Īśvarapratyabhijñā Vimarśinī

Utpaladeva's verses on "recognising the Lord" as one's own self, carried whole inside Abhinavagupta's commentary, in four divisions: knowledge, action, scripture, and the summing-up of the levels of reality.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta138 Passages

1Oṃ. Homage to Śiva, whose body is saṃvid. Now, the Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī. Out of the full, which is free of ābhāsa, He first makes “I” shine,…
2So says the venerable Vidyādhipati. We shall set this out in the part on the Āgamas. Therefore a parāmarśa of His eminence over all must also be embra…
3with which the passage ends. But even within the relation of cause and effect, in some cases there shines a screening by another unfolding, brought ab…
4“Once Śiva-ness, present in everything, has been known a single time through a pramāṇa, whether from the śāstra or from the guru’s word, with an under…
5“The pratyabhijñā of Him”: of that Great Lord. Pratyabhijñā is knowing that is turned back, facing towards the self; it is prakāśa. “Turned back”: for…
6“The fruit of rites, or of injunctions, is in the end only being made of You, O deva; but those here who seek the fruit, their state would be a bewild…
7But surely it is establishing the Lord that has to be done. What is this establishing? It is not, to begin with, coming into being, since He is eterna…
8Here, who, by a pramāṇa of what kind, would bring about, with regard to a Lord of what kind, an establishing that consists in the knowing “He exists”,…
9But if neither the working of the factors of action nor the working of a pramāṇa can occur in the Lord, then which working is the one spoken of in “I…
10“Tathā hi” marks the opening of a line of reasoning; it means “let it indeed be seen”. Others say that by “tathā” what is to be proved is pointed to,…
11For only that should be called real in its own right whose form shines unaffected by anything else; and there is nothing called insentient that is una…
12So the inner śakti of action, just like knowledge, is established by itself and is self-luminous. But that same śakti, moving by its own śakti through…
1“But surely, the ābhāsa of a svalakṣaṇa” and so on, as far as “the doer too is therefore constructed” with which they end. In that passage, two ver…
2“A further one”: after that comes the knowing with vikalpa, since every vikalpa, directly or through a chain, is rooted in what is free of vikalpa. An…
3Here, let the object one wishes to remember exist at the time of memory, or let it perish: what does that matter? That the experience, at least, has b…
4That being so, then, just as a goitre within serves for nothing but trouble, so a stable ātman bears no fruit but the trouble of constructing it. So w…
5The one who argues the pūrvapakṣa draws out this absurd consequence on the ground of what the other side accepts, thinking: “I shall gain the reversal…
6Here, to begin with, there are the dealings “I know the object”. In them, all that is truly there is the prakāśa of the object. That is not the object…
7Where it is joined with the reflection of caitanya, then, to begin with, if that reflection itself is not prakāśa in the primary sense, nothing would…
8There, the moments have the form of earlier and later because an awareness that is vikalpa links them; in itself nothing is earlier or later, for it i…
1Here ends the second āhnika, named The Setting Out of the Pūrvapakṣa, in the Jñānādhikāra of the Pratyabhijñāsūtravimarśinī, composed by the venerable…
2“Seeing” is knowing. It differs from the insentient in that its one form is to be self-luminous; for the insentient has to be described as what stands…
3The “not letting slip” of a content “experienced”, that is, made to shine by experience, means not losing it, making it shine just as it was. That is…
4Whatever “ordered life” belongs to “people”, that is, to the world, is their dealings; and it depends on the linking of all acts of knowing, a linking…
5No one, to begin with, denies that saṃvid shines. But if that saṃvid rests in itself alone, how is it the prakāśa of an object? For then the prakāśa w…
1and so on. And the variety into which these śaktis, of knowledge and the rest, divide is of countless kinds; so the capacity for it, svātantrya, which…
2The inward-facing awareness that “perceived the object experienced before” is, first, still there now, “afterwards”, at the time of memory too. For wh…
3To establish this very truth of memory there are further verses. Suppose, then, someone were to say: “Here memory is vikalpa, and the object is not ma…
4If that object were to shine in an outward form, as different from the knowing that is remembering, then the very shining of what is remembered would…
5The earlier object, the pot and the rest, shone “separate”, as “this”. Not so does the experience shine at the time of remembering, as “this is the ea…
6That other act of seeing which yogins have is a particular knowing that arises from meditation and the like and has another’s citta as its content. In…
7To begin with, people at large have no awareness of this kind; for they do not think of any seeing as separate, in this way: “That seeing was mine.” B…
8Here, of whatever kind the seeing is in its own body, just so must it always shine. And at its own time it is lit by nothing else, and its fitting pra…
9“Tat”, in the sense of “therefore”, shows here that what was set out before is drawn on as the reason. Since it has been said that experience, like th…
1Now the fifth āhnika. We praise that Śiva who, with the lamp of the śakti of knowledge, ever brings to light the host of things sunk deep within the…
2“An object”: blue and the like. If its shining were nothing but its having the form of blue and the like, and not some further nature of prakāśa that…
3If prakāśa, whose self is knowing, is other than the object, and for that very reason different from the object, then in itself, since its form is not…
4Here awareness, to begin with, is undivided, for its highest truth is prakāśa alone. If the form of blue were something over and above prakāśa, then,…
5And for him this is not a mere supposition; rather, it ends in certainty. Consider: the cause of variety stated by the Vijñānavādin, marked as the awa…
6And if other pramātṛs are different, then the appearances resting in them are simply different, by the principle that they are not apart from knowing.…
7Nor should this be said: “Since solid things cannot be in one place, and since in conjunction their being in different places is not removed, there is…
8Here, to begin with, although it is possible that in dream, remembering, daydreams, fancies and the like the variety of the ābhāsa of blue and the res…
9It is not only that, by the arguments set out in the verse just before, the outer object does not shine through perception, for perception is just thi…
10But surely it was said, “would make what stands within shine outside”; that standing within has to be made good. With this doubt in view, he says: An…
11Here, suppose appearance, which is prakāśa, and non-appearance, which is the absence of prakāśa, a pot and the like, each stood in its own self, the t…
12“The śakti of citi is unchanging”; “that is the kaivalya of seeing.” “The seer is seeing alone”: in these and the like, too, the guru Ananta has shown…
13The citi in “cetayati” is the action of citi. Its self, that is, its own nature, is pratyavamarśa, whose mark is wonder at itself. Consider: in the po…
14“for discerning the truth of spanda.” So it runs. And: “The outflowings of spanda, the guṇas and the rest.” In the world too, to have spanda is to…
15The śakti of being the doer, whose self is sovereignty, draws all the śaktis in with it; and it has the form of vimarśa. So it is fitting that it alon…
16But surely things are set in order by the strength of prakāśa, and that prakāśa has vimarśa for its essence; so where vimarśa is not different, it is…
17By the all-pervading one’s śakti of māyā, that very one, whose range is a divided object of awareness, is spoken of by the names knowledge, conception…
18Here, to begin with, a joining with words, like pointing with a finger and the like, is the very self of caitanya. Otherwise, when a child first sees…
19Let it be so: a subtle vimarśa enters into the body of prakāśa. But where, being gross, its form as vikalpa is plain, there the word appears apart, ju…
1Now the sixth āhnika. We praise that Śiva who, carving out with the chisel of their exclusion the things whose wealth is non-difference from His own…
2For when a pot is seen, in the very place of the pot a not-pot too is supposed possible, something of the nature of cloth and the like: apt to step in…
3That which, leaving aside the tattva of cit through māyā, appears in what is quite distinct, in the body, in buddhi, or in prāṇa, or in something cons…
4The awareness “I” is of two kinds: pure, and of māyā. Of these, the pure is the one that is in saṃvid alone, not different from the universe, or in th…
5So it stands: the impure awareness “I” is vikalpa alone. And this notion “I”, twofold as it is, is again twofold: in the form of experience alone, an…
6What was shown earlier, “in the body, in buddhi” and so on, holds good in this way. How? It holds good if, in dealings, in the domain of māyā, the Sov…
7But surely, if the whole class of inner ābhāsas is made to shine outside everywhere, what then is the difference of ābhāsa in memory and the rest? And…
1By the present participle, unceasing flashing out is made plain. By the karmapravacanīya, a relation is made plain whose self is marking: the relation…
2There, with the doubt in view, “What is that connection?”, he first shows the relation of cause and effect, which pervades most widely: Perceptions a…
3This is the sense of the word “even”: how is even the dealing in cancelling possible, which must be upheld for the sake of the claim that “where there…
4Here, meaning to set out, since it has come up, the truth about how dealings with absence are established, he first finds fault with the very example…
5Here this path, that one thing is itself to be dealt with as the absence of another thing, is, to begin with, a path of common experience that cannot…
6Though the heap of light is other than a piśāca, and though this much is established, that “there is light, which is not a piśāca”, still it cannot be…
7Not only is cancelling not established from self-awareness; it is not established even from inference, because the subject is not established, and, by…
8By this way of proof stated in the two verses that begin “each different”, which works through agreement and difference, and likewise by the way of gi…
1with which the passage ends: in these eleven verses that is set out. Of them, one verse says that an ābhāsa either depends on another ābhāsa or is oth…
2And with pleasure and the like, and with the things that cause pleasure and the like, even though their appearance is there, the standing is of that k…
3“In oneness with the pramātṛ”: because of the absence of any interval that this brings about, these ābhāsas have no effective action at all. For effec…
4The prakāśa “as outside”, that is, with an own nature cut off from the pramātṛ, of blue and the like reflected within vikalpa, comes by the will of th…
1Nor does this self of His, marked by prakāśa, as it holds in awareness the colouring by blue and the like, sit merely void, like a crystal. Rather, it…
2First, what was said: that there are only acts of knowing, divided into experience, vikalpa and the rest, and that they have no ground at all; that me…
3Those ābhāsas that are established as fixed in their measure, such as those of the moon, the sun and the rest, of the mango, the jasmine, the kuṭaja a…
4“Form” is a thing’s own form, and its “variety” is its being divided. Thus “a house” is one form, “a courtyard” another, “a market” another, “a temple…
5In all real things, one and many in form, there is a sequence whose nature is time; and its “source”, explained as what its arising rests on, is the d…
6Here, in truth, it will be concluded within the adhikāra, in the words “so will alone is being the cause, being the doer, action”, that for the Suprem…
1with which the passage ends, the āhnika is set out in a group of seven verses. There, in the first verse, which is like a sūtra, he shows that action…
2Here, to begin with, when Caitra is seen moving, the thought “he is not moving” never at any time arises, as “it is not silver” does. With the double…
3Manas, as it determines afterwards, makes these constructions of action and the rest, which rest on those two and are made of the working of the pramā…
4And here this is the order in which saṃvid comes down: all this spreading out belongs to the śakti of action alone, and even within it relation alone…
5“Of the appearance of class” means of class whose form is what appears. The constructions that grasp it do not, as with relation, rest only on oneness…
6The joining together with each other that is seen among the factors of action, that is, among substances that bear the śaktis of doer and the rest, as…
7So it runs. And if their doing that, which is known through positive and negative concomitance made of perception and non-perception, is not itself pe…
1So, in the course of setting out the spreading of the śakti of action, the truth of the universal and the rest has been shown, with relation going fir…
2That by whose power, that is, by whose capacity, a real thing such as blue or pleasure “is settled”, meaning that it does not pass beyond a fixed boun…
3“Because that is settled by the power of that.” Moreover, here the fruit has the very form of an operation, and an operation is established as having…
4in that passage. This being so, in the double moon too: the moment someone wants to stir up other people’s curiosity, which he takes for the effective…
5But surely it was said, “measuring, with respect to what is the content of a single designation”. If a single designation works only on an outer svala…
6Or one who seeks the effective action of concealment would divide out things that spread over a wide space. Or one who wants to learn, “in dealings, w…
7In the form in which ābhāsas are mixed, some one ābhāsa must, as the principal, be made the place where the other ābhāsas come to rest. It is their co…
8But surely, if pramāṇa in this way rests on each ābhāsa, then the knowing of fire is pramāṇa for the ābhāsa of fire, and the knowing of smoke for the…
9In this way the own nature of a thing is established by one pramāṇa resting on each ābhāsa. And the inseparability of those ābhāsas from each other, a…
10So the ordering of difference and non-difference comes from the force of vimarśa alone; for that is the very unfolding of the śakti of svātantrya of t…
11But surely, if the ordering of difference and non-difference among things comes from the force of vimarśa alone, then talk of error in the three world…
12But surely, let it be so with the silver in mother-of-pearl. But in the knowing of the double moon, in the ābhāsa “two moons”, no joining with anythin…
13And so the difference of things by “qualities”, that is, by limiting adjuncts, by sound and the rest, or even by a staff and the like, meant as limiti…
14It has been said that a pramāṇa is an ever new ābhāsa that clings to a limited pramātṛ and faces towards the prameya. So where that which is prakāśa,…
15But surely, if in this way a pramāṇa is of no use for the Blessed One and does not hold, why a śāstra about Him? For that is nothing but a pramāṇa, si…
16From svātantrya of this kind, whose form is the śakti of māyā, there comes delusion, the loss of full sentience. It is the conceit that what shines do…
1Here ends the third āhnika, named The Account of Pramāṇa, Its Fruit and Prameya, in the Kriyādhikāra of the Pratyabhijñāsūtravimarśinī, composed by th…
2that is to say, this point must then of necessity be argued for. And then he shows how it holds, in this way: The relation of cause and effect in th…
3Making is making what shines within shine outside, without its giving up that form. And so, whatever real thing is called “within” with respect to som…
4“Consider”: beginning with an example, he makes firm that the pervasion has been seen to be of just this kind. Insentient causes do their work when se…
5For yogins too, without clay or seed, by the sway of will alone, the pot and the rest come to be, doing this and that lasting effective action of thei…
6But surely, if effects come to be whose working is just like that of the particular effects of the well-known causes, even when those causes are overs…
7So it goes with the reason that is an own nature. But surely, to begin with, it is seen that scorpions and the like have many causes, insects, cow-dun…
8Once, to begin with, in a kitchen, the relation of cause and effect between the ābhāsa of fire and the ābhāsa of smoke is grasped by the force of perc…
9A single thing, to begin with, is no relation of cause and effect. And two things that come to be at once do not have the form of cause and effect, li…
10But surely, if looking to another, marked by having a being that is set going and a being that sets going, does not hold where things rest in themselv…
11“In this way”: what was said, being the doer of the action of change, marked by the svātantrya to mingle and divide the ever-flowing differences of pr…
12If it is said that the oneness of what is cit in form is real, while this difference comes from the flood of avidyā, then whose is this flood of avidy…
13He draws this to a close: In this way, for one who wishes to stand thus, as the world that is the ābhāsas of pot, cloth and the rest, so will alone i…
1“Thus”: since the relation of cause and effect spoken of in other systems, resting on what is insentient in form, does not hold in any way; but rather…
2In “from whose unmeṣa the world rises”, it is the Īśvara tattva that is spoken of by the word unmeṣa. For the universe’s being clear and outward is it…
3Being higher is being first, the “I” that looks to nothing else; being lower is not being full, the “this” that looks to another. And here, in the two…
4The śakti of māyā, again, bearing a firmly rooted conceit of being the pramātṛ in what is not cit in form, the void and the rest, and making things, t…
5The void and the rest would be joined with the properties of sovereignty if, while clung to as “I”, it gave up being a prameya. Were it so, its pramey…
6What is of the form of effect and instrument, of twenty-three kinds, and what is the cause that is its root, whose form is the undividedness of all ef…
1We praise that Śiva who, though His own nature is unbroken, would spread out the varied fashioning of pramātṛs in the wheel of the essence of His own…
2And he who is freed knows things, taking them to be as his own limbs; so he is their master, and since he hands them their own form as it is in the hi…
3For here it is the Supreme Lord alone, whose śakti is unhindered everywhere, who, wishing to be so, becomes this and that; and there is no one else in…
4Here, to begin with, the vidyeśvaras and the vijñānākalas are not beings who come to be, since they have passed beyond the path that ends in māyā; and…
5But when, in the way of the guru’s teaching already given and the like, one rises out, as it were, from that prameya, the void and the rest, and stays…
6Here the cit tattva, covering its own svarūpa, appears in the form of what is known, as buddhi and the rest down to the body, or as a pot and the rest…
7So, when there is resting in just that much alone, pure, the puryaṣṭaka in both its forms, then the being of I-ness that is “well asleep”, marked by a…
8But where being the object of the outer senses, and being common to all pramātṛs, shine as real in the highest sense, through a going on of settled kn…
9“Prāṇa”: this standing of what is cit in form, in the form of prāṇa and apāna, whose own nature is living, is, to begin with, in the form of a general…
1But when that working of breath lays waste the left and right paths and flows upward in the form of the middle, then, bringing about that flowing, whi…
2Here, to begin with, insentient things shine only as sunk in the sentient; for the parāmarśa of the insentient, “this”, rests only in the parāmarśa of…
3The prakāśa and the vimarśa that are the very svarūpa of the Blessed One, whose form is the universe, everywhere in the universe: these, to begin with…
4Here, to begin with, the pati is the one who protects the universe by creation and the rest, marked by the variety of its appearing, and whose own nat…
5Here it has been said that objects, to begin with, are ābhāsas alone. And at times they are mixed together by the oneness of parāmarśa, when they have…
6But surely, if objects are just as many without vikalpa as with vikalpa, what difference is there in the prameya, between its being the pati’s and the…
7“Even doubt would not be held in doubt: this is freedom from doubt, plain to see.” So it runs. But surely, in this way, what difference is there bet…
8This path, new, lying within all the secret śāstras yet unknown because it is deeply hidden, and easy to tread because it lacks even a trace of the to…
9A woman in love, her love grown by hearing of her hero’s virtues, longing to see him as the one thing most worth winning, her heart not her own day an…