Inhibition: The Cause of Suffering According to Abhinavagupta

Abstract

This article investigates the response of Abhinavagupta (11th century CE), one of the most important and original thinkers of classical India, to one of the main problems within the philosophical and religious thought of that culture, namely the problem of suffering. To that end, for the sake of contextualization, the ideals framing the problem of suffering in the Indian canonical tradition, especially the opposing values purity-impurity, are first revised; after this, the critique to such ideals as articulated by the marginal religious movement known as Tantra, to whose later strata Abhinavagupta himself belonged, is summarized. The analysis of Abhinavagupta’s own response pays particular attention to the concept of “inhibition” (Sanskrit, śaṅkā) and is based on key passages of his magnum opus, the Tantrāloka, as well as his Parātrīśikā-Vivaraṇa, translated into Spanish directly from the original Sanskrit for the first time. As I show, the analysis results in an unusual vindication of the finite order, the realm of suffering, as long as that very order is lived without inhibitions or doubts—that is to say, as the manifestation of one single consciousness in everything, including the experience of evil and the dreadful, and moreover where differences like pure-impure, superior-inferior, liberation-bondage become meaningless.