Tantraloka Chapter 1 Lesson 1

Welcome to the first lesson in the Tantrāloka Home Study Program.  We are delighted to offer this introductory lesson completely free of cost.

LESSON 1 covers the first verse of Abhinavagupta’s Tantrāloka.  For the background on this text and its relationship to the larger topic of Kashmir Shaivism, please see the Program Overview on this site.  You may also like to listen to the free course on Locating Trika which provides historical overview.

Maṅgala Stuti (1) – The seed-verses that serve as the signature seal and invocation for Abhinavagupta’s works in Anuttara Trika Kula. Evoking the divine image of Śiva and Śakti, the layers of poetic meaning in these verses serve to refresh and re-awaken in both speaker and listener the state of God-Consciousness from which the Tantrāloka was composed.

Course materials:

• PDF of all of Chapter 1, translated by Dr. Mark Dyczkowski, our free gift to you.  This PDF contains all 334 verses, printed in the original Sanskrit (both Devanagarai script and transliterated to English), and English translation.  
• Audio can be downloaded from here

Each lesson is six hours or more long divided into three or more parts. The total length of all the recording of this chapter is around ninety hours.

Chapter one is general introduction to the whole of the Tantraloka and so, essentially to all of Trika “Saivism.