What does it mean to choose the Shakta path? (was Shaktism..)

[Guest guest]

Hello Devi bhakta.

 

Thank you for the references regarding accounts of Indra meeting Uma.

>What does it mean to choose the Shakta path that is *different* from

>choosing, say, the Shaivite or Krishavite path?

 

To choose the Shakta path is to focus attention on Shakti. What is

important about Shakti?

 

I am not sure that the answer to this question is found in statements that

Shakti is Brahman, or that Shakti is supreme (highest).

 

Certainly such statements can be found in shakta literature, for instance

in the passage I recently quoted from the Uma Samhita of the Shiva Purana.

 

There are also statements that focus praiseful attention on Shakti, while

describing her as the partner of the Brahman. I'm thinking for instance of

the Saundaryalahari (Ocean of Beauty) in which she is called

"Parabrahma-mahishi".

 

There are, after all, many ways of naming and picturing the supreme, the

highest. I suggest to you that real importance of Shakti is that, highest

or not, she connects the heights and the depths.

 

A passage from the Pandit Shiva Candra, an associate of Sir John Woodroffe:

 

"In water, on land, and in space the Mother dances before the eyes of the

Sadhaka, to whom the world thus appears true. When the world become full of

the Mother, then all the gunas cease to be enemies. Nothing is then a

stain. It is no longer necessary to regard the world as stained, and to

look upon another as stainless." (Woodroffe (ed); _Principles of Tantra_,

Ganesh, Madras, 1986, Vol 1 page 178)

 

A Tantric view? Yes, but also a Puranic one, for the very words Shakti,

Mahamaya and Prakriti -- all found in the Puranas -- speak of the

continuity between the Brahman and the Samsara, the eternal and the

transient, the Spirit and the flesh.

 

Other religions and cultures of worship acknowledge this continuity in

various ways, yet it seems to me that the shakta vision declares it with

particular clarity and power.

>You note that you have been pursuing these same issues for years, and

>I can only thank you once again for choosing to honor this Group with

>your findings.

 

I'm very pleased to have found this Group. I hope that the findings in this

message are of interest.

 

Om shantih,

 

Colin.