Gioia Lussana

YOGA: THE ART OF CONTEMPLATION THAT BECOMES A FESTAL CELEBRATION
To Rafaele Torella, mentor and inspirer of my yoga as a ceaseless festal celebration.

This essay highlights some aspects of a contemporary practice of Kashmiri non-dual yoga steadfastly linked to the lineage of its mediaeval masters. Gioia Lussana’s exploration, based on long-standing experience in research and practice of the Kashmiri yoga tradition, focuses on its specific interpretation of ritual in the Hindu tantric context – closely related to game, art, celebration, and contemplation. Behind each of these terms is concealed a melting-pot of philosophical implications, some of which resonate both in Western philosophical and mystical as well as Indian religious traditions. Gioia Lussana’s essay shows that, in Kashmiri yoga, the realisation of one’s deepest essence is truly comparable to the creative process in any form of art. The yogin, like Śiva creating the world in the ecstasy of dance, is revealed as the artist par excellence

« Part of the celebratory aspect is splendor. Properly speaking, however, splendor de-rives from the shining and appearance of the essential. (…) Play and dance are part of the splendor of celebration.” — Martin Heidegger¹
« O Lord of yoga, the best among the knowers of yoga, I wish to hear a yoga that is exempt of fatigue (anāyāsa), has no ‘constructive’ action (anārambha), no means (an-upāya), [but nonetheless] yields great results (mahāphalam)” — Mālinīvijayottaratantra²

THE ART OF PLAYING

Is yoga something one does? What we call yoga in its modern interpretation inspired by transmission from mediaeval Kashmir is not a form of activity in the usual sense of the word, but rather an expression of the inner creativity of the human being which, through the motionlessness or dynamism of the body, brings into being the most intimate part of the self, one’s own authentic nature. Authentic literally means “which makes itself”. Likewise, mediaeval Kashmiri yoga was defined as akalpita, “not constructed”, akrtaka, “spontaneous”, “which makes itself”³.
The free flow of breath, unconstrained by our will to control it, reveals the intrinsic luminosity of each living phenomenon. The flowing motion of breath becomes dazzling light.

“The spontaneous flow of breathing: this is the wonder of yoga. Once I have experienced the absolute Splendour of divine energy, what will not shine for me?” (Abhinavagupta – Anubhavanivedana).⁴

The ardour of Śiva, who according to tradition is dazzling light and Lord of prana⁵, spreads through the breath of life like radiant joy into space (akasha). His splendour may be revealed only in a space that is open, unobstructed, terse. In the temple of Chidambaram in southern India, Śiva is, for example, portrayed as akasha-linga, the symbol of boundlessness. Akasha is the first element of manifestation, the most subtle, extending in all directions and penetrating all that exists. It is shining space, like Śiva present in all things. 9 pt corresponds to ether, a term etymologically connected to ardour, being portrayed as a clear sky in which blazes a flame (Greek aitho = “blaze”, “burn”, “shine”. Aithra = “clear sky”, cf. the Sanskrit root idh-). Śiva makes the space of reality vibrate and catch fire. The vital breath (prana)⁶ through spontaneous or voluntary breathing conveys heat, light, emotion, and mental presence in the physical gesture of the yogin, as free as the boundless space of consciousness.

Prana running with its own natural rhythm dissolves the knots and tensions accumulated over time and then the yogin lives the experience of luminous freedom of his inner energy, which is also propagated all around him, beyond his body. The flash (sphur-) takes place in an instant (sphur- means literally “sparkle”, “quiver”, and “spout”, at the same time). Shining does not belong to time but pulsates in the present instant, like a beating heart, quivering with light at each new beat. The asana of Kashmiri yoga is configured as a formless twinkling in the space freed by the breath, in which every feature dies out, leaving a shining opening as inviting as a vast heaven. In its passage, natural breathing liberates the bodily space, which is thus revealed as vivid, dazzling.
The craving for what is spontaneous, highlighted particularly by non-dual tantrism, is already present in nuce – albeit not apparent – also in the later commentaries to the Patanjala-yogashastra. By way of example, in his vivarana⁷ Shankara harks back to the description of the samadhic mind present in Vyasa and affirms that it svayam eva samadhiyate⁸ (by herself the mind becomes contemplative). Without any help from outside, the mind manages to enter into harmony with itself, since it depends on nothing but itself. Through yoga, from the deepest vital core of every being, is activated and freely comes forth compellingly and in an unfiltered manner that creative craving, our centre, usually hidden or unexpressed. In non-dual yoga it sheds light, emotion, gesture, posture and dynamic sequence in space.

YOGA, THE ART OF PLAYING

And in what way can we define yoga as an art form?9 Any free expression that flows from our inner vitality may be considered art. In this connection we may use Kant’s apt expression¹⁰, defining both the living being as such and the work of art as a “purposeless objective”. We may thus consider yoga art par excellence, the free manifestation of being alive, in the intrinsic sense of what is understood as “living”. Alive is what is spontaneously self-produced in a continuous manner and spreads itself creating relations. In this outside interaction with other living things it increases its vital capacity, just like some kind of yeast. Yoga is wholly art since, in becoming an expression that pours out into space, becoming a bridge between the inner vitality and the outside world, it has a physical, psychical, philosophical and spiritual meaning.
The art of yoga as the free expression of the self – like poetry, music, dance and all other artistic forms – is thus not merely activity, but rather “shared intensity”. Yoga is a living intensity that intensifies in relating. Discovering, creating links is, moreover, one of the original meanings of the root yuj- from which the word yoga derives. It is art since it “awakes”, “sets in motion” and compiles coherently and harmoniously what we fundamentally are. The Sanskrit root ar-, from which the word art derives, summarises all these meanings.

We may consider yoga art par excellence, the free manifestation of being alive, in the intrinsic sense of what is understood as “living”. What is spontaneously self-produced in a continuous manner and spreads itself creating relations

The art of yoga is ultimately that pure expressiveness, the emotion that is an “end in itself”, which we may define as a “ceremonial of inaction”¹¹, since its action is not functional, not intended to achieve something. It is ars liberalis or action that serves no purpose, but finds its scope in its own self-sufficiency.
Yoga, to quote an expression from F. Schiller’s poem Elegie zur Friedenszeit, acts like “the butterfly’s uncertain wing”¹². The butterfly drifts uncertainly because it goes where it is called at that moment, with no strategy, no intention, freely, or rather, playfully. Playfulness is the modus operandi of every artistic expression, sharing with the natural world a productivity unencumbered by any obligation of achievement. Nature, like art, while producing its fruits in a mysteriously harmonious and coherent manner, is not only freed from our control, but is essentially free from being beneficial. In its evolution, the natural world thus follows patterns that are rigorous in themselves, even while they intertwine, incessantly altered by other paths of growth and expression, with the freedom that only the creativity of art possesses.

In its contemporary reformulation,¹³ Kashmiri yoga, while following its mediaeval transmission channel, in its gestures embodies its own free expression, without any other goal than that of manifesting itself. This recalls very closely some of the spiritual intuitions of mediaeval Rhenish mysticism, from Meister Eckhart to Angelus Silesius, and to the latter’s celebration of the rose that “flowers without a reason”.196¹⁴
In mediaeval Kashmir, where aesthetics reaches the heights of extreme refinement, art is the gate leading beyond the limitations of one’s individual horizon by virtue of sadharana, a generalisation of single experience, no longer tied to one’s own personal needs, but identifying with a vaster horizon. Through rasa, aesthetic experience, we are freed from our little world and live in a state of pervasive plenitude, without censure or judgement, that of any manifestation of art, whether produced or contemplated. Simply we forget (the Sanskrit verb to describe this experience would be li-, meaning to melt, to dissolve) the confines between us and the other, spreading into an experience that includes both.

This state of “forgetting” the confines – a non-functional attitude together with a highly focused presence on what is being experienced to the exclusion of all else – is what Abhinavagupta attributes to the artist, to the consumer of art and to the yogin who, as we have stated, is an artist in the wider sense. In such a context, forgetting is a state of mental repose, absorbed, totally engrossed in consuming the experience and rendering the latter inclusive and impersonal. The emotion generated in the artist or yogin is called bhava, a term that Bharata, the legendary author of the Natyashastra (II cent. BCE-II cent. CE), the great treatise on the arts, derives from the causative of bhu- (= to be, to become) with the meaning of “bringing into being”, “causing”, “pervading”, just as a scent spreads and imbues the mind of him who creates.

The oblivion to all else in whoever is immersed in this specific creative/emotive experience recalls – albeit with due differences – that oblivion or open suspension (Vergessenheit) described in the mystic writings of Meister Eckhart¹⁵. The mystic’s distracted mind can be compared, as it were, to that of a child absorbed in the enjoyment of his play, untouched by whatever takes place around him. So too, the yogin in asana forgets everything that is not the present experience.

We may also recall that, in the 8th century C.E., at the Buddhist Council of Lhasa, for both schools contending for the first place in meditative experience – the Indian school with its progressive view represented by Kamalashila and the Chinese Ch’an of Ho-shang that championed the direct path – the acme of experience for both was the doctrine of transcendence of discursive thought into a state of ‘forgetfulness’ (asmriti) and non-mind (amanasikara). This “empty mind” loosely recalls the state of nirvikalpa or pre-discursive mind referred to by the Vijnanabhairava-tantra (8th century C.E.), a seminal text of non-dual Shaivite tantrism.

It should also be specified that, in this context, unlike most philosophical schools, even the proliferation of thought is not in the end negative, since it is the fruit of the free expression of the mental potentialities and its creative refinement. In the view of the Paramadvaita, the most radical dualism, everything, even what may appear useless or negative, has its own raison d’être and is, in any final analysis, divine.

Furthermore, even in the Yogasutra (4th–5th centuries C.E.), a text for ascetics devoted exclusively to inner practices, Vyasa deems it to be a particular type of samadhi, which Bhoja (11th century) in a later commentary of the text, always in the section on samadhi, attributes to the Gods. We are dealing with the samadhi known as vikshipta, the prerogative of a distracted mind¹⁶. The Gods have no incumbencies or problems to solve in ordinary life and may thus adopt a non-functional mind, the thought-free state of a child absorbed in his play, forgetful of all else. Their existence is lila, play, an activity as free as that of Shiva who creates the world by dancing, lilaya, out of pure amusement¹⁷.

The same word “play” is etymologically linked to the Sanskrit root div- (from which diocus, iocus). Div- is “self-amusement”, “play”. Abhinavagupta, in his commentary on the Bhagavad-gita¹⁸, even creates a derivation of the word deva, God, from this very root. The Gods are thus, by definition, those who “love to amuse themselves”, to play.

Śiva, supreme yogin and quintessential artist, in order to have fun, in a playful and brimming ecstasy, decides to create the world, the theatrum mundi, which is none other than samsara, the conditioned existence of common mortals. Here is how he is saluted by Bhatta Nayaka, one of the most direct inspirers of the aesthetic theory of Abhinavagupta, who lived in Kashmir in the 11th century:

“Homage to Śiva, the poet who creates the whole universe.Thanks to him, people every moment enjoy the rasa of the world’s dramatic performance”.¹⁹

In these verses, the human adventure of common mortals on this Earth is compared to the aesthetic emotion (rasa) of one who enjoys an artwork, of one who is part of the Supreme Lord’s creative dance and actively participates in his play. It is understood that this playful enjoyment includes the whole range of feelings, even what are deemed negative emotions. In impersonating the various roles that life demands of him to stage, the common mortal should truly awaken to the knowledge that such roles are actually interchangeable, as occurs in playing. Identifying oneself with one of them clashes with the variegated phantasmagoria that each individual life actually brings into being.

Like water flowing freely, as though in play, the qualities of adaptation and elasticity are those required for the actor’s mastery on stage. He knows how to assume the part assigned to him, with all the appropriate feelings, while remaining always conscious of his own self. Paradoxically, if the actor identifies rigidly to a single role, he loses sight of his own self, his own intrinsic liberty. Only through flexibility in the play between his own self and his other self can he find himself²⁰.

It is Shiva himself who is prasara, kriya. He is motion that runs ceaselessly and spontaneously through existence, identifying with only one thing, while flowing in all things. This is his nature, according to the Kashmiri masters.

Playing the serious game of life, letting oneself transform unresistingly into the different roles, changing part without abandoning self-awareness, is the art of living that each one of us is called upon to learn. It means taking oneself seriously, but not too seriously. It is the dance of Shiva. And Shiva in his multiform creativity is in fact a living paradox.

In an even more engaging way than the common man, the artist and the yogin, through the creativity of gesture, free and unmindful of any activity other than that of giving substance to their own inner world, actually personify an alter deus, imitating the playful dance of Shiva who creates the world.
Freed from ordinary stereotyped codifications, the gesture of the yogin, like that of the artist more widely speaking, is imbued with the quality of joy (bhoga), the same superabundant joy that flows from Shiva’s desire to shape the world.

Whatever the particular type of emotion brought into being, whether positive or negative, everything that the experience brings with it is enjoyed and, as it were, ‘tasted’ by the Divine Lord. In the view of mediaeval Kashmir, it is first and foremost the emotion of living that is intensified in such tasting, in the same way as one who creates / enjoys a work of art, or for the yogin²¹. One may relish delicious food, a sunset, a starry sky, or even sadness or the intensity of sorrow. In aesthetic or religious experience, however, when our emotional state reaches the apex of expression, there is a surplus as compared to everyday emotion, however intense in itself, exceeding in a measureless intensity that disrupts the ordinary categories of space and time²².

So, what happens to our perception of reality? In these two extraordinary contexts, things unexpectedly acquire their real taste, experienced precisely for what it is: what is bitter, bitter and what is sweet, sweet, as Bernard of Clairvaux would say²³, a Western mystic who was a contemporary of Abhinavagupta. On the pinnacle of experience, reality is paradoxically even more real than ordinary perception. In the Kashmiri view, however, it is always the awareness of daily intensity, always highly valued by these schools, that nourishes, sustains and allows access to the extraordinary nature of ritual time. Life is intense by definition.

Asvada, the fulness of tasting, as Abhinavagupta clearly shows, thus has a noetic value. A. Baumgarten, the founder of philosophic aesthetics, speaks of a cognitio sensitiva, a sensitive, non-verbal awareness, capable of opening wide universal knowledge from a single detail.²⁴ The artist, the enjoyer of art and the yogin embody the privilege of knowing things more deeply, things as they really are. They intuit and know reality by tasting it, marvelling²⁵. As Utpaladeva maintains, reality seems to us opaque, unfeeling – and thus unknowable – due to a lack of wonder. In the Kashmiri schools of Shaivite philosophy, the category of wonder assumes a whole constellation of meanings and implications. Basically, wondering implies a deeper awareness of the reality in which we live, a delighted insight into the nature of the real. And knowing implies self-knowledge²⁶.

Through art, through the art of yoga, we see more, we understand more, we know the world more, and also ourselves.

To mention a parallel with Western philosophy, Hegel considers art as a form of self-knowledge of the spirit²⁷. In his view, in line with the epistemology of the Kashmiri schools, every encounter with a work of art is therefore an encounter with the mystery of one’s own authentic nature.

Utpaladeva²⁸, a great master of the Kashmiri medieval lineage, uses the term ghurnana (ghurn- means to move driftingly) to describe a rhythmic and undulating movement of the body, referring to the bhakta or yogin’s state of ecstatic absorption. Abhinavagupta²⁹ uses a term with a similar meaning, andolana, which we may translate as “oscillating”. Utpala uses ghurnana to mean a movement like the dancing body, a rhythm like a swing, like rocking a baby, due to the transfer of a distended gratification to the gesture. For the Kashmiri master, such dynamics – also mirrored qualitatively by the immobility of the asana – is triggered by the amazed tasting (camatkara), like a fragrance (amoda) that imbues the whole of being. The gestural art of this yoga is ullasata, a Sanskrit term that fully expresses the characteristics of bodily dynamics in space. Literally, ullasata means “gush out”, “come forth”. This is the energetic quality of the yogic gesture, causing the original vital breath to circulate through the body. Lal- means to move freely, thoughtlessly. And this is the gestural art of the yogin, prompt and attentive (sadara), but “without letting it show”, playfully spontaneous, never ostentatious, hurried or rigidly mechanical. Ullasata includes the meaning of coming to light, irradiating, resounding, playing, dancing. When the bodily movement gushes out directly from within, it pours out like a festive light in space.

THE TIME OF CELEBRATION³⁰

In ancient India, as for us in the West, art arises as a festal celebration. The extent of the celebration relates both to existential and artistic as well as to contemplative and religious expression. And Kashmiri yoga can be defined as a festal yoga, a pure act of celebrating the miracle of existence, its sacral nature evoked through bodily experience. Etymologically, festal celebration is a time that is full, self-sufficient, celebrating first and foremost our deepest inner being, our inmost dwelling. Festal celebration in Sanskrit is literally vastya, the domestic hearth, the innermost point of the home, its centre. Every celebration also has a unitive, universal value. Celebration means fellowship. It escapes time that is used usefully, for the practical needs and purposes of each, and finds its own common space-time, shared, choral. Every celebration is essentially the relationship between us and ourselves and between us and the world. Celebrating is an art, as emphasised by Gadamer in contemporary philosophy of aesthetics, and festal time takes us back to aesthetic experience as the rite of expressing self.

In his Phaedrus³¹, Plato praises the grace of playing and of the festival, connecting the two concepts which we have linked with the expressive art of non-dual yoga. It is playfulness that makes festal time free and significant. The Dutch ethnologist Johan Huizinga, in the 1930s, published a famous essay, Homo ludens, in which he affirms that the procedure of play underlies every culture and every truly creative act. Furthermore, the Dutch Indologist Frits Staal has shown that the complex rituality of Vedic India derives in reality from meaningless gestures whose scope lies only in their being acted out in the ritual context.This is precisely what happens in play and in the rite of yoga, where the function of the gesture emerges at the instant from the relation between the dense body and empty space. This gratuity with no pre-established meaning is the matrix of all creativity, it is the weft of festal time, the soul of non-dual yoga.

Festal time, like play time, is the time of squandering, when our actions in the world no longer aim at obtaining a profit, but are donated as a free offering, solely for celebratory purposes. Time offered is not time lost or banally useless, but can rather be defined as sacrificial time, in which the dedicated gesture simply renders thanks to existence. Festal time is an emancipation from daily duty, from everyday pressure, to stay at last in a “restful now”, an unexpected gift. In this sense, the celebration can be considered something sacred, which makes possible what would otherwise be inconceivable. The sacredness of the celebration with its dilated perception of time can be found not only in the Psalms³², but in the Dialogues of Plato³³, where the celebration is understood as a time made by God. In some way, in celebration, time is suspended and there opens wide an infinite experience in which one’s wholeness is found: an embrace that includes the whole of life. Each asana in Kashmiri yoga embodies this suspended and boundless sacredness. A thanks whispered to existence with all the pores of one’s skin, already announced by that ananta samapatti of the Yogasutra. The asana is accomplished (nirvartayati) when, reducing effort, the mind expands to the infinite³⁴. The emotion of this cosmic embrace that releases the yogin from ordinary space-time is that rapt forgetfulness that joins the art of play with the mystic’s inner aptitude, on which we have already dwelt.

CONTEMPLATION IS A FESTAL CELEBRATION

In the solemn time of festal celebration, the visual-contemplative act becomes central. Vision becomes more acute and is shared by the whole being, reuniting with everything that takes place outside us. The very art of the theatre, which includes all the arts, was born in ancient Greece as the festive way to evoke and relate to the sacred, allowing it to be contemplated. The festive celebration of praise to the Gods was called theoria.³⁵ In the philosophical language of ancient Greek, theoria meant contemplation (thea, sight + orao, see). More exactly, it meant watching the priestly procession preparing to pay homage to the Gods with hymns, dances and praises.

Theoria was also the term used for the culminating vision of the Mysteries in honour of Dionysus. Theoria meant joyful contemplation of the sacred, emotionally shared: a vision concretely experienced, rather than being merely ‘theoretic’, as we would now say, distorting the original meaning of the word. The contemplator became one with the object contemplated, taking part with one voice, in a single hymn of praise.

In ancient India, the artist, like the petitioner in archaic Greece, contemplated the divine, celebrated, imitated the divine and identified with it, rendering festive homage through ritual gestures

In ancient India too, the artist, like the petitioner in archaic Greece, contemplated the divine, celebrated, imitated the divine and identified with it, rendering festive homage through ritual gestures³⁶. Here, traditional dance and yoga find a common ancestor. Through the rite that binds him to the God, the contemplator – but we could equally say the dancer or the yogin – is saved, i.e. becomes salvus, whole, sheltered from the anguish of the separation that reigns in ordinary life, in which the divine is experienced as other-than-self. In festal contemplation, homo aestheticus and homo religiosus rediscover their own lost integrity.

In light of more recent studies, we might even say that the most ancient meaning of what we call yoga is the rite of devotion and homage to the divine that the gestures of the dancer, the poet, or the artist bring into being through the various expressive colourings of his inner self. Historically, traditional Hatha yoga took root originally around the 6th century BCE, with the appearance in India of new groups of renouncer ascetics, called shramana, “those who practise”, or “those who toil (shram-)”, who started spreading most probably from today’s Allahabad, over greater Magadha. These groups largely attracted Buddhists and Jains, partly influenced by Vedic Brahmanical traditions. Their aim was to end the cycle of rebirth (samsara) and suffering determined by karma, that characterised human existence. For this purpose, they developed a set of meditation techniques (dhyana, deriving from dhyai-, a verb quite similar to the Greek theorein). Before becoming ascetic, however, there was an ecstatic and aesthetic yoga, probably of a more ancient origin. From this viewpoint, harking back to an ancestral India, already expressed to some extent by producing the mystical hymns of the Rig Veda, the rite of yoga must have developed from an original bhaktirasa, the emotional afflatus that becomes the supreme art, that of establishing and making manifest the relation between man and God, elevating the human body to the stage for the transmission and experience of the spiritual dimension.

The divine was equated with splendour. In such a context, the celebration of light, attested without exception in all archaic societies, was rooted in the primordial art of invoking and paying homage to the sun, the light principle of life³⁷. Most probably, the priest performed an archetypal, precursory dance, although documentary sources are lacking, of what was to become celebratory yoga, a veritable incarnation of a hymn of praise.

Mediaeval Kashmir seems to draw on that very same attitude – both aesthetic and religious – that stamps yoga with such unmistakable originality. Momentum rather than exercise, tasting rather than fatigue. Through vital pulsation (prana) inner heat/splendour becomes emotion, an aware presence, gesture and, ultimately, an evoking of the sacred. Dwelling in the immobility of the asana, free self-expression becomes contemplation of the most intimate part of us, the sacred within.

The most ancient meaning of what we call yoga is the rite of devotion and homage to the divine that the gestures of the dancer, the poet, or the artist bring into being through the various expressive colourings of his inner self.

The yogin, particularly in Kashmiri yoga, is a bhakta, literally so in the meaning stemming from the root bhaj-. Bhaj- means “participate”. Thus, the yogin participates, shares the sacred, by performing a conscious gesture that originates from prana, the vital breath. This type of ecstatic/aesthetic yoga is radically ethical, since the bhakta/yogin forgets his own personal interest and abandons himself in the asana to an availability without reservations, we may say without expectations, a prayer without petitions, an offering of the self to existence just as it is, to Shiva. The ethics of non-dual tantrism is merely the disclosure of our deepest essence in relation to whatever is outside us. And as such, it is naturally expansive. The Western Middle Ages would describe it in the words of St Thomas³⁸ bonum diffusivum sui, the Good that spreads by its own nature, by itself. Virtue, again according to the thought of St Thomas, is merely a disposition to follow, in the right way, our natural inclination³⁹. This condition, content with itself, is elevated beyond time and space, which is what happens to the nartaka, the actor or dancer on stage in the Hindu theatre, embodied in the role to be performed and temporarily forgetful of his own personal affairs.

CONTEMPLATION IS THE HEART IN FESTAL CELEBRATION

Contemplation is Meditation. Dhyai- in Sanskrit, the ancient root from which derives the classical term for meditation dhyana, meaning “contemplate”, “observe”, “see close up”, “recall to mind and to the heart”, “think”, “meditate”. In the lexicon of non-dual tantrism, the terms describing the experience of meditation are anusamdhana or anusamdhi, both of which mean “memory”, but also “investigation”, “introspection”, “awareness”, “reflection” and – according to some commentators – “visualisation”.

According to a well-known etymology, “contemplate” derives from cum + templum, evoking the lifting of his gaze to the heavens of the priest designated to circumscribe a small portion of it (i.e. the templum) and read the omens of bird flight in that area. Lifting one’s gaze in contemplation becomes the raising and opening of one’s attention and one’s heart. To the original imprint of seeing is added the exaltation of the heart, the festal aptitude. Such is the yogin’s aptitude in non-dual Shaivism, a joyous alertness of heart and mind within an eminently contemplative yoga. The natural energy of attention in these schools is an upward propensity, an impetus (udyama) of the heart. When everything needed in daily life is achieved, one may sit quietly with a participating and attentive heart, doing nothing further, and celebrate, which is one of the meanings of the verb as-, “sit”, from which derives the term asana in Sanskrit, the posture of contemplation.

In the 4th century BCE, the pre-Socratic Anaxagoras replied to the question as to why one comes into the world: for the sake of contemplating (eis theorian), i.e. for that special activity that is tranquil inactivity, with a participatory attentiveness. We might add that he is echoed first by Aristotle⁴⁰: we are working hard to have otium. Then St Thomas when he affirms that the contemplative life is the true goal of human existence (finis totius humanae vitae)⁴¹.

In The City of God, Augustine evokes a “timeless time” in which we can finally rest, see, love, praise. In Augustine, looking and loving constitute a single path, evoking that opening of the heart that alone allows us to see into the depths. Only where love opens one’s eye does one’s gaze rest on the beloved object. And love, the expansive form of being, can gush forth in profusion from a heart at peace, freed from needs, raised above the logic of the useful on which our daily life turns. When everything has been done, one discovers the perceptive dilation of the game, the festal fullness of purposeless felicity, the saving art of dwelling on the object contemplated, the celebration of existence.

Contemplation means lingering⁴². Letting our gaze linger on something, we discover the infinite details – unseen by the distracted eye – kindling their meanings and a wondering interest in what we are looking at. Lingering produces consensus with the object, like self-identification with what we are contemplating. We are mirrored in what our intention is free to linger on. And this recognition generates a sort of enhanced vision. From the observer and from the object contemplated an overflow is produced, a diffused perceptive horizon that includes both ourselves and the object contemplated. By contemplation, we know more deeply not only the object observed, but ourselves observing it, creating a kind of synergy between the contemplated and the contemplator, in which both share with the other and enhance the other.

Before a mental description of what we are contemplating arises, we see ourselves simply with our joy in the object contemplated. Contemplation is knowing, contemplation is recognition, contemplation is reuniting. For the Pythagoreans, by way of example, a single act of contemplation favours identification with a cosmic order, with the symbolic relationship of a universe of vaster meaning that included the single individual.

When things are free from any purpose, they become festal. According to Heidegger, they have no function, but shine and sparkle⁴³. Liberated from the stranglehold of gain and routine, they emanate a contemplative quietude that makes lingering possible, a grateful rest. And one remains lingering; the emphasis on self is silenced, leaving space for a festive, impersonal and undisturbed gaiety. The rite of contemplation widens in the architecture of a festive, blessed, immortal space-time that perpetuates itself rhythmically, marking the sacredness of an eternal present.

In contemplating the other, we discover the greatest joy, the intensity of the original whole, in a disposition of non-action which, as we have seen, Thomas Aquinas also considers as constituting the true goal of our being in the world.Moreover, the object contemplated, to which a sharing attention is devoted, becomes the beloved object of an authentic love, since it is uncalculated. This very gratuitous loving attention reveals complete joy in the contemplator⁴⁴.

The contemplator of the divine, the theoros, is thus the contemplator par excellence. For the great mediaeval Kashmiri master Utpaladeva, only if we are aware of having light within us can we see it and recognise it in an external object, thus recognising the same light that illuminates ourselves and everything else in the world. Similarly, in ancient times contemplation of the divine was a real and proper mimesis, an imitatio Dei in which one saw oneself and recognised oneself in the light of the God celebrated.

According to Aristotle, the human being is capable of the contemplative life (bios theoretikos) since he already has in himself something of the divine. Through the rite of contemplation (theoretike) he discovers himself, since he is mirrored in what he observes, recalling his true nature, his divine root. This dwelling in the intimacy of the self (which brings us back to the Sanskrit etymology of the term festal celebration) is the greatest and most perfect happiness, since we no longer seek anything of what we are, restoring it to our memory, returning it to our heart. He who sees, who contemplates, experiences in this simple action (or non-action) true happiness. This was the view of Aristotle, confirmed in the comment of St Thomas in the Nicomachean Ethics: to him who sees, nothing is lacking, omnia secum portat⁴⁵.

A famous Japanese haiku captures the essence of the contemplative attitude we are describing:

Sitting quietly,
doing nothing,
Spring comesand grass grows by itself⁴⁶

In such a context, sitting and doing nothing makes one ready for an alert quietude in which everything happens by itself, without any need for our intervention. This is the spirit of contemplation, to remain in that delicate balance between inaction and attention.

In the haiku quoted above, the live repose of contemplation implies an emptying of the self to make room for a focus on the festal celebration of nature, relinquishing to the background the very subject of contemplation. Only by lingering in this condition can we grasp and see the shining of something new, never seen before. This lack of emphasising ourselves, opening up to what is outside us, is the authentic source of joy. Contemplation is joy because the self does not interfere. It is without intention. Meditation makes us feel that wherever we are we have everything, we are in syntony with the movement of everything, we are everything.

This is the contemplative attitude that the Kashmiri masters also intuited. The emotive intensity of just being in the experience is itself the whole experience.

The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han, quoting Heidegger, affirms that prior to any thought activity, there is in us a background emotion, a pathos, our innermost core, from which thought itself and hence action come to life⁴⁷. According to Abhinavagupta, that background emotion is shanta rasa, the emotion of tranquillity, the matrix – quiet, but vibrating with every other emotional state. Somananda, the great initiator of the Shaivite lineage, already describes in his Shivadrishti the background of being as a tranquil sea where the water’s surface reveals a subtle ripple, barely perceptible. That first ripple will swell to a wave that is more easily visible. That slight initial vibration is already action, we might say, returning to Abhinavagupta, it is already emotion. All eight basic emotions, described by Bharata in the Natyashastra, arrive as waves on that tranquil sea, shanta rasa, considered by the Kashmiri masters as the ninth emotion, the fundamental one, the original.

Sitting tranquil in immobile asana, but with a softly beating heart: that is the attitude of contemplation, when one ceases action in order to feel the pulsating life that moves the immobility from inside. That feeling, lingering in the posture, will become emotion, participation, celebration – the festal celebration of our being in the world. From that living and luminous presence is born every thought, every action, everything!

1. Martin Heidegger GA 52: Hölderlins Hymne ‘Andenken’, Frankfurt 1992, pp. 66-67 (my translation).
2. This passage is not included in the partial translation of the text: The Yoga of Mālinīvijayottaratantra: Chapters 1-4, 7-11, 11-17, Critical Edition, Translation and Notes by Somadeva Vasudeva, Pondicherry 2004, but in: Raffaele Torella: “Abhinavagupta’s Attitude towards Yoga”. In: Journal of the American Oriental Society [139.3] 2019
3. Non-dual yoga in Kaśmīri tradition appears as a celebration of life and an exaltation of the vital prin-ciple (prāņa), regarded as identical with consciousness itself. The yogic ever-vigilant (svodita) contemplative attitude nourishes awareness, so as to unfold into a full awakening, embodied in the very ordinary life. The highest degree of yoga is then spontaneous (akṛtaka) and requires neither effort nor technique. This is not a ‘performative’ yoga, but felt, lived, experienced at first hand with full attention and ‘heartfulness’. Yoga is Life. See Gioia Lussana, “Yoga is Life. The flowing course of consciousness in Kaśmīri Śaivism”. In: Transcultural Dialogues (FIND) [n° 3], 2019
4. Cf. Hymnes de Abhinavagupta. Traduits et commentés par Lilian Silburn, Paris 1970, p. 38.
5. On the conception of prāṇa as omni-pervading vital energy, we find comparisons and matches between the tantric and the Chinese Taoist view. François Jullien, in all his works, describes the centrality and charac-teristics of the vital principle. See for example: François Jullien: Nourrir sa vie: à l’écart du bonheur, Paris 2005
6. On the relationship between prāṇa, dazzling light and the illuminated mind in Abhinavagupta (sattva as prāṇa), see D. Cuneo and E. Ganser “The Emotional and Aesthetic Experience of the Actor. Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le comédien in Sanskrit Dramaturgy, in: F. Sferra and V. Vergiani (eds) Verità e bellezza. Essays in Honour of Raaele Torella, Napoli 2022, pp. 193-272
7. Cf. Śaṅkarācārya: The Vivaraṇa Subcommentary to Vyāsa-bhāṣya on the Yoga-Sūtra-s of Patanjali: Samād-hipāda, edited and translated by Trevor Leggett, Boston 1981
8. Sa ca sārvabhaumaḥ cittasya dharma iti | cittasya dharmo nātmādīnām | tac ca cittaṃ svayam eva samādhīyate ‘ntaranirapekṣatvāt ||
9. On the concept of an ‘aesthetic’ rather than ascetic yoga, see Gioia Lussana: “The Art of Yoga: to incar-nate Beauty”, Transcultural Dialogues (FIND) [n°1], 2019
10. Cf. Immanuel Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, Berlin 1790, Introduction
11. Cf. Byung-Chul Han: Vita contemplativa: oder von der Untätigkeit, Berlin 2022. Chapter 1: Visionen der Untätigkeit
12. The original expression in Schiller’s Poem is “die unsichere Flügel der Schmetterlings”
13. See in this respect Gioia Lussana: Lo yoga della bellezza. Spunti per una riformulazione contemporanea dello yoga del Kaśmīr, Bologna 2021, cap. XII, p.111 et seq.
14. “…[die Rose] blühet weil she blühet “ (“it blooms because it blooms “). Angelus Silesius, Cherubinischer Wandersmann, ed. by Wilhelm Bölsche, Leipzig 1905, p.39
15. See Meister Eckhart, Von der Vergessenheit, in: Deutsche Werke, Stuttgart 2023, pp. 124-125.
16. Vyāsa, Yogasūtra bhāṣya I,1. See Michel Angot, Le Yoga-Sutra De Patanjali: Suivi Du Yoga-Bhashya De Vyasa: Le Yoga-Bhasya de Vyasa, Paris 2008
17. These considerations on art as play are matched and confirmed in the work by Hans-Georg Gadamer: Die Aktualität des Schönen, Stuttgart 1977. First part, chap. I, II, III, Die Aktualität des Schönen. Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest.
18. Abhinavagupta’s Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. Gītārtha Saṁgraha, trans. Boris Marjanovic, Delhi 2005.
19. Cit. in Sheldon Pollock: The Rasa Reader, Classical Indian Aesthetics. New York 2016, p. 149.
20. On the aesthetic theory of the Kashmiri masters, and particularly Abhinavagupta, even today a basic reference is still Raniero Gnoli: The Aesthetic Experience According to Abhinavagupta, Varanasi 1968. Cf. J. L. Masson, M. V. Patwardhan: Śāntarasa and Abhinavagupta’s Philosophy of Aesthetics, Poona 1985. Cf. also Daniel H. H. Ingalls (ed.): The Dhvanyāloka of Ānandavardhana with the Locana of Abhinavagupta, translated by D. H. H. Ingalls, J. M. Masson, and M. V. Patwardhan, Cambridge (MA) 1990; Sheldon Pollock: A Rasa Reader. Classical Indian Aesthetics, New York 2016; Elisa Ganser: Theatre and Its Other. Abhinavagupta on Dance and Dramating Acting, Leiden: Boston 2022; and Raffaele Torella: “Passions and Emotions in the Indian Philosophical-Religious Traditions”, in: Purushottama Bilimoria and Alexandra Wenta (eds.): Emotions in Indian Thought-Systems, London 2015, pp. 57–101. In this respect see also Raffaele Torella: “Beauty”. In: Burlesque of the Philosophers. Indian and Buddhist Studies in Memory of Helmut Krasser, ed. by V. Eltschinger et al., Bochum, Freiburg 2023. pp. 755–779; and “Variations on nartaka ātmā”, Bulletin d’études indiennes 36: Hommage a Marie-Claude Porcher, 2024, pp. 389-414.
21. Cf. Gioia Lussana: Lo yoga della bellezza, op. cit., cap. V
22. On the sacredness of every vital phenomenon, not only in reference to the purely ritual dimension, but also to everyday life, see Gioia Lussana: Yoga is Life. The flowing course of consciousness in Kaśmīri Śaivism”, op. cit.
23. Bernard of Clairvaux: Sermones de diversis (Miscellaneous Sermons), Collegeville (U.S.A.) 2008.
24. Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer: Die Aktualität des Schönen. Chapters I, II and III: Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest
25. On the concept of camatkāra, a term usually translated by marvel, cf. Raffaele Torella: Camatkāra, in: Journal of Indological Studies, Kyoto 2022, passim.
26. As a rule, also in the Western tradition contemplation is deemed a knowledge that is accom-panied by wonder and marvel at the discovery. See Bernard of Clairvaux: De consideratione, book 5, last chapter: Admiratio est actus consequens contemplationem sublimis veritatis (On Consideration). II, II, 180, 3 ad 3: https://www.ecatholic2000.com/bernard/on-consideration.shtml (2024, July 5).
27. Cf. H.G. Gadamer, Die Aktualität des Schönen. Part two, chapter 2 “Ästhetik und Hermeneutik”.
28. See Raffaele Torella, Bettina Bäumer (eds): Utpaladeva, Philosopher of Recognition, Delhi 2015.
29. Abhinavagupta: Tantrāloka, chap. 37, 48. See also Luce dei tantra. Tantrāloka, edited by Raniero Gnoli, Milano 2017.
30. On the concept of festal celebration, inspiration is found in some considerations of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Die Aktualität des Schönen, op. cit. passim, and also J. Pieper: Muβe und Kult, München 1947.
31. Plato, Phaedrus 276 b 5. See also Josef Pieper, Zustimmung zur Welt. Eine Theorie des Festes, München 1963.
32. Cf. Psalms 117, 24.
33. See for example Laws, 653 d 1; 828 a.
34. Vyāsa, Yogasūtra bhāṣya II, 47. See Michel Angot, Le Yoga-Sutra De Patanjali: Suivi Du Yoga-Bhashya De Vyasa,op. cit
35. Cf. Josef Pieper: Glück und Kontemplation, München 1957, Cap. IX.
36. Cf. Elisa Ganser: “Dance as yoga: Ritual offering and Imitatio Dei in the physical practices of classical Indian theatre”, in: Yoga and the Traditional Physical Practices of South Asia: Influence, Entanglement and Confron-tation, edited by Daniela Bevilacqua and Mark Singleton. Journal of Yoga Studies (Special Issue, Vol. 4), 2023 pp.137-171.
37. Prior to the success of the mediaeval lineage of Śaivite masters, the cult of the sun (Sūrya) is docu-mented in Kashmir, subsequently assimilated to the cult of Śiva, but maintaining several salient characteristics. The sun worshippers (the sauras) worshipped the sun in the temple of Sūrya Mārtanda, whose ruins can still be seen near Anantnag.
38. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica, I, q. 5, a. 4. ad 2.
39. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica, Ibid.,Ivi, II, II, 108, 2.
40. Nicomachean Ethics 10, 7. The Artistotelian otium corresponds to the contemplative life. It is vigilant repose, skolé, or the leisure of not having to do [anything].
41. Thomas Aquinas: Summa theologica, II, II q. 180.
42. On the practice of lingering in relation to the the contemplative aptitude, cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Die Aktualität des Schönen, first part, chap. III, Die Aktualität des Schönen. Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest.
43. See Martin Heidegger: Hölderlins Hymne ‘Andenken’, (Wintersemester 1941/42), band 52, Martin Heidegger Gesamtausgabe), Frankfurt am Main 1992. pp. 66-67.
44. This is matched in the thought of Bernard of Clairvaux. Cf. De diligendo Deo, ed. Waktin W. Williams, Cambridge 1926, pp.32 et seq.
45. See Josef Pieper: Glück und Kontemplation, pp. 87 et seq.
46. See Robert E. Lewis (ed.), The Book of the Zen Grove, with Japanese translations and commentaries by Shibayama Zenkei, selected by Shimano Eidō, Livingston 1984.
47. Byung-Chul Han, Vita contemplativa, chapter 3: Vom Handeln zum Sein.