Begriff
Shivaशिव
In non-dual Shaiva philosophy, the name for consciousness itself. The philosophical use is distinct from the puranic deity of the same name.
Wörtliche Bedeutung
Two different things travel under this name and conflating them causes most of the confusion around it. There is Shiva the deity of puranic narrative, with a biography, a family and a mythology. And there is Shiva as a technical term in non-dual Shaiva philosophy, denoting consciousness as such.
The second is not a character. Statements made about it — that it is unchanging, that it is identical with the self — are philosophical claims, not statements about a figure.
Philosophische Bedeutung
Traditionelle AuslegungThe Trika and Pratyabhijna traditions identify Shiva with the singular consciousness that is the subject of all experience, and identify the individual self with it. Recognition of that identity, rather than acquisition of anything new, is what these texts describe as liberation.
The deity imagery is retained and used, but the tradition is explicit that it is describing the nature of awareness.
Utpaladeva, Isvarapratyabhijnakarika; Ksemaraja, Pratyabhijnahrdayam
Verwandte Begriffe
Moderne ForschungHistorians distinguish several Shaiva streams — Saiddhantika, non-Saiddhantika, Kaula and others — which hold materially different views of Shiva, ritual and liberation. Treating "Shaivism" as one system flattens distinctions the traditions themselves defended at length.
Sanderson, "Saivism and the Tantric Traditions", in The World's Religions, 1988
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