On the dakṣiṇācāra and the vāmācāra – I

Posted by Phil Hine in Occult, tantra  |  July 7th 2020  |  About poster:

Of late I have been revisiting some earlier work I did on the passage of the concept of the “Left-Hand Path” into Western Esotericism. A consistent theme throughout Western Esoteric discourse almost from its inception (in the work of Madame Blavatsky and later Theosophical works) is that the so-called “Right-Hand Path and Left-Hand Path are binary opposites, and to align with one is to exclude the other.

As Kennet Granholm states in his book, Dark Enlightenment: “Part of the antinomian discourse and rhetoric is that any particular Left-Hand Path exists in antithetical relation to what it perceives to be ‘the Right-Hand Path’. This includes religious philosophies, political ideologies etc. that are thought to be ‘mainstream’, collectivistic in character, and/or conforming in ideology and practice. A particular Left-Hand Path thus defines itself in opposition to this ‘Right-Hand Path’, and aims to be what this ‘mainstream’ religiosity is not.” ¹ Of course, one finds in overt Right-Hand Path texts a similar opposition to the Left-Hand Path. For example, In Sane Occultism (first published in 1929) Dion Fortune writes: “The Initiate of the Right-Hand Path is God-centred; the Initiate of the Left-Hand Path is self-centered; that is the prime difference between them. … The Initiate of the Left-hand Path is aiming at power for self-gratification. He is dangerous to contact because he is out to use his pupils, not to serve them, and there is not very much left of a life after he is finished with it. There are three motives which prompt him – greed, lust, and desire for power and knowledge for their own sake.”

As most readers of this blog will be aware, the terms “Left-Hand Path” and “Right-Hand Path” have their origins in the distinction between two streams of tantric traditions – see this post for some discussion of the appearance of this distinction into nineteenth-century scholarship, from which it passed into Theosophy.

What is perhaps less understood is how this division between the right-hand (dakṣiṇācāra) and left-hand (vāmācāra) streams ‘works’ within the context of the tantric traditions themselves.

Hierarchies of traditions
Within the vast corpus of texts that forms the Śaiva mantramārg, there are two major divisions – the Śaiva Siddhānta, and the non-Siddhāntas. The Śaiva Siddhānta tradition corresponds to the dakṣiṇācāra, whilst the various non-Siddhānta traditions make up the vāmācāra. But the relationship between the two is not one of mutual opposition and exclusion, as one might expect. Rather, the tendency amongst tantric exegetes was to place all traditions and religions beyond their own school into a schema of ascending soteriological value – a doctrine called uttarottaravaiśiṣṭya – which treated the various religions as different degrees of revelation. These revelations were valid in their own domain, but only the scriptures of a devotee’s particular system could grant the ultimate liberation.

This perspective was first extended to the ordinances of the Vaidikas – the Śruti and Smṛti of Brahminism. The general Śaiva position was that the Brahmanic ordinances were valid in their own domain – that of the prescriptions for the conduct and obligations required for persons in the four caste-classes – the varṇāśramadharmaḥ. The Śaivas also supported the Brahmanic goal of liberation (mokṣaḥ) for those who desired to escape the wheel of Saṃsāra via the performance of ritual injunctions – however, they held that the ultimate liberation could only be attained by taking Śaiva initiation and following its practice disciplines. A passage frequently cited by Śaiva Siddhānta authors and attributed to a lost scripture, the Bhāgavottara says:

“So he should not transgress the practices of his caste-class and discipline even in thought. He should remain in the discipline in which he was when he was initiated into the Śaiva religion and [at the same time] maintain the ordinances of Śiva.” ²

Other Śaiva exegetes argued that following Śaiva initiation, devotees should continue to uphold their mundane religious duties, although with the understanding that the performance of both Vaidika and Śaiva observances brought any additional benefits – rather it was to maintain the social order.

This same hierarchy of revelations was accorded to the Śaiva Siddhānta by the followers of the nondual non-Siddhānta traditions. Whilst acknowledging that the scriptures of the Siddhānta were the fundamental authorities of the mantramārga as a whole, they considered their own scriptures to have been revealed by Śiva for the benefit of elite initiates. So the vāmācāra traditions shared many elements of Śaiva Siddhānta doctrine and practices, and it is not unusual to find vāmācāra exegetes re-interpreting Śaiva Siddhānta scriptural passages to bring them into line with their own specialized traditions.

Alexis Sanderson (2007) cites a passage from the first Ṣaṭka of the Jayadrathayāmala, which gives a four-fold hierarchy of religious systems – the common (sāmānyam), the restricted common (sāmānyaviśeṣam), the restricted teachings (viśeṣatantram) and finally the more restricted (viśeṣataraṃ).

The most general level is the common (sāmānyam), comprising of the two Epics and the Purāṇas (those being accessible and relevant to all four caste-classes). Then comes the restricted common (sāmānyaviśeṣam) – comprising of all Brahmanical ordinances relevant to Brahmins, Kṣatriya, and Vaiśya, that is the Śruti (three Vedas) and Smṛti (dharmaśastras). These are then followed by the restricted teachings (viśeṣatantram) comprising of the Saura, Śaiva Siddhānta and Pāñcarātra scriptures, the Lākula and Vaimala, the Atharvaveda, the texts of Sāṃkhya and Yoga, and the scriptures of the Buddhists and the Jains – because a person commits to these only after taking upon themselves a specific vow. The highest level of scriptures is that of the more restricted (viśeṣataraṃ) so-called because only a person already bound by the corresponding body of restricted scriptures can hold authority in them. These are the Dakṣiṇatantras, the Guhyātantras, the Gāruḍa and Bhūta tantras, and the Buddhist Vajrayāna. Such inclusivism is characteristic of Śaiva thought – as opposed to that of the Vaidikas, whose learned theoreticians consistently denied the validity of any religious system outside of Śruti and Smṛti. ³

A similar hierarchy of ‘tantric’ traditions can be found in the Tantrāloka, where Abhinavagupta states that the vāma is a “higher” revelation than the dakṣiṇācāra; that of the Kula higher than the vāma, and his own Trika tradition the highest of all, transcending that of the Kula: “The essence of all the tantras, present in the right and left traditions, which has been unified in the Kaula is to be discovered in the Trika” ⁴ It is worth noting that within the nondual corpus of scriptures, the term tantra is usually used to refer to the lower teachings.

In the next post, I’ll take a closer look at the commonalities and main differences of doctrine and practice shared by the two streams.

Sources
Dion Fortune Sane Occultism (The Aquarian Press, 1967)
Kennet Granholm, Dark Enlightenment: The Historical, Sociological, and Discursive Contexts of Contemporary Esoteric Magic (Brill, 2014).
André Padoux The Hindu Tantric World: An Overview (University of Chicago Press 2017).
Alexis Sanderson “The Śaiva Exegesis of Kashmir” in Dominic Goodall, André Padoux (eds) Tantric Studies in Memory of Hélène Brunner (French Institute of Pondicherry, 2007).
Alexis Sanderson “Tolerance, Exclusivity, Inclusivity, and Persecution in Indian Religion During the Early Medieval Period” in John Makinson (ed) Honoris Causa: Essays in Honour of Aveek Sarkar (Allen Lane, 2015).
Hugh Urban Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study of Religion (University of California Press. 2003).
Christopher Wallis Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition (Mattamayūra Press. 2013).

Online
The Institute for Śaiva and Tantric Studies

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