Laghustutih (vrittisameta) 69

69

mantra in general, nevertheless this beginning is undertaken to consider the specific fruits; thus it is taught that liberation alone is the fruit of worshiping the bindu along with subtle sound. The vocative address ‘O Goddess’ is to be supplied here as well from the subsequent verse. She is called Goddess (devī) because she sports within herself alone through the fivefold cosmic activities characterized by the creation, maintenance, dissolution, concealment, and grace of the universe, or because she consists of self-luminous consciousness; hence the address to her. Or, Goddess means she who is the undivided reflective awareness of the ‘I’ that is the essential nature of the God, the Great Lord who consists solely of self-luminosity and is the inner Self of all. Or, Goddess means she who illuminates, by virtue of entry into her own light in the form of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, the artificial cognizers characterized by void, intellect, vital breath, and body, as well as the objects contained within them such as pleasure, pain, blue, and yellow, along with their cognitions. ‘In yours’: belonging to you, concerning you. ‘In the first vāgbhava seed syllable’: in the seed syllable named vāgbhava, situated in the four-petaled mūlādhāra within the center of the yoni among the nine yonis at the pericarp of the lotus, having a triangular form. ‘Stationed’: existing in its center, consisting of bindu with subtle sound. ‘That subtle measure’: the kalā. ‘Which rivals the rising of a slender, gleaming shoot of a cucumber vine’: ‘cucumber vine’ is the urvāru creeper; ‘the rising of a slender, gleaming shoot’ is the emergence of its tendril, an emergent, curved, fine filament; ‘rivaling’ means resembling, having a similar form and consisting of light; she who is renowned in the treatises as the power Kuṇḍalinī. ‘Her, resolved upon the activity of generating the universe’: having the nature of Parā, Paśyantī, and so forth, producing the phenomenal universe of words and meanings by way of the fifty phonemes. ‘Always’: even at all three times of worship. ‘Knowing’: having worshiped her as one's own Self. ‘Men do not again suffer’: do not undergo ‘the state of an embryo situated in a mother's womb’, because they have themselves attained the state of being the father and mother of the universe. ‘Thus we meditate’: we determine with certainty. ‘We’: we who are devoted to you. || 2