Intensities: Bodying Yantra
What does the Śrīcakra mean to me? What part does it play in my own practice? As you might know from reading my Unfoldings newsletter I have been devoting some time to discussing Kenneth Grant’s representation of Tantra. Grant has a great deal to say about the Śrīcakra, and going over Grant’s take on it, plus referring to various tantric scriptures, as well as what scholars have written, prompted this short post. In doing so, I want to get away from scripture or analysis.
The yantra is not a static thing. It’s more than just a diagram. It is life.
The yantra pulses.
It pulses with the rhythms of the universe. It is the beating of my heart, the rise and fall of my breath; the firing of nerve synapses; the flashes of stars and nebulae. A light in the sky overhead that turns out to be an Airbus on its final approach to Heathrow.
The yantra is the goddess. She is me and I am her and we are enfolding together in everything. She is life. She is there in moments of pain, moments of joy. All that I experience from moment to moment is a gift from the goddess and an offering to her.
The Yantra pulses.
The yantra is simultaneously the goddess, the universe, my body. Me. We are folded together in the bindu. We pulse forth outwards, we draw back inwards. Her Śaktīs are for me, capacities, possibilities. Modes of action, of reaching out, drawing in. (Here’s a quick tour through the deities populating the Śrīcakra).
Sometimes the goddess feels like a prism; I sense her presence in the play of sunlight on water; in the shimmering of light on surfaces. It is a joyful expansiveness difficult to describe; as though in opening up I am filled with everything, yet everything is me.
There are times when I use the yantra as a map; I consider the key moments; people; places; the events of my life and meditate on them as shifting points on the yantra’s intersections. Nothing stays at one point for very long.
The yantra pulses.
What began as a focused meditation some years ago I can now bring to attention in a moment. Sometimes it just ‘happens’; a light touch, or a sense of expansive inclusion so intense as to be overwhelming. Truly, the Saundaryalaharī – the flood of beauty, is well-named. I infuse and enliven the yantra that is my body with nyāsa; its nodes and intersections are pinpricks of light. I give the goddess’ gestures, dispelling fear and granting boons (abhayamudrā and varadamudrā) to myself, to others, and to the world. These are not mere gestures, they are modes of action; ethical commitments if you like.
The yantra pulses.
