Practices
Similarly to other tantric schools, Kaula chooses a positive (affirmative) approach: instead of prescribing self-limitations and condemning various actions, it embraces such actions in a spiritual light. Thus, sexuality, love, social life and artistic pursuits are considered vectors of spiritual evolution. The main focus in Kaula is on practical methods for attaining enlightenment, rather than engaging in complex philosophical debate. Whatever is pleasant and positive can be integrated in its practice.
The principal means employed in the Kaula practice are the spiritual family, the practice of initiation rituals, the couple (sexual rituals such as maithuna), the body (spiritual alchemy inside one's own body), the energy (shakti) (controlled especially through the use of mantras and mystical phonemes) and the consciousness (seen as the epitome of one's whole being and of the universe itself).
The first phase of development is linked to the attainment of a state of non-duality described as an "absorption into the spiritual heart", nirvikalpa samadhi or experiencing the "uncreated light" of consciousness (prakāśa) (read a number of subjective accounts of this experience).
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Famous quotes containing the word practices:
“Such is the art of writing as Dreiser understands it and practices it—an endless piling up of minutiae, an almost ferocious tracking down of ions, electrons and molecules, an unshakable determination to tell it all. One is amazed by the mole-like diligence of the man, and no less by his exasperating disregard for the ease of his readers.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Money made through dishonest practices will not last long.”
—Chinese proverb.
“To learn a vocation, you also have to learn the frauds it practices and the promises it breaks.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)