Kashmir Shaivism

Kashmir Shaivism is a non-dual tantric philosophy that took shape in Kashmir between roughly the ninth and eleventh centuries, reaching its most systematic form in the Trika ("threefold") school associated with the scholar-practitioner Abhinavagupta. Where earlier Shaiva traditions often set a supreme Śiva apart from an inferior, binding world, Trika treats the whole of manifest experience, including limitation, desire and embodiment, as the self-expression of one conscious reality, to be recognised rather than escaped.

This non-dualism differs in method from Advaita Vedanta, which it otherwise resembles in its "not-two" conclusion. Advaita generally proceeds by discriminating the real from the apparent through scriptural study and inquiry; Kashmir Shaivism keeps that philosophical rigor but also treats the body, breath, sound and aesthetic experience as valid ground for recognition, without asking that they first be renounced. Its philosophical works, including Abhinavagupta's Tantrāloka, sit alongside practical material on mantra and subtle energy, placing it within the broader tantric current explored on this site's Yoga & Tantra path, while keeping its own distinct lineage, vocabulary and textual canon.

The tradition nearly disappeared as a living transmission after the thirteenth century, surviving mainly among a small number of Kashmiri Pandit families. Its wider contemporary reach, through scholar-practitioners translating its classical texts and adapting select practices for modern students, is largely a development of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.