anupaya
अनुपाय anupāya'Without means': the limit case of the Kashmiri Shaiva scheme of upayas, where no method operates and a single word from the teacher suffices. The Tantraloka gives it a chapter of its own ahead of the other three, and the Tantrasara counts it among four. But Abhinavagupta's verse commentary on the Malinivijayottara calls the division threefold and identifies the anupaya with the shambhava, and the 1918 editor of the Tantrasara read the negative prefix as 'little' rather than 'none'.
Where this term appears
- The four upayas: what it cost to call a state a method Lineages
That shambhava is the anupaya ; after it the means of consciousness; and the anava would be the means of the insentient, which is also held to be manifold." — Abhinavagupta, Mālinīślokavārttika 1.996cd to 997, …
- Avesha: what the tantras did when nothing happened Lineages
Chapter 2 of the Tantraloka is the chapter on anupaya , the means-less way, the topmost rung of a scheme of four means whose lowest rung is exactly where a seven-day contemplation of a phoneme in a bodily place…
- The Shiva Sutras: the rock, the count, and the commentary that won Lineages
Abhinavagupta's scheme has a fourth term above the three, anupaya , the non-means, where there is nothing to be done at all.
- The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra Lineages
At the top is anupaya , the "no-means," in which recognition simply dawns, whole and sudden, with no technique at all.