Sahaja

Sahaja means spontaneous natural joy of a divine nature. It was first used by Saraha and other Buddhists in north India in the 8th century CE. The origins of the word are in Apabhramsha, a now defunct language, and Old Bengali, with the earliest recorded use being from the 8th century CE.Shashibhusan Das Gupta, "Obscure religious cults" (Calcutta: Mukhopadhyay, 1969), chapter 1] Per Kvaerne, On the Concept of Sahaja in Indian Buddhist Tantric Literature, "Temenos", vol.11, 1975, pp88-135]

In the Nath tradition

The Sahaj tradition has been passed down by Nath yogis such as Gorakhnath and bhakta sants such as Dnyaneshwar, Muktabai, Mirabai and Kabir.Kabir: In the bliss of Sahaj, "Knowledge of Reality", no.20 [http://www.sol.com.au/kor/20_03.htm] ] Also by Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of the Sikh tradition.Niharranjan Ray, The Concept of Sahaj in Guru Nanak's Theology and its Antecedents', in "Medieval Bhakti Movements in India", edited by N.N.Bhattacharyya (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1969), pp17-35]

In "The Pathless Path to Immortality", Shri Gurudev Mahendranath wrote:

cquote|Man is born with an instinct for naturalness. He has never forgotten the days of his primordial perfection, except insomuch as the memory became buried under the artificial superstructure of civilization and its artificial concepts. "Sahaja" means natural. It not only implies natural on physical and spiritual levels, but on the mystic level of the miraculous. It means that easy or natural of living without planning, designing, contriving, seeking, wanting, striving or intention. What is to come must come of itself.

It is the seed which falls in the ground, becomes seedling, sapling, and then a vast shady tree of wisdom and teachings. The tree grows according to "Sahaja", natural and spontaneous in complete conformity with the Natural Law of the Universe. Nobody tells it what to do or how to grow. It has no swadharma or rules, duties and obligations incurred by birth. It has only svabhava - its own inborn self or essence to guide it. "Sahaja" is that nature which, when established in oneself, bring the state of absolute freedom and peace.

It is when you are in your natural state, in the harmony of the Cosmos. It is the balanced reality between the pairs of opposites. As the Guru of the Bhagavad Gita says, 'The person who has conquered the baser self, and has reached to the level of self-mastery: he is at peace, whether it be hot or cold, pleasure or pain, honoured or dishonoured.' Thus "Sahaja" expresses one who has reverted to his natural state, free from conditioning. It typifies that outlook which belongs to the natural, spontaneous and uninhibited man, free from innate or inherited defects.

In all the Golden Dharmas, "Sahaja" flourishes. In Taoism, it was the highest virtue (Teh). In the earlier Zen records, it is the main plank of training along which the disciples had to walk. The masters demanded answers which were "Sahaja", and not the product of intellectual thinking or reason. The truth only came spontaneously.

"Sahaja" in Chinese became tzu-jan, or Self-so-ness. Taoism openly lamented the loss of the peculiar naturalness and unselfconsciousness of the child.

Sahaja is one of the four keywords of the Nath Tradition, the other three being Svecchachara, Sama, and Samarasa.

Vaishnava-Sahajiya

The "Vaishnava-Sahajiya" is a tantric Hindu cult that originated in Bengal from the 17th century. The Vaishnava-Sahajiya sought religious experience through the five senses which included human coupling and sexual love. "Sahaja" (Sanskrit: “easy” or “natural”) as a system of worship was prevalent in the Tantric traditions common to both Hinduism and Buddhism in Bengal as early as the 8th–9th centuries. The divine relationship between Krishna and Radha (guises of the divine masculine and divine feminine) were celebrated by the poets Candidas, Jayadeva and Vidyapati whose works parallel the "rasa" or "divine mood" of human love and divine love; which was later explored by Chaitanya albeit in less overtly sexual practices. The Vaisnava-Sahajiya coterie is a synthesis and complex of these various traditions. The Vaisnava-Sahajiyas due to their sexual tantric practices were perceived with marked disdain by other religious communities and operated in secrecy. In their literature they deliberately employed an encrypted and enigmatic style. Because of the necessity of privacy and secrecy, little is definitively known about their prevalence or practices. [Source: [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9074642/Vaisnava-Sahajiya] (accessed: Monday July 9, 2007)]

ee also

* Samadhi
* Turiya

Notes

References

*Arora, R.K. "The Sacred Scripture" (New Delhi: Harman, 1988), chapter 6: Sahaja
*Das Gupta, Shashibhusan. "Obscure religious cults" (Calcutta: Mukhopadhyay, 1969)
*Davidson, Ronald M. "Reframing Sahaja: genre, representation, ritual and lineage", "Journal of Indian Philosophy", vol.30, 2002, pp45-83
*Kvaerne, Per. "On the Concept of Sahaja in Indian Buddhist Tantric Literature", "Temenos", vol.11, 1975, pp88-135
*Mahendranath, Shri Gurudev. [http://www.mahendranath.org/twiyoga1.mhtml Ecstasy, Equipoise, and Eternity] . Retrieved Oct. 20, 2004.
*Mahendranath, Shri Gurudev. [http://www.mahendranath.org/pathlesspath.mhtml The Pathless Path to Immortality] . Retrieved Oct. 20, 2004.
*Neki, J.S. "Sahaja: an Indian ideal of mental health", "Psychiatry", vol.38, 1975, pp1-10
*Ray, Niharranjan. "The Concept of Sahaj in Guru Nanak's Theology and its Antecedents", in "Medieval Bhakti Movements in India", edited by N.N.Bhattacharyya (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1969), pp17-35