The Eight Limitations of Man According to the Kularṇava Tantra
Transgression, Bondage, and Liberation in Left-Handed Tantra
In the esoteric world of Tantric India, few texts carry the weight of the Kularṇava Tantra, a medieval Śākta scripture held sacred by practitioners of the left-hand path (Vāmācāra). This scripture addresses those willing to confront the burning grounds of their own minds, not the masses seeking comfort.
The text lists eight limitations (pāśas), psychic fetters binding the soul. These limitations are not external enemies but internal knots. The Kularṇava Tantra states directly: “Hatred (dveṣa), doubt, fear (bhaya), shame (lajjā), disgust (ghṛṇā), family attachment (kula), habit (śīla), and caste (varṇa), these are the eight bonds. One who is bound by these is a paśu [an animalistic being]; one who is free of these is Śiva.”
These are not metaphors. In the left-handed Kaula tradition, these eight bonds get confronted directly through lived ritual acts, transgressive and transformative.
Origins of the Kularṇava Tantra
The Kularṇava Tantra (Sanskrit: कुलार्णव तन्त्र) stands as a key textual source of Kaula Tantra. Composed between the 11th and 13th centuries CE, it emerged from the Śākta traditions of Eastern India, particularly Bengal and Odisha, where cremation-ground sādhanas, goddess worship, and yogic eroticism converged. The text takes the form of dialogue between Śiva and Devī. Its cryptic, initiatory style marks it as a cornerstone of the Kaula school, outlining doctrine, ritual practice, and the guru’s role.
The Kularṇava defines the Kaula path as more dangerous than walking on a razor’s edge or holding a tiger by the neck:
“Walking on the razor’s edge of a sword, holding a tiger by the neck, or draping a serpent on one’s body—these are easier than faithfully following the Kula path.” (Kularṇava Tantra 2.122)
The eight pāśas appear in this context, not as philosophical defects but as initiatory gates. Each requires tearing open through ritual fire and personal confrontation.
The Eight Bonds (Aṣṭa-Pāśa)
Dveṣa (Hatred)
The mind’s active rejection. Refusal of persons, forms, ideas. In Kaula practice, the sādhaka may ritually praise what he despises or worship the enemy. Not moral therapy. Psychic inversion.
Saṁśaya (Doubt)
Not intellectual skepticism, but paralyzing doubt in the path, the guru, the Self. The remedy? Acts of irreversible commitment. Obedience in the face of fear. Guru-ordained acts that defy logic and pierce through hesitation.Bhaya (Fear)
Fear is confronted literally. Rituals in cemeteries (śmaśāna-sādhana), sleeping beside corpses, offering liquor to blood-smeared deities. Fear is not managed, it is consumed.Lajjā (Shame)
Erotic rites in the presence of others. Public nakedness. The loss of face, family name, gender identity. Shame is used as a razor to strip off the social skin.
Ghṛṇā (Disgust)
Meat, menstrual blood, spit, excrement. These are not shocking for shock’s sake. They are tools. Disgust is an armor; Tantra tears it off.
Kula (Family Attachment)
This is deeper than missing home. It’s the entire web of obligations and emotional entrapments that bind one to lineage, clan, and inherited duty. The Kaula sādhaka cuts this cord ritually, with acts that would terrify a Brahmin father.Śīla (Habit/Morality)
Śīla here refers not to discipline but to habitual conduct, the internal autopilot of “good behavior.” Left-handed rites reverse all habits: you eat what you were told was filthy, sleep where you were told was haunted, love what you were told to fear.Varṇa (Caste/Identity)
This is not just about Indian caste. It includes race, gender, class, nation. In cakrapūjā, Kaula rituals often include partners from taboo groups: low caste, different religion, socially outlawed persons. Every time a boundary is crossed, a false identity is peeled away.
Liberation by Breaking Limits
The Kularṇava Tantra does not suggest avoiding the world. It suggests diving into it with radical clarity, under the guidance of a true guru. The text says:
“By those very substances which cause downfall, attainment (siddhi) is taught.” (Kularṇava Tantra 5.48)
This is the core of left-hand Tantra. Wine, meat, sex, filth, cemeteries, when entered ritualistically, with consecration and awareness, become weapons against conditioning. The pāśas are not sins; they are limitations. And limitation, in Tantra, is the only sin.
Contemporary Implications
For the modern practitioner, especially those engaging in Left-Handed Yoga systems, the Kularṇava’s message remains urgently relevant. The eight bonds are not medieval relics. They show up in every conversation with a conservative parent, in every reaction of moral superiority, in every private shudder of shame.
To walk this path today does not necessarily mean sleeping on corpses—but it does mean identifying one’s deepest taboo and walking straight into it. This may be psychological, sexual, social, or spiritual. The path is not safe, but it is sacred.
A Final Thought
The eight pāśas are not to be resolved, they are to be destroyed. What remains is the Kaula adept: naked, unbound, fearless.
In the words of the Kularṇava Tantra,
“One who is free of these bonds is Śiva.”
And Śiva, in Kaula Tantra, is not the yogi who escapes the world, but the madman who dances inside its burning center.