Sahaja

Ananda Coomaraswamy describes its significance as "the last achievement of all thought", and "a recognition of the identity of spirit and matter, subject and object", continuing "There is then no sacred or profane, spiritual or sensual, but everything that lives is pure and void.

The siddha Saraha (8th century CE) was the key figure of the Vajrayana Buddhist Sahajayana movement, which flourished in Bengal and Odisha.

[6] Sahajiya mahasiddhas (great adepts or yogis) like Saraha, Kanha, Savari, Luipāda, Kukkuripāda, Kānhapāda and Bhusukupāda were tantric Buddhists who expounded their beliefs in songs and dohas in the Apabhraṃśa languages and Bengali.

[citation needed] The sahajiyas also practiced a form of tantric sex which was supposed to bring the female and male elements together in balance.

Sahaja meditation and worship was prevalent in Tantric traditions common to Hinduism and Buddhism in Bengal as early as the 8th–9th centuries.

[16]The concept of a spontaneous spirituality entered Hinduism with Nath yogis such as Gorakshanath and was often alluded to indirectly and symbolically in the twilight language (sandhya bhasa) common to sahaja traditions as found in the Charyapada and works by Matsyendranath and Daripada.

[17] It influenced the bhakti movement through the Sant tradition, exemplified by the Bauls of Bengal, Namdev[18]Dnyaneshwar, Meera, Kabir[19] and Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism.

[20] Yoga in particular had a quickening influence on the various Sahajiya traditions[citation needed] The culture of the body (kāya-sādhana) through processes of Haṭha-yoga was of paramount importance in the Nāth sect and found in all sahaja schools.

The two aspects of absolute reality were explained as the eternal enjoyer and the enjoyed, Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā, as may be realised through a process of attribution (Aropa), in which the Rasa of a human couple is transmuted into the divine love between Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā, leading to the highest spiritual realisation, the state of union or Yugala.

[23] Vaisnava-Sahajiya is a synthesis and complex of traditions that, due to its tantric practices, was perceived with disdain by other religious communities and much of the time was forced to operate in secrecy.

He becomes invulnerable, beyond all dangers, when all forms melt away into the Formless, "when surati merges in nirati, japa is lost in ajapā" (Sākhī, Parcā ko Aṅga, d.23).

[28] This state seems inherently more complex than samadhi, since it involves several aspects of life, namely external activity, internal quietude, and the relation between them.