Parvati Sadhana

Showing Up as Compassion

As Tantrikas you are well aware of the transformational methods of practice known collectively as “Deity Yoga.” Where we take on the qualities, channels, cakras, and energy body of the deity in the form of their seed mantra, to awaken the deity’s unlimited capacity for expressing a specific set of qualities and virtues within our own human experience.

You know that Ganesa sadhana removes obstacles and harmonizes kundalini for smooth unobstructed ascent. Siva sadhana brings us into the great mystery of life – that which is beyond birth and death, and Hanuman sadhana may bring out many diverse virtues from our essence- pure devotion, courage, and intelligence.

But which deity do we use to awaken, through this process of reflection, “compassion?” After all, compassion is the worldly manifestation of the energy of our essence, our Ananda Sakti. Ananda Sakti is unconditioned, spontaneously arising, ever-fresh energy of experience, and its tangible expression is Love and Compassion.

Wisdom is the other aspect of this energy – Cit Sakti or Caitanyam Sakti.

If our essence (Paramasiva) were likened to the sun, the Source, then the rays that spontaneously and continuously stretch out from our essence are Wisdom and Compassion and are inseparable, just as both light and warmth are inseparably manifested in the sun’s rays. And just like the sun’s rays, which are given freely to friend and enemy alike, our true Love and Compassion is not preferential, but bathes all beings in our experience.

The Tantras all begin with Lord Siva sitting undisturbed in perfect tranquil one-ness of spontaneous non-conceptual meditation. He is the image of the self-perfected state. Yet he is static. He sits on Mount Kailasa, the top of the world.

His consort Parvati, is forever nuzzling into him affectionately, requesting him to give the teachings and transmissions to the beings who are suffering in the worlds below.

If it were not for Parvati, Siva would not engage, he would not participate. She is his Ananda Sakti – She is his compassion. And the very nature of this energy, this loving-compassion, is to flow out, to give, to connect, to enrich, to participate – to bless and to love.

Parvati is the Tantrik icon of Love and Compassion. She is our Ananda Sakti, our unlimited source of pure Love and Compassion.

As Tantrikas we want to uncover the Love and Compassion of Parvati – unlimited in its expression, non-preferential and flowing continually outward to all beings from our hearts.

The key here is that Parvati’s impulse, her very nature, is to benefit. She is unable to sit comfortably in self-perfected, self-reflective Awareness, as Siva does. She is impelled to act on behalf of the myriad sentient beings whose suffering she feels.

She doesn’t have to try to act compassionately or try to feel something for others. It is her base – it is who she is. She is Love and Compassion and it must flow out.

To express Love and Compassion is to be in the “energy” of Tantrik practice or Tantrik life.

Most of us begin Tantrik practice with vague ideas of what pure Love and Compassion would look like, feel like, etc. We have very few reference points in our culture, society and family life for unconditioned love and self-less service.

To cultivate unconditional Love and its expression as Compassion it is easier for us to work with kindness and caring, respect and gratitude.

By involving kindness and caring in all of our daily activities we stay connected to and immersed in our primordial energy. And this is how we can remain engaged and fully participating in our actual situation while generating and accumulating good karma. When our thoughts, our feelings, our attitude and our activities are steeped in kindness and caring, we are directly participating in and radiating the energy of our awakened nature. It is in those moments that we are expressing our enlightenment.

So kindness and caring are a type of 2nd attention until they become all pervasive in our experience. They connect us to Compassion.

Unconditional Love can be a very remote possibility in our minds. How can we love with no conditions, no expectations, and still be truly engaged in life?

It is actually quite easy to find our source of Pure Love by evoking gratitude and respect. In any moment if we can’t feel Love (or anything else for that matter), we can remember how grateful we are for this precious human birth, for the grace to have made contact with the teachings and for the unconditional loving presence of our guru.

As soon as we evoke this gratitude by remembering what we’re grateful for, we immediately can feel the crusty enclosure of the imprisoned heart crack open and dissolve. We can sense the expansion of a feeling that is essentially good, uncaused. And we can immediately notice that this energy is not static, is not “mine.” We notice that this energy of life, Love and Compassion, must immediately be radiated to all beings. We can instantly sense our one-ness with all of life.

But for some, the experience of gratitude may be buried deep within, covered by superficial layers of hell, animal or ghost realm tendencies. Our karma of self-hatred and feelings of being tormented, of being cut-off in a self-stupor of ignorance, or of feeling so self-depleted and needy, may cause us to feel unable or even unwilling to evoke gratitude.

At this time it is wise to spend time with your kula, to read inspiring teachings and stories of the Mahasiddhas, to practice, and to try to get to the feeling of “respect.”

Try to invoke a sense of respect for others and yourself. And by marinating in the respect you have for others and for your own path – you will be able to connect to gratitude and eventually unconditional Love.

Then it is possible to be like our mother Parvati, ever urging Siva to share the liberating teachings with us who still suffer. And as we encounter people in our lives who are also still suffering, our capacity for compassion and love is deepened; it is triggered into deeper awakening and is spontaneously radiated.

This is how we become Love and Compassion, the energy, the feeling of our self-perfected Siva nature.

May all Beings be Liberated!
Sivoham

Photo Attributed To: The Last Paladin

Original Posting: February 2007

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