- Lived:
- c. 950–1016 CE by the dating most specialists now follow (some references give c. 975–1025) · born, taught and vanished in and around Śrīnagar (then Pravarapura), in the Kashmir valley, within a few miles of the Vitastā (Jhelum) river
- Field:
- philosophy and aesthetics — the great synthesizer of the non-dual Śaiva traditions now called Kashmir Śaivism, and the most influential theorist of art India ever produced
- The Big Idea:
- You are not a person searching for God; you are God playing at being a person, and liberation is simply recognizing it. Art works the same way — a sad play delights you because, tasting grief that belongs to nobody, consciousness is tasting itself.
- In their words:
- "The tasting of poetry's savour is the close kin of the tasting of brahman." (the Locana, his commentary on the Dhvanyāloka; the rendering is ours — Ingalls, Masson and Patwardhan's scholarly version runs close)
- If you remember one thing:
- One Kashmiri wrote the definitive account of the tantric path to God and the definitive account of why audiences weep at plays — and argued they were the same book, because in the theatre and in the universe alike, the whole show exists so that consciousness can recognize itself and shiver with delight at the recognition.