Imaginative Realization in the Vijñānabhairava Tantra
<p class="Standard">Among the religious traditions that developed in ancient India, the Tantric tradition offers one of the most vigorous efforts at vindicating the powers of the imagination. A key term in this context is <em>bhāvanā</em>, literally the “act of bringing s...
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| Formato: | article |
| Lenguaje: | EN ES |
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Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
2017
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| Acceso en línea: | https://doaj.org/article/4e6bae6d016a410bb9794e12d026f365 |
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| Sumario: | <p class="Standard">Among the religious traditions that developed in ancient India, the Tantric tradition offers one of the most vigorous efforts at vindicating the powers of the imagination. A key term in this context is <em>bhāvanā</em>, literally the “act of bringing something into being”, used to indicate a disciplined cultivation of the mind’s natural capacity to form images. This brief article addresses the meaning of <em>bhāvanā</em> in the <em>Vijñānabhairava Tantra</em> (VBh), a short scripture written in the spirit of the Śaiva Tantric Trika tradition around the first half of the 9th century CE. In this text, as the article shows, <em>bhāvanā</em> is understood not only as a human faculty but now also as a divine power with important ontological and soteriological implications. In this way, the centrality of the imagination common to many Tantric texts reaches a remarkable zenith in the VBh, anticipating the view of later influential thinkers such as Abhinavagupta and Kṣemarāja (10th-11th centuries).</p> |
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