Insight Editions · No. 407
The Vijnana-bhairava-tantra
A Translation by Christopher Wallis (complete but lacking commentary)
Christopher D. Wallis
Wallis's working translation of the Vijnana-bhairava-tantra (c. 850 CE): Bhairava's teaching that the Goddess is the state of fullness, and the 112 methods of breath, emptiness, bliss, daily life and contemplation that lead into it.
A study guide to The Vijnana-bhairava-tantra by Christopher D. Wallis (Christopher Wallis (Hareesh), 2017). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
A ninth-century Kashmiri dialogue in which Bhairava tells the Goddess that the Supreme is not a visualised deity but the state of absolute fullness, and offers about 112 ways into it.
SCOPE
The full text in Wallis's 2017 working translation: the View (vv. 1 to 23), breath, subtle-body, sound and emptiness methods, bliss and daily-life practices, contemplations, and the inner reinterpretation of ritual.
KEY FIGURES
Bhairava and Bhairavī; Kṣemarāja, Śivopādhyāya, Abhinava Gupta; modern scholars Alexis Sanderson, Paul Muller-Ortega and Jaidev Singh.
BEST FOR
Meditators who want the full menu of VBT practices with notes on what the Sanskrit really says.
The Book on One Page
The Vijñāna-bhairava-tantra (c. 850 CE) is a Kashmiri scripture framed as a dialogue between Bhairava and the Goddess Bhairavī. Wallis's 2017 working translation renders the whole text with short notes. Its claim: the Supreme Goddess is not a deity to visualise but the state of absolute fullness (bharitā), and roughly 112 methods lead into it, from the pause between breaths to the taste of good food.
| Ch. | Verses | Big idea |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 to 23 | All ritual forms of the deity are teaching devices; the real Goddess is the full state of being, and Śakti is the doorway to Śiva |
| 2 | 24 to 35 | Breath and subtle-body methods: the pause, the central channel, twelve cakras |
| 3 | 36 to 64 | Bindu, nāda, uccāra and the emptiness practices: the body as space |
| 4 | 65 to 93 | Bliss and daily-life practices, with a warning that they need an activated energy-body |
| 5 | 94 to 135 | Contemplations: emotions, desire, the "I", equanimity, the world as magic show |
| 6 | 136 to 162 | Inner ritual: japa, dhyāna, pūjā, homa reinterpreted; the breath as the Goddess's mantra |
This is a draft translation ("complete but lacking commentary"), with Wallis's own "CHECK" notes left in and several verses marked as needing Sanskrit commentary. Wallis also shows that the text's count of 112 methods does not hold: some methods take several verses and some verses repeat others. Read it as a working document, not a finished edition.
The Goddess Asks, Bhairava Answers
The text opens with Bhairavī's doubts. She has heard every Trika teaching, yet asks what Reality truly is: the mystic alphabet, the deity Navātman, the three goddesses, nāda and bindu? And if the Supreme Goddess has a form and colour, how can she be supreme? Bhairava's answer clears away the whole ritual apparatus in a few verses.
Forms as Sweets and Threats
Bhairava praises the question as "the very essence of the Tantras". The embodied forms he taught in the scriptures "are not the real essence... like a magic trick, like dreams or illusions", given to those "debilitated by dualistic thought", entangled in ritual. They help the unawakened progress "like a mother uses sweets and threats" with her children.
The one pure universe-filling 'form' of Bhairava is that absolutely full state of being called Goddess Bhairavī: beyond reckoning in space or time, without direction or locality, impossible to indicate, ultimately indescribable, a field free of mental constructs, blissful with the experience of the innermost Self.
Vijñāna-bhairava-tantra 14 to 16b"When this is the ultimate Reality, who is to be worshipped, and who gratified?" Wallis glosses the bharitākārā avasthā as "a joyously expanded field of awareness free of mental filters", the heart's consent to the moment as it is. His teacher Alexis Sanderson puts it plainly: this fullness, "rather than the composite images or mantras of ritual", is what the Trika means by Parā.
In its context, revealing ever more esoteric deities was "largely a game of sectarian one-upmanship". Here the plethora of ritual forms is set aside: accessing inner fullness is the highest worship possible. The idea later became common and is taught today, but in 850 "it was unheard of".
Śakti as Doorway
There is "never the slightest separation between Śakti and her Host". The power of fire to burn cannot be separated from fire; Śakti is treated as separate only as a teaching tool. "In our way (the Kaula way), Śiva's śakti is said to be the entryway." As directions in space are known through a lamp's light, Śiva is known through Śakti.
The Goddess then asks the practical question: how is this state, beyond space and time and impossible to conceive, attained? Bhairava's reply is the hundred-odd techniques of verses 24 to 135, in no particular order.
The radical anti-ritual reading depends on reading verses 8 to 13 as dismissing ritual forms; Wallis credits Sanderson for "a reading that makes sense out of the problematic grammar of verse 13", so the key passage rests partly on an emendation. The text also keeps ritual elsewhere and ends by restricting the teaching to initiates, so "anti-ritual" is too strong.
Breath and the Subtle Body
The first method is "a sublime meditation on the spaces between the breaths", and the scripture returns to the breath at its close. Verses 24 to 35 then move into Kuṇḍalinī-like ascents, a twelve-cakra system, and the central channel.
The Supreme Goddess constantly articulates as the life-giving flow of breath: prāṇa rising up, and jīva descending. By pausing at the two places where they arise, and filling those points with silent awareness, one abides in the state of inner fullness.
Verse 24, Yukti 1Three Technical Words
| Term | Ordinary sense | Śaiva sense |
|---|---|---|
| jīva | life, soul | the inhale, the movement into embodiment |
| uccaret | to utter | to breathe and enunciate a mantra with the breath (so'ham / haṃsa); not in the dictionaries |
| visarga | the ":" sign | emission, absolute potential flowing forth; its two dots mirror the heart and the dvādaśānta above the head |
| bharaṇa | pausing | also "filling, nourishing", cognate with Bhairava |
Each pause becomes "a pregnant pause", full of potential for embodiment after the exhale and surrender after the inhale. Verse 25 is not a second method but a comment on the first, which, Wallis notes, "seems to undermine the text's claim to teach 112 methods".
Paul Muller-Ortega argues many "methods" are really spontaneous experiences on the path. Verse 26 supports this: the breath grows subtler until it stops by itself along with the mind in the Center, revealing an emptiness "filled with the quiet intensity of pure presence". Verse 27 may describe either a deliberate 1:1:1:1 breath or the involuntary kumbhaka of experienced meditators.
Rising Light, Twelve Centers
- Yukti 3. Imagine the subtlest prāṇa as rays of light rising from the root and dissolving above the crown. The text predates the word kuṇḍalinī in this sense.
- Yukti 4. Śakti rises "like a streak of lightning" from cakra to cakra; at the top comes mahodaya, the "Great Dawn".
- Yukti 5. Twelve centers with twelve vowels (a, ā, i, ī ... aṃ, aḥ), practised in coarse (visualise and intone), subtle (feel the vibration) and supreme (secret: sound turns into light) forms, unlike the seven-cakra system familiar in the West.
- Yukti 6. Fill the body with energy and break through the knot between the eyebrows to the all-pervasive level: a form of khecarī mudrā.
- Yukti 10. Visualise the central channel as a slender lotus fiber, the Goddess as innermost Space.
Several of these verses "cannot be understood from the verse alone", in Wallis's words: one must consult commentaries and living teachers. Even then he is unsure whether setu means "bridge" or "dike". A reader working from the translation alone gets the outline of practices whose details were oral.
Sound, Point and the Void
Verses 32 to 64 range from esoteric gazing and mantra to an extended set of emptiness practices in which the body itself becomes space. Wallis argues these interior yogic methods are prerequisites for the sensual ones that follow.
The Peacock's Feather
Verse 32: "Meditating on the Five Spaces as the colorful circles of the peacock's feathers, one enters the Heart, the Supreme Space." The five spaces are the sense apertures. They are separate, while a feather's circles are nested, so the instruction is to merge the sense-fields into one field, and see phenomena as vibrations decorating vast emptiness. Wallis notes that the feather's dark iridescent centre is the colour of Anuttara Śiva: "As far as I know, no one has noticed this correspondence yet." He adds that Jaidev Singh misunderstood the commentary.
Verse 33: wherever awareness comes to rest, "whether a space, a wall, or a perfect vessel", it dissolves into it and bestows the boon. Wallis reads para-pātra literally as a well-formed bowl, against commentators who read "a worthy disciple". "Note the Zen-like quality of the practice here, and this is before there was Zen." Verse 34 asks you to rest attention inside the cranium (kapāla), a word that evoked the Kāpālikas' skull-bowls and so the reality of death.
Bindu, Nāda, Uccāra
| Verse | Practice |
|---|---|
| 36 | Close the senses with the hands (probably ṣaṇmukhī mudrā), pierce the eyebrow-center, perceive the bindu |
| 37 | Meditate on the bindu as a tilak of subtle fire in the heart or above the head |
| 38 | Be steeped in the Unstruck Sound, "a rushing river in the vessel of the ear" |
| 39 | Full uccāra of OṂ; meditate on the void after its protracted sound |
| 40 to 41 | The beginning and end of any syllable; the fading resonance of a vīṇā |
Wallis's strongest claim in the notes: the accessible practices later in the text move you toward liberation only if these interior practices come first. "Without activating, opening up, and priming the energy-body... one is simply eating, drinking, listening to music, and having sex, and calling it Tantrik Yoga."
The Body as Space
Contemplate all parts of the body at once as continuous with surrounding space (v. 43). Then hold the space above the crown, at the root and in the heart simultaneously (vv. 44 to 45). Imagine the tissues pervaded by space (v. 47), and the skin as a mere screen "within which there is nothing" (v. 48). Gaze into an empty pot, ignoring its walls, or over open land free of trees and buildings (vv. 59 to 60).
Verse 51 is a portable version: "Wherever you may be, whatever you may be doing, continually keep your attention on that upper limit, the dvādaśānta. As mental agitation dies away, something indescribable may occur within days." Interleaved are traditional purifications: imagining the body incinerated by the Fire of Time (v. 52), dissolving the tattvas (v. 54), contemplating the Paths of the cosmos (vv. 56 to 57). Verse 55 promises "freedom in one's dreams", which Wallis reads as lucid dreaming.
Between any two states, rest in the center between them, release both, and Reality shines in the Center (v. 61). Verse 62 adds a pause after any mood is released, before the next arises.
Wallis's peacock reading is ingenious but his own: he admits "no one knows for sure the practice intended", and offers a second reading (five cakras) before dismissing it. The "within days" promises (vv. 51, 107) are scriptural rhetoric; no time frame is reliable for experiences the text itself calls indescribable.
Bliss and Daily Life
The best-known part of the scripture, verses 65 to 93, treats joy, sensual pleasure and ordinary moments as doorways, including verses on sexual union read in their Kaula context. Wallis brackets the section with his caution from Chapter Three: these practices count only for one with an activated energy-body.
Bliss Practices
Wherever the mind delights, let your attention linger there in the felt sense of that rapture. In any such experience, the true nature of supreme bliss may shine forth.
Verse 74| Verse | Doorway |
|---|---|
| 65 | Body or world as full of innate joy |
| 67 | Stopping the outflow of prāṇa; a crawling-ants sensation, then supreme happiness |
| 68 | Attention between "fire" (root) and "poison" (tip) with breath retention: Wallis says it took him years to decode |
| 69 to 70 | Union with a consecrated partner, or its memory, as immersion in Śakti |
| 71 | Joy of seeing a loved one after a long time |
| 72 | Savoring good food and drink |
| 73 | Merging with music and song |
Verse 67 describes "the sometimes strange somatic experiences" of long meditation; Wallis says his bracketed additions "are not speculative" but come from parallel sources, which is why translation needs the Sanskrit literature, not just a dictionary.
Daily-Life Practices
- Sleep's threshold. When the outer world has faded but sleep has not come, Parā Devī manifests (v. 75).
- Light and gaze. Rest the gaze on dappled light (v. 76); look at the clear sky without blinking (v. 84); on a moonless night, meditate on the formless form of darkness (v. 87).
- Posture oddities. Sit with only the buttocks touching a soft seat, hands and feet in the air (v. 78); focus on the space of the armpits (v. 79); let the jaw go slack and mentally sound HA (v. 81).
- Movement. Be rocked on a swing or chariot (v. 83); whirl until you fall (v. 111).
- Sensation. Prick the body with a needle and stay with that point (v. 93).
- Gaze on a being. Look steadily at a person or animal, free of projections about them (v. 80).
The section's force is its ordinariness: none of these require a temple, and several (a sneeze, a swing, darkness) happen anyway. The skill is to notice the gap they open and not hurry to fill it.
The sexual verses (68 to 70) are presented in a scholarly frame, but modern "Tantra" marketing seizes on exactly these verses and ignores Wallis's point that the text presupposes initiation and yogic preparation. Verse 70's language (desire recalled in a male practitioner's terms) also shows the text's male, initiate audience, which a modern reader must translate rather than adopt.
Contemplations: Emotion, Self and Sameness
Verses 94 to 135 shift from body and sense to insight: dropping the idea of a mental apparatus, working with desire and anger as they arise, seeing the same consciousness in every body, and treating the world as a magic show. The section culminates in becoming one with Bhairava.
Emotions as Openings
When in the field of craving, anger, greed, confusion, intoxicated excitement, or jealousy, make the mind still and soft right in the middle of the emotion: reality is that which remains when the feeling has passed through.
Verse 101- Desire (v. 96). Watch a desire arise and lead it to quiescence: it dissolves into the place it arose from.
- The question (v. 97). "When neither desire nor thought arise, who am I? Truly, I am just as I actually am."
- Energy, not content (v. 98). When desire or thought does arise, consider its energy as an essential śakti of the Self.
- No owner (v. 99). Cognitions arise "without cause and without objective basis", eddies of mental energy that "belong to no one".
- Neither pole (v. 103). Do not abandon the heart-mind to suffering or happiness; know the reality in the Center.
- Threshold states (v. 118). Just before or after a sneeze, at the start or end of anger, in fear, sorrow, curiosity, the onset or end of hunger: the Absolute is available.
One Consciousness in All Bodies
Ordinary awareness (v. 106) The awareness of knower and known is common to all embodied beings.
The yogī's difference Yogīs "pay careful attention to the connection" between them; and they cultivate the felt sense that the consciousness in another's body is the same as their own (v. 107).
Verse 123 attacks ritual purity head-on: "That which people of paltry understanding consider 'purity' is impurity in the teachings of Śiva. There is neither purity nor impurity. Therefore, be free of such mental constructs, and be happy." Equanimity follows: equal toward foe and friend, honour and dishonour (v. 125); neither hatred nor craving (v. 126).
In everyday life, when you hear yourself say "I am..." or "this is mine", seize the moment to ask what "I" or "my" refers to. "The mind tries to find a referent, but it cannot" (v. 131). Or chant the name Bhairava understanding it as "that which supports (bhṛ) everything, produces (rac) everything, and pervades (vyāp) the whole" (v. 130).
The closing contemplations treat the world as a magic show (v. 133) and declare: "For me there is no bondage; nor is there any need for liberation. These are merely concepts with which people frighten themselves" (v. 135). Verse 110 gives the positive image: "Just as waves arise from water, flames from fire, and light-rays from the sun, the waves of the universe arise from me, Bhairava."
Verses 133 to 135 ("unreal as a magic show", "this world is empty") sound closer to illusionist Vedānta or Buddhism than to the realist nondualism of Kṣemarāja, for whom the world is real as Śiva's expression. The scripture predates the Recognition school and is not internally uniform; reading it through later Kashmiri commentary smooths over this.
Inner Ritual and the Breath's Mantra
The concluding verses sum up the View and reinterpret every outer rite of mainstream religion as an inner act. The text then comes full circle to the breath, the Goddess's natural mantra, and ends with secrecy rules and an embrace.
O Goddess, I have taught 112 concise verses on how to become 'waveless'. One who can understand them attains true wisdom.
Verse 139Nistaraṅga, "waveless", means internally still; Wallis suggests it is the same state Patañjali defines as yoga in Yoga-sūtra 1.2. One connected to even one method becomes Bhairava, free of fear of old age and death, "fully liberated even as he goes about his daily life" (v. 142ab).
Every Rite Turned Inward
| Outer rite | Inner meaning in the text |
|---|---|
| Japa (repetition) | Ever greater absorption (bhāvanā) in the supreme state |
| Mantra | The spontaneous resonance of self-awareness, the soul of all mantras |
| Dhyāna (visualisation) | A mind motionless, free of forms, not imagining a deity with a face |
| Pūjā (worship) | A firm mind dissolving into the thought-free void, not flowers |
| Homa (fire offering) | Elements, senses and objects offered into the Great Void, consciousness as the ladle |
| Yāga (sacrifice) | Innate joy |
| Kṣetra (holy place) | Immersion; also a pun: starving (kṣap) sins and saving (tra) beings |
| Bath | Immersion in one's essence: Freedom, Joy, Awareness |
| Pilgrimage | Kuṇḍalinī, extended by the breath and will |
The text says the Goddess's japa goes on 21,600 times each day and night: the natural breath cycle, about four seconds long. An apocryphal verse names it: the breath goes out with sa and returns with ha, "haṃsa, haṃsa". The scripture ends where it began, with the pause between breaths.
The worshipped, the offerings and the worshipper are in reality One; how then can we use the term 'worship' (v. 153)?
The nectar "should never be given" to a follower of a non-Tantrik path, the cruel, or those not devoted to their teachers, but should be given "without hesitation" to Kaula "heroes" relatively free of dualistic views. Relinquish attachment to village, kingdom and family to take it up; "sooner give up one's own life" than give it to one not ready. Then the Goddess, satisfied, flings her arms about Śiva's neck.
The closing verses pull two ways: everything outer is "coarse", yet the teaching is gated by initiation and devotion to teachers, a rule a public translation necessarily sets aside. Wallis's equation of "waveless" with Patañjali's nirodha also sits awkwardly with the critique of nirodha he makes in The Recognition Sutras, where Tantra's mind need not be stilled.
What the Scripture Teaches as a Whole
A hundred-odd doorways, one room: the full state of being that the Trika calls the Goddess. The methods differ in technique and audience, but each aims to catch awareness in a gap, a pause, a joy, an emotion at its first arising, and let it recognise itself.
Master Takeaways
- The Goddess is a state. Parā is fullness (bharitā), not a figure with a colour and form.
- Forms are teaching tools, "like sweets and threats" for children.
- Śakti is the doorway to Śiva, as a lamp's light reveals space.
- Start with the breath. The two pauses, at heart and above the head, are the first and last method.
- Many methods are experiences. Some verses describe what happens by itself in deep practice.
- Merge the senses into one field, like the circles of a peacock's feather.
- The body is space. Skin is a screen; tissues are pervaded by sky.
- Prime the energy body before treating pleasure as practice.
- Linger where the mind delights: food, music, reunion, love.
- Use ordinary gaps: falling asleep, sneezing, swinging, darkness.
- Soften inside emotion and see what remains when it passes.
- Find the referent of "I", and notice there is none.
- The same consciousness looks out from every body.
- Purity rules are constructs; drop them and be happy.
- Every rite is inner: japa, pūjā, homa, pilgrimage.
- Breath is the natural mantra, 21,600 times a day.
- One method is enough if fully lived.
Frameworks Worth Keeping
| Framework | Verses | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Two pauses of the breath | 24 to 27 | A practice for any moment |
| Coarse, subtle, supreme | 30, 56 | Graduated depth for any technique |
| Body as space | 43 to 48 | Release body-identification |
| Center between two states | 61 to 62 | Rest in transitions |
| Bliss as doorway | 65 to 74 | Aesthetic savouring as practice |
| Emotion at first arising | 96 to 101 | Digest desire and anger |
| Inner ritual table | 144 to 154 | Reinterpret any practice inwardly |
Who's Who
- Bhairava and Bhairavī. The divine speakers: Śiva in fierce form, and the Goddess who questions him.
- Kṣemarāja (c. 1020). Author of the opening verse on the meaning of "Bhairava"; quotes the VBT in The Recognition Sutras.
- Śivopādhyāya. Later Sanskrit commentator whose readings Wallis follows and corrects.
- Abhinava Gupta and Jayaratha. Exegetes who cite and gloss key verses.
- Alexis Sanderson. Wallis's Oxford teacher, credited with the reading of verse 13.
- Paul Muller-Ortega. Scholar who argues many methods are spontaneous experiences.
- Jaidev Singh. Earlier translator whom Wallis corrects on verse 32.
- Christopher D. Wallis (Hareesh). Translator.
Whole-Text Critical Lens
Strengths. A careful, practice-literate translation that explains technical terms (jīva, uccaret, visarga) dictionaries miss, flags uncertainty honestly, and frames the sensual verses inside the yogic sequence. Limits. It is a draft: "CHECK" notes, missing commentary on several verses, and a promised published version. Interpretive leaps (the peacock's colour, the twelve cakras' names, the Kuṇḍalinī decoding) are Wallis's own. The scripture itself mixes illusionist and realist strands and restricts its teaching to initiates, which no public translation can honour. Read it as a menu of doorways, not a system.
Pause at the end of each exhale and each inhale. Do not turn back too soon (v. 25). Fill the pause with silent awareness, and notice what is already there.
About This Edition
This Insight Edition is an independent study guide to The Vijnana-bhairava-tantra by Christopher D. Wallis. It summarises and comments on the book in its own words, quotes only short passages for discussion, and is not a substitute for the original. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the author or publisher. Please read and buy the original.