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pratyabhijna

प्रत्यभिज्ञा pratyabhijñā

'Recognition'; the Kashmir Shaiva school holding that liberation is the sudden recognition that one's own self is already Shiva.

Where this term appears

  • What is Tantra? Lineages

    Trika teaches the Pratyabhijna doctrine, the philosophy of "recognition": liberation is the sudden recognition that your own consciousness was always the one divine consciousness.

  • Who was Abhinavagupta? Lineages

    For the philosophy that would become the spine of his thought, the Pratyabhijna or recognition school, he sat with Lakshmanagupta, himself a direct pupil of the philosopher Utpaladeva.

  • What is Kashmir Shaivism? Philosophy

    This is why the mature school is called Pratyabhijna , "recognition." Liberation here is not the manufacture of something new.

  • The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra Lineages

    It is a recognition — pratyabhijna , the tradition's central word, "recognising again" what you always already were.

  • What is Shaivism? Lineages

    Its keyword is pratyabhijna , "recognition." Framed by Utpaladeva in the tenth century, building on his teacher Somananda, and raised to its height by Abhinavagupta around the year 1000, this is a non-dual syst…

  • The Four Streams of Hinduism Essentials

    There is the non-dual Kashmir Shaivism of the Trika and Pratyabhijna schools, whose towering figure is Abhinavagupta, writing around the year 1000, for whom the entire universe is the play of a single conscious…

  • What is Shakti? Essentials

    In the Isvara-pratyabhijna-karika , verse 1.5.11, he writes: svabhavam avabhasasya vimarsam vidur anyatha / prakaso 'rthoparakto 'pi sphatikadi-jadopamah Rendered plainly: they know reflective self-awareness, v…

  • Who is Shiva? Deities

    Shiva is the supreme reality for the Shaiva traditions, and, by one widely cited estimate, for something like a quarter of all Hindus, though such figures are rough…

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