Question from a new group member: Is Shakti Love?

[Guest guest]

I have joined this group to better understand what it means for God to be

understood as our Divine Mother and as Absolute Feminine. I believe that this is

the original form of monotheism.

 

Coming from a Catholic background, I also understand God as Absolute Love.

 

What is the relationship between Divine Love, which I understand as an active

Divine energy that sustains all beings in the Cosmos and Shakti? Is Shakti the

same as Divine Love?

 

What does it mean to understand Shakti as a specifically feminine energy?

[Guest guest]

Shakti in its esoteric form can be meditated upon as male, female or

attributeless according to taste and inclination.

 

--- On Sat, 3/7/09, stjmk <stjmk wrote:

 

stjmk <stjmk

Question from a new group member: Is Shakti Love?

 

Saturday, March 7, 2009, 2:58 AM

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have joined this group to better understand what it means for God to be

understood as our Divine Mother and as Absolute Feminine. I believe that this is

the original form of monotheism.

 

Coming from a Catholic background, I also understand God as Absolute Love.

 

What is the relationship between Divine Love, which I understand as an active

Divine energy that sustains all beings in the Cosmos and Shakti? Is Shakti the

same as Divine Love?

 

What does it mean to understand Shakti as a specifically feminine energy?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

stjmk wrote:

 

> What is the relationship between Divine Love, which I understand as an

> active Divine energy that sustains all beings in the Cosmos and

> Shakti? Is Shakti the same as Divine Love?

>

> What does it mean to understand Shakti as a specifically feminine energy?

These are awfully big questions and they really can't be answered fully

without a detailed treatment of Indian philosophy. The short answer is

that the worship of Devi is a way of affirming the reality of the world

as an expression and revelation of the divine. But here's a little

background:

 

To start with a first, inaccurate, generalization, the male side of

things in India is generally associated with passivity, contemplation,

and spirit and the female side is connected with activity, creative

energy, and matter. This is almost, though not quite, a direct reversal

from the usual Western construction of these concepts, where the male is

active and the female is passive. What doesn't change, especially in the

dualist traditions, is the relative valorization of the two, because

most Indian theories assume that stillness, changelessness,

contemplation and spirit are far superior to their opposites. So women

lose out in both cases.

 

The Indian traditions are very rich and diverse, however. That kind of

thinking is pretty common among dualists, those who separate spirit and

matter and who generally separate divinity and humanity. (These are very

often Vaisnavite in orientation, though there's no hard-and-fast

connection.) Among non-dualists--Advaita thinkers--there's still a

tendency to assert that spirit is the only reality. In tantric

traditions, though, even this assertion is done away with. (It's a kind

of crypto-dualism anyway.) Behind a lot of tantric practice is the

assertion that the material world is the necessary self-expression of

the spirit. You don't have to escape the world of activity to achieve

liberation. The very give-and-take of ordinary human life is in reality

the play (lila) of the divine, and through mantra, meditation, ritual,

and other practices it becomes ever more possible to experience it as such.

 

The strong feminine element in tantra is therefore a way of embracing

the qualities associated with the female pole, which tend to be

denigrated by (mostly male) sages, and of discovering the divine in the

everyday. (You can read the Tripura-rahasya for some of these themes.)

That's why tantra and Shaktism are often connected. But you can find

much the same approach in Kashmiri Shavism. In the end, as another reply

said, the gender doesn't matter. Every school that I know of embraces

the idea that Brahman itself is totally beyond form or comprehension,

and certainly beyond gender classification. That's the insight behind

the figure of the Ardhanarishwara, who's half Shiva and half Shakti. My

temple is very committed to Devi, but we give a lot of attention to

Shiva, too. All we can approach is a partial vision of a reality which

embraces both. Yet Devi remains the ultimate, because the material world

and her activity are necessary. Doing comes first.

 

Is Shakti love? Depends on who you ask. For my own rather demythologized

answer I'll quote from a book I'm writing:

 

The universe doesn't treat us like a lover, but when we love we live

the life of the universe and not our own. To be fully present in

that love is all but impossible. It demands an awesome, almost

inhuman amount of detachment and absolute self-surrender. But even

those of us who feel ourselves to be many lives away from

enlightenment can recognize what that life would be like, and from

time to time we somehow have the grace to live it. In those moments

we are radiantly fearless, fully engaged with others, one with the

dance which moves our limbs and our heart. We are joyously alive in

love, and what is love but the willingness to embrace whatever

comes? Love is not an emotion but a way of living, and we can feel

the universe lit up by love because the way of being of love is none

other than the universe's own way of being. Love goes beyond a cold

acceptance of events, because it does not try to maintain a distance

from anything; it embraces all and it makes no exceptions. Beauty,

ugliness, joy, horror, kisses, cruelty, murder, and devotion---love

takes them all into itself. To love is simply to live wholeheartedly

in the fullness of knowledge, and to live fully, without any

judgment or defense against what is, is to love the universe as the

universe would love itself. And that is what it does in us

spontaneously, once we allow ourselves to live as we really are,

because we are nothing but points through which the universe, by

some strange trick of evolution, can reflect upon and love itself.

 

Have a wonderful journey with the Goddess. She's the best of company if

you can grow quiet enough to listen to her. (And don't I wish I could be

that quiet more often!)

 

Michael Steinberg

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Michael,

 

Thank you for your reply to my question. It is very much in keeping with why I

am here to learn more about Devi. The Indian perspective that the feminine

principle is active can be found in Abrahamic traditions as well, though usually

it's fairly well hidden. In Genesis, it is the feminine Ruach Adonai that is the

active creative principle. She also makes a notable appearance in the Wisdom

books. In Christianity, the Holy Spirit/Sophia that is the feminine active

transforming principle. I don't know much about esoteric traditions in Islam,

but I'm quite sure the same principle is recognized.