The Kaula Who Sees One in All: Equanimity as the Highest Sadhana
śmaśāne bhavane devi tathaiva kāñcane tṛṇe
na bhedāyasya deveśi sa kaulaḥ parikīrtitaḥ
कर्दमे चन्दने मित्रे-मित्रे शत्रौ तथा प्रिये
श्मशाने भवने देवि-तथैव कांचने तृणे
न भेदायस्य देवेशि! स कौलः परिकीर्तितः
Among the many profound teachings preserved within the Kaula
and Tantric traditions, few cut as cleanly to the heart of spiritual
realization as the verse that defines a true Kaula. The teaching, preserved in
the Tantric scriptural tradition, declares that one who sees no difference
between mud and sandalwood, friend and enemy, cremation ground and home, gold
and straw — that being alone deserves to be called a Kaula. This is not a
poetic exaggeration. It is a precise, demanding description of an inner state
that takes lifetimes of sincere sadhana to achieve.
Who Are the Kaulas?
The Kaula school represents one of the most esoteric and
spiritually sophisticated streams within the broader Tantric tradition of
Shaiva and Shakta philosophy. The word Kaula derives from the Sanskrit root
kula, which in the Tantric context refers to the totality — the family of
Shakti, the network of energy that constitutes all of manifest and unmanifest
existence. A Kaula practitioner is therefore one who has aligned themselves
completely with this totality, who recognizes Shakti — the Divine Mother — as
the living substance of every name and form without exception.
The Kaula path is neither purely renunciatory nor purely
worldly. It is a path of radical integration, where the practitioner works
within the world, uses the body, the senses, and experience itself as
instruments of awakening. The Kularnava Tantra, one of the most authoritative
texts of this tradition, declares in its opening chapters that the Kaula path
is the highest among all paths, not because it is the easiest, but because it
demands the greatest inner transformation.
The Kularnava Tantra states:
"Kevalam shastram ashritya na kartavyam vinirnayas,
kaulo margah param guhyam trigeshu api durlabham"
The Kaula path is the supreme secret, rare even across the
three worlds.
The Meaning of Equanimity
The equanimity described in the verse is not indifference,
not the cold detachment of someone who has simply stopped caring about the
world. It is something far more alive and radical. In Tantric understanding,
all apparent opposites — beauty and ugliness, pleasure and pain, sacred and
profane — arise within and from the one Shakti. To perceive difference at the
level of essence is to remain caught in maya, the superimposition of division
upon what is fundamentally undivided.
Mud and sandalwood both arise from the earth, both return to
it. Gold and straw are both expressions of Prakriti. The cremation ground and
the home are both spaces within which Consciousness — Shiva — remains
unchanged. The Kaula who has internalized this sees through the surface of
names and forms to the single luminous reality that holds them all.
This is not philosophy merely to be recited. It is a
realized state, described in the Tantras as Samabhava — the condition of equal
vision. The Vijnanabhairava Tantra, a crown jewel among Tantric scriptures,
repeatedly points to this as the mark of one who has truly entered the
recognition of Bhairava:
"Sarvatra bhairavo bhavet" — Bhairava is
everywhere, in all things, without exception.
Symbolism of the Pairs
Each pair mentioned in the verse carries deep symbolic
weight.
Mud and Sandalwood represent the distinction between what is
ordinarily considered lowly and what is considered refined, auspicious, sacred.
Sandalwood is offered in worship; mud is discarded. Yet both are earth. The
Kaula sees Devi in both.
Friend and Enemy represent the pull of personal likes and
dislikes, the fundamental bias of the ego-self. To move beyond this pair is to
dissolve the separate self that defines itself through relationships of
preference. This is not a call to abandon discernment but to act without inner
partiality rooted in ego.
Cremation Ground and Home carry enormous significance in the
Kaula and Shakta traditions. The cremation ground — the shmashana — is not a
place of horror in this tradition. It is where Devi Kali dances, where Shiva
meditates, where all illusion is burned away. For the Kaula, the shmashana is
as sacred as any domestic altar. Many Kaula and Natha masters performed their
most intense practices in the shmashana precisely because it dissolves fear and
strips away the ego's comfort.
Gold and Straw represent the most obvious worldly hierarchy
of value. To see them equally is to be free from greed, from the compulsive
clinging to wealth and the rejection of poverty. It does not mean a Kaula
cannot function in the world — it means inner freedom from the tyranny of
valuation.
The Kaula and the Question of Conduct
A common misunderstanding is that the Kaula's equanimity
means absence of ethical awareness or social responsibility. The Kularnava
Tantra is explicit on this point. The true Kaula is not one who performs
transgressive acts for their own sake. Transgression in the Kaula tradition is
always in service of inner liberation — the breaking of fear, disgust, pride,
and attachment. One who uses the label of Kaula to justify selfish or harmful
conduct is called a Pashukula in the scriptures — one still bound like an
animal, regardless of the outer form of practice.
The Kaula's equal vision arises from fullness, not from
recklessness. It is the natural overflow of a heart that has touched the ground
of Being.
Modern Day Relevance
In a world increasingly fractured along lines of ideology,
identity, wealth, and status, the Kaula's vision of Samabhava is not a relic of
an ancient Indian past — it is a living challenge to the way contemporary human
beings construct reality. To stop identifying people and situations as threats
or rewards, as useful or disposable, is a profound act of inner revolution.
The teaching does not ask practitioners to ignore injustice
or remain passive. It asks for freedom from reactive, ego-driven perception so
that one's actions arise from clarity rather than fear, from love rather than
preference.
A Kaula does not withdraw from the world. A Kaula moves through the world as it truly is — as Devi herself, in every grain of dust, in every fire, in every face.
Aham Devi na canyosmi brahmaivam natra samshayah — I am
Devi, nothing other; I am Brahman, of this there is no doubt. (Devi Gita)