Agamas are mainly practice oriented and hence not much of philosophy given therein. Especially, the philosophy is not usually mentioned separately like other sects. Sometimes philosophy is derived from its core teachings and practices. Though there are many sects of agamas like shaiva, shAkta, saura, ganapatya etc. I am posting about agamas related to shaiva/shakta. In another post I have shared about important differences between Vedantic Non dual philosophy and agamic non dual philosophy.
Kashmiri Shaiva Philosophy
What is commonly called “Kashmiri Shaivism” is actually a group of
several monistic and tantric religious traditions that flourished in
Kashmir from the latter centuries of the first millennium C.E. through
the early centuries of the second. These traditions have survived only
in an attenuated form among the Brahmans of Kashmir, but there have
recently been efforts to revive them in India and globally. These
traditions must be distinguished from a dualistic Shaiva Siddhānta
tradition that also flourished in medieval Kashmir. The most salient
philosophy of monistic Kashmiri Shaivism is the Pratyabhijnā, or
"Recognition," system propounded in the writings of Utpaladeva (c.
925-975 C.E.) and Abhinavagupta (c. 975-1025 C.E.).
Abhinavagupta's disciple Kshemarāja (c. 1000-1050) and other
successors interpreted that philosophy as defining retrospectively the
significance of earlier monistic Shaiva theology and philosophy. This
article will focus on the historical development and basic teachings
of the Pratyabhijnā philosophy.
Tantra and Kashmiri Shaivism
While tantrism is a complex and controversial subject, one of its most
definitive characteristics for contemporary classifications—if not its
most definitive one—is the pursuit of power. Tantric traditions are
thus those that aim at increasing the power of the practitioner. The
theological designation for the essence of such power is Shakti (the
female counterpart to the male divine principle, whose essence is
power). The manifestations of Shakti that the practitioner of tantra
aspire after vary greatly, from relatively limited magical
proficiencies (siddhis or vibhūtis), through royal power, to the
deindividualized and liberated saint's omnipotence to the performance
of God’s cosmic acts.
Trika" Sub-tradition of Shaivism
The tradition of monistic Shaivism called “Trika” (referring to its
emphasis on various triads of modalities of Shakti and cosmic levels)
produced the first work of full-fledged scholastic philosophy. This
was the Shivadrishti, "Cognition of Shiva," by Somānanda (c. 900-950
C.E.). (See the summary of themes of the Shivadrishti below.)
Utpaladeva, a student of Somānanda, wrote a commentary on the
Shivadrishti, the Shivadrishtivritti. He also wrote several other
works interpreting and furthering the work of Somānanda with much
greater sophistication. Those texts are the foundational works of the
Pratyabhijnā philosophy of focus in this article. The most
comprehensive of these texts are the Īshvarapratyabhijnākārikā,
"Verses on the Recognition of the Lord," and two commentaries on the
Verses, the short Īshvarapratyabhijnākārikāvritti, and the more
detailed Īshvarapratyabhijnāvivriti. (The latter text has been
accessible to contemporary scholars only in fragments.) Utpaladeva
also wrote a trilogy of more specialized philosophical studies, the
Siddhitrayī, "Three Proofs"—Īshvarasiddhi, "Proof of the Lord;"
Ajadapramātrisiddhi, "Proof of a Subject who is not Insentient;" and
Sambandhasiddhi, "Proof of Relation."
Abhinavagupta, widely recognized as one of the greatest philosophers
of South Asia, was a disciple of a disciple of Utpaladeva. Abhinava
profoundly elaborated and augmented Utpaladeva's arguments in long
commentaries, one directly on the Verses, the
Īshvarapratyabhijnāvimarshinī; and the other on Utpaladeva's longer
autocommentary, the Īshvarapratyabhijnāvivritivimarshinī.
While Abhinavagupta's Pratyabhijnā commentaries are of paramount
philosophical importance, this thinker's greatest significance in the
history of tantrism is probably his effort, in his monumental
Tantrāloka and numerous other works, to systematize and provide a
critical philosophical structure to non-philosophical tantric
theology. Abhinava utilized categories from the Pratyabhijnā
philosophy to interpret and organize the diverse aspects of doctrine
and practice and Shaiva symbolism from the “Trika” sub-tradition; and
he synthesized under the rubric of this philosophically rationalized
Trika Shaivism an enormous range of symbolism and practice from other
Shaiva and Shākta traditions as well. Abhinavagupta is also renowned
for his works on Sanskrit poetics—in which he interpreted aesthetic
experience as homologous to, and practically approaching the monistic
Shaiva soteriological realization.
Basic Themes of Somānanda's Shivadrishti
While the focus of this article is on Utpaladeva's and Abhinavagupta's
Pratyabhijnā philosophy, mention should be made of some of the basic
themes of Somānanda's precursory Shivadrishti.
Somānanda's broadest concern is to explain how Shiva through the
various modalities of his Shakti emanates a real universe that remains
identical with himself. In establishing the Shaiva doctrine he refutes
a number of alternative views on ultimate reality, the self, God and
the metaphysical status of the world. He devotes the greatest
polemical efforts against the theories of the 4th-6th century
Vaiyākarana (or "Grammarian") philosopher Bhartrihari.
According to Bhartrihari, the ultimate reality is the Word Absolute
(shabdabrahman)—a super-linguistic plenum, which fragments and
emanates into the multiplicity of forms of expressive speech and
referents of that speech. Somānanda repudiates the view that a
linguistic entity could be the ultimate reality, while at the same
time identifying the true source of language as the Sound (nāda)
integral to Shiva's creative power.
Somānanda takes a less polemical approach towards Shāktism. He argues
that there is ultimately no difference between Shakti and Shiva, who
is the possessor of Shakti. He supports this contention with the
analogy of the inseparability of heat from fire, which is the
possessor of heat. Nevertheless, he asserts that it is more proper to
refer to the ultimate reality as Shiva rather than Shakti. Other Hindu
schools criticized by Somānanda include the Pancarātra as well as the
Vedānta, Sāmkhya and Nyāya-Vaisheshika systems.
Purposes and Methods of Utpaladeva's and Abhinavagupta's Pratyabhijnā System
Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta ambitiously conceive the Pratyabhijnā
system as both a philosophical apologetics (which follows Sanskritic
standards of scholastic argument) and an internalized form of tantric
ritual that leads students directly to identification with Shiva. They
explain the basic means by which the system conveys Shiva-identity
according to the same basic ritual pattern described above, as
shaktyāvishkarana, "the revealing of Shakti."
The Pratyabhijnā philosophers, however, also frame Shakti as the
reason of a publicly assessable inference, or "inference for the sake
of others" (parārthānumāna). According to the scholastic logic, the
reason identifies a quality in the inferential subject "I" known to be
invariably concomitant with the predicate, "Shiva." Thus I am Shiva
because I have his quality, that is, Shakti, the capacity of emanating
and controlling the universe.
The Pratyabhijnā Epistemology
In order to address debates on epistemology that were then current,
Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta further explain the mythic and ritual
pattern of Shiva and Shakti in terms of recognition. The specific
problem the writers address had been formulated by the Buddhist logic
school of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, which flourished in medieval
Kashmir. Contemporary interpreters have characterized the philosophy
of Buddhist logic as a species of phenomenalism akin to that of David
Hume. According to this school, the foundation of knowledge is a
series of momentary and discrete perceptual data (svalakshana). There
are no grounds in those data for the recognitions of any enduring
entities through ostensible cognitions utilizing linguistic or
conceptual interpretation (savikalpaka jnāna). In debates over several
centuries, the Buddhist logicians had propounded arguments attacking
many concepts that seemed commonsensical and were religiously
significant to the various orthodox Hindu philosophical schools—such
as ideas of external objects, ordinary and ritual action, an enduring
Self, God, and revelation.
The Pratyabhijnā philosophers' response to the problematic posed by
Buddhist logic revolutionized earlier approaches of the Nyaya
philosophers, the Shaiva Siddhāntin Sadyojyoti and even Utpaladeva's
teacher Somānanda, and may be characterized as a form of
transcendental argumentation. Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta interpret
their central myth of Shiva's emanation and control of the universe
through Shakti as itself an act of self-recognition
(ahampratyavamarsha, pratyabhijnā). Furthermore, abjuring Somānanda's
agonistic stance towards Bhartrihari, they also equate Shiva's
self-recognition (Shakti) with the principle of Supreme Speech
(parāvāk), which they derive from the Grammarian. They thereby
appropriate the Grammarian's explanation of creation as linguistic in
nature. Thus the Kashmiri Shaiva philosophers ascribe to Speech a
primordial status, denied by the Buddhist logicians.
Utpaladeva's and Abhinavagupta's epistemology may best be illustrated
by its approach to perceptual cognition. The Pratyabhijnā arguments on
this subject may be divided into those centered around two sets of
terms: prakāsha; and vimarsha and cognates such as pratyavamarsha and
parāmarsha.
Prakāsha is the "bare subjective awareness" that validates each
cognition, so that one knows that one knows. The thrust of the
arguments about prakāsha is analogous to George Berkeley's thesis of
idealism that esse est percipi. The Shaivas contend that, as no object
is known without validating awareness, this awareness actually
constitutes all objects. There is no ground even for a
"representationalist" inference of objects external to awareness that
cause its diverse contents, because causality can be posited only
between phenomena of which one has been aware. Furthermore, the
Kashmiri Shaivas argue that there cannot be another subject outside of
one's own awareness. They conclude, however, not with solipsism as
usually understood in the West, but a conception of a universal
awareness. All sentient and insentient beings are essentially one
awareness.
Vimarsha and its cognates have the significance of apprehension or
judgment with a recognitive structure, and may be glossed as
"recognitive apprehension." (The recognitive is the act of recognizing
or an awareness that something perceived has been perceived before.)
Utpaladeva's and Abhinavagupta's arguments centering on these terms
develop earlier considerations of Bhartrihari on the linguistic nature
of experience. Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta refute the Buddhist
contention that recognition is a contingent reaction to direct
experience by claiming that it is integral or transcendental to all
experience. Some of the considerations they adduce to support this
claim are the following: that children must build upon a subtle,
innate form of linguistic apprehension in their learning of
conventional language; that there must be a recognitive ordering of
our most basic experiences of situations and movements in order to
account for our ability to perform rapid behaviors; and that some form
of subtle application of language in all experiences is necessary in
order to account for our ability to remember them.
The two phases of argument operate together. The idealistic prakāsha
arguments make the recognition shown by the vimarsha arguments to be
integral to all epistemic processes, constitutive of them and their
objects. Moreover, on the radical logic of the Kashmiri Shaiva
idealism, the recognition generating all things belongs to one
subject. It must therefore be his self-recognition. As it is through
the monistic subject's self-recognition that all phenomena are
created, the Pratyabhijnā thinkers have ostensibly demonstrated their
cosmogonic myth of Shiva's emanation through Shakti in terms of
self-recognition. The student, by coming to see this self-recognition
as the inner reality of all that is experienced, is led to full
participation in it.
The Pratyabhijnā Ontology: The Syntax of Empowered Identity
Just as Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta appropriate Bhartrihari in
equating self-recognition with Supreme Speech and thereby interpreting
recognitive apprehension as linguistic in nature, they also follow the
Grammarian school in interpreting being or existence (sattā) (the
generic referent of language) as action (kriyā). The Grammarian view
itself originated in Brahmanic interpretations of the Veda as
expressing injunctions for sacrifice. The Kashmiri Shaivas further
agree with much of Vedic exegetics in conceiving being as both
narrative and recapitulatory ritual action. Following the account
above, it is Shiva's mythic action through Shakti as self-recognition
that constitutes all experience and objects of experience, and that is
reenacted by philosophical discourse.
The Pratyabhijnā thinkers propound their philosophy of Shiva's action
to explain a wide range of topics of ontology. One of their concerns
is to describe how Shiva's action generates a multiplicity of
relationships (sambandha) or universals (sāmānya) as the referents of
discrete instances of recognitive apprehension. With this theory they
attempt to subvert the Buddhist logicians' contention that evanescent
particulars are ontologically fundamental. For the Shaivas, categories
are primitive, and particulars are formed out of syntheses of those
categories.
