Trika

Kashmiri religious community whose
members were devotees (bhakta) of
the god Shiva; the greatest figure in the
Trika school was the tenth-century
philosopher and aesthetic theorist
Abhinavagupta. Trika Shaivism is a
tantric tradition—that is, a secret, ritually
based religious practice—whose philosophical underpinnings merge two
philosophical positions, theism and
monism. Theism is the notion that a
divinity is the Supreme Reality in the
universe, whereas monism conceives a
more abstract principle as the basis of
all reality. For Trika Shaivism, the sole
true reality is the god Shiva, who is both
Supreme God and the source for emanations from which the material universe
is formed. Final liberation of the soul
(moksha) comes through a process of
“recognition” (pratyabhijna), in which
one realizes that the entire universe is
nothing but a manifestation of Shiva
alone. Here one “recognizes” something
that has always been true but until that
time had been obscured by a mistaken
understanding. For further information
see Paul Eduardo Muller-Ortega, The
Triadic Heart of Siva, 1989. See also
tantra and Shaiva.