OF THE SRI TANTRA-SARA TEXT

INTRODUCTION

(1) Parama Shiva The Supreme Shiva, who is possessed of the five powers of bliss, will, consciousness, knowledge, and action, and in reality consists of the three primary forces—will, knowledge, and action—that perform all activities, is of the nature of unceasing light. Resting in His own bliss, He causes His own self to appear contracted due to the power of Māyā the power of illusion/concealment, which acts as a veil to His own self. After this self-concealment, through the limitation of impurity and like an actor on a stage, He becomes divided and is called the Anu the limited/atomic individual self.

(2) He alone, the independent Lord of consciousness, eternal, all-pervading, whose nature is both manifest and unmanifest, the pure light that is Shiva, out of His own freedom, desires to liberate that Anu from the worldly bondage of birth, death, and suffering caused by ignorance, which makes Him appear as if different from Himself. By showing the path of knowledge, after revealing the nature of the self, He reveals the nature of Shiva as unceasing light.

(3) This path of knowledge has been revealed by Parama Shiva Himself in the form of the Āgamas scriptural traditions out of a desire to help the Anu.

(4) Among the Āgamas, the Shaivāgama prevails as the one most favorable for the attainment of the knowledge of non-duality (Advaita). Following the methodology of the Mālinīvijaya-tantra a primary Shaiva scripture, it collects all methods for the realization of one's own nature. This work, the Tantrāloka, is the essence of that tradition. Just as the Vedānta philosophy was clarified by the incarnation of Shankarācārya, so too has this text been revealed...