Chapter Three: The Madhura Disposition in India's Inner (Esoteric) Religious Disciplines
Emptiness and compassion, or wisdom and skilful means, came to be understood as the feminine and masculine principles, and their nondual union as the fulfilment of practice. Skilful means is the masculine principle and wisdom the feminine. Emptiness is feminine and compassion masculine. Thus emptiness as wisdom is the feminine and Shakti principle, while compassion as skilful means is the masculine and Shiva principle.
In yogic language, wisdom and skilful means have yet another set of names: respectively, iḍā and piṅgalā, the lunar and solar channels, left and right, vowel and consonant. The suṣumṇā between iḍā and piṅgalā is called avadhūtikā in Buddhist practice.
Along the path of this avadhūtikā, the awakening mind ascends from the Emanation-body or Emanation-wheel at the navel. It proceeds successively to the Dharma-body or Dharma-wheel at the heart, then to the Enjoyment-body or Enjoyment-wheel at the throat, and finally reaches the uṣṇīṣa lotus, where it attains supreme delight. This is the indescribable condition of great bliss in which wisdom and skilful means, emptiness and compassion, undergo their great union.1
The principle of joined union
Yuganaddha, joined union, deserves further consideration, for it is the very life of the Buddhist Sahajiyas' innate practice. The fifth chapter of the Pañcakrama gives a lucid and extensive explanation of the practice of joined union. It says that yuganaddha is the condition in which samsara is completely abolished through direct knowledge of defilement and purification, and the state of supreme cessation is attained.
It is the complete union and harmony of perceiver and perceived, finite and infinite, wisdom and skilful means, emptiness and compassion, man and woman. One becomes established in suchness through body, mind, and speech and then returns to this suffering world only in order to gain right knowledge of conventional and ultimate truth. To unite those conventional and ultimate realities completely and make them one is called yuganaddha.2
Footnotes
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Ubhayor milanaṃ yac ca salila-kṣīrayor iva / advayākāra-yogena prajñopāyaṃ tad ucyate / cintāmaṇir ivāśeṣaṃ jagataḥ sarvadā sthitam / bhukti-mukti-pradaṃ samyak prajñopāya-svabhāvataḥ //—“The union of the two, like water and milk, effected through the discipline of nondual form, is called wisdom and skilful means. Like a wish-fulfilling jewel, it abides forever throughout the whole world and, by the nature of wisdom and means, perfectly bestows both enjoyment and liberation.” Hevajra Tantra. ↩
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See Herbert V. Guenther, Yuganaddha, Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Studies, no. 3. ↩