

prāvṛṇ megha ghana-vyoma

vidyullekhā-vilāsinīm ॥ 3

Salutations to aparā devī, the inferior energy, who is situated in the gross body of Bhairava, the real dancer. Like lightening from the dense clouds of the rainy season, She is the light which has come out from the objective world, and which shines in the form of God consciousness.

dīpta jyotiś chaṭāpluṣṭa

bheda bandha trayaṁ sphurat |

stat-jñāna śūlaṁ satpakṣa

vipakṣotkartan-akṣamam ॥ 4

Let that sharp pointed triśūla of Bhairava – filled with will, knowledge and action – have predominance in knowledge only. And let that jñāna-śūla remain in such a way that it destroys the opposites of the highest state of bliss (jagadānanda). May that jñāna-śūla destroy all the three bondages by its flame of absolute divine God consciousness.

svatantrya śaktiḥ krama saṁsisṛkṣā

kramātmatā ceti vibhor vibhūtiḥ |

tadeva devā trayam antarāstām-

anuttaraṁ me prathayat svarūpam ॥ 5

O supreme Bhairava! You alone possess the three glorious energies of absolute independence, of the will of desiring the world of succession, and of the world of succession itself. Let these three glorious energies remain in my heart in such a way that they reveal to me that supreme nature of God consciousness.

tad-devatā vibhavabhā vimahā marīci-

cakreśvarā yitanija sthitir eka eva |

devīsuto gaṇapatiḥ sphurad indu kāntiḥ

samyak samucchalayatān mama saṁvidabdhim ॥ 6

May Gaṇeśa, who is known as Cakreśvara – the Supreme Lord of the triple wheel of energies – who is the only son of the Supreme Goddess, and who is glorified with the radiance of the full moon embodying the nature of the Self; let that Gaṇapti vibrate and penetrate my ocean of consciousness, and let that ocean shine everywhere and vibrate in such a way that it pervades the whole universe!

Concluding verse from Abhinavagupta’s Kramastotra

itthaṁ sva-śakti-kiraṇau-ghanuti-prabandhān

ākarṇ-ya deva yadi me vrajasi prasādam |

tenāśu sarva-janatāṁ nija-śāsan-āmśu-

saṁ-śāntitākhila-tamaḥ-paṭalāṁ vidheyāḥ ॥

O mother Divine! Having heard the spontaneous outpourings of my heart in the form of these incessant hymns, I pray You ordain that the sole outcome of this effort be a flood of Thy sweet grace in the form of infinite light, which will instantly tear asunder and dispel the darkness covering humanity.