This is just a Play
Midnight Conversation
Tantra says:
– Relax, this is just a PLAY.
– Really? And who is playing?
– You. This is a One-Player game.
– Ha, ha… And who am I?
– You are the Unique Absolute Reality (Consciousness, God, Divinity, the Unified Field, Shiva—call it what you will) in a wonderfully diverse manifested state. When you look at someone, you are looking at yourself. 😁
– Well… why did this play begin?
– To unfold all your infinite possibilities. Being one, perfect, unchanged, and without differentiation or movement is simply boring…
– Oh, but this is a terrible game! Just look at what’s happening with this virus!
– To truly enjoy any game, you first need to recognize that you are in a game. Once the game ends, you return to your untouched reality. Second: PAIN is necessary for JOY to exist in this board game. The excitement of playing this human role lies in experiencing both pain and joy, creation and destruction, everything in totality! But you don’t need to SUFFER. Just experience what unfolds before your eyes. Your suffering stems from not knowing who you are and that you are playing.
– Easy for you to say! Does this mean that even when I feel immense pain, worry, loss, loneliness, and sadness, I can still find happiness because deep inside, there’s something that remains untouched?
– YES! Come on! You practice a lot of yoga, yet you struggle to believe that you are as radiant as the sun, as powerful as…
– Oh, no! This is a cruel world, and there’s no such thing as something wonderful, blissful, and eternal!
– Well, then continue playing… 😌
*
ABHINAVAGUPTA’S
15 VERSES OF WISDOM
1. The brilliance of the One Being’s light does not vanish in external light or in darkness because all light and darkness resides in the supreme light of God Consciousness.
2. This Being is called Lord Shiva. He is the essence and existence of all beings. The external objective world is the expansion of His Power and it is filled with the glamour of the glory of God Consciousness.
3. Shiva and Shakti are not aware that they are separate. They are interconnected just as fire is one with heat.
4. He is the God Bhairava. He creates, protects, destroys, conceals, and reveals His nature through the cycle of this world (The 5-fold Activity of Divine Consciousness). This whole universe is created by God in His own nature, just as one finds the reflection of the world in a mirror.
5. The entire embodied cosmos is His supreme Power (Shakti), which He created in order to recognize His own nature. This (Shakti), who is the totality of the embodied cosmos, loves the state of God Consciousness. She is in the state of ignorance, remaining perfectly complete and full in each and every object.
6. The supreme Lord Shiva, who is all-pervasive and fond of playing and falling, together with the Power of His own nature, simultaneously brings about the varieties of creation and destruction.
7. This supreme action cannot be accomplished by any other power in this universe except Lord Shiva (God), who is completely independent, perfectly glorious and intelligent.
8. The limited state of consciousness is unaware and cannot simultaneously expand itself to become the various forms of the universe. The possessor of independence is absolutely different from that unaware state of consciousness. You cannot, therefore, recognize Him in only one way. The moment you recognize Him in one way you will also recognize Him in the other way.
9. This Lord Shiva, who is completely independent (Svatantrya), has the diversity of creation and destruction existing in His own nature. And, at the same time, this diversity is found existing in its own way as the field of ignorance.
10. In this world you will find varieties of creation and destruction, some of which are created in the upper cycle, some of which are created below, and some of which are even created sideways. Attached to these worlds smaller portions of worlds are created. Pain, pleasure, and intellectual power are created according to the status of being. This is the world.
11. If you do not understand that there is actually no span of time, this misunderstanding is also the independence (Svatantrya) of Lord Shiva. This misunderstanding results in worldly existence (samsara). And those who are ignorant are terrified by worldly existence.
12-13. When, because the grace of Lord Shiva is showered upon you or, due to the teachings or vibrating force (shaktipat) of your Master, or through understanding the scriptures concerned with Supreme Shiva, you attain the real knowledge of reality, that is the existent state of Lord Shiva, and that is final Liberation. This fullness is achieved by elevated souls and is called Liberation in this life (Jivanmukti).
14. These two cycles, bondage and liberation, are the play of Lord Shiva and nothing else. They are not separate from Lord Shiva because differentiated states have not risen at all. In reality, nothing has happened to Lord Shiva.
15. In this way the Lord, Bhairava (Shiva), the essence of all Being, has held in His own way, in His own nature, the three great powers: the power of will (Iccha Shakti), the power of action (Kriya shakti, and the power of knowledge (Jnana Shakti). These three powers are just like that trident which is the three-fold lotus. And seated on this lotus is Lord Bhairava, who is the nature of the whole universe of 118 worlds.
16. I, Abhinavagupta, have written and revealed these verses for some of my dear disciples who have very little intellectual understanding. For those disciples, who are deeply devoted to me, I have composed these fifteen verses just to elevate them instantaneously.
Self Realization in Kashmir Shaivism by John Hughes pp. 21-34; State University of New York Press.
