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| Bhairava's image in the Durbar Square, Kathmandu. |
Abhinava now passes from the principle to its concrete structure. He has just said that saṃsāra is the unevenness born from non-recognition of full Anuttara. The doctrine of the malas explains how that unevenness actually takes shape in lived experience: as contraction, difference, and karmic conditioning. So this is not a new subject, but the same argument becoming more precise.
From the sense of incompleteness, one reduces oneself to minuteness — this is āṇava-mala
apūrṇābhimānena svātmani aṇutvāpādanāt āṇavamalasya
“From the sense of incompleteness, by imposing minuteness upon oneself, arises āṇava-mala.”
Abhinava does not begin the malas with morality, action, or even thought in the ordinary sense. He begins with apūrṇābhimāna — taking oneself to be incomplete.
And what does that incompleteness do? It makes one impose aṇutva upon oneself: smallness, limitedness, contracted individuality. Not because the Self truly becomes small, but because it is taken that way.
That is why āṇava-mala is so fundamental. It is the primal contraction by which the unlimited is lived as limited. The trouble begins not with the outer world, but with this inward reduction.
So the point is not merely “the soul is tiny.” The point is: consciousness, by mis-taking itself as incomplete, assumes the form of the finite.
A simple way to say it:
āṇava-mala is the feeling, “I am not whole; therefore I am only this much.”
That is the first narrowing, and the rest follows from it.
From seeing difference arises the mala called Māyā
bhedadarśanāt māyākhyasya [bhinnavedyaprayātraiva māyākhyaṃ
janmabhogadam |]
“From the seeing of difference arises that mala called Māyā.
[The one called Māyā is precisely the pursuit of distinct objects of knowledge; it gives rise to birth and experience.]”
Now Abhinava moves from incompleteness and desire to a more articulated distortion: bhedadarśana, seeing in terms of difference.
This is important. Desire already reaches outward toward completion, but Māyā-mala is more specific: the world is now encountered as a field of distinct knowables, separate things standing apart from one another and from oneself.
That is why the gloss is so exact: Māyā is the pursuit of differentiated objects. Consciousness no longer only feels lack. It now chases fulfillment through a divided world.
And from that comes janma-bhoga-da — it gives birth and experience. In other words, once reality is lived as a field of separate objects to be pursued, one is fully inside the machinery of saṃsāra.
So the movement is now:
first, I feel incomplete;
then, I long to be completed;
then, the world appears as a spread of separate things that might complete me.
That is Māyā in this context. Not mere illusion in a vague sense, but the structuring of experience through separateness.
A simple analogy: once the center is lost, life begins to look like a supermarket of possible salvations. Every shelf holds “something” that might complete me. That is close to Abhinava’s point: Māyā is not just false appearance, but the pursuit of reality under the sign of difference.
From karmic grasping arises kārma-mala
kartaryabodhe kārmaṃ tu māyāśaktyaiva tattrayam ||
iti ] malasya tacchubhāśubhavāsanāgraheṇa kārmamalasya ca ullāsāt
“But kārma [mala arises] when there is non-awareness regarding the doer; and that triad comes about through Māyā-śakti itself.
And through the grasping of those auspicious and inauspicious latent tendencies, there is also the arising of kārma-mala.”
Now the movement becomes more concrete.
Once difference is seen and pursued, action does not remain simple. It becomes entangled in vāsanā — the grasping of stored tendencies, pleasant and unpleasant, auspicious and inauspicious. That accumulated pull is what makes karma bind.
The key phrase here is kartary-abodhe — non-awareness regarding the doer. The problem is not action itself. The problem is that action is no longer transparent to its real ground. One acts from contraction, then grasps the traces of action, then continues to move under their pressure.
So kārma-mala is not just “bad deeds.” It is the binding force of action when consciousness is already functioning under incompleteness and difference.
The sequence is now very clean:
first, I take myself to be small;
then, I seek completion;
then, I see a world of separate objects;
then, I act under that structure and become marked by the residues of action.
That is why the three malas belong together. Kārma-mala is not an isolated third item. It is the ripening of the first two into patterned bondage.
Even the slightest non-recognition unfolds into the three malas
[iyatparyantam aṇumātramapi ityādyeva upodbalitam sūkṣmekṣikāvadhāryametat |]
“This much has already been strengthened earlier by the statement ‘even the slightest amount’; this should be discerned by subtle inspection.”
Abhinava now points back and says: this was already implied.
The phrase aṇumātram api — even the slightest amount — was not rhetorical excess. It was a precise warning. A very subtle lapse in the recognition of full Anuttara is enough for the whole chain to begin unfolding.
That is why he tells the reader to see this through sūkṣma-īkṣikā — subtle inspection. The malas do not necessarily begin as gross obvious defilements. They begin very fine: a slight contraction, a slight sense of lack, a slight shift into difference. But once that shift is there, the rest can develop from it.
So the point is important because it prevents a crude reading. One does not need a dramatic “fall” to enter saṃsāra. Even a very fine non-recognition can serve as the seed.
A simple way to put it:
for Abhinava, bondage does not begin only when things become obviously dark;
it begins the moment fullness is even slightly not known.
When that unevenness ceases, the threefold mala is absent
svarūpāparijñānamayatadvaiṣamyanivṛttau [tasyānuttarasya vaiṣamyanivṛttau
trilakṣaṇasya malasyābhāvāt |]
“When that unevenness, which is made of non-recognition of one’s own nature, ceases — [that is, when the unevenness with regard to that Anuttara ceases — there is the absence of the mala characterized as threefold].”
Now Abhinava turns the whole argument around.
Up to this point he has shown how non-recognition unfolds into contraction, difference, and karmic binding. Here he states the reverse just as clearly: when that vaiṣamya ceases, the malas cease.
The key phrase is svarūpāparijñānamaya — “made of non-recognition of one’s own nature.” That means the malas are not independent substances. They are formations sustained by misrecognition.
So their cessation does not require destroying some second reality. It requires the ending of the unevenness rooted in non-recognition of Anuttara.
That is why the gloss says the threefold mala disappears there. The three malas are many in articulation, but one in root. Remove the root, and the triad no longer stands.
A simple analogy: if a rope has three knots tied from one twist, you do not need three different ropes to explain them. Untwist the root tension, and the knots lose their support. That is close to Abhinava’s point here.
When the malas are absent, anger and delusion too are nothing but Bhairava-consciousness
malābhāvāt krodhamohādivṛttayo hi
paripūrṇabhagavadbhairavabhaṭṭārakasaṃvidātmikā eva |
“For when the malas are absent, the movements of anger, delusion, and the rest are themselves of the very nature of the consciousness of the fully complete Lord Bhairava.”
This is one of the boldest lines in the passage, and it must be read under its condition: malābhāvāt — when the malas are absent.
Abhinava is not saying that a siddha remains deluded in the ordinary sense, as though realization left one inwardly confused, mistaken, or psychologically bound. That would be too crude, and it would indeed destroy the distinction between bondage and freedom.
His point is subtler.
Earlier he explained that anger, desire, delusion, and the rest appear under vaiṣamya — unevenness born from non-recognition of full Anuttara. In that condition, these movements are distorted. They bind because they arise from contraction, incompleteness, and self-loss.
Here he is speaking of the same field of forces after the malas are absent. So the issue is not whether the outer shape of a movement may still look fierce, dark, shocking, or bewildering. The issue is whether that movement is still rooted in bondage.
That is the key distinction.
In more human terms: an ordinary person gets angry because they are wounded, threatened, lacking, reactive, or identified. Their anger is tied to contraction. Likewise, what we call moha in ordinary life is genuine confusion: not seeing clearly, being caught, being inwardly obscured.
Abhinava is saying that these movements do not come from some second principle outside Bhairava. Their substance is still Śakti. Under mala, they appear as bondage. Without mala, that same energetic field is no longer governed by self-loss.
So when he includes moha, he is not saying that awakened consciousness becomes ignorant. He is saying that even those modes of manifestation which, from the side of bondage, appear as confusion or bewilderment are not outside Bhairava. In real life, that means an awakened being does not have to look like a permanently polished, emotionally flattened schoolteacher. There may still be force, unpredictability, rupture, opacity, even behavior that bewilders others. But that bewilderment may belong more to the standpoint of the observer than to actual inner bondage in the siddha.
At the same time, this line does not license spiritual romanticism. It does not mean that every unstable, aggressive, or chaotic person is secretly manifesting divine consciousness. Most such cases are simply ordinary bondage. Abhinava’s point is ontological, not permissive. He is saying that no movement has a substance outside Bhairava; he is not saying that every movement is therefore liberated as it stands.
So the sentence holds a precise paradox:
under mala, anger and delusion are saṃsāric distortions;
without mala, even those energies are not other than Bhairava-consciousness.
That is why the line is so striking. Abhinava refuses both simplifications:
he does not reduce liberation to emotional sterilization,
and he does not dissolve the difference between bondage and freedom.
Somānanda is cited to show that even what surges forth as prakṛti is Śiva
yaduktaṃ
śrīsomānandapādaiḥ . . . (?) utsaratprakṛtiḥ śivaḥ |
“As the venerable Somānanda has said:
‘… Śiva is the prakṛti that surges forth.’”
Abhinava now supports the previous bold claim with Somānanda.
The force of the citation is clear even though the part of the manuscript is not preserved: what surges out as prakṛti, as manifesting nature, is not being placed outside Śiva. It is said to be Śiva.
That matters because a weaker nondualism might still reserve divinity for the pure, inward, quiet, or transcendent side, while treating manifest nature as something secondary, lower, or quasi-independent. Somānanda’s line blocks that move. What bursts forth as nature is not a second principle. Its very substance is Śiva.
In real life, this means manifestation is not divided into two worlds — one truly divine, the other merely mechanical or fallen. The movement outward, the emergence of force, the dynamism of becoming: these too belong to the one conscious ground.
That does not erase the distinction between bondage and freedom. It means only that even what appears as manifesting nature cannot claim a substance outside Śiva. That is the point Abhinava needs here, and Somānanda states it in concentrated form.
Pleasure, pain, and delusion too are pervaded by the same supreme Śiva
tathā
sukhe [kramāt sattvarajastamoguṇakārye |] duḥkhe vimohe ca sthito'haṃ paramaḥ śivah
“And likewise:
‘In pleasure [which, in sequence, is the effect of sattva], in pain, and in delusion, I abide as the supreme Śiva.’”
Abhinava now presses the same point one step further and makes it more existential.
The claim is no longer only that what surges forth as prakṛti is not outside Śiva. Now he says directly: in pleasure, in pain, and in delusion too, I stand there as supreme Śiva.
That is striking because it cuts against a very common religious reflex — the idea that the divine is present in clarity, harmony, purity, and joy, but somehow absent in pain, obscurity, or bewilderment. Abhinava refuses that division.
Still, the line has to be read with the earlier condition in mind. He is not praising delusion as delusion, nor treating saṃsāric confusion as spiritually sufficient. His point is that even in those states, the underlying reality has not become something other than Śiva. The problem is not absence of the ground, but non-recognition of it.
So in real life the meaning is severe and consoling at once.
It is consoling because even dark experience is not outside the ground.
It is severe because one cannot explain darkness by saying reality itself has split into two substances.
The line also keeps the previous argument balanced. If anger, delusion, and the rest can be said to be of the nature of Bhairava when mala is absent, then it must also be true that pleasure, pain, and bewilderment do not possess some independent substance outside the one consciousness.
A simple way to put it:
Śiva is not only the hidden ground of our best states.
He is also the hidden ground of the states in which that truth is hardest to recognize.
Even in suffering there can be expansion, firmness, and the meeting with dhṛti
duḥkhe'pi pravikāsena sthairyārthe dhṛtisaṃgamāt |
“Even in suffering, through unfolding, because of the joining with firmness for the sake of steadiness…”
This line has blood in it.
Abhinava is not speaking from the safety of abstraction. He does not say only that suffering is “also included” in some pale philosophical totality. He says more: even in suffering there can be unfolding. That is a fierce claim.
Because suffering normally does the opposite. It narrows. It hardens. It drives consciousness into recoil, bitterness, panic, or numb endurance. It makes the world feel smaller, the breath shorter, the heart more defended. So when Abhinava says duḥkhe’pi pravikāsena, he is pointing to something that goes directly against the ordinary law of wounded life: pain does not have an absolute right to close the being.
That is the first force of the line.
And then comes dhṛti — firmness, steadiness, the capacity to hold. Not theatrical heroism. Not spiritual posing. Not the ego congratulating itself for surviving. Something quieter and more severe: a deep staying-power by which consciousness does not shatter under what it undergoes.
That is why the line matters. It does not glorify pain. It does not say pain is secretly pleasant, or that one should seek it, or that it is holy merely because it hurts. It says that suffering can become a place where something in consciousness stops scattering and becomes more real, more grounded, more incapable of lying.
In that sense, Abhinava is naming a transformation of pressure.
The same force that, under contraction, would turn into collapse or agitation, can under another condition become sthairya — solidity, gatheredness. Suffering remains suffering. But it no longer has the power to define the whole field. It becomes a furnace in which instability is burned away and something weight-bearing begins to appear.
So the line is not sentimental. It is almost terrible in its dignity.
It says:
even here,
even where the nerves are scorched,
even where the mind would rather flee,
there can still be unfolding.
There can still be contact with firmness.
There can still be a mode of standing that is not defeated by pain, even if pain itself has not yet left.
That is the depth of the point. Abhinava is not rescuing suffering from outside. He is saying that consciousness, even there, is greater than the shape suffering tries to force upon it.
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