Shambhavi Sarasvati - Tantra: the Play of Awakening

JAYA KULA PRESS
4110 SE Hawthorne Blvd. #106
Portland, Oregon 97214
jayakula.org

2012 by Shambhavi Sarasvati
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover and interior design and layout:
Cecilia Sorochin / SoroDesign

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012937052
Sarasvati, Shambhavi
Tantra: the play of awakening
ISBN print edition:
978-0-9841634-2-7
0-9841634-2-5

ISBN ebook edition:
978-0-9841634-3-4
0-9841634-3-3

For everyone, all

T HIS BOOK IS a tour guide, a map and a friend for anyone on a conscious path of spiritual awakening. It wants to support you in your efforts to discover the wisdom inherent in Reality, to warn you of possible detours, to comfort, encourage, prod and make you laugh.

The teachings youll encounter here are loosely organized. Feel free to skip around, meander, double back or read straight through. The final section is titled Heart Advice, but in truth, the entire book is composed of teachings I received with my heart and am sharing with you from the heartthe heart of a practitioner, of a disciple and, more recently, a teacher.

In the direct realization traditions, such as Kashmir Shaivism and Dzogchen, we say: Everything is fine. Life is not a problem. We understand that whatever happens is Reality, aka God, expressing itself. Or as is said by the Dzogchen masters: Everything is self-perfected from the beginning.

If everything is fine, why bother teaching, or writing books?

Teaching is not fixing a problem. A plant taking in water is not fixing something. It is just being a plant. Teaching is also an aspect of nature, as is studenting. There is an ongoing teaching aspect that is part of the natural expression of life moving toward Self-recognition, or realization. Teaching, teacher and student are one natural, coarising technology for delighting in the experience of waking up.

My root Guru, Anandamayi Ma, exhorted everyone to do spiritual practice. She urged people to turn their lives and activities toward Self-realization in whatever way they could. But there was no sense of personal urgency attached. She had total confidence in life. Her exhortations were just what was naturally happeningpart of the expressive play of Reality. Nothing more or less.

On one level, I feel constant wonder that traditions, teachers and practices, such as those from which I have benefitted, exist at all. I want to share my wonder, and what I have learned, with you. Id like you to deepen your practice, whatever it is. I want you to realize more of your nature and experience greater spaciousness, sensitivity and expressivity in your life as I have.

On another level, these affects and desires are all the same impulse of an aware, awake Reality accomplishing the revelation of itself to itself. It is all playfulness. I find it impossible at this stage to take writing, or teaching or even my own lingering earnestness too seriously. My students will confirm that I regularly break out into giggles while giving satsang and other teachings. That we show up and play together like this is wondrous, delightful and hilarious.

My previous book, Pilgrims to Openness, presented an overview of the tradition of direct realization Tantra (Kashmir Shaivism) and practical View teachings, many of them about how everyday life functions as spiritual practice. (So read it, if you havent already! )

View teachings help you to understand the larger context in which your practice is occurring. You learn about Reality from the perspective of those who have already realized. That Reality is more expansive than what you are likely experiencing right now.

View teachings also convey how to do spiritual practice and how to correctly orient yourself to your practice by understanding why you are doing it and what attitude to adopt as you do your practice.

For instance, people are often instructed to watch their breath. This instruction is commonly understood to be meditation. Even when I specifically point out that I am not giving an instruction to watch the breath, some people slip into this behavior over time.

In my tradition, a beginning instruction would more likely be to feel the breath and to lose the watcher. This is a profoundly different instruction. Students have to know that it is important and why. When View teachings are given correctly and students are not too distracted to listen and absorb them, this kind of slippage does not occur.

View teachings are not theories. They are not simple information, or academic philosophy. View teachings are transmission teachings given by a person who has practiced, usually for a long time, and has realized the fruit of practice.

By receiving View teachings, you are already beginning to discover your real nature in a direct way. The alchemy that exists between you and the teacher causes you to have an actual, embodied experience of your own essence nature. This discovery, however fleeting, acts as a beacon. You can see where you are going and head more directly for that. Reading is different from hearing the teachings in the presence of the teacher, but it is still a useful practice.

This book is a collection of View teachings. It addresses many of the nitty gritty circumstances that arise when you are doing some kind of practice, most specifically in direct realization traditions. However, because all aspirants to Self-understanding eventually encounter similar circumstances, I think this book can be useful to anyone in any tradition. I know that I have received useful teachings from Buddhist, Christian, Daoist and other teachers.