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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts, and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Hello and welcome back to the new Books in Indian Religions podcast, a podcast channel here on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dr. Barash Balkaran. More importantly, I have the pleasure of welcoming back to the podcast Dr. Gavin Flood, who is professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Oxford. We are talking about a new Routledge publication called the Concept of Mind in Hindu Tantra. Gavin, welcome back to the podcast.
- [01:32]
C
Thank you very much. Very pleased to be here.
- [01:35]
B
How does it come to mind to write a book on the concept of mind in Hindu Tantra? What's the genesis of this work?
- [01:40]
C
Well, it was way, way, way back. I once read an article by Herbert Gunter, who was a Canadian scholar who wrote an article on the concept of mind in Buddhist Tantra. And the issues that he was raising there struck me as being still relevant. Like how what the kind of the mentalistic language in one religion or one philosophical system, can we translate that into mentalistic language in another tradition or another system? So that was his problem, if you like, that he was looking at in that book. He didn't really come to any clear conclusions, but I thought that the enterprise and the questions he was raising were interesting and are still relevant. So that was the initial inspiration for the book was Herbert Gunter's article on the concept of mind in Buddhist Tantrism.
- [02:40]
B
So then do we have a tension in Tantrism in particular regarding how the mind is conceived?
- [02:46]
C
I think that there is, as in the Western philosophy, the tension is between, from Descartes, if you like, between a kind of dualism that the mind is separate from the body, which is the mind exists not in extension or space, but in time and the body exists in extension in space and that there's a two way causation between them. So that's a very important philosophical position through the history of Western philosophy. And it's perhaps a popular understanding of the mind too. We speak about our minds as being somehow, that we are our minds and we have a body. And although that's been philosophically challenged, I think a similar kind of problematic also occurs in Indian traditions.
- [03:39]
B
How would you characterize that problematic? It's more nuanced than the Descartes setup, isn't it?
- [03:45]
C
Yes, it's much more nuanced because I think there is a dualism. But it's a distinction between the Atman, the self, or the jiva, the life force, the essence of the person and all the rest, the mind body as a single complex. So it's not that the subject of first person prejudicates, I want a cup of tea, I go to the pub, or whatever is the true subject. There's a deeper subject which is the self, the jiva or the Atman, which is unchanging and carries on through in different incarnations, if you like. So what Descartes regarded as the mind body split is actually within the Indian traditions generally, and within Tantric traditions in particular, one single complex. So we're a complex of mind, body, if you like, together. So there are physicalist ways of describing ourselves in terms of, say, the five elements, and there are mentalistic ways of describing ourselves in terms of the manas, the mind, in terms of the ego, the ahankara, the eye maker, and in terms of the subtle, the subtle organs which interact with the world. So in the Tantric tradition, you have a sthula sharira, a gross body, and you have a sukshma shirerera, a subtle body which comprises what we would call the mind as well. And within that subtle body you have these latent traces of actions that come into fruition in this or in future lives. So the Cartesian model is somewhat too simple in a sense. And the Tantric tradition has this more complex model of mind body as a cohesive unit. But the true subject is deeper than that, is the jiva or the Atman, which itself is unchanging and itself is the true subject of first person predicates, although we have to be liberated to know that.
- [05:56]
B
So then the issue is not so much the interplay of the mind and body, it's really the mind body complex against the backdrop of this perhaps more primordial or abiding aspect of self. The Atman.
- [06:12]
C
Yes, I think that's correct. You could still say, well, that's still a dualism. And indeed it was for Tantric traditions such as the Shaiva Siddhanta, which is, if you like, the backbone of the Tantric tradition, which is indeed a dualist system, which says that the self, the anu, the atom or the jiva, is indeed distinct from the mind body complex. And it's that which carries on, but also that anu is distinct from all other anus, all other atom, all other atomic cells. So there's an ontological pluralism in that system. So the dualism is real, but it's between the self and the mind body complex, if you like, within us. Now, with the other kind of Shaivism, the non dualistic Shaivism, which people will probably know about the situation, is more complex because they deny that there is a plurality of jivas, a plurality of souls. There is only one soul, if you like, which is identical with Shiva. And it's characterized as Parachaitanya, supreme consciousness or pure consciousness. And that's our true identity. So the mind body complex that we identify with, that we think is our true self, is, at the end of the day, not the case. Now, that's a different position to the Advaita position, the Advaita Vedanta position, because it doesn't deny the reality of the world and that complex. But it says that in truth it is, it is pure consciousness. So it's a subtly different philosophical position to Advaita, and it's a distinct philosophical position to the dualistic Shaiva Siddhanta because it maintains that the self is not plural but singular. So what do you hope folks would.
- [08:11]
B
Take away from this work as a whole? What are some key points the book is making?
- [08:16]
C
I think the. The book is, I think, several things. One is it's a history. So some people say that you can't do a history of ideas in India because the philosophies are unchanging in a sense. But I think that this book shows there's a shift in the understanding of the concept of mind through the generations, through into. Into modernity or on the eve of modernity, and where it becomes much more universalistic and connected up with other philosophical systems such as Advaita. Now, so that's one takeaway thing from the book, is that it's a history of the idea of the concept of mind and that there is indeed a history of ideas within India. Secondly, I would like people to take away the idea that it's a complex relationship between mind and body, between mentalistic vocabulary and physicalist vocabulary, and that the way that the Tantric tradition divides up reality is different from the one in the west that we've inherited from Descartes. So I think two points.
- [09:38]
B
Yeah. Maybe walk us through some of the chapters. Just some really fascinating discussions. And I think you're right in that the way you've set it up, certainly there is an intellectual history issue of ideas unfolding there, but maybe walk us through some of the chapters in the book.
- [09:54]
C
Say that again, Sorry.
- [09:58]
B
Perhaps you can walk us through some of the chapters in the book or the structure of the book. How do you lay it out?
- [10:03]
C
Oh, yes, okay. The. The structure of the book is. Well, it's chronological. It starts with. In the introduction, I look at the early concepts of mind in the history of Indian thinking, and particularly the term manas. Now, manas is used way back, right, in the Rig Veda, where it seems to hold a very kind of high status, the notion of mind, because it's linked to imagination or inspiration. D and so I examined that mentalistic vocabulary way back then. I then go into looking at mentalistic vocabulary in early Buddhist thinking, because the Buddhist concept of citta and indeed manas influences what we call the Hindu understanding as well. So I look at the two notions of mind in that early Buddhist material. One is that citta is constructed, if you like, is impermanent, and arises out of causes and conditions. So the mind is real, but it's constantly changing from moment to moment and is created by causes and conditions. That is our pasts, but also the immediate environment in which the mind finds itself. So determined is not the wrong word, but it's constrained by those two forces, the past, latent tendencies, vasanas, samskaras, and also the senses, the world of the senses that we inhabit. So that's one view of the mind. It's constantly changing. The other view of the mind, also in the Pali canon, is that the mind is pure in its essence, that they have this notion of pabasara, citta, in Sanskrit, prabhasvara, citta, which is the luminous consciousness. And in a couple of places in the Pali canon, the Buddha says that this Mind amongst is luminous is Prabhasara. So it's interesting. There's a tension, I think, within those early sources between these two concepts of mind and both come into the Yogic tradition in Brahmanical thinking. So I then go on to speak about Patanjali and the Patanjali concept of mind as his definition of yoga's yoga, Chitta vritti, Nirodha Yoga is the cessation of mental fluctuation. And there you have the idea of citta, very much from the Buddhist understanding of something which is unchanging. But you also get in the Brahmanical tradition the idea that the mind is pure and luminous in its essence. So I look at that in the introductory chapter and how that goes into yoga in the traditional Hatha Yoga. The Hatha Yoga concept of the mind as fluctuating and changing. So looking at this tension, on the one hand you have the idea that the mind is pure, on the other side that it's defiled. So another Buddhist image, the mind will settle on a flower like a fly will settle on a flower, but it will also settle on a running sore. So very strong Buddhist images that have a negative evaluation of the mind. So I'll explore that tension between its negative evaluation and its positive evaluation in the early sources and then going to look at the Shaiva Siddhanta, the dualist understanding of the mind in sources such as the Matanga Parameshvara, the Mrijendra Tantra and other dualist tantras, where the Shaivas take on the Samkhya category, the Samkhya 25 Tattvas, if you remember. Samkhya philosophy is dualistic, says there's a self Purusha and the world matter, Prakriti and mind. Manas is within Prakriti, within the material order of the world. Now, the shaivasiddhantins take those 25 Samkhya categories and add their own 11 to get 36 categories. So these 36 categories evolve from the drop, the Bindu, which is the. The seed, the essence of the universe which Shiva acts upon. So Shiva who is external to that acts upon it. And then the universe unfolds. Now, within that unfolding, the mind and the body occur, are part of that unfolding. And the jiva or the Anu or the soul, is incarnated into that complex of mind, body, until it's incarnated. Now, these sources also tell us that at the end of an Aon, all of this contracts back into the Bindu, back into the drop, and the souls which are not liberated go back into the receptacle, if you like, which is the Purusha tatva. They go back into the receptacle in a quiescent state until the universe expands again and those souls are thrown out. The Pancharatra tradition, which has more or less the same cosmology, talks about the beehive of the souls. The purusha is the beehive, the ali kosha, the beehive of the souls, where the souls get thrown out at the beginning of a new age and then get embodied in matter once again. And that goes on over and over again until each individual soul is liberated from the process. But of course, the process has no end because there's no limit to the number of souls in the cosmos. So that's the Shaiva Siddhanta. So I describe those texts and those sources and quote the texts and sources in that chapter. We then go on to look at the non dualistic understanding of this process. Now the non dualists, like Abhinavagupta and kshemaraja in the 9th and 10th centuries, inherit this tradition in a sense, although they have their own revelation of the non dualist tantras. And they interpret this tradition to mean that it is Shiva himself, pure consciousness, that evolves as the universe. So it's not that the universe is unreal, it is that the universe is made of consciousness. And our purpose in life is to wake up to this reality that we are pure consciousness. So the concept of mind in this tradition is at one relative level, if you like, the same with the Shaiva Siddhanta. But on an ultimate level, the mind is, as the Buddhist thought, luminous and pure, and is identical with Shiva as the great God, the Maheshvara. So Bhairava, who's iconographically depicted as a deity with fangs and bulging eyes pressing out into the world, indicates that the world is not unreal, but is real. And Bhairava, who is pure consciousness, presses out into the realms of experience to experience himself, to experience the world, to have the taste, the Chamatkara, of himself as world. So it's a different metaphysics with the non dual Shaivas, although they inherit the same cosmology and the same language and same terminology. I then go on to develop that notion in a number of later thinker Zara, who is influenced by Advaita Vedanta in the 18th century. And there it's interesting because you get the language of Advaita, that there are four states of consciousness. The waking state, the dream state, deep sleep, and the Fourth state, which is our deeper, truer reality. The Turiya.
- [18:35]
B
Turiyavasta.
- [18:36]
C
Yeah, that's right. You get that mapped onto the Tattva system. And so he's melding the Advaita Vedanta with Kashmir non dualism. And then finally in the book I do a comparative philosophy of mind and compare the non dualist understanding with some examples from the history of western philosophy, starting with Kant, for whom there's a world of phenomenality in which we experience the world, but it's a kind of idealism. But we're kind of locked within this sphere of what he calls phenomenality or what we call phenomenality where our experience is determined by mental categories. So space, time and causation are within the mind and, and our determiners of our reality. And I then go on to look at that in some end up with phenomenologists and look at phenomenology in relation to non dualistic Shaivism.
- [19:48]
B
So which if any of these strands did you find perhaps notable, compelling, surprising, resonant, you know, does anything stand out to you about these strengths?
- [19:59]
C
I think when I was doing the work for the, for the book that it was the Shaiva, the non dualistic Shaivas who stood out for me in their affirmation of world and their affirmation of life. So in contrast to Samkhya, which in a sense is a kind of gnostic system where the soul needs to become realize its isolation, its kaivana from matter, the. The Shaiva non dualists have a much more positive appraisal of the ordinary world that we inhabit. The main point being that it is made of consciousness. So that was something that struck me I think was the affirmation of worldly values in a way of pleasure, of desire, of beauty. So the non dualistic philosophers seem to have taken this idea on. So Abhinavagupta, for example, he compares a sudden enlightenment to if you see a loved one, unexpectedly after a long time a joy arises in the heart, he says, and so that joy that arises in the heart and shatters thought construction and that is akin to the liberating experience. So he uses lots of those kind of examples which are quite world affirming in their orientation.
- [21:36]
B
Yeah, it is, you know, we have this really this dance, this sort of 30,000 foot dance in Hinduism between, you know, Vedic world affirmation and then world denial. And then we have these kind of strands coming together and it is really refreshing to see more world affirming esoteriology such as what we see here. Certainly that Is in part my attraction to the Devi Mahatma because you don't really have a platform. It is a platform, bar none, for social activism, which might be tricky to find amid Hindu cosmology which says, well, it's all Maya and we transcend it. So it's fascinating where these exegetes either reinterpret or reveal elements of Shastra that say, look, yes, our goal is to transcend or to transform, but the world is real and important and worth engaging as well.
- [22:34]
C
Yeah, I think that's a wonderful point, Raj, because it's very difficult to desire change within the world if the world is unreal. Or as someone once said to me, who was an Indian who practiced a kind of dualist meditation, he called this the dustbin of the universe. So if you have that worldview, you want to escape. There was, I think it was William Carlis Williams, find there's a better universe next door. Let's go. So if you have that fundamental metaphysics, it's very difficult to get, it seems to me anyway, to get a social activism or change of the social body off the ground. Whereas if you have a cosmology which is world affirming, such as non dualistic Shaivism or the Devi Mahatmya that you mentioned just now, which has a positive attitude towards world, then the desire to change our social and political conditions sits much more easily with that worldview.
- [23:42]
B
Indeed. And I love this idea, not only from a Hindu studies perspective, but from a common sensical perspective as well and embodied perspective, that if there is a divine, the world is not an obfuscation of the divine, but an expression of it. I mean, have we beheld the majesty and the mystery in nature and all of its intricacies? It's staggering. And so I think it stands to reason for those who are more spiritually inclined to render the world as an expression of divinity as opposed to something crude that obfuscates it alone. Perhaps one can hold both views in a sense, but if there are miracles which exist in the universe, and certainly creation itself is one of them.
- [24:30]
C
Well, that's right, Roger. I 100% agree with what you've just said. The, and the non dualistic. Well, I think that Shaivism is less of a pure non dualism, if you like, more of an emanationism. That the universe is an emanation of God, if you like, or Shiva or Maheshvara, but it is consciousness and it's a splendor, it's a throb, or it's a pulsation. Of this pure consciousness, but it is real, so it's not illusion. So that was their main criticism of Advaita Vedanta. The Advaita Vedanta concept of Brahman Shamaraja says somewhere it says that the absolute is kleba, is a eunuch and has no. No dynamism, has no energy to it.
- [25:29]
B
Potency.
- [25:30]
C
No potency, that's right. But the universe we experience has great potency in the flowers, in the trees, in our lives, in the pulse of life flowing through our veins. So a much more positive attitude to world, seeing world, not as an obscuration, but as an expression of divinity. That's right.
- [25:53]
B
That's really fascinating. So is there anything else you would like to talk about with this project, this book, or perhaps what else you're working on at present?
- [26:04]
C
Well, I think we've covered the main points of the concept of mind in Hindu Chantra. I think through focusing on a sort of fairly perhaps narrow question of the concept of mind that actually allows us to discuss, as we have today, bring in many sort of deep metaphysical issues about the nature of life and the nature of the world and the relationship between divinity and cosmos. So through focusing on that question, I think it allows us to bring in and to deepen our understanding of these kinds of questions. It doesn't answer the questions, I don't think, but it certainly allows us to explore them in a different way.
- [26:53]
B
Yeah, on some level there is this sometimes overt, often covert or implicit idea that there's a connection between the microcosm and the macrocosm. There's a connection between the human complex and then the greater cosmic complex. And so the ways in which we construe mind, particularly in the tradition, have great implications for the ways in which we construe creation, universe. And it's interesting in that, you know, whether you know, which one's created in the other's image, you know, I suppose it can go both ways at times, but it really is fascinating and I think probably particular in the traditions that any inquiry into mind is inquiry into cosmos because the cosmos is considered intelligent on some level.
- [27:42]
C
Well, that's a really good point. Yes, that's right. The cosmos is considered intelligent at some level. And certainly for the shaivas, the non dual shaivas, the further back you go, if you like, or the deeper you go, the more unified and the less differentiated things become, or if we want to look at it in a hierarchical model, in this world where we are, there's a strong differentiation between mentalistic terms and physicalist terms between self, between you, me and other beings. Whereas the higher up the scale you go, the less differentiated things become and the less clear becomes the distinctions between self, body and world. So for a deva, a God, the God's body and the God's world, the bhuvana and the sharira are the same. So that's an interesting idea too, that the lower down the hierarchy you go, the more differentiated things are. The further up the hierarchy you go, the less differentiated things are, until you get to the unity of Shiva at the top of this chain of being.
- [29:00]
B
Fascinating. So what are you working on now or next?
- [29:05]
C
I've just done a comparative work called the Symbol of Ascent, which will be published by Bloomsbury, which is a comparative study of the notion, a bit like what we were just talking about, the notion of going up or the notion of ascent across Indian and Western traditions. So the next project I like to work on is on the category of the person. I think again in a comparative context. There was a book way back now, in 1985, called the category of the Person, published by Nick Allen and Stephen Lukes and Michael Carruthers, I can't remember who else now. And in that article, there was the famous article by Alexis Sanderson on the category of the person in Kashmir, Shaivism. And these essays were responding to Marcel Mauss, French sociologists who argued that there's a developmental notion of a person and it develops in the west, it gets so far in India, but gets stuck, so it doesn't develop. So Sanderson was responding against that. So I'd like to revisit that question of the category of the person in a comparative context.
- [30:24]
B
Well, certainly sounds like fascinating work. We'll have to cover the Blooms rework. It seems to be out soon, I believe. So love to have you back on the podcast soon.
- [30:34]
C
Thank you so much, Raj. It's a pleasure to talk to you.
- [30:37]
B
Yes, thank you very much for appearing today. For those listening, we've been speaking with Dr. Gavin Flood of Oxford on the concept of mind in Hindu tantra. Until next time, keep listening, keep reading, keep well, and keep contemplating this little thing called mind. Bye for now.