Chapter Three: The Madhura Disposition in India's Inner (Esoteric) Religious Disciplines

In the “Illumination of Joined Union” of the Advayavajra-saṅgraha, the exclusive and complete union of emptiness and compassion is described as wholly ineffable and inconceivable. They exist eternally in a condition of perpetual union. The work's “Five Verses on Love” declares emptiness to be compassion's wife and calls their unbroken union in this relation “innate love.” Joined union, nonduality, and the state of samarasa are one and the same. What the Shaiva and Shakta Tantras call sexual union or kāma-kalā is also this.¹

These Tantras speak of realising supreme truth through the union of its two powers: moving and unmoving, negative and positive, static and dynamic. The masculine and feminine principles, or seed and womb, appear there symbolically. At first this symbolic practice remained a healthy esoteric discipline. Later, however, both Hindu and Buddhist Tantras accepted its gross and corrupt forms as practice. Human nature's downward tendency found an easy support. As a result, Buddhist Tantra portrayed the union of emptiness and compassion, or wisdom and skilful means, in the idealised bodily union of gods and goddesses—in paintings as well as sculptures.

The real meaning of samarasa

The true meaning of samarasa is the experience of unity within the world's diversity, and an uninterrupted current of undivided blissful play within every inequality. The Hevajra Tantra says that in the innate state there remains neither the conception of wisdom nor of skilful means, nor is there experience of any kind. In such a state, superior, intermediate, and inferior are all equal.²

Through yogic practice, the practitioner enters a state from which the whole world appears as an immeasurable ocean of bliss. Every sense of duality, inequality, division, opposition, and difference has been destroyed, leaving bliss alone. This is the innate condition of great bliss. Buddhist Tantras hold this innate great bliss to be accomplished through the union of wisdom and skilful means, or emptiness and compassion. Hindu Tantras regard it as arising from the perfect harmony of Shiva and Shakti.

Among Buddhists, therefore, “great bliss” names a distinctive condition of the practitioner and is virtually synonymous with nirvana. Great bliss is affective or positive; nirvana is privative or negative. Yet—