Crazy Wisdom {The Eight Aspects of Padmasambhava}

Book Review: Crazy Wisdom {The Eight Aspects of Padmasambhava}– by Chogyam Trungpa, edited by Sherab Chodzin  (Shambhala 1991)

This book stemmed from a series of lectures given by Chogyam Trungpa during two week-long crazy wisdom seminars in December 1972 following a three-month retreat where he presumably contemplated what he would teach in North America now that he had been here a few years. He encountered here a quest for experience among young people experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs and spiritual techniques. Apparently, the first lecture was given right after the retreat with him not having slept at all the previous night and day. His teaching style would change to a more methodical one after these Crazy Wisdom Seminars. The teachings follow a request to teach about the eight aspects of Padmasambhava. Trungpa Rinpoche chose the title of Crazy Wisdom to convey in an informal manner these eight aspects. Each chapter ends with questions and answers from the teaching sessions.

He notes at the very beginning that the subject is very difficult and may be confusing to some, presumably due to mixing different levels and styles of instruction. Padmasambhava was a beloved Indian teacher who brought Buddhist teachings to Tibet. The Tibetans of the time were uncultured shamanist peoples. He is credited with “taming” the wild Tibetan people, and with introducing them to new ways of experiencing metaphysics and spiritual practices. Trungpa notes that one can make a crude analogy of Padmasambhava teaching Tibetans to Tibetans teaching Americans in modern times, not that Americans are wild and uncultured, but that they are predisposed to what he calls “spiritual materialism” which is the idea that merely “buying” into an idea one can be healed by it and come to metaphysical understanding. Spiritual materialism, he suggests, is chasing an ideal and formulating conclusions without actual understanding. A better approach is to meditate on our own confusion without seeking immediate answers but to go deeper into our chaos and neuroses to seek a deeper understanding without the overriding goal of an answer in verbal communicative terms. He says, we seek until we give up hope. “This hopelessness is the essence of crazy wisdom.” Hopelessness is also fearlessness. This process of going deeper within has the effect of ridding us of our preconceptions so that we lose our reference points. Such a psychological process is connected to the eight aspects of Padmasmbhava and he suggests that his teaching of discussing these aspects can be such a penetration. It is important to avoid the habit of trying to grade oneself on a spiritual path as that is the snag of spiritual materialism. The spiritual journey is “ongoingly ruthless,” he says, and there are no resting places for self-congratulations. This ruthlessness implies not giving in to hope and fear. Crazy wisdom is a “primordial craziness,” free of seductive delusions and distractions. In spiritual materialism the goal is often to confirm ideas, to see things as one idealizes them rather than to see things as they are. In spiritual materialism there is a goal but in transcending it there is no goal.

“Padmasambhava’s way is that of transcending spiritual materialism, of developing basic sanity. 

 Developing basic sanity is a process of working on ourselves in which the path itself rather than the attainment of a goal becomes the working basis.”

Trungpa mentions three categories that develop in the journey: completeness/totality of the path, energy/play on the path, and practicality of the path. He notes that the spiritual path does not need to be labeled – all of our mundane activity is included as well, how we relate. The illusory division of self and other creates the equally illusory division of samsara and nirvana. Spirituality is not really the path, he says, but a way of conditioning our path and our energy. The three categories above are how we condition the path, how we relate to it. We relate to it in terms of the totality of our experience, our energy and play, and the practicality of it. This is our motivation. Now he relates these three aspects (totality, energy, and practicality) to the three bodies of the Buddha: dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya. He calls them the psychological aspects of Buddha Nature. He explains that the eight aspects of Padmasambhava are not lineal stages but more like a wheel, being eight aspects of any situation. He explains the Tantric approach as unmasking from the inside rather than from the outside. Tantra works from the assumption that we are inherently enlightened so that we merely remove the obscurations to our enlightened nature rather than “become” enlightened, what we already are.

Metaphorically, we tend to see enlightenment as an adult phenomena – old and wise, but in Tantra, says Trungpa, it more resembles a child-like and youthful quality. The story of Padmasambhava appearing as an eight or ten year-old boy on a lotus in a lake with enlightened qualities is an example. He was said to be playful and innocent. Once as a young prince when playing with a vajra and a trident on the roof of the palace, he dropped both, killing two passersby. For this he was exiled and found his way to dwell in a charnel ground. He was born with a sudden glimpse of awakening and thereafter had to learn how to deal with his awakening. The story of Padmasambhava, he says, is a manual of how to be a Buddha and we are all potentially, inherently a Buddha. Discovering our Buddha Nature is the Tantric path. Here the path is the goal and the goal is the path. 

Padmasambhava, as manifesting from dharmakaya through sambhogakaya down to nirmanakaya had to learn how to relate to sentient beings and the worldliness within which they are caught up. Thus he had to learn to relate with samsaric mind. Living in the charnel ground, he sees it in his playfulness as no different from the palace he lived in previously. He dwelled in the fearlessness, the knowledge of eternity, the first stage of crazy wisdom. A vidyadhara is the holder of ‘scientific knowledge’ and an attainer to this crazy wisdom. Being enlightened he manifested as Vajradhara, the holder of indestructibility. This completes the first two aspects of Padmasambhava: as a young prince in the palace and as a young siddha in the charnel ground.

The third aspect is as a bhikksu, a Buddhist monk. This cements his relationship to the tradition. His acquired name is Shakya Simha, or Lion of the Shakyas, which was also a name of Buddha. As a monk he began teaching dharma. When he visited a nunnery where a princess just turned nun, Mandarava, was dwelling, he began teaching there and was eventually discovered by the king, Mandarava’s father, who was so dismayed that he captured Padmasambhava and burned him on a pyre. The pyre burned for some days but would not kill him. He manifested a lake there and sat on a lotus in the center of it. The king confessed his wrong-doing of harming an accomplished siddha and bid him to teach at the palace. The guru initially refused but eventually accepted. During this stage of his teachings he let things be – he let the beings around him discover their own neuroses. His next trial or act was to debate magically five-hundred theists, Brahmanists. He destroyed them in his next aspect as the Lion’s Roar, Senge Dradrok. 

His next aspect occurred when he went to Tibet. Here he did not encounter theistic Brahmanists, but Bon shamanists. Their equivalent concept was that of yeshen, which means something like ‘primordial ancestral great friend’, or heaven. Here he manifested in the wrathful form of Dorje Trolo. Trungpa considers that Bon, at the time, was theistic, and Buddhism being non-theistic, made it difficult to challenge nationalistic theistic religions like Hinduism but even harder as in the case of Bon, profound shamanistic philosophies grounded in nature. He calls it “anthropocentric” and notes that those types of beliefs are not grounded in basic sanity. He could not pit his gods against their gods but utilized ‘mind,’ as his crazy wisdom to subdue/convert the Tibetans. 

“Dorje Trolo arrives in Tibet riding a pregnant tigress. The tigress is electric. She is pregnant electricity…. Dorje Trolo knows no logic. As far as {he} is concerned, the only conventional logic there is is relating with heaven and earth. Because the sky forms itself into its particular shape, the horizon exists. There is the vastness of space, the sky; and there is the vastness of the earth. They are vast, but okay – so what? Do you want to make a big deal out of the vastness? There is this vastness, but why not consider the smallest things that are happening as well? The grain of sand is more threatening than the vastness of space or of the desert; because of its concentratedness it is extremely explosive. This is a huge cosmic joke here, a gigantic cosmic joke, a very powerful one.”

According to tradition, Padmasambhava buried many teachings in Tibet to be discovered by future generations. This is known as the “terma” tradition. Trungpa describes this manifestation of Dorje Trolo as an immense wrathful energy of compassion and wisdom. Trungpa also notes in answering a student question that the crazy wisdom tradition appears to be exclusively confined to the Nyingma school in Tibetan Buddhism – the “old” school associated with Padmasambhava, particularly the Maha ati, or Dzog Chen lineages. He does note that the Mahamudra tradition of India and Tibet involves similar types of manifestations of siddhi, or accomplishments. Trungpa notes that traditionally there are three ways to tell and understand the Padmasambhava story: the external/factual way, the internal psychological way, and the higher, secret way – which is the approach of crazy wisdom. These are the traditional classifications: outer, inner, and secret. He notes that his current teachings about the life of Padmasambhava are quite unscholastic, though they draw on some of the outer events of his life.

He mentions the idea of working with Padmasambhava as a cosmic principle rather than as a historical person, utilizing his “grace” or adhisthana, in a devotional or romantic way as in bhakti yoga. There are two approaches here he says: the exoteric way of poverty, of seeking the grace one does not have – which is based on spiritual materialism; and the esoteric way of admiring the same principle that you also possess innately – which is based on sanity. This important method employs what is known as “vajra pride” or sacred outlook. It is the pride that is untainted with ego as it is simply recognition that one has the potential for complete awakening. It is an acknowledgement of that potential. Regarding these approaches he says that most of the time one begins from the poverty viewpoint, one begins from a materialistic approach of attaining what one does not have, then proceeds to the sane approach of discovering qualities that are inherent within. I remember a Padmasambhava teaching I attended where the teacher noted this cosmic principle of the Guru, saying that there was a Padmasambhava for every section of space or world system of so many planets! 

At the beginning of the second seminar he reiterates that Padmasambhava’s goal was to teach the barbarian monotheistic Tibetans the non-theistic approach of Buddhism. Believing in “that” or God implies belief in “this” or not God. ie. the Self. It is this relating through reference points that is delusional, he notes. He had to cut through the practicality of the indigenous ecological-type shamanic tradition in order to teach the Tibetans and prepare them for the Tantric path, which requires letting go of Self. It is similar, he said, to America at the time – we all think things exist for our benefit as the Bon Tibetans did. He intimates that such indigenous/shamanic/practical/sane/ecological traditions are quite beautiful and valid, just that the Buddhist view transcends their limitations. Previous beliefs and traditions do not need to be discarded, according to the Buddhist view, but perhaps just sublimated in some sense to a more profound view.

Trungpa reiterates in a long exchange with a student, that the prerequisite for crazy wisdom is sheer, all-encompassing, groundless hopelessness. “… a sense of hopelessness could provide the basic approach to non-duality.” He notes that experience itself involves a sense of duality – relating to the experience as the one having it. This is usually called subject-object duality. Thus the experience is projected onto a self, an experiencer, and there is separation. He says there is a sense of space between experience and the projection of the experience. There is an instant of “pregnant openness”” or emptiness between experience and its projection. The projection happens after the experience: “When we definitely decide to leap, we have leapt already.” Experience first happens (unconditioned) before it is conditioned. Trungpa notes that Padmasambhava manifested from dharmakaya through samboghakaya to nirmanakaya, (He is often called a nirmanakaya Buddha) and this manifesting from the subtle to gross bodies/forms of Buddha is also connected to his eight aspects – the aspects are on different levels/planes of subtlety. Padmasambhava “is” the three kaya principle. As practitioners we are trying to relate to the Padmasambhava-ness in our state of being – the Precious Guru within. He also says we are infested with Padmasambhava and haunted by him.

He tells the story of the ordinary farmer, the Madman of Tsang, who was asked by Trugpa’s guru, Jamgon Kongtrul, how to unite with Padmasambhava. He answered that he did recitations and mantras for years continuously trying to unite with the great Guru but finally he gave up and then realized that he was the Guru, that the Guru was calling him and then everything changed. Trungpa notes that dharmakaya means primordial Buddha and refers to the Buddha that did not “become” a Buddha but always was and has never not been Buddha. 

The eight “aspects” of Padmasambhava are traditionally translated as the eight names of the guru. The aspects ae not a lineal descent or ascent but simultaneous. They might be called the eight ways beings experience Padmasambhava. He notes that the effect of crazy wisdom is to mirror one’s neuroses back as in the scriptural statement:

“He subdues whoever needs to be subdued and destroys whoever needs to be destroyed.”

There is no logic and there are no limitations.

The first aspect is Pema Gyalpo or Padma Raja in Sanskrit. This is the youthful lotus prince. He is born with the enlightened quality of fearlessness. He related with things openly and directly, without fear. He had a sense of eternity.

In talking about the dharmakaya (body of truth) he notes that it does have some conditioning, at least in the Nyingma teachings. Dharmadhatu is no experience while the dharmakaya is the beginning, doorway of conditioning experience. He also says there are different viewpoints as to whether there is karma at the dharmakaya level – in the Maha Ati (Dzog Chen) tradition Longchen Rabjam says there is karma in dharmakaya, but other schools say no. He also notes that the process of manifestation from dharmakaya to nirmanakaya is the same as the process of manifestation given in the Buddhist tradition as the twelve links of interdependent origination, or the twelve nidanas. Trungpa Rinpoche here and throughout the book gives more conversational style question and answer exchanges than I have encountered in teachings. There is a playful quality to the dialogue, yet it is also quite intense.

Death is an uncompromising discontinuity where our habitual patterns cease to function, he says. He notes that socially, facing impending death is often embarrassing to both the dying and those who witness it. He notes, I think quite correctly, that most faith-based reminders about death, are really based on fear. They are reactions to the discomfort of the impending unknown and the impending ceasing to exist.

In his next aspect, after being exiled and living in the cremation ground he discovers eternity. He goes to visit a teacher in the Maha Ati tradition, Shri Simha, said to have come from Thailand, but now living in a cave in another charnel ground. He asks Shri Simha how to destroy the sense of experience. Shri Simha reduces him to the syllable HUM, then swallows him and shits him out. HUM is penetration:

“You don’t try to dissolve experience or try to regard it as a fallacy. You penetrate experience. Experience is like a container with lots of holes in it, which means that it cannot give you proper shelter, proper comfort.”

HUM is a seed syllable, often a condensed form (of a yidam deity), thus he was condensed, abbreviated, tightly packaged, concentrated.

Developing his sense of eternity Padmasambhava was said to be able to control time and space. This is his yogi aspect, Nyima Oser. Trungpa suggests that this “penetration” is like waking up from absorption. He uses the analogy of falling out of a punctured hammock. He also notes that spiritual development is more an unlearning process rather than one of collecting experiences. Thus the style of Padmasambhava is one of unmasking, unlearning, removing layers of obscurations. He makes the interesting statement that fear without hope is insightful. “It has spontaneously existing resourcefulness.” He seems to suggest that hope and fear as the root of all emotions are the basis of duality. They are the attractive and repulsive aspects. He says that we would ideally relate to them without feedback so that the situation will resolve or become clear. Trungpa spent a lot of time beginning in his youth attending to dying people. He says that we should convey to a dying person that death is a very “real” experience rather than trying to give them hope for some happy outcome through dogma. The idea is to let it be as it is rather than try to persuade it, I think.

The aspect of Shakya Senge, or Padmasambhava as a Mahayana Buddha is “connected to the expression of ultimate sanity. This realization allowed him to be able to teach, to proclaim, through the Lion’s Roar. According to tradition Padmasambhava studied with and was ordained as a monk by Ananda, the famous student of the Buddha. Ananda was his guru. I can observe that that shortens the lineage between Padmasabhava and Buddha Shakyamuni just as the termas shorten the lineage between Padmasambhava and the tertons (terma treasure discoverers). This makes sense in light of the Guru’s ability to control time. Padmasambhava, or Guru Rinpoche, is the archetypal guru, particularly for the Tibetan people. He is said to be still alive in the same body living near Jambu, on a continent of vampires (rakshasas) in the Copper Colored Mountain. 

Teaching sanity requires skillful means, as sanity is often found to be too spacious or irritating. Perhaps we are too comfortable in our confusion. Senge Dradrok, his aspect as the Lion’s Roar, is when he appears as a great magician to subdue the tirthikas, the dualists, sometimes called heretics. These heretics are distinguished from the non-dual Vedantists, whose view is much closer to that of the Buddhists. This powerful aspect of the Guru allowed nature to destroy those predisposed to being destroyed.

Trunpa distinguishes the experience of emptiness (shunyata) from that of crazy wisdom. Shunyata is wisdom without energy while the Tantric approach is based on energy.

The next aspect is simply Padmasambhava. He is usually called Guru Rinpoche, or Pema Jungne, or the “Lotus-Born” in Tibet, or Padmakara in Sanskrit. This may have something to do with a sectarian philosophical argument whether he should be understood more as a cosmic principle or as a historical person, a scholar, or pandit. This is his aspect as a pandit. He entered Nalanda Monastery and studied the threefold discipline: meditation, morality, and knowledge, which correspond to the Buddhist division of teachings known as the Tripitaka, the three baskets: sutra, vinaya, and abhidharma. The idea is to become well-grounded in theory and practice and understanding. He mentions the value of working with the intellect without a “watcher” and this seems to be similar to Indian teachings about working without a witness.

The next aspect is Loden Choksi. Here he was a king’s guru (rajguru) who went to the nunnery to teach Mandarava who would become his consort. When confronted by the King of Zahor who sent him to be executed he manifested using all aspects of his punishment to ornament himself magically by becoming immune to all the tortures. Obstacles became adornments. In this aspect he accepts and adapts accordingly rather than seeking to change things other than himself, his mind. 

The eighth and final aspect of Padmasambhava is Dorje Trolo, the absolute aspect of crazy wisdom. This aspect is all about transmitting the teachings, the grace-energy, or adhisthana, to sentient beings. There are three styles of transmitting this energy: 1) by word of mouth – this includes all language and writing too and all of our preconditioning to be able to receive and comprehend such teachings; 2) the method of crazy wisdom on the relative level – here the teacher shows by creating situations that appear to occur by themselves through a symbol or sign conveyed by the Guru; 3) the mind lineage or the thought lineage. This aspect of crazy wisdom may appear quite ordinary but is based on dharmakaya, so is the most profound. He mentions a kind of aware uncertainty developing, at the boundary between the death of the question and the birth of the answer. The crazy wisdom of Dorje Trolo is an uncompromising wrath. He subdued the twelve guardian goddesses of Tibet, converting them to protectors of the dharma. He transformed his consort Yeshe Tsogyal into a pregnant tigress and together they subdued the psychic energies of the country. He appeared in his wrathful form ambiguously, as part Tibetan, part Indian, part human, part animal. The pregnant tigress represents dangerous energy, the vehicle of Padmasambhava. He introduced impracticality to the overly practical Tibetans. Yet it was the return of their practicality later that made them good yogis, he says.

Padmasambhava foretold prophecies of the distant future. One was that Tibet would be conquered and subdued. This made the royal personages anxious. One remedy was the development of the buried treasure, or terma tradition, where teachings were concealed magically all over Tibet for the benefit of future generations. 

There is an About the Author section that talks about Trungpa Rinpoche’s recognition as a tulku, or nirmanakaya, an incarnated teacher – in his case the 11^th Trungpa Rinpoche, leader of Surmang Monastery. His main teachers were the Nyingma master Jamgon Kongtrul and the Kagyu master Khenpo Kangshar. He escaped Tibet to India in the late 1950’s. Eventually he moved to England and was educated at Oxford. He took a solitary retreat in Bhutan in 1969. After this he immediately became a lay person, married an Englishwoman, and moved to North America. He taught for seventeen years, developing a reputation for being dynamic and controversial. He gave many talks, wrote many books, he translated texts, practiced art, painting, poetry, and other contemplative arts. He developed the Shambhala Warrior teachings and a Buddhist and Contemplative University at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. There were developed several systems of training. He died young in 1987 at age 47. He was also known to have a habit of alcohol use, some drug experimentation (which was commonplace at the time) and womanizing. In these aspects he was quite controversial, yet he shaped the transmission of Tantric Buddhism, the Vajrayana, or “indestructible vehicle,” to the West most extensively.

The Sword and the Flute: Kali and Krsna: Dark Visions of the Terrible and the Sublime in Hindu Mythology

Book review: The Sword and the Flute: Kali & Krsna: Dark Visions of the Terrible and the Sublime in Hindu Mythology – by David R. Kinsley (University of California Press, 1975)

This is a great study of Indian metaphysical ideas. It shows that the study of deities can indicate how a people conceived of the human condition. The vast and diverse Hindu pantheon depicts the divine in a myriad of ways, from gentle to severe. Kali and Krsna are two of the most popular deific forms in Hindu India. One terrifies while the other intoxicates. Man, as a religious being, says the author, seeks out the “other” in deified forms. Because of their popularity, particularly in Bengal, Kali and Krsna likely epitomize fundamental truths of the Hindu tradition, he reasons.

Krsna is first revealed in the Bhagavad Gita, part of the epic Mahabharata, where he appears as the charioteer of the warrior-king Arjuna. He is revealed here as an avatar of Visnu. An avatar can be defined as an incarnating god. Around 400 C.E. Krsna’s genealogy appears in the Harivamsa, a text meant to be an appendix to the Mahabharata. Here Krsna’s birth and childhood as a cowherd in Vrndavana is recounted. Archaeological evidence suggests that the depiction of Krsna as a cowherd goes back to about 200 B.C. though not in literature till about 600 years later. The story of Krsna in Vrndavana is further embellished in the various puranas. Here his lover, Radha, becomes the embodiment of the god-intoxicated devotee. Kinsley gives three “versions” of Krsna: as a human hero in the Mahabharata, as a divine incarnation in the Bhagavad Gita, and as the Supreme Lord as the cowherd youth (Krsna Govinda). Krsna became a teacher in the Gita but ultimately an object of devotion in the later tradition.

Krsna is the eternal child, spontaneous and playful. In the lore he engages in pranks, dares, sporting, and endless play. As a butter-thief and prankster he gets the reputation of a hooligan in some of the lore. He is said in this manifestation to represent the unconditioned nature of the divine. The wild play continues through Krsna’s adolescence. The author sees his youth and frolicking nature as indicative of his approachability. He is an adorable babe and charming adolescent. A third factor he mentions about Krsna as a child god is his “transcendental aloofness,” meaning that he is so absorbed in his revelry that he does not rule the world like a king and actually shows little direct concern for the world – “a testimony to the essential nature of the divine as self-delight.” Even his combat with demons is a form of play. He defeats them readily and creatively and their corpses are absorbed into the land of delight, Vrndavana. Vrndavana started as the temporary home of Krsna during his youth but in later texts became synonymous with the highest heaven. Krsna was known for his beauty, grace, and pleasant fragrance. The nymphs of Krsna’s heaven are the gopas and gopis, who maintain Vrndavana and are continually mesmerized by the sound of his flute. The gopis are the milk-maids, each who experiences herself as Krsna’s exclusive lover. Krsna is eternally young in the eternal spring of Vrndavana. There are various theological arguments as to whether Radha and the gopi girls are part of Krsna (as his sakti) or separate. 

The call of Krsna’a flute bewitches. Not unlike the pipes of Pan the flute of Krsna makes people stop what they are doing and come frolicking to the wood. The devotees become filled with ecstasy and abandon their tasks. Even the gods are mesmerized and drawn to listen. Even Krsna is intoxicated by the sound of his flute. With his flute he fills the world with bliss.

Krsna is also the divine lover. Radha’s place in Indian literature and Vaisnava myth came much later. She was mention by 700 CE but did not become popular until the 11^th and 12^th centuries. The love of Krsna and Radha is framed as a “first love” full of klutziness and bodily exploration. Youthful love becomes the delightful game of love-play. Their amorous dallying is a favorite subject of Vasinava poets. Approaching the divine as lover is one aspect of the devotee. Radha and Krsna become totally absorbed in one another. Thus the path of devotion, or bhakti, is a path of bliss, or ananda. It is the aspiration towards a heavenly realm that is erotic, life-affirming, and eternally blissful. 

The author chooses three most important themes in the traditions of Krsna: Bhakti (devotion), Ananda (bliss), and Lila (play). In the Bhagavad Gita and Mahabharata Krsna teaches Arjuna about bhakti-yoga, or how to worship the Supreme Lord. Also taught are karma-yoga, the path of disinterested works, and jnana-yoga, the path of knowledge. The Gita exemplifies the path of bhakti-yoga. Early in this tradition the work of the devotee was straightforward, ruled by discipline and sacrifice. When Krsna showed his true form (as Visnu) to Arjuna it terrified him. By the time of the Bhagavata-purana (10^th century CE) and possibly beginning with the Harivamsa (400 CE) the devotional methods took on a fervent, emotional, and impassioned quality. The influence of the Tamils in South India might be relevant here. They came from all castes and tended to reject the religion of the priests. Devotional poetry and ecstatic love came to dominate their Vaisnava and Saivite cults. Tamil saints of both cults ridiculed Brahmanism. The new devotees paid less attention to serving society (through karma-yoga) and more to serving the Supreme Lord through ecstatic devotion. The same was to occur in the north, in Bengal. Bhakti-yoga would come to be seen as the supreme yoga. The soul of a human (jiva) was said to be the hladini-sakti of the Supreme Lord, his most essential self. Thus the true nature of the soul of man is pure bliss. It is maya which conceals our true nature from us. Thus we are all gopis, we are all Radha.

The well-known formula of the Absolute in Hinduism is Sat-citt-ananda, or being-consciousness-bliss. Krsna changed, in the tradition, from an avatar of Visnu, to the Absolute, the Supreme God, the source of all avatars. This was a theological change that came quite late, possibly even under Muslim influence. Thus, the monotheistic Vaisnava theology became firmly established, particularly in Bengal with the Bhagavad-purana being its most important book. The Upanisadic absolute as Brahman was now called “impersonal.” Krsna became, as the Hare Krishna movement says, the “Supreme Personality of Godhead.” To the Vaisnava theologists, God is one but has a threefold aspect: Bhagavan, Paramatman, and Brahman:

“Paramatman is God in relation to nature (prakrti) and spirit (jiva), Brahman is unqualified and therefore never expressed, while Bhagavan is infinitely qualified and infinitely perfect and considered the most sublime aspect of all. And Krsna, finally, is identical with Bhagavan.”

The divine is said to express himself through his saktis. This expression is the same as Krsna’s dalliance in Vrndavana. Thus the Godhead “is” Krsna and Radha and the gopis and gopas frolicking in Vrndavana. It is God as an eternal expression through his saktis. He does not “reveal” himself to humans or direct their affairs, he simply displays himself through his natural expression.

Lila is called divine play. Since the gods have no shortcomings, no needs, and no desires, there is no work or striving for goals. All action is simply play. Thus for humans they are unpredictable. There is no purpose to the play in Vrndavana, it is just play. According to the Harivamsa and the puranas, Visnu incarnates when Mother Earth requests him to subdue the tyrannical demon-king Kamsa. This, he does while still engaged in play. Vrndavana is an eternal magical playground. The Vaisnava cults of Bengal and the north emphasized Krsna’s child cowherd form as the most essential and complete form of the Lord. His life in Vrandavana is a continuous song and dance and dalliance without aim.

Now we come to Kali, as this is really two books in one, with some comparison at the end. Due to her extreme appearance, Kali has been controversial both in Hindu and non-Hindu contexts. Some sects offer her blood sacrifices but others do not. She is called Mistress of Death and in her myths and iconic appearance she is slayer, particularly of demons. Her association with the infamous Thugs, a criminal cult who sacrificed humans to her, often by strangulation, have given her a bad reputation, although I have heard such sects may have been more influenced by Muslims than is generally known. In any case, Kali is on the fringe and expresses out-of-control attributes. However, she is also the Divine Mother, compassionate and kind to her children. In spite of her appearance, she is one of the most popular deities in Hinduism, especially in Bengal. Some see her as a continuation of the Aryan Great Goddess of the Vedas while others see her as a tribal goddess inherent to non-Aryan pre-Vedic India.

Most of the earliest references to Kali do seem to associate her as an indigenous tribal deity who later entered the greater Hindu tradition but there are a few goddesses in the Vedas that may be precursors to her. In the Mundaka Upanisad, Kali is one of the names of the seven tongues of Agni. As a ‘tongue of fire’ this may presage her later association with the cremation ground but that is only speculative. Other possible prototypes of Kali are Ratridevi (the Goddess Night) and especially the demoness Nirrti, who appears to be the personification of death, destruction, and sorrow. Kali has been called the “terrible night of destruction. Both Ratridevi and Nirrti appear in the Rg Veda. Nirrti disappears while Kali appears in the epic and Puranic period texts (200 BCE to 300 CE). Nirrti and Kali have some similarities (both are black) but many differences and cannot be definitively linked.

In the Mahabharata there are mentioned two “mothers” who became the companions of Karttikeya (Skanda or Kumara) when he went to slay the demon Taraka. One was called Bhadrakali and the other Kalika. The mothers collectively were said to be both beautiful and terrifying and to live in trees, caves, mountains, crossroads, and cremation grounds. They were said to speak many languages. These sound a lot like the “fierce mothers” or matrkas, of early Bengali tradition associated with warding off disease and guarding the Sanskrit letters in the Buddhist and early Tantric traditions and may be precursors or contemporaneous with them. The author mentions the matrika association and that since they spoke many languages and were associated with the late deity Karttikeya they were likely peripheral to the Aryan tradition. Geoffrey Samuels in his book, The Origins of Yoga and Tantra, noted that the fierce mothers as deities to ward off sickness and disease may have become a practical necessity after people began to live in larger cities along the Ganges as merchant towns built up. Some of the late Indus Valley peoples likely migrated eastward eventually entering these areas as well. People living in closer proximity with livestock likely led to more disease as has historically been the case throughout the world. Another early reference to Kali in the Mahabharata is when she appears with a noose to lead the dead away after the sleeping Pandava army is slaughtered by the surviving Kaurava warriors. As in her later main descriptions she is black with a bloody mouth and disheveled hair. Except perhaps in add-ons to the epic, she is not yet associated with Durga.

In the Devi-Mahatmya Kali is first associated with Durga. This is the text that gives the mythology of Kali. The Great Goddess as Durga has to fight off demons born from the sleep of Visnu. When she confronts the demon brothers Sumbha and Nisumbha and their army who have subdued the gods and rule over them, this is when Kali appears when Durga in the form of Parvati confronts the demon heroes Canda and Munda. She becomes furious and Kali springs from her brow in her terrifying form armed with a sword and a noose. Howling and laughing madly she decapitates them both and presents their heads as a gift to Durga. In another scene Durga is having trouble defeating the regenerating demon Raktabija so she calls Kali who sucks out all his blood so he cannot regenerate. This is the main mythological entrance of Kali, born from wrath, ferocious, and invincible in battle. Oddly, in the Thuggee version of the myth she strangles the demons with helpers and then exhorts the helpers to make their living by strangling human victims. Later she was to keep the same terrible form but assume new roles. In the Agni and Garuda-puranas she was summoned through mantra for success in warfare. As a patron of thieves she appears in the Bhagavata-purana. In Kalidasa’s Kumarasmbhava (4^th to 5^th centuries CE) she is mentioned as part of Siva’s wedding procession, walking behind the matrikas in her fierce form. In all these depictions she is still a minor deity. In Subandhu’s Vasavadatta (6^th or 7^th century CE) there is mentioned a goddess called Bhagavati or Katyayani whose description is very similar to Kali. Other works of that time period describe Kali (also Candi, another name of Durga) as a non-Aryan goddess, particularly venerated by tribal hunters called the Sabaras. Kali is similar to Camunda in appearance and attributes in Bhavabhuti’s Malatimadhava (late 7^th or early 8^th century CE).

The Tamils of South India also had wrathful goddesses similar to Kali. In the Tamil epic Silappadikaram (traditionally dated to 2^nd century BC but probably not written before 4^th or 5^th century CE) Kali appears as the goddess of death aiding bandits who offer her blood sacrifices. Similar tales occur in other Tamil epics, one where she is called the Dark Mother of the Forest.

In Bengal there are similar earlier fierce goddesses: Durga, Manasa, the snake goddess, Sitala, goddess of smallpox, and Candi, goddess of the jungle and hunters. Candi is a popular name of Durga as the Great Goddess, but is usually not depicted in wrathful form. However, Kali as a distinct deity does not appear to have been worshipped in Bengal before the 18^th century even though she is one of the most popular deific forms there now. That is when she gained prominence in Vaisnava literature and Sakta devotional literature. Kali is known in other parts of India also from earlier times. In some places she is not associated with Durga. The author concludes that she cannot be definitively found to originate in any one particular region. Despite her association with Durga as the Great Goddess, Kali was not accepted quickly as a deity. She was often seen as a demonic shrew, worshipped by criminals and outsiders.

Kali’s great popularity as a goddess likely began with her association with Siva and then with the spiritual technology of Tantra. She began to be associated with Siva as early as the 8^th century CE. It is uncertain how and why they came to be associated. Both have wild and peripheral qualities and are associated with cremation grounds and death and destruction – so it may have been a similarity of attributes. The names Kali and Parvati are used interchangeably in the Vamana-purana. Both Kali and Parvati have dark complexions but the visual similarities end there. Kali later appears as a consort-sakti to Siva. In that text and the Siva-purana, which is likely quite late, it is made clear that all goddesses are manifestations of Mahadevi as Uma-Sati-Parvati, the spouses of Siva. In the Rudra-samhita Kali is said to have been created from Siva’s hair. Other myths more strongly confirm Kali’s identification with Parvati. There are stories of Siva and Kali dancing madly together and ones of a dance contest between the two, where he wins. This is prevalent in South India and may represent the local Saivite cults absorbing the local goddess cults. It could be Siva as Purusa (spirit) subduing Kali, as Prakrti (matter). Indeed Kali (and many goddesses) are associated with matter and the elements. There is a story similar to the Ramayana where Siva must rely on Kali to subdue demons, as he could not do it himself. This is the story where Siva lays down among the corpses of the battlefield and Sita who has assumed the form of Kali is dancing madly slaying and severing heads but is exhorted by Brahma to recognize Siva, said here to be her husband, and to stop in her embarrassment.

It is thought that with the rise of Tantrism came greater popularity of female deities. This began around 700 CE and continued and by 1600 CE Kali was strongly associated with Tantrism though her transition to here may have come much earlier. In the Mahavidya tradition of the ten wisdom goddesses, it is Kali who is said to be the greatest. In the Mahanirvana-Tantra she is praised as the devourer of time, who originates and ends all things. Tantra exhibits deity forms as in sexual union. In Hinduism it is Siva-Sakti, sometimes said to be Consciousness-Energy. In. Buddhism it is Upaya-Prajna, Skilfull Means and Wisdom. Kali, as death, is confronted by the sadhaka, the Tantric practitioner, as nothing is forbidden and all is part of the spiritual path. The Karpuradi-stotra, a short work in praise of Kali, describes a pancatattva ritual, the rite of the five forbidden things, as performed in the cremation ground amidst a meditation on the form of Kali. She grants the boon of freeing the sadhaka from fear. As the mistress of the universe she is identified with the five elements, as matter, and with Siva, as consciousness, creates and destroys the universe.

The latest development of Kali in Indian tradition is her popularity in Bengali devotionalism. This is mostly the result of two teacher-poets: Ramprasad Sen (1718-1775) and Ramakrishna (1836-1886). These two made many beloved devotional hymns to the Great Wrathful Mother. Ramprasad became a Krsnanagar Court poet and his works became popular for all castes in the region. His descriptions of the attributes of Kali were embraced by the people. He sings of her madness, complains of her unfairness, and yet sees her as the entire universe, “present in every form.” He sees in her the darker dimensions of reality. She is unruly and demonic and yet the mother of all. Her boon is conquering the fear of death. Beginning with Ramprasad, devotion to Kali emerged from the secret societies of Tantrism into the venue of public worship. Ramakrishna kept up the devotional tradition of Ramprasad and added much to it. He emphasized Kali as playful and approached her often as a child would approach his mother. He had time to be devotional and approached her as a bhakti-yogi. I recall reading Ramakrishna saying that it is Kali who grants the “fruits of yoga.” Her popularity in Bengal still retains a darker side as black goats are often beheaded and sacrificed to her, apparently, every other day at one temple. She was also associated with Bengali nationalism and armed resistance in the early 1900’s and invoked as cause of disasters, like flooding, which are plentiful in Bengal, through her long association with inauspiciousness.

Erich Neumann and Heinrich Zimmer offered Jungian interpretations of Kali as the archetypal overbearing mother and as the return to childhood of the devotee. She is merciless in that she represents the inevitables of birth, growth, decay, death, and pain. The author criticizes these Jungians when they interpreted the child-like devotee as portraying a human weakness and a giving up when true liberation requires a human striving. I agree with the author that this interpretation by Neumann is short-sighted. The author notes that to understand Kali one must strive to understand the Indian vision of reality. Here is I think one of the most thoughtful parts of the book.

Kali is here described as Mahamaya, the grand illusion that is our reality. It is maya that prevents us from seeing the world as it is. The gods are said to be mayins, able to conjure whole worlds into existence. The world is mere appearance, conjured by the minds of gods. One quest of the spiritual hero is to rend the veil of maya, to unmask reality. Kali, among other wrathful deities, is a slayer of ego. It is ego which is made of the stuff of maya. Kali’s mad appearance reveals the world as unpredictable and spontaneous, impermanent and chaotic. She reveals the world as it is beyond our ego-mask.

Kali is seen as matter and suffering, prakrti and dukkha. Prakrti is matter but also mind and ego, all of which are revealed to be illusory. It is also primal urge towards grosser forms, moving from the unmanifest to the manifest. As dukkha, or suffering, she is emblematic of the Buddha’s first noble truth, that all is suffering. The unsatisfactoriness of Samara is epitomized in the four sufferings of birth, old age, sickness, and death.

Kali is also time. Time in the Indian worldview (and most archaic societies) is beginningless, endless, and cyclical. The universe is created and destroyed multiple times, infinitely through long cycles of thousands or millions of years (kalpas, one kalpa = one day of Brahma) through ages called yugas. Kali is called Mistress of Time as her name is the feminine form of time, or kala.

Kali’s association with death is most strong. Her lore finds her on battlefields and cremation grounds. The spiritual goal of liberation, or moksha, is said to be possible at death if one does not find it in life, if one trains properly enough. Kali’s boon is confrontation and acceptance of death, notes the author. The death of the ego must be a precursor to liberation.

“Kali’s boon is freedom, the freedom of the child to revel in the moment….”

Only when one lives in the moment, accepting death and all that is inevitable, can one be free from the mocking laughter of Kali, and to understand her as the loving mother.

She is “tamed” by Siva in the dance contest myth and by the Tantric hero through his meditation on her in the cremation ground. Another version of this type of practice is the Tibetan Chod practice where Krodha Kali (Throma Nagmo) as the Wrathful Black Lady is ejected from the top of the practitioner’s head and proceeds to cut up his or her body and feed it in a meal to demons. This is traditionally done in cremation grounds and scary places in the cover of night. The author suggests that accepting her truths – illusion, suffering, and the limitations of matter and time, through childlike devotion is another way to tame her. The dark and terrifying aspects of Kali are merely the dark and terrifying aspects of reality itself.

While the myths of Kali and Krsna seem to present very different versions of divinity - liberation through bliss and liberation through understanding harsh reality, they have similarities. Kinsley notes that they are both black, which suggests a kinship with the land and soil and likely both non-Aryan in origin. They are both peripheral to the Brahmanic tradition. They are not associated with light, the heavens, or order, as are many Vedic deities, but more with the life-force within. Both are erotic: Krsna passing the time in love-play and Kali said to enjoy intercourse with Siva. Krsna is the essence of life as his realm of eternal spring reveals while Kali is the stark reminder that life feeds on life and so requires death. Thus both have “wet” natures, says the author. Both are also wild and frenzied in nature. The goal of liberation is to transcend Samsara yet it is revealed through these deities and others that Samsara is also pervaded by that which is divine, and so that which is beyond it, or as the Mahayana Buddhists say – Samsara and Nirvana are inseparable. The wild natures of Krsna and Kali suggest that the divine is unspecified, boundless, spontaneous, and unconditioned. They are beyond the ego-centered notions of order, control, and predictability. Both invite their human admirers to look beyond – by joining in their revelry, play, and mad dance.

This was a very cool study of apprehending ideas through study of deific forms. It is not known if Kinsley is a practitioner of the traditions but he does note participating in rituals during his time in India. It is a great book aiding an understanding of Indian traditions.