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| Credit: John Hill |
Christopher
Wallis is on the warpath defending his beloved Vijnana-bhairava-tantra (VBT) again.
This time against a peculiar poet named Lorin Roche, who believes that he can divine
(literally) the mystical meaning of Sanskrit words, a method by which he has decoded
the opaque stanzas of the VBT. Or so Roche believes. The old hippie has
apparently published an entire “translation” of the tantra, titled “The Radiance
Sutras”.
Imaginary
translations of this kind seem to be tolerably common (I have one of the
Egyptian Book of the Dead made by some New Age enthusiast), but Wallis isn´t
amused, since he is both a scholar and practitioner of the Tantric traditions
associated with the VBT. Apart from critiquing Roche and exploding some myths about the Sanskrit language, he also makes some more
general observations on American spirituality and its perennial inability to listen
to authorities (or perhaps the wrong ones entirely). Note also the (inevitable)
hedonistic slant of Roche´s interpretation, more “Shakti” (or Neo-Tantra?) than
“Shiva”. Nirvana, it seems, can wait.
Quite
interesting contribution from Wallis.
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