Ground Zero

bliss or the abyss

Today we continue our exploration of the philosophical theology called Kashmir Shaivism. This is the last post in this philosophy series (for now at least). Next week I’ll give you a short history of this Tantric movement and then do a couple of weeks taking a more critical stance - problems, gaps, conundrums that I see with this tradition.

But for today, we continue the deep dive. And we’re going really deep: we’re looking for something that can crystallise all the elements that we’ve been trying to understand for the last month or so.¹ And that thing, I think, is what the philosopher-saint Abhinavagupta called Principle Zero.

First and Second Principles

Over the last few weeks we’ve looked at the Tantric conception of reality as 36 principles, arranged in a loose hierarchy. At the top we have principles 1 and 2. These are abstract principles that form the ground zero, the ultimate basis, for everything that follows.