On Śaiva Terminology: Some Key Issues of Understanding

The goal of this paper is to reconsider some key concepts of nondualist Kashmirian ?aivism whose interpretation and translation have generally been the subject of some sort of silent consensus. Through the close examination of a particular text, the Paramārthasāra of Abhinavagupta and its commentary by Yogarāja, as well as of related texts of the system, I shall attempt to improve upon the understanding and translation of terms such as ghana (and the compounds derived therefrom), the roots sphar, sphur, pra]kā? etc., and their derivatives, bhavanakartr?tā, and the names of the three malas. Further, bhāvanā will be discussed in its ?aiva acceptation and a more suitable translation suggested.     

Vedāntic Analogies Expressing Oneness and Multiplicity and Their Bearing on the History of the Śaiva Corpus. Part II: Vivartavāda

Journal of Indian Philosophy - This article, divided into two parts, traces and discusses two pairs of analogies invoked in Sanskrit(ic) literature to articulate the paradox of God’s oneness...     

A Śaiva Interpretation of the Satkāryavāda: The Sāṃkhya Notion of Abhivyakti and Its Transformation in the Pratyabhijñā Treatise

It is a well-known fact that the ?aiva nondualistic philosopher Utpaladeva (fl. c. 925–975) adopted the Sā?khya principle according to which the effect must exist in some way before the operation of its cause (satkāryavāda). Johannes Bronkhorst has highlighted the paradox inherent in this appropriation: Utpaladeva is a staunch supporter of the satkāryavāda, but whereas Sā?khya authors consider it as a means of proving the existence of an unconscious matter, the ?aiva exploits it so as to establish his monistic idealism, in perfect contradiction with the Sā?khya dualism of matter and consciousness. How does Utpaladeva achieve this complete reversal of meaning of the satkāryavāda? The present article argues that the elliptical verses of the ī?varapratyabhijñākārikā dealing with this issue have been partly misunderstood so far due to the loss of Utpaladeva’s own detailed commentary (Vivr?ti) on this passage: Abhinavagupta’s two commentaries, however terse in this respect, clearly show that a crucial part of Utpaladeva’s reasoning remains implicit in the verses. The article therefore attempts to reconstruct the gist of Utpaladeva’s strategy by having recourse to various other ?aiva sources, including Somānanda’s ?ivadr???i and Utpaladeva’s own commentary thereon. This examination shows that Utpaladeva’s appropriation of the satkāryavāda rests on a profound transformation of the Sā?khya notions of manifestation (abhivyakti) and potentiality (?akti), and that his criticism of the Sā?khya understanding of causality might target the ?aiva dualists as well as Sā?khya authors.     

Blurring the Distinction Between Empirical and Normative Legitimacy? A Methodological Commentary on ‘Police Legitimacy and Citizen Cooperation in China’

Asian Journal of Criminology - In a fascinating study into the nature of police legitimacy in Southern China, Sun et al. (2018) present evidence that what researchers have previously been treated...     

Vedāntic Analogies Expressing Oneness and Multiplicity and their Bearing on the History of the Śaiva Corpus. Part I: Pariṇāmavāda

Journal of Indian Philosophy - This article, divided into two parts, traces and discusses two pairs of analogies invoked in Sanskrit(ic) literature to articulate the paradox of God’s oneness...     

Shifting Concepts: The Realignment of Dharmakīrti on Concepts and the Error of Subject/Object Duality in Pratyabhijñā Śaiva Thought

Contemporary scholars have begun to document the extensive influence of the sixth to seventh century Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti on Pratyabhijñā ?aiva thought. Utpaladeva (925–975) and Abhinavagupta’s (975–1025) adaptation of Dharmakīrti’s apoha (exclusion) theory provides a striking instance of the creative ways in which these ?aivas use Dharmakīrti’s ideas to argue for positions that Dharmakīrti would emphatically reject. Both Dharmakīrti and these ?aivas emphasize that the formation of a concept involves both objective and subjective factors. Working within a certain perceptual environment, factors such as a subject’s desires, habits, and conditioning lead him or her to form a concept (vikalpa) based on excluding what is not relevant to the accomplishment of his or her goal. However, the two differ in their account of the relationship between concepts and subject/object duality itself. While Dharmakīrti claims that the division of a cognition into subject, object, and awareness is nonconceptual, the subtly shifted definition of a concept that these ?aivas employ allows them to claim that the error of subject/object duality is actually conceptual. This seemingly small difference in their respective evaluations of the nature of subject/object error has surprisingly large consequences. If, as these ?aivas claim, any awareness involving a duality is conceptual, then subject and object are concepts. Moreover, if the formation of a concept requires desire, then some kind of desire must be inherent to consciousness itself before the formation of a limited subject/object pair. In short, ultimate consciousness must be ?iva, who possesses the freedom to will any and all possible realities.     

Teenagers’ Experiences of Pregnancy and the Parents’ and Partners’ Reactions: A Malaysian Perspective

This study focuses on the experiences of unwed teenage mothers in Malaysia in respect to the reactions of their parents and the fathers of their babies and how the reactions from significant others influence these unwed teenage mothers. The investigation was based on content analysis of interviews with 17 unwed teenage mothers, aged 12 to 18 years, during their probation or placement in shelter houses. The results show that most unwed teenage mothers became pregnant as a result of rape or statutory rape, and thus were at risk of developing mental health problems. Three themes were developed: secrecy, repression, and rejection. Four additional themes—feeling detached, trapped, unworthy, and ambiguous—were developed to describe the teenagers’ experiences of pregnancy.     

The Four Nobles’ Truths and Their 16 Aspects: On the Dogmatic and Soteriological Presuppositions of the Buddhist Epistemologists’ Views on Niścaya

Most Buddhists would admit that every Buddhist practice and theoretical construct can be traced to or at least subsumed under one or more among the four nobles’ truths. It is hardly surprising, then, that listening to these truths and pondering upon them were considered the cornerstones of the Buddhist soteric endeavour. Learning them from a competent teacher and subjecting them to rational analysis are generally regarded as taking place at the very beginning of the religious career or, to put it otherwise, still as an ordinary person along the preparatory path. At this stage, the discursive nature of the four nobles’ truths fits well the didactic and intellectual requirements of early religious practice. But how about the subsequent, more distinctively intuitive/non-conceptual stages of a mystic’s career? How to interpret, for instance, our sources’ strong emphasis on the four nobles’ truths as forming the content of the first pivotal event on the path, the so-called path of vision? And how to understand a philosopher’s claim that the yogic path exhausts itself in one’s learning, rationally analyzing and mentally cultivating the four nobles’ truths? In order to understand this, one has to turn to Abhidharmic interpretations of the four truths as embodying the ultimately true aspects of reality itself. Here, the truths are not regarded as a didactic device encapsulating the entire Buddhist law, but as the basic sixteenfold structure of the real. It is, of course, these ultimately true aspects that the path of cultivation is supposed to make directly perceptible to the yogin, thus enabling him to get rid of ignorance.     

Nondualism in Early Śākta Tantras: Transgressive Rites and Their Ontological Justification in a Historical Perspective

This paper examines the ritual and philosophical meaning of the term ‘nondual’ (advaya/advaita) in early ?ākta Tantras (6th–9th centuries), including some early sources of the anti-ritualist kaula cult. It shows that nondualism denoted only ritual nondualism in the earliest texts, namely, the principle of seeing and using pure and impure substances in ritual without distinction, rejecting the pure-impure dichotomy of orthopraxy. The ontology these tantras presuppose is basically dualist, for they usually see the Lord and the created world as different and regard original impurity (mala) as a removeable material entity, similarly to the classical system of the dualist ?aiva Siddhānta. Nondual ontology evolves gradually, starting with scattered statements about the nature of the god and the phenomenal world, usually in a ritual context. It appears in a form similar to the classical one only in the Krama and related systems, as argued in Sanderson (in: Goudriaan (ed.) Ritual and speculation in early tantrism: studies in honour of André Padoux, 1992).     

On Semantics and Saṃketa: Thoughts on a Neglected Problem with Buddhist Apoha Doctrine

“...a theory of meaning for a particular language should be conceived by a philosopher as describing the practice of linguistic interchange by speakers of the language without taking it as already understood what it is to have a language at all: that is what, by imagining such a theory, we are trying to make explict." – Michael Dummer (2004: 31)     

Meditation,Idealism and Materiality: Vivid Visualization in the Buddhist ‘Qizil Yoga Manual’ and the Context of Caves

Journal of Indian Philosophy - This paper examines the topic of Yogācāra idealism through a little studied Buddhist meditation manual, the so-called ‘Yogalehrbuch’ or...     

Spinoza’s Conception of Personal and Political Change: A Feminist Perspective

Law and Critique - By focusing upon three figures: a trade unionist, who can no longer understand or reconcile himself with his past misogynist behaviour; Spinoza’s Spanish poet, who loses...     

Exploring the Relationship Between Offending and Victimization: What is the Role of Risky Lifestyles and Low Self-Control? A Test in Two Urban Samples

The present study explores the strength of the relationship between offending and victimization among young adolescents. We focus especially on the role background characteristics such as gender, immigrant background and family structure and causal mechanisms such as risky lifestyles and low self-control as many scholars have argued that the correlation between offending and victimization may be caused by common characteristics of offenders and victims. The article build upon two large-scale self-reported delinquency studies in Sint-Niklaas (Belgium) and Halmstad (Sweden). The correlation between offending and victimization is strong, even when controlling for demographics, lifestyles and low self-control. However, the lifestyle and low self-control model predicts offending better than victimization and the independent effect of offending on victimization is larger than the independent effect of victimization of offending. The same pattern is found in both samples, suggesting the stability of findings. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

On the Origins of the Violent Neighborhood: A Study of the Nature and Predictors of Crime‐Type Differentiation across Chicago Neighborhoods

Little of the literature on crime at the neighborhood level examines whether and why some crime types predominate in a given neighborhood over other types. Many macro‐level theories do make predictions about the sort of crimes that occur in some neighborhoods, although they remain largely untested. This study focuses on one of these theories, differential opportunity, and its predictions about the making of violent neighborhoods. Drawing on various data sources, this inquiry determines whether crime profiles differ across Chicago neighborhoods—that is, whether there is significant variation across neighborhoods on ratio of violent crimes to other crime types. Next, it also investigates whether the structural factors implicated in the differential opportunity perspective distinguish these neighborhoods or only predict the incidence of crime. The results reveal significant differences in the distribution of crimes across neighborhoods, as well as show that certain factors identify neighborhoods that favor violence over other crimes.     

Recodifying the Law: A Metalinguistic Inquiry into the Recodification of Belgian Law Between 2014–2019

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - Legal scholars attribute a great deal of importance to the linguistic dimension behind...