Tantra
Written by Samael Aun Weor Category: Matrimony, Divorce and Tantra Created: 22 August 2006 We can assert that Tantra is the essence of Yoga. There exist three types of Tantra: white, black and grey. Indeed, White Tantra is unique and worthwhile, because neither the orgasm nor the ejaculation of semen exist in it. White Tantra awakens the Kundalini, in other words, the Fire of the Holy Spirit. That fire fortifies the soul; it strengthens it and fills it with terribly divine igneous powers. Sex Yoga states, “Poison must be transformed into medicine.” They understand by poison the lure of women and of spirituous beverages. In alchemical terms, we would say that it is necessary to transform lead into gold. Indeed, Yoga is worthless without Tantra. Yoga is worthless without its sexual essence. Brahmins consider the sexual union as equivalent to a divine sacrifice, and the feminine organs as the fire where the sacrifice is offered. The Brahmin woman says the following in one of the sacred texts: If thou wilt make use of me at the sacrifice, then whatever blessing thou shalt invoke through me, shall be granted to thee! - Satapatha Brahmana Buddhist Tantrikas attain Nirvana by means of the woman and sex. Yogis and Yoginis reach Samadhi (ecstasy) through the sexual act without spilling the semen. This is the coitus reservatus, in other words, the sexual act without reaching the orgasm, without ejaculating the semen. The Tantric Yogis and Yoginis pass through a long and difficult preparation before entering in to the field of Sex Yoga. This entire preparation requires Concentration, Meditation, Bandhas, Mudras, Pratyahara, Pranayamas, etc. One text indicates that the Yogi has to sleep for three months with the Yogini to his right and another three months to his left, without having sexual intercourse with her. The sexual intercourse without ejaculation is performed only after the two periods of three months. This act is named or called Maithuna. Nirvana is achieved with Maithuna. Samadhi (ecstasy) is attained with Maithuna. The Kundalini awakens and develops totally with Maithuna. Yogi and Yogini begin the dance of Shiva and Shakti (the eternal feminine and her spouse), thus they happily dance before the Tantric Sexual Act.
Thus, after the sacred dance the Yogi and Yogini couple sit to meditate as the Mayan Initiates do, back against back, the two dorsal spines making contact in order to achieve perfect mental and emotional breathing dominion.
They sit in the oriental style on the ground, with their legs crossed, as the Buddha is represented. The practice of Maithuna is performed only after this. Amongst the Yogis, all of this is performed under the guidance of a Guru. The Guru performs great, powerful magnetic passes on the coccygeal magnetic center of both Yogi and Yogini in order to help them to awaken their Kundalini. A text of Yoga advices the Yogis to hold their respiration if they are in the danger of falling into orgasm. The text states, If the disciple holds the respiration, his semen will not be spilled, even when he is embraced by the most tender and attractive of women. Many magical positions exist in the east for the performance of the sexual act called Maithuna. Women Yoginis must marvelously contract their vaginal muscles; this is how they avoid the orgasm and the ejaculation of their feminine sexual liquor. This is how their Kundalini awakens. Tantric texts state that even when the semen is at the breaking point of being ejaculated, the Yogi must retain it at any cost, in other words, the semen must not be spilled. The Yogi enters into ecstasy during the sexual act. Nirvana is attained with this type of sexual ecstasy. This is “to ride on the tiger;” this is how the Yogis consider this sexual act named Maithuna. The sexual positions of Maithuna are numerous and they choose the one they wish. All of these sexual positions are found illustrated in the Kama Kalpa, a book of Sex Yoga. In one of them, the Yogi performs the Maithuna seated on the ground with his legs crossed in the oriental style; the Yogini sits on his legs and absorbs the phallus, thereafter she crosses her legs behind the Yogi’s lower back in such a way that the Yogi is enveloped by her legs. Sometimes the inverted embrace is utilized, within which, for very sacred and symbolic reasons, the Yogini executes the active part. The Yogi represents the apparently motionless spirit while she, the Yogini, represents nature in motion. Thus, in the supreme moment of the sexual act when the orgasm is approaching, the Yogini performs the more terrible and violent sexual contractions in order to avoid the spasm and the orgasmic ejaculation. The Yogis take advantage of this moment for the most frightful concentration and the most remarkable meditation. This is how they attain Illumination, Ecstasy, Samadhi. Nevertheless, in the Western World, any matrimony can practice Maithuna without using these difficult positions from the east of the world. It is enough to pray to the Holy Spirit before the practice, asking for His assistance, and thereafter to perform the sexual act in the western style; the couple must withdraw before the orgasm. The semen must never be ejaculated in one’s life. The foolish scientists of Black Magic believe that this practice is dangerous and that can bring congestion to the prostate, urethra and seminal vesicles. This concept of the foolish scientists is a solemn falsity. We, the Gnostics, practice this sexual act throughout our entire lives, and we have never suffered of problems with the prostate or the urethra or the seminal vesicles. There is no doubt that matrimonies can reach supreme happiness with Maithuna. This is how the joy of the honeymoon is perpetuated throughout the entire life. With this sexual act, there is true happiness; each time, the couple feels more the need for caresses and for performing the sexual act, without getting weary or tired of it. With this type of sexual act, divorces will end in the world. We enter into Nirvana with this type of sexual act. Couples can pray and meditate back against back in the oriental style if they wish, thus begging, beseeching the Holy Spirit, to grant them the joy of receiving the Fire. It is false to asseverate that Maithuna damages the prostate and produces prostatitis. All of us who practice Maithuna enjoy splendid health. In the beginning, the Maithuna is sacrifice, yet after some time Maithuna is complete sexual satisfaction and supreme joy. All of those theories that the foolish scientists render in order to combat Maithuna are absolutely false, and those who allow themselves to be cheated by the “reason without reason” of these tenebrous ones, will inevitably be transformed into inhabitants of the abyss. We are initiating the New Aquarian Era and humanity will be divided in two bands: Those who accept White Tantra, and those who will define themselves for the Black; in other words, those who will accept the ejaculation of their semen and those who will not accept it; those who will continue with the ejaculation of their semen, and those who will not continue with the ejaculation of it; White Tantric People and Black Tantric ones, that is all. Speaking in an occult manner we would say: White Magicians and Black Magicians. These are the two bands of the New Aquarian Era.
Frederick Nietzsche stated in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra the following:
Voluptuousness: to all hair-shirted despisers of the body, a sting and stake; and, cursed as "the world," by all the afterworldly: for it mocks and befools all erring, misinferring teachers. Voluptuousness: to the rabble, the slow fire at which it is burnt; to all wormy wood, to all stinking rags, the prepared heat and stew furnace. Voluptuousness: to free hearts, a thing innocent and free, the garden-happiness of the earth, all the future's thanks-overflow to the present. Voluptuousness: only to the withered a sweet poison; to the lion-willed, however, the great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines. Voluptuousness: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope. For to many is marriage promised, and more than marriage,- -To many that are more unknown to each other than man and woman:- and who has fully understood how unknown to each other are man and woman! Indeed, love is a terribly divine, cosmic phenomenon. When the man officiates at the altar of supreme sexual sacrifice, he can, in that moment, direct his entire voluptuousness towards all of his magnetic centers and make them vibrate, sparkle and shine. We are like remarkably divine Gods in those moments of supreme sexual voluptuousness. The sacred scriptures state, “Ask and it shall be given onto you; knock and it shall be open onto you.” Indeed, within the supreme moment of the sexual act is the precise moment in which we can ask the Third Logos (the Holy Spirit) for all of those longed-for powers. The tremendous power of the forces of Shiva, the Third Logos, transforms us into Gods. Much is being said about meditation and ecstasy (Samadhi). Indeed, the best hour for meditation and ecstasy is the hour of sexual voluptuousness. The sexual forces produce the ecstasy. Through meditation, we must transform the voluptuousness into ecstasy. During the sexual act and after the sexual act, when the voluptuousness is still vibrating, we pass through the sacrificius intelectus. Indeed only the creative emotion can takes to the ecstasy. Only the one who is capable of crying when praying to the Third Logos before the sexual act and after the sexual act can enter into Nirvana; only the one who is capable of becoming inebriated with the voluptuousness without spilling the semen can be transformed into a remarkable, divine God. Those who learn how to wisely enjoy the voluptuousness without spilling the semen are transformed into absolutely happy beings. The Perfect Matrimony is the basis of the Path for the Social Christ. Unfortunately, in modern life, matrimony has transformed into a frivolity which is distant from wisdom. This is why marriages collapse; this is the cause of many divorces. It is necessary to study Gnosis, it is urgent to go back into the mystical celebrations of the mysteries of love. It is urgent to learn how to enjoy the delights of love. It is urgent to comprehend that with voluptuousness the Angel is born within our own selves. Only the Angels can enter into the kingdom. White Tantra has the science in order to end divorce and to preserve the honeymoon throughout one’s entire life. The home is the foundation of a Christian society. White Tantra with its famous Maithuna is the clue of divine sexual happiness. TANTRA CHAIR
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DESIRE IN PLANETARY TANTRA
The Challenge and Standard of the Gaian Dakinis On January 26, 2009, while I was visiting the USA, I released on this site the five ritual components (tool kit) of Planetary Tantra: 1 the secret dakini name for Gaia, 2 the Kala Tantra Vow, 3 Shri Yantra, the holding pattern, 4 the Sodashi mantra, the sounding pattern, and 5, instructions on taking the Vow with the Tantric buddy-system. NOTE: This essay was written in February 2009. At that time I proposed a five-point ritual for self-initiation into Planetary Tantra. Since then, I have reduced the ritual to three points, excluding the Shri Yantra and the Shodashi mantra, relics of Hindu devotionalism. See the Gaian Tantra Vow. jll: August 2010 Those of you who loyally follow this site, as well as newcomers who may recently have come upon it, could well be wondering: What does JLL expect the world to do now? Or, perhaps more pertinently, and realistically, What is JLL himself going to do next? How is he going to proceed with showing how to put these components into practice? Cosmic Timing To be perfectly honest, I may do nothing at all. Upon reflection since releasing this material, I have come to realize that there may be no more that I can do with it. I have compared myself to a weather-caster reporting on a turbulent front and navigating in it at the same time. That's a pretty good analogy, and I can continue to report in that vein. In other words, I can amplify and clarify the material and methodology I have presented so far... But let me switch metaphors for a moment: With respect to the theory and practice of Planetary Tantra, I would compare myself to someone who has set the cornerstone for a building—a temple, if you will—run a few strings and laid out some chalk lines in the earth, preparatory to further construction. I have produced the rudiments of a foundation, that's all. And it may be all that I can do, due to limitations of time and my specific role as a first-generation (G-1) Kalika. As explained elswhere on site, the role of those born like myself between 1945 and 1975 is to announce and initialize Planetary Tantra. I calculate nine generations of 30 years each, a total of 270 years, from 1945 to 2215 which is the end of Kali Yuga and, simultaneously, the end of the great precessional cycle of 25,920 years that began around 23,700 BCE. Kali Yuga, comencing in 3012 BCE, is the last fifth of this cycle. There are various ways of computing and permuting these cycles, some of which are quite baroque. I find these figures, based on my extrapolations from the Dendera Zodiac and other ancient calendric systems, simple and reliable. In long-term chronology involving cosmic cycles, it is helpful to keep the computations minimal, lean, and simple. In reckoning patterns of cosmic timing, less computation is more instructive. The limitation of time affecting me personally is age. Having been born in 1945, the first year of the first generation of Kalikas, I now find myself well into my sixties and contemplating a project that will extend 200 years into the future. No matter how much I might accomplish in the rest of my life, my work would only represent the edge of the wedge (another metaphor), regarding full-blown revelation of Gaian Tantra. I have said that the practice will morph radically through the generations. The vision of the Shakti Cluster with its 10 / 5 / 3 format will change, the goddess icons will mutate, but the essential structure of the grand mandala will remain constant. Each generation will move deeper into interactivity and intimacy with this 18-gauge manifestation of the Divine Feminine. Today those born in 1976 or after are G-2 Kalikas. They would at most be 33 years old. I see the first transfer of this planetary practice occuring now principally between myself and those of that age group, 33 or under. The role of those between 33 and 63, like myself, would be to consolidate the initial framework of the practice, rather than to carry it into its next expression. I would also point out that the role of those born 1965 - 75, in the last decade of G-1, is especially crucial in recognizing and securing the fundamentals of Planetary Tantra for the future. To a large extent, if not totally, the transfer has to be made person to person, one on one. Thus, what I can accomplish by way of transfer—"transmission," to use the fashionable term—through the medium of writing is limited. However, I will certainly continue to post material on site relating to the theory and practice of Planetary Tantra, or Kala Tantra, as it may also be called. These writings to come will be orientation material and commentary, rather than actual transmission. Also, I will present a month-by-month course in working with the "Lunar shaktis," a way to learn interactivity with the Shakti Cluster. The first Lunar Shakti Calendar in preparation will run from September 2009 to September 2010. I will use the time until then to initialize the concept and demonstrate how it works, thus preparing those who want to use the calendar when it comes out. As for first-person transmission of Planetary Tantra, I invite anyone attracted by this prospect to contact me: jll A Planetary Terma As a self-styled terton, or treasure-finder, I consider the five ritual components of Planetary Tantra to comprise a terma, or ter, a sacred wisdom treasure. These five components are like the budding end of a plant that is to grow into the fully mature wisdom treasure. Many termas exist (thousands, in fact) in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, but none of them is planetary or global in scope and application. Termas received in the tradition attributed to Padma Sambhava and his consort Yeshe Tsogyal exhibit two kinds of content: ornate teachings about the nature of mind, or rites and spells. The latter are, to my knowledge, far more numerous. In other words, these termas either propound complex philosophical and epistemological teachings, or they propose magical acts, ritual of divination, propitiation and protection, and so forth. In both cases, this material is strictly limited to the cultural and spiritual setting in which the termas emerge. They are locally derived from Tibet, typical of the shamanism of that country and culture. They have no planetary outreach, nor do they present methods for interactivity with the planetary goddess, Gaia-Sophia, who responds to the secret dakini name, VV. At least not to my knowledge. Also, putting the instructions in these termas into practice requires deep and extensive knowledge of the vast corpus of Tibetan Buddhism in its theoretical, visionary, and ritual aspects. In this respect, they differ from Planetary Tantra which is accessible to everyone, regardless of spiritual background, beliefs, initiations, training, etc. However, traditional termas from Tibetan Buddhism do have one important feature in common with "The Terma of Gaia Awakening," as I have titled it. Namely, termas in Vajrayana are closely associated with dakinis. This association goes to the heart and origin of "the Tibetan Treasure tradition of channelled authorial voices" (Germano and Gyatso, "Longchenpa and the Possession of the Dakinis," in Tantra in Practice). Nyingma legend states that its founder, Padma Sambhava, prepared around 800 CE the most famous terma of that tradition, the Longchen Nyingthig, and predetermined its discovery by the terton Jigme Lingpa (1730 - 1798), nine centuries in advance. Doing so, Padma Sambhava set the precedent on concealment of termas, whose preservation is consigned to dakinis. First, he imparted the teachings to close disciples living at that time, including his consort, the adept Vairochana, and King Trisong Detsun: He entrusted the teachings to them through the means of the naturally arising dakini, the wisdom, the feminine principle of the three bodies of the Buddha. He gave prophetic empowerments by saying that these teachings would be discovered by Jigma Lingpa, an incarnation (tulku) of King Trisong Detsun. Yeshe Tsogyal arranged the teachings in symbolic scripts of unforgetting memory on the yellow scrolls of naturally arisen five colors. With aspirational empowerments, they concealed the teachings in the casket of luminous heart treasure (or mind treasure) of the disciples. They entrusted the concealed teachings to the dakinis, the ultimate sphere wisdoms, for preservation until the right time came to awaken the teachings from the luminous intrinsic nature of the mind of the discoverer. (Tulku Thondup: Masters of Meditation and Miracles. Italics added.) This legend involves dakinis intimately in both the inception and discovery of termas, not to mention their preservation through the interval. The role of the Diamond Sky Dakinis and Mahavidyas of the Terma of Gaia Awakening is equally intimate, but with a different slant: the Gaian Dakinis are actually the instructors, operating through "the naturally arising ... wisdom, the feminine principle of the three bodies of the Buddha," or Gaian Trikaya, as I call it. They are not merely the guardians of this terma, but its originators and transmitters. All eighteen of them with VV focal are instrumental channels or super-animating voices of "the luminous intrinsic nature of the mind" of Gaia, she who is the living wisdom of the earth: Sophia in Greek, Vidya in Sanskrit. The name in Tibetan for the first planetary terma would be Dorje Namkhai Khandro Nyingthig, "Heart Essence of the Diamond Sky Dakinis." Dorje means "thunderbolt," but also "diamond, adamantine substance." The term Diamond Sky Dakini is not my invention. It comes from the Hevajra Tantra, VII, 30: "The samadhi of the vajrayosana is the way to supreme bliss." Scholars render vajrayosana as "adamantine girl." My translation: "The perfect attention (samadhi) of the Diamond Sky Dakini is the path to supreme bliss." How perfectly true is that. Dakini Standard In Planetary Tantra, I have no authority but the authenticity of my own experience as a natural-born mystic and veteran psychonaut. Take what I say on the beauty that informs it, and test it in your way. I am not an accomplished adept in communication with the Gaian Dakinis, but I have made some inroads into understanding how such communication is even possible, and charted some approaches to what its intent and direction might be. This is sobering instruction, I can tell you. Exciting to the max, wild and exhilarating, but deeply sobering. The first thing that struck me last year as I entered into this experience was the high standard to which the Gaian Dakinis hold those who would interact with them. I do not mean a moral standard, requiring exemplary behavior, ethical rules, or the like. Nor do I mean an intellectual standard, the requirement of high intelligence. Wild as it may sound, the standard of the Dakinis in the Shakti Cluster depends neither on ethics nor intelligence but ultimately on desire, on what you desire supremely of your life. Such is my instruction. Consider for a moment the composition of the 18-gauge Cluster: 10 Mahavidyas or Hindu goddesses, a jewel-flower or pentad of 5 Diamond Sky Dakinis, 2 overseeing guardians, above and below, and the 18th Dakini, VV. The distinctive feature of this format is the inclusion of Mahavidyas with Dakinis, for these two classes of feminine deities are quite different in character. The Mahavidyas belong to a religious tradition scholars called desideristic: that is, they are supernatural or mystical deities who grant desires. The Dakinis, especially the five of the pentad, belong to a different strain of religious striving, the quest for liberation. Hence scholars characterize them as liberationist. These two cumbersome terms, desideristic and liberationist, refer to seemingly contrasting goals attached to religious and spiritual striving. It is widely said that Tibetan dakinis such as Vajravarahi are superior to Hindu goddesses such as Matangi because the dakinis grant wisdom for liberation, while the Mahavidyas just grant personal desires, wishes, "boons," protection from harm, vengeance on enemies (including death), etc. This view obviously carries a value judgement on desire, making it an inferior goal compared to the quest for wisdom and liberation, including the intention to strive for the liberation of others. It might appear that there is a contradiction at the heart of the Shakti Cluster, including as it does both desideristic and liberationist agencies, which could be in conflict. But in my experience so far, I have come to realize that there is no such conflict because the coexistence of these feminine powers in the Gaian matrix merges the two goals. It does so because commitment to the liberationist goal, i.e., enlightenment, relies on the reflex of personal desire. To be liberated, even from one's personality, is also a personal desire. And even more surprizing (at least it was so to yours truly) is how the dynamic of desire generates liberation: how we achieve liberation through desire, not from it. This notion of liberation through desire sets up the initial or introductory condition for engaging the Shakti Cluster. But wait, it gets better. To achieve liberation through desire, which is the unique opportunity offered by interactivity with Gaia and her full console of divinities, the Diamond Sky Dakinis who foster liberation and instill wisdom collaborate with the Mahavidyas, who grant personal desires, in a most astonishing manner: they support all experience leading to liberation, they guide and instruct, but uniquely for individuals who recognize and own their highest desire. In other words, The Diamond Sky Dakinis hold you to your highest desire, your supreme personal desire, and do not dissociate it from the quest for liberation, but make it the paramount condition for that quest. It is impossible to understand the unprecedented spiritual opportunity this presents, as long as we are restricted to the traditional Buddhist teaching that desire (Skt trishna, "craving") is the root of all suffering, as stated in the Four Noble Truths attributed to the historical Buddha, Prince Siddharta or Shakyamuni. But the Buddha lied by omission. He only told half of his realized truth to the world at large. He taught that desire is your ticket into samsara, the game of rebirth. He withheld the second part of the teaching: namely, that desire is also your ticket out of the game, and, better still, it is the payoff for the game, the winning score. The Buddha reserved this, admittedly outrageous part of this enlightened teaching for a select group of followers including his cousin Ananda, Subhuti, Mayakashyapa, Shariputra, and Vimalakirti—that is to say, those fewest of the few disciples who received direct mind transmission of enlightenment and were confirmed first-hand in that transmission by Shakyamuni. Others who did not receive a confirmed experience of enlightenment, comparable to the Buddha's own, were not privy to the second part of the teaching about desire. So goes the secret oral legend of Kali Yuga, concerning liberation through desire. Now, with that particular tidy piece of information delivered, I ask you to consider this: The practice of Planetary Tantra is extremely rigorous because, being held to your highest desire by the Gaian Dakinis, you cannot proceed to interactivity with them unless you know what your highest desire is. And most people don't have a clue. Ask yourself, What is my supreme desire for my life, that would be my highest pleasure to accomplish? This is not an easy question to answer. I have yet to meet anyone who can answer it, clearly and definitively. To be held to your highest desire is the high standard for participation in Planetary Tantra, the condition for entry set by the Dakinis who foster liberation, in complicity with the Mahavidyas who lavishly grant all manner of personal desires, anything and everything you want. Supreme Design When I contemplate the extraordinary Dakini standard regarding desire, I have to say, in brutal honesty, that I have doubts about who can actually get onto this practice of Planetary Tantra. The initial condition set by this standard is going to rule out a great many contenders and pretenders. Age is also a factor, I believe. Beyond a certain age, say fifty or so, it is rare for an individual to know what his or her highest desire in life is, because the fluent of desire tends to recede into the background, taking a lesser priority with advanced years. Also, by that age many people will have achieved what they consider to be their desires, be it social status, affluence, security, career, family legacy, and so on. The question of what one desires fades as these achievements gel, so maturity and achievement work against the recognition of one's highest desire. Excuse me if this sounds like ageism. I may be guilty of that offence, but I am just reporting with total candor what I encounter on a case by case basis. Naming the highest desire for your life is quite a challenge. Younger people do not have a definitive edge, but they do have the advantage of raw passion to drive them to the challenge. Planetary Tantra will not develop until the end of the kalpa, 2216 CE, by being passed on in a conventional way from the older to the younger generation. It will be generated by youth, inceptively. G-1 transmission is the exception, in that older generation Kalikas such as myself initially announce the path. The duration of the Terma of Gaia Awakening from October 2008 is 208 years. You may now understand more clearly my reservations about how much I can transmit. There are not a lot of principles in Kala Tantra. Only three, in fact. Which I have yet to state on this site—coming soon. These principles are not to be confounded with the five ritual components of the practice, released on Delivery Day. And then there is an ongoing set of Instructions, to be developed and tested by everyone who comes into the path. One of the Instructions is, "Hold to your highest desire, for the capacity for liberation depends on what you want it for." This is a sublime and rigorous teaching, if I do say so myself. I challenge anyone to come up with a principle that demands a more exquisite and ruthlessly honest pitch of self-knowledge. The Dakini standard on desire makes interactivity with the Shakti Cluster self-selective, with those who cannot meet this standard being eliminated at the outset. I realize that this statement sounds elitist, and incites separation. But all the phenomena of nature involve a factor of selection, don't they? Why should human nature be any different? I do not mean "natural selection," which is a stupid fiction, or survival of the fittest, which is a mean falsity. I mean the selection of what can work on its own terms: a boat badly designed and poorly built will not sail. It is "deselected" from sailing on its own terms, on the basis of its design and the real-world expression of that design. Desire is the measure of the supreme design of human nature. In the human species, exceptional among animals but not superior, desire determines who is selected for interactivity with Gaia, and how. Correct me if I am delusional, but this looks to me like an extremely radical notion. I am shocked by it myself. I do not find this notion expressed or even implied, either in evolutionary science or religious philosophy. Personally, I am staggered by this truth, if it is indeed a truth. That I seem to be the one who enounces it for the first time, in this precise language, does not make it any less astonishing to me. I have found that, when asked to state their highest desire, people express confusion and bafflement. This is because, first, true desire has become clouded and deviant in the atmosphere of our have-it-all world, and second, because we today, although we in the West appear to live in an indulgent society where all desires are granted, do not experience the level of intense pleasure that would attune us to our highest desire. Failure to identify one's highest desire is an hedonic problem, typical of the degeneration of pleasure in Kali Yuga. I must add, but without sufficient justification within the limits of this essay, that the desire to strive for the liberation of all sentient beings (Bodhisattva Vow) is spurious and won't get you to a first date with the Dakinis. It cannot be anyone's highest desire, because it is an implant, a prescribed wish. It is a plea for service, yes, but service is not in the Gaian Dakini agenda: neither service nor selfishness adhere in the admission of highest desire. Furthermore, the Bodhisattva Vow is unrealizable, a vain motive. The desire to aid the liberation of one other sentient being, one only, could meet the Dakini standard, perhaps. But then we're talking love, aren't we? And love is personal. Also, note that love is not a term of use in Buddhist philosophy. Compassion, yes: karuna. Friendship, yes: maitri. But there is no proper word for love in the Buddhist idiom. Sanskrit distinguishes poorly between love and desire, putting both under the generic term, kama. Pleasure is both the initial condition and final effect of owning your highest desire. In other words, the more pleasure you feel, purely for its own sake, in hedonistic excess, the closer you will come to attunement to your true desire. And when you own your true desire, you will also realize your highest pleasure in it. Desire and pleasure are complementary and intergenerating. Co-emergent, as Buddhist jargon has it. I repeat, the Dakini standard determines a self-selection process regarding interactivity. Consider this: If you fix on your highest desire and it is not the right and true one, but a mistaken, misstated, or spurious one, you can blow yourself right out of the running. In this practice, a near miss is almost always fatal. For instance, suppose that your highest desire is to be famed as the greatest downhill skier in the world. Stated precisely in that way, because it must be defined precisely to meet the standard. But suppose this is a spurious or misstated desire, the true desire being to be the greatest downhill skier, even if not recognized as such, without fame. Such a slight misstatement of the highest desire will throw you totally out of the range of interactivity. Syntax is crucial: for instance, "My highest desire is to be the greatest downhill skier in the world, whether or not I am famous for it," is a more cogent formulation, fitting the standard of high definition. Without such rigor of formulation, you will not get to square one with guidance and instruction of the Dakinis, not to mention the lavish generosity of the Mahavidyas who are ready, willing, and able to grant anything you want compatible with your highest desire, cogently stated. Kali's Game Gaming is the master teaching metaphor for Kali Yuga. Defined in this idiom, Planetary Tantra is a desideristic game with a liberationist aim. In that paradoxical merge resides the automatic selection for the practice: know what you want supremely to be freed of having to want anything at all. To meet that standard of self-knowing is not the end result of Gaian interactivity in Planetary Tantra: is the entry condition for the practice. But it is also the goal of the practice. Tantra is not a result-driven process. It is an instanteous feedback dynamic, an immediate and perpetual turnaround. This is why this essay on desire is categorized under GOAL. I cannot teach anyone how to define their highest desire. No one can. You find your way to it, or not. I believe G-2 Kalikas, born in 1976 or after, now 33 years old and under, will be more likely to claim their highest desire, and subsequent generations will have even better odds. The odds will be better, but the number of self-selected participants will diminish proportionally due to the exponential rise in population we are now facing. It might be argued that people of G-2 and succeeding generations will be so blitzed by the consumer trance and media-driven mass-mind programming of their every wish and whim that they will have a much harder time to identify their highest desire. Perhaps, but I strongly sense that as the acquisition game becomes more desperate, the chances for some players will improve. To put it in other terms, the breakthrough to the highest desire will be spectacular in future generations, with more frequent random hits, due to the extreme conditions of social conformity. I can foresee that some rare few people will be driven by extremity to know their highest desire as their sole means of survival, morally and physically, in a social world that has lost all sense of what's worth desiring. Where there is abundance of enjoyment in desire, of what use is it to speak of union with the Divine, and where there is union out of this world, where is the enjoyment here and now? But the Kalika knows both. Oh Sadashiva, Benefactor of the Universe!, You have generously spoken of the mode of worship of the Supreme Prakriti, Mother Power, which benefits all beings equally, and provides the sole path for enjoyment and liberation together, the unique path of immediate liberation in Kali Yuga. - Mahanirvana Tantra jll 21 February 2009 Andalucia
TOWARD THE SECRET GATHERING
Freedom and Desire in the Shakti Cluster In How to Practice Planetary Tantra, I sought to clarify the elementary conditions of interactive magic with Gaia. The foundation of the practice is, of course, taking the Vow. I advise doing this ritual in pairs. You may do it as many times as you like, but only once with each person. If necessary, keep trying until it feels totally right. The aim of this essay is to offer some concluding guidelines on basic practice. I signal the word basic. Planetary Tantra comprises two levels, basic and advanced. So far I have used the terms Planetary Tantra and Kala Tantra more or less interchangeably. But this is not totally correct, and may be misleading. To clarify: Planetary Tantra is basic practice of interactive magic with Gaia, Kala Tantra is advanced practice. By the end of this essay you ought to have a clear notion of this distinction. Sacred Instruction In Tibetan Buddhism, taking instruction means receiving oral teaching from a recognized lama or tulku. This is direct, word-of-mouth transmission of doctrine and technique, sealed by a vow (samaya). The instruction may consist of philosophical ideas but more often it will concern the specifics of ritual practice. For instance, instruction in diety yoga, the visualization of a yidam for the purpose of achieving a higher state of awareness. This is a common practice in the generation stage (development stage) of Atiyoga. In Planetary Tantra, instruction comes directly from the Sacred Mind of Sophia. Let's recall the Tantric conversion: Sophia :: Wisdom :: Vidya. Earth Wisdom is the property of the Buddha Nature manifesting in the Sambhoga form of this planet, and engaging the Nirmana form of sentient life in the biosphere. In other words, the Buddha Nature articulates itself in this display as a planet, in the natural world, and supernaturally, in any way it likes. The Absolute may be inexpressible, or not, but one thing is certain: it is infinitely expressive. Mayavada Vedanta is a dualistic approach to reality that takes interest in the expressions of the Absolute, One Mind, rather than dismissing and dissolving those expressions in order to return to their source. My spiritual legacy is Mayavada, dualist and phenomenalist—meaning, you take phenomena for real and not merely for an illusion that shrouds ultimate reality. Mayavada means "approach through Maya." Maya is not illusion, something false, deceptive, and unreal, something we need to get beyond. What is beyond time and space reaches us right here, in appearance. Maya is the real expression of the inexpressible source of awareness and appearances alike. Traditionally, Shakta religion or Shaktism has taken the Mayavada approach, stressing duality so that reunion can be realized. Duality is not separation but, paradoxically, the condition for unity. The ultimate metaphysical trinity is DUALITY - ONENESS - UNITY. Emphasis on oneness alone denies duality, as seen in the Advaita Vedanta (non-dualist) approach which takes appearances to be an illusion arising from another illusion, that of separation from the Oneness. But unity combines duality and oneness. It allows separation so that relationships can develop. This I consider to be a more complete and generous version of metaphysical truth. I strongly encourage you to consider the Mayavadin perspective. Basic practice in Planetary Tantra restores and reignites each individual's innate connection to the Divine Feminine. Tantra has been called "the cult of the Feminine." This characterization applies for Planetary Tantra as well. I have explained the need for the exclusive and overriding emphasis on the feminine in this path. If this emphasis troubles you, I would suggest that you reflect on this question: What is Woman to Gaia? TOWARD THE SECRET GATHERINGFreedom and Desire in the Shakti Cluster In How to Practice Planetary Tantra, I sought to clarify the elementary conditions of interactive magic with Gaia. The foundation of the practice is, of course, taking the Vow. I advise doing this ritual in pairs. You may do it as many times as you like, but only once with each person. If necessary, keep trying until it feels totally right. The aim of this essay is to offer some concluding guidelines on basic practice. I signal the word basic. Planetary Tantra comprises two levels, basic and advanced. So far I have used the terms Planetary Tantra and Kala Tantra more or less interchangeably. But this is not totally correct, and may be misleading. To clarify: Planetary Tantra is basic practice of interactive magic with Gaia, Kala Tantra is advanced practice. By the end of this essay you ought to have a clear notion of this distinction. Sacred Instruction In Tibetan Buddhism, taking instruction means receiving oral teaching from a recognized lama or tulku. This is direct, word-of-mouth transmission of doctrine and technique, sealed by a vow (samaya). The instruction may consist of philosophical ideas but more often it will concern the specifics of ritual practice. For instance, instruction in diety yoga, the visualization of a yidam for the purpose of achieving a higher state of awareness. This is a common practice in the generation stage (development stage) of Atiyoga. In Planetary Tantra, instruction comes directly from the Sacred Mind of Sophia. Let's recall the Tantric conversion: Sophia :: Wisdom :: Vidya. Earth Wisdom is the property of the Buddha Nature manifesting in the Sambhoga form of this planet, and engaging the Nirmana form of sentient life in the biosphere. In other words, the Buddha Nature articulates itself in this display as a planet, in the natural world, and supernaturally, in any way it likes. The Absolute may be inexpressible, or not, but one thing is certain: it is infinitely expressive. Mayavada Vedanta is a dualistic approach to reality that takes interest in the expressions of the Absolute, One Mind, rather than dismissing and dissolving those expressions in order to return to their source. My spiritual legacy is Mayavada, dualist and phenomenalist—meaning, you take phenomena for real and not merely for an illusion that shrouds ultimate reality. Mayavada means "approach through Maya." Maya is not illusion, something false, deceptive, and unreal, something we need to get beyond. What is beyond time and space reaches us right here, in appearance. Maya is the real expression of the inexpressible source of awareness and appearances alike. Traditionally, Shakta religion or Shaktism has taken the Mayavada approach, stressing duality so that reunion can be realized. Duality is not separation but, paradoxically, the condition for unity. The ultimate metaphysical trinity is DUALITY - ONENESS - UNITY. Emphasis on oneness alone denies duality, as seen in the Advaita Vedanta (non-dualist) approach which takes appearances to be an illusion arising from another illusion, that of separation from the Oneness. But unity combines duality and oneness. It allows separation so that relationships can develop. This I consider to be a more complete and generous version of metaphysical truth. I strongly encourage you to consider the Mayavadin perspective. Basic practice in Planetary Tantra restores and reignites each individual's innate connection to the Divine Feminine. Tantra has been called "the cult of the Feminine." This characterization applies for Planetary Tantra as well. I have explained the need for the exclusive and overriding emphasis on the feminine in this path. If this emphasis troubles you, I would suggest that you reflect on this question: What is Woman to Gaia?
As you come into the basic practice of interactive magic with Gaia, your innermost feeling and intuitions about Woman will be profoundly altered. Both men and women will sense this change, especially when the Vow has taken effect properly. Gradually, you will realize that Woman is a lens through which Sophia sees herself in incarnation; the nature of the lens causes her to see herself gendered as female, but she also sees men through the same lens, as mutated women! Biologically, women and men both arise from a female ground plan or genetic matrix, with the mere variation of one chromosome to determine the difference. Woman incarnates in men and women alike. Man only incarnates in men. Man is another kind of lens, the filter through which Sophia sees humanity, the Anthropos, not herself, the Aeon. Yet in her vision Sophia merges these two perspectives as our two eyes, right and left, give us a single, integrated picture of the world.
In the divine imagination of the Aeon Sophia, the Anthropos is the consort yoga of Woman and Man. It is both male and female, and neither male nor female, and it does not even exist unless Woman and Man are both engaged immanently in maithuna, sacred intercourse. To speak less mysteriously, if I can, interaction with Gaia leads to the vivid realization that the Anthropos (projected from the Pleroma by the Aeon Sophia and another Aeon in a ritual of consort yoga, remember?) is not the human species in its biological manifestation, but the dreamed coupling of Woman and Man, perpetually sustained in Sophia's Mind: a living dream of embodied love, a divine bisexual emanation. As the Vow takes effect, your subconscious will be implanted with the recognition of this emanation. When this sublime intuition matures in one's heart, it will be increasingly impossible to accept any theological notions about humanity, any received assumptions about the genders, or any evolutionary concepts of the human species, that do not incorporate the magical notion of bipolaric emanation. Interactivity with Gaia is magical. The first magic to be realized in basic practice is that Sophia and her consort Aeon did not create the Anthropos: they emanated it, and still do. Humanity was never created in a literal sense, for it is perpetually being dreamed into life. Additional to the massive sea change in the perception of humanity, interactivity with Gaia will bring surges of sacred instruction. She and she alone is the guru, the sole master, the spiritual teacher of humankind entire. Learning that comes straight from the Goddess has been associated with the Hindu goddess Sarasvati and other icons of feminine wisdom. Indeed, I would say that the figure of Sarasvati is the one received image that best represents Gaia as instructor to those who take the Vow. Sarasvati is often shown playing the vina, an instrument from Southern India that hints at her Dravidian roots. Musical, linguistic, and acoustic talents are strongly enhanced by Gaian interactivity. The corresponding figure in Native American spirituality would be White Buffalo Woman. The white buffalo calf is an atavistic vision of the Anthropos, the animal double of humanity, you could say. White Buffalo Woman instructs the tribes of the planet in rituals of atonement with the Great Spirit (Originator, Gnostic Pleroma), such as the smoking of the Peace Pipe. In the very same way, Gaia will grant sacred instruction to those receptive to it, in the manner that suits them and resonates to their talents, wishes, and passions. Through her instruction, she will bring many people to recognition of the interspecies bond, for the Anthropos exists in relation to all sentient beings, not alone, not separate or superior. Three Studies If you undertake interactive magic with Gaia, you will come to know directly and irrefutably how the Aeon Sophia teaches the Anthropos to each and every one of us, by private instruction, you could say. Gnostics attributed this particular type of instruction to Mary Magdalene—some evidence of which survives in the Pistis Sophia (pre-Nag Hammadi) and the framentary Gospel of Mary. Magdalene symbolizes the intuitive feminine power to recognize the Anthropos, authentic humanity, pitelios rhome in Coptic. In truth, the sense of humanity cannot be taught or acquired externally in any way, from any person. It is totally intrinsic. But can be acquired, in a sense, by divine instruction accessible to everyone. Magdalene and other Gnostically enlightened women carried that unique instruction and pointed others to it. They midwifed the Sophianic teaching of the Anthropos in others. Planetary Tantra is Shakti worship—not in the manner of church services, of course, but as a daily discipline of articulated intuition and ongoing self-education. Today, Shakti worship is less a devotional path than an educational one: taking instruction from Sophia. Basic practice in Planetary Tantra expands into a lifestyle by the undertaking of three subjects: the great mandala of the Shakti Cluster (space), the pattern of lunar cycles (time), and the Vajra Jewel (matter, sensation). Practice is voluntary, chosen by each individual, but these studies could as well be pursued in couples or groups. Learning about the Shakti Cluster can be done in any way you like. For instance, look at the site detailing the imagery and attributes of the Mahavidyas, including the powers they grant to their devotees. The remaining eight deities of the Cluster can be investigated through books on Tibetan Buddhism and Female Buddhas, etc. I recommend Miranda Shaw's magnificent Buddhist Goddess of India as the foundation text of Shakti Cluster studies. Each person will be attracted to some figures more than others. Sensational connections will occur. Some individuals by mere study will connect with a guardian. Meditation on the Shakti Cluster can be immensely enriching and may well inspire all manner of artistic expressions in music, painting, and dance. A whole new religious disposition is compressed into this configuration, but it must always be focussed on the central factor, Dakini 18, VV. Inspirational work with the Mahavidyas and Diamond Sky Dakinis can erupt in your imagination like a fireworks display. Many digressions and even regressions can arise when you explore the labyrinthine realms of the Divine Feminine. With mythical material, there is always a risk of getting lost or overwhelmed.... But, to complete the metaphor, remember that all the fireworks come off the ground in the first place. The eighteen-gauge Shakti Cluster gives focus and direction to all that arises in the human psyche with "the return of the Goddess." To return to the Goddess, return your attention continually to VV, she who will give you her attention. Lunar Shaktis The second study in basic practice is month-to-month tracking of the lunar cycles as they relate to the Mahavidyas and Dakinis in the Cluster. A different Shakti comes on shift with each new moon and transmits from 29 days. Following the lunar cycle in the Tantric Zodiac presents continuous opportunities to learn how the Shaktis operate, recognize their frequencies, and respond to their instruction. This study is a month-long meditation ritual that sensitizes you to the telepathic emanations of the entire Cluster, one Shakti at a time. Dakini Wisdom emerges in your ordinary mindstream as an alternative current of thought that gradually becomes more and more distinct from your own stream of inner talk. To learn this distinction is to acquire trained clairaudience, transception. Clairaudience is a time-tried method in Tibetan Tantra and many other schools of cognitive illumination. Long Chen Pa (1308–1364/9) was a high siddha of the Nyingma Pa, the school of Tibetan Tantra to which Kala Tantra may be compared. The method he practiced and taught is called in Tibetan sems dpa' rdo rje, and in Sanskrit, sattvavajra. This is a process of interactive transmission between the Wisdom Sphere of the Dakinis and human mentation, self-conscious thinking. In this process, the pure ground dimension of the non-originated mind (rigpa) converses spontaneously with itself. Scholars translate sems dpa' rdo rje as "cognitive responsiveness" (Lipman and Peterson, You Are the Eyes of the World). I call it transception; verb, to transceive. See Earth Terma and Stone Terma (forthcoming) for more on the tranception of Dakini Wisdom. "Invoking the lunar shaktis is our method," Aunt Preema tells the young Shambu in Amarananda Bhairavan's Medicine of Light. Bhairivan is a Dravidian revivalist who as a boy was taught goddess lore and sorcery by his Aunt Preema, an odiyya or witch dedicated to Kali. His books are loaded with exotic lore that seems quite authentic. Presented through storytelling, the lessons of the village matriarch are highly reminiscent of supernaturalism a la Castaneda, right down to the image of that old-time witch's familiar, the crow.
I recommend this book (published in 2000) and Medicine of Light (2007). Both contain a good deal of mystical lore pertinent to Planetary Tantra. The "kaula sorcery" of Amaranada Bhariavan anticipates Kala Tantra in many respects, and sets the atmosphere for advanced work. It will whet your appetite for mysteries and marvels to come.
Sensory Illumination The third topic of study after the Shakti Cluster (space, atmosphere) and the cycle of lunar shaktis (time, mindstream) is the Vajra Jewel (matter, sensation). The center of this jewel is VV herself, Dakini 18. The five points of the inverted star surrounding her are occuped by the Diamond Sky Dakinis classed as Female Buddhas (FB) and Wisdom Dakinis (WD): 11 Nairatmya (nai RAHT MYAH), "whose body is the sky" FB 12 Vajravarahi "Diamond Sow,"a powerful revealer WD 13 Kurukulla mistress of witchcraft and enchantment WD 14 Parnashavari "The Leaf-Clad Lady," shamanic deity FB 15 Visvamata "The Variegated Mother," FB As explained in How to Practice Planetary Tantra, the five Diamond Sky Dakinis command your attention through the senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. The sixth, Dakini 18, commands your attention through the faculty of memory by liberating it from the involuntary task of remembering. With the study of the Vajra Jewel, basic practice moves deeply into interactive magic. At the basic level of Planetary Tantra, the tools of magic are your own five senses, plus your memory. The correlations of the Diamond sky Dakinis to the five senses are an essential part of the interactive tool kit embedded at the center of the Shakti Cluster. These correlations are as follows: 11 Nairatmya Blissful Inclusion - seeing 12 Vajravarahi Blissful Freedom - hearing 13 Kurukulla Blissful Passion - taste 14 Parnashavari Blissful Vitality - smell 15 Visvamata Blissful Surrender - touch These correlations can and must be test-run and verified by direct experience, one person at a time. The impact of the Shakti Cluster becomes a vivid reality as you realize that the Diamond Sky Dakinis are immediately present in the field of your senses, inside what you receive as sense impressions. The numinous presence of the Dakinis is infrasensory. For instance, inside ordinary sense impressions of seeing surge the emanations of Blissful Inclusion of Nairatmya. Her energies, her sublime frequencies are not just coordinated with your sense impressions, they are inseparable from them. What you experience as perceiving sights with your eyes, Nairatmya experiences as a dance of bliss-filled currents that expand infinitely to include the entire sky. To see eternity in a grain of sand (as the poet William Blake divined) is an experience of realization of Blissful Inclusion through a visual impression. Were this to happen, you would see the entire universe, all that is to be seen, far and near, included in the singular sight of a grain of sand in your hand. This is not fantasy, but something that can really be known and felt directly. Nairatmya confers this experience perpetually and spontaneously as you allow your attention to merge with hers, thus seeing as she does. On her signature frequency, we are entrained to the realization prescribed in Mahayana teaching by the theory of pugdala-nairatmya, "the absence of self in persons." Blissful inclusion of all selves in one look comes with direct perception of the absence of self in any person, including the one looking. Such is the instruction of Nairatmya. What you experience in the ordinary impressions of smell, coming, say, from a pine tree in the breeze, Parnashavari on her side feels as a surge of bliss-filled vigor, rich, superactivated vitality. Sensations of smell contain coded information about the healing and harming properties of plants, animals, and people. Pheremones are the operative memes of this Diamond Sky Dakini, through which she associates people for the celebration and enhancement of heightened vitality, sexual joy, and healing. You want to get high with someone whose scent you like, and vice versa, and scent itself is a potent psychoactive catalyst. Parnashavari instructs through smell. And so on with the other Dakinis of the Vajra Jewel with VV at the center. Some of these correlations can be compared, if you like, to traditional teachings in Tibetan Buddhism. For instance, the Tibetan Book of the Dead is called the bardo thodol, "liberation by hearing on the bardo plane or intermediate zone." The notion of liberation by hearing resonates closely to the frequences of Vajravarahi whose signature is Blissful Freedom, pervading the sense of hearing. Many accounts in Buddhist literature attest to immediate liberation and supreme enlightenment through the faculty of hearing. By far the most famous of such accounts occurs in the Surangama Sutra, an 8th century Mahayanist text regarded as a foundation teaching in Ch'an Buddhism. In this sutra, twenty-five Bodhisattvas recount their achievement of samadhi, perfect attention. At the end of the discussion, the Buddha asserts that the way to samadhi through hearing is superior to all others. This is one of the key insights of non-attainment teaching in Ch'an Buddhism. Gaian Biofeedback "What is that Talent which it is a curse to hide?" The "Secret Gathering" of Planetary Tantra is the Shakti Cluster, and in another sense, it is the empathic unification of everyone who interacts with the Cluster. Interactive magic with Gaia is a biofeedback process with the Cluster as the monitor. In the typical biofeedback experiment, the subject is hooked up to a machine such as a blood pressure gauge or electrodes that measure brain waves (EEG). The monitor provides feedback about the internal workings of the subject's body. By concentrating the mind and emotions in a ritual act of attention, the subject can cause changes in blood pressure or modify brain waves, and immediately see these results on the monitor. Biofeedback provides instant proof that mental and emotional states alter the way the body functions. It raises what is involuntary to the level of conscious volition. To be alive is to be in a constant biofeedback loop with the entire planet as the monitor, but normally we do not have a specific way to read the monitor. We just see the earth, feel it beneath our feet, and know that we depend on it for every breath we take, but we do not interact with it in a voluntary way. Consequently, we do not understand how breathing or any other involuntary act could register on the planet monitor and feed information back to us, as data comes from the biofeedback device. To experience a biofeedback loop with the planet, i.e., interactive magic, we need to supply something that defines the looping function of the monitor. This supplementation is done with the faculty of imagination. The purpose of imagination in our species is to center a visionary projection onto the earth that feeds back to us our direct connection to the planet, and allows us to evolve that connection in vital and sensory intimacy. The imaginary scenario is the monitor that feeds back dakini instruction on how to live interactively with Gaia. Many scenarios will induce some kind of empathic participation with Gaia, but the full console of the Shakti Cluster is the paramount tool for attaining such participation. It cannot be matched or surpassed by any other scenario, symbol, or concept. It is, at this unique moment in history, the supreme artifex for the religious imagination of humankind. Medieval alchemists, who were in some respects forerunners of Planetary Tantra, used the term artifex for the imaginary monitor to Gaia. This archaic word can refer to any tool or device or image or symbol or ritual object that produces a biofeedback effect. For instance, a valentine, the image of the Virgin Mary, or the logo of the Communist Party. Such symbols are products of human imagination through which the power of imagination works back upon whoever considers them. However, there is a crucial difference between such well-known symbols and the Shakti Cluster: conventional religious symbols and images affect those who consider them whether or not they have been produced by the individual so affected. The Shakti Cluster, on the other hand, does not affect anyone who does not participate vividly in producing and sustaining it with their own imagination, supported by deep empathy and rigorous intent. The visionary scenario of the 18-gauge console cannot be entertained in a passive way: it has to be engaged by choice. Those who engage it are selected by it. Those who do not engage it are deselected from the purposes of Gaia-Sophia. Such is my instruction. The poet William Blake asked, "What is that Talent which it is a curse to hide?" The answer is: the talent of imagination. But not just imagination for indulgence, fantasy, escape, self-glorification, vicarious atonement, and like. Imagination applied to the specific purpose of forming a biofeedback loop with Gaia-Sophia is a talent unique to our species. Other species are supplied with this loop in their instinctual programs. We alone have the responsibility to supply it for ourselves.
Scholars ponder the inclusion of the Tibetan goddess Tara, the Liberator, among the Mahavidyas. Her Tibetan name is Drolma, "she who crosses over." She seems out of place among that outrageous crew of witches with their "desideristic" powers to grant personal desires and indulge every selfish wish and impulse of their devotees. Tara is the paramount figure of the liberationist goal of spiritual practice, leading people across samsara from ignorance to enlightenment. She represents selfless commitment to the liberation of all sentient beings. How then can her presence among the Mahavidyas be explained? Ought she not be grouped with the Female Buddhas of the Vajra Jewel?
There is a rare form of Tara almost unknown to the millions who regard her as the sweet, benevolent guide to liberation. The Wrathful Green Tara (above) occupies a unique role in the Shakti Cluster. As the sole Female Buddha among the Mahavidyas, she has the special role of receiving whoever "crosses over" into the Secret Gathering. The use of the faculty of imagination, that precious talent which it is a curse to hide, selects or deselects us for Gaia's purposes, including mutation of the human species. This process is witnessed by Gaia herself through one unique member of the Shakti Cluster: the Wrathful Green Tara, who may be called the Selector. jll 22 March 2009 Andalucia. Under completion with Nairatmya. Kali Definition
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TerminologyIn Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (practiced in the Himalayan regions), Buddhist Tantra is most often termed Vajrayāna (Tib. རྡོ་རྗེ་ཐེག་པ་, dorje tekpa, Wyl. rdo rje theg pa) and Secret mantra (Skt. Guhyamantra, Tib. གསང་སྔགས་, sang ngak, Wyl. gsang sngags). The vajra is a mythical weapon associated with Indra which was said to be indestructible and unbreakable (like a diamond) and extremely powerful (like thunder). Thus, the term is variously translated as Diamond Vehicle, Thunderbolt Vehicle, Indestructible Vehicle and so on.
Chinese Esoteric Buddhism it is generally known by various terms such as Zhēnyán (Chinese: 真言, literally "true word", referring to mantra), Tángmì or Hanmì (唐密 - 漢密, "Tang Esotericism" or "Han Esotericism"), Mìzōng (密宗, "Esoteric Sect") or Mìjiao (Chinese: 密教; Esoteric Teaching). The Chinese term mì 密 ("secret, esoteric") is a translation of the Sanskrit term Guhya ("secret, hidden, profound, abstruse").
In Japan Buddhist esotericism is known as Mikkyō (密教, "secret teachings") or by the term Shingon (a Japanese rendering of Zhēnyán), which also refers to a specific school of Shingon-shū (真言宗).
Chinese Esoteric Buddhism it is generally known by various terms such as Zhēnyán (Chinese: 真言, literally "true word", referring to mantra), Tángmì or Hanmì (唐密 - 漢密, "Tang Esotericism" or "Han Esotericism"), Mìzōng (密宗, "Esoteric Sect") or Mìjiao (Chinese: 密教; Esoteric Teaching). The Chinese term mì 密 ("secret, esoteric") is a translation of the Sanskrit term Guhya ("secret, hidden, profound, abstruse").
In Japan Buddhist esotericism is known as Mikkyō (密教, "secret teachings") or by the term Shingon (a Japanese rendering of Zhēnyán), which also refers to a specific school of Shingon-shū (真言宗).
History
Mahasiddhas, Palpung monastery. Note the figure of the great adept Putalipa at center, seated in a cave and gazing at an image of the meditational deity Samvara and the figure at the bottom left holding a skull-staff (khaṭvāṅga) and a flaying knife (kartika)
Mahasiddha movement
Tantric Buddhism can be traced back to groups of wandering yogis called mahasiddhas (great sages).[3] According to Reynolds (2007), the mahasiddhas date to the medieval period in the North India (3–13 cen. CE) and used methods that were radically different than those used in Buddhist monasteries, including living in forests and caves and practicing meditation in charnel grounds similar to those practiced by Shaiva Kapalika ascetics.[4] These yogic circles came together in tantric feasts (ganachakra) often in sacred sites (pitha) and places (ksetra) which included dancing, singing, sex rites and the ingestion of taboo substances like alcohol, urine, meat, etc.[5] At least two of the mahasiddhas cited in the Buddhist literature are comparable with the Shaiva Nath saints (Gorakshanath and Matsyendranath) who practiced Hatha Yoga.
According to Schumann, a movement called Sahaja-siddhi developed in the 8th century in Bengal. It was dominated by long-haired, wandering mahasiddhas who openly challenged and ridiculed the Buddhist establishment. The mahasiddhas pursued siddhis, magical powers such as flight and extrasensory perception as well as spiritual liberation.
Ronald M. Davidson states that,
"Buddhist siddhas demonstrated the appropriation of an older sociological form—the independent sage/magician, who lived in a liminal zone on the borders between fields and forests. Their rites involved the conjunction of sexual practices and Buddhist mandala visualization with ritual accoutrements made from parts of the human body, so that control may be exercised over the forces hindering the natural abilities of the siddha to manipulate the cosmos at will. At their most extreme, siddhas also represented a defensive position within the Buddhist tradition, adopted and sustained for the purpose of aggressive engagement with the medieval culture of public violence. They reinforced their reputations for personal sanctity with rumors of the magical manipulation of various flavors of demonic females (dakini, yaksi, yogini), cemetery ghouls (vetala), and other things that go bump in the night. Operating on the margins of both monasteries and polite society, some adopted the behaviors associated with ghosts (preta, pisaca), not only as a religious praxis but also as an extension of their implied threats."
Tantras
Diamond Realm Mandala, based on the tantric Vajrasekhara Sutra, and symbolizing the final realization of Vairocana Buddha in Shingon.
Naked tantrikas dancing and eating from skull cups (kapalas), closeup of a Chakrasamvara mandalaMany of the elements found in Buddhist tantric literature are not wholly new. Earlier Mahāyāna sutras already contained some elements which are emphasized in the Tantras, such as mantras and dharani. The use of protective verses or phrases actually dates back to the Vedic period and can be seen in the early Buddhist texts, where they are termed paritta. The practice of visualization of Buddhas such as Amitābha is also seen in pre-tantric texts like the Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra.
There are other Mahāyāna sutras which contain "proto-tantric" material such as the Gandavyuha and the Dasabhumika which might have served as a central source of visual imagery for Tantric texts.[12] Later Mahāyāna texts like the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra (c. 4th-5th century CE) expound the use of mantras such as Om mani padme hum, associated with vastly powerful beings like Avalokiteshvara. The popular Heart Sutra also includes a mantra.
Vajrayāna Buddhists developed a large corpus of texts called the Buddhist Tantras, some of which can be traced to at least the 7th century CE but might be older. The dating of the tantras is "a difficult, indeed an impossible task" according to David Snellgrove.
Some of the earliest of these texts, Kriya tantras such as the Mañjuśrī-mūla-kalpa (c. 6th century), teach the use of mantras and dharanis for mostly worldly ends including curing illness, controlling the weather and generating wealth. The Tattvasaṃgraha Tantra (Compendium of Principles), classed as a "Yoga tantra", is one of the first Buddhist tantras which focuses on liberation as opposed to worldly goals. In another early tantra, the Vajrasekhara (Vajra Peak), the influential schema of the five Buddha families is developed. Other early tantras include the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi and the Guhyasamāja (Gathering of Secrets).
The Guhyasamāja is a Mahayoga class of Tantra, which features new forms of ritual practice considered "left-hand" (vamachara) such as the use of taboo substances like alcohol, sexual yoga, and charnel ground practices which evoke wrathful deities.[17] Ryujun Tajima divides the tantras into those which were "a development of Mahāyānist thought" and those "formed in a rather popular mould toward the end of the eighth century and declining into the esoterism of the left",[18] this "left esoterism" mainly refers to the Yogini tantras and later works associated with wandering antinomian yogis. This practice survives in Tibetan Buddhism, but it is rare for this to be done with an actual person. It is more common for a yogi to use an imagined consort (a buddhist tantric deity, i.e. a yidam).
These later tantras such as the Hevajra Tantra and the Chakrasamvara are classed as "Yogini tantras" and represent the final form of development of Indian Buddhist tantras in the ninth and tenth centuries. The Kalachakra tantra developed in the 10th century. It is farthest removed from the earlier Buddhist traditions, and incorporates concepts of messianism and astrology not present elsewhere in Buddhist literature.
According to Ronald M. Davidson, the rise of Tantric Buddhism was a response to the feudal structure of Indian society in the early medieval period (ca. 500-1200 CE) which saw kings being divinized as manifestations of gods. Likewise, tantric yogis reconfigured their practice through the metaphor of being consecrated (abhiśeka) as the overlord (rājādhirāja) of a mandala palace of divine vassals, an imperial metaphor symbolizing kingly fortresses and their political power.
Relationship to Shaivism
Vajrayana adopted deities such as Bhairava, known as Yamantaka in Tibetan Buddhism.
The central deity of the Cakrasaṃvara Tantra, which according to scholars like David B. Gray and Alexis Sanderson, appropriated numerous elements from nondual Shaiva Tantra
The question of the origins of early Vajrayāna has been taken up by various scholars. David Seyfort Ruegg has suggested that Buddhist tantra employed various elements of a “pan-Indian religious substrate” which is not specifically Buddhist, Shaiva or Vaishnava.
According to Alexis Sanderson, various classes of Vajrayāna literature developed as a result of royal courts sponsoring both Buddhism and Shaivism. The relationship between the two systems can be seen in texts like the Mañjusrimulakalpa, which later came to be classified under Kriya tantra, and states that mantras taught in the Shaiva, Garuda and Vaishnava tantras will be effective if applied by Buddhists since they were all taught originally by Manjushri.
Alexis Sanderson notes that the Vajrayāna Yogini tantras draw extensively from the material also present in Shaiva Bhairava tantras classified as Vidyapitha. Sanderson's comparison of them shows similarity in "ritual procedures, style of observance, deities, mantras, mandalas, ritual dress, Kapalika accouterments like skull bowls, specialized terminology, secret gestures, and secret jargons. There is even direct borrowing of passages from Shaiva texts."[25] Sanderson gives numerous examples such as the Guhyasiddhi of Padmavajra, a work associated with the Guhyasamaja tradition, which prescribes acting as a Shaiva guru and initiating members into Saiva Siddhanta scriptures and mandalas.[26] Sanderson claims that the Samvara tantra texts adopted the pitha list from the Shaiva text Tantrasadbhava, introducing a copying error where a deity was mistaken for a place.
Ronald M. Davidson meanwhile, argues that Sanderson's claims for direct influence from Shaiva Vidyapitha texts are problematic because "the chronology of the Vidyapitha tantras is by no means so well established" and that "the available evidence suggests that received Saiva tantras come into evidence sometime in the ninth to tenth centuries with their affirmation by scholars like Abhinavagupta (c. 1000 c.e.)" Davidson also notes that the list of pithas or sacred places "are certainly not particularly Buddhist, nor are they uniquely Kapalika venues, despite their presence in lists employed by both traditions." Davidson further adds that like the Buddhists, the Shaiva tradition was also involved in the appropriation of Hindu and non-Hindu deities, texts and traditions, an example being "village or tribal divinities like Tumburu".
Davidson adds that Buddhists and Kapalikas as well as other ascetics (possibly Pasupatas) mingled and discussed their paths at various pilgrimage places and that there were conversions between the different groups. Thus he concludes:
The Buddhist-Kapalika connection is more complex than a simple process of religious imitation and textual appropriation. There can be no question that the Buddhist tantras were heavily influenced by Kapalika and other Saiva movements, but the influence was apparently mutual. Perhaps a more nuanced model would be that the various lines of transmission were locally flourishing and that in some areas they interacted, while in others they maintained concerted hostility. Thus the influence was both sustained and reciprocal, even in those places where Buddhist and Kapalika siddhas were in extreme antagonism.
Davidson also argues for the influence of non-brahmanical and outcaste tribal religions and their feminine deities (such as Parnasabari and Janguli).
Mahasiddhas, Palpung monastery. Note the figure of the great adept Putalipa at center, seated in a cave and gazing at an image of the meditational deity Samvara and the figure at the bottom left holding a skull-staff (khaṭvāṅga) and a flaying knife (kartika)
Mahasiddha movement
Tantric Buddhism can be traced back to groups of wandering yogis called mahasiddhas (great sages).[3] According to Reynolds (2007), the mahasiddhas date to the medieval period in the North India (3–13 cen. CE) and used methods that were radically different than those used in Buddhist monasteries, including living in forests and caves and practicing meditation in charnel grounds similar to those practiced by Shaiva Kapalika ascetics.[4] These yogic circles came together in tantric feasts (ganachakra) often in sacred sites (pitha) and places (ksetra) which included dancing, singing, sex rites and the ingestion of taboo substances like alcohol, urine, meat, etc.[5] At least two of the mahasiddhas cited in the Buddhist literature are comparable with the Shaiva Nath saints (Gorakshanath and Matsyendranath) who practiced Hatha Yoga.
According to Schumann, a movement called Sahaja-siddhi developed in the 8th century in Bengal. It was dominated by long-haired, wandering mahasiddhas who openly challenged and ridiculed the Buddhist establishment. The mahasiddhas pursued siddhis, magical powers such as flight and extrasensory perception as well as spiritual liberation.
Ronald M. Davidson states that,
"Buddhist siddhas demonstrated the appropriation of an older sociological form—the independent sage/magician, who lived in a liminal zone on the borders between fields and forests. Their rites involved the conjunction of sexual practices and Buddhist mandala visualization with ritual accoutrements made from parts of the human body, so that control may be exercised over the forces hindering the natural abilities of the siddha to manipulate the cosmos at will. At their most extreme, siddhas also represented a defensive position within the Buddhist tradition, adopted and sustained for the purpose of aggressive engagement with the medieval culture of public violence. They reinforced their reputations for personal sanctity with rumors of the magical manipulation of various flavors of demonic females (dakini, yaksi, yogini), cemetery ghouls (vetala), and other things that go bump in the night. Operating on the margins of both monasteries and polite society, some adopted the behaviors associated with ghosts (preta, pisaca), not only as a religious praxis but also as an extension of their implied threats."
Tantras
Diamond Realm Mandala, based on the tantric Vajrasekhara Sutra, and symbolizing the final realization of Vairocana Buddha in Shingon.
Naked tantrikas dancing and eating from skull cups (kapalas), closeup of a Chakrasamvara mandalaMany of the elements found in Buddhist tantric literature are not wholly new. Earlier Mahāyāna sutras already contained some elements which are emphasized in the Tantras, such as mantras and dharani. The use of protective verses or phrases actually dates back to the Vedic period and can be seen in the early Buddhist texts, where they are termed paritta. The practice of visualization of Buddhas such as Amitābha is also seen in pre-tantric texts like the Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra.
There are other Mahāyāna sutras which contain "proto-tantric" material such as the Gandavyuha and the Dasabhumika which might have served as a central source of visual imagery for Tantric texts.[12] Later Mahāyāna texts like the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra (c. 4th-5th century CE) expound the use of mantras such as Om mani padme hum, associated with vastly powerful beings like Avalokiteshvara. The popular Heart Sutra also includes a mantra.
Vajrayāna Buddhists developed a large corpus of texts called the Buddhist Tantras, some of which can be traced to at least the 7th century CE but might be older. The dating of the tantras is "a difficult, indeed an impossible task" according to David Snellgrove.
Some of the earliest of these texts, Kriya tantras such as the Mañjuśrī-mūla-kalpa (c. 6th century), teach the use of mantras and dharanis for mostly worldly ends including curing illness, controlling the weather and generating wealth. The Tattvasaṃgraha Tantra (Compendium of Principles), classed as a "Yoga tantra", is one of the first Buddhist tantras which focuses on liberation as opposed to worldly goals. In another early tantra, the Vajrasekhara (Vajra Peak), the influential schema of the five Buddha families is developed. Other early tantras include the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi and the Guhyasamāja (Gathering of Secrets).
The Guhyasamāja is a Mahayoga class of Tantra, which features new forms of ritual practice considered "left-hand" (vamachara) such as the use of taboo substances like alcohol, sexual yoga, and charnel ground practices which evoke wrathful deities.[17] Ryujun Tajima divides the tantras into those which were "a development of Mahāyānist thought" and those "formed in a rather popular mould toward the end of the eighth century and declining into the esoterism of the left",[18] this "left esoterism" mainly refers to the Yogini tantras and later works associated with wandering antinomian yogis. This practice survives in Tibetan Buddhism, but it is rare for this to be done with an actual person. It is more common for a yogi to use an imagined consort (a buddhist tantric deity, i.e. a yidam).
These later tantras such as the Hevajra Tantra and the Chakrasamvara are classed as "Yogini tantras" and represent the final form of development of Indian Buddhist tantras in the ninth and tenth centuries. The Kalachakra tantra developed in the 10th century. It is farthest removed from the earlier Buddhist traditions, and incorporates concepts of messianism and astrology not present elsewhere in Buddhist literature.
According to Ronald M. Davidson, the rise of Tantric Buddhism was a response to the feudal structure of Indian society in the early medieval period (ca. 500-1200 CE) which saw kings being divinized as manifestations of gods. Likewise, tantric yogis reconfigured their practice through the metaphor of being consecrated (abhiśeka) as the overlord (rājādhirāja) of a mandala palace of divine vassals, an imperial metaphor symbolizing kingly fortresses and their political power.
Relationship to Shaivism
Vajrayana adopted deities such as Bhairava, known as Yamantaka in Tibetan Buddhism.
The central deity of the Cakrasaṃvara Tantra, which according to scholars like David B. Gray and Alexis Sanderson, appropriated numerous elements from nondual Shaiva Tantra
The question of the origins of early Vajrayāna has been taken up by various scholars. David Seyfort Ruegg has suggested that Buddhist tantra employed various elements of a “pan-Indian religious substrate” which is not specifically Buddhist, Shaiva or Vaishnava.
According to Alexis Sanderson, various classes of Vajrayāna literature developed as a result of royal courts sponsoring both Buddhism and Shaivism. The relationship between the two systems can be seen in texts like the Mañjusrimulakalpa, which later came to be classified under Kriya tantra, and states that mantras taught in the Shaiva, Garuda and Vaishnava tantras will be effective if applied by Buddhists since they were all taught originally by Manjushri.
Alexis Sanderson notes that the Vajrayāna Yogini tantras draw extensively from the material also present in Shaiva Bhairava tantras classified as Vidyapitha. Sanderson's comparison of them shows similarity in "ritual procedures, style of observance, deities, mantras, mandalas, ritual dress, Kapalika accouterments like skull bowls, specialized terminology, secret gestures, and secret jargons. There is even direct borrowing of passages from Shaiva texts."[25] Sanderson gives numerous examples such as the Guhyasiddhi of Padmavajra, a work associated with the Guhyasamaja tradition, which prescribes acting as a Shaiva guru and initiating members into Saiva Siddhanta scriptures and mandalas.[26] Sanderson claims that the Samvara tantra texts adopted the pitha list from the Shaiva text Tantrasadbhava, introducing a copying error where a deity was mistaken for a place.
Ronald M. Davidson meanwhile, argues that Sanderson's claims for direct influence from Shaiva Vidyapitha texts are problematic because "the chronology of the Vidyapitha tantras is by no means so well established" and that "the available evidence suggests that received Saiva tantras come into evidence sometime in the ninth to tenth centuries with their affirmation by scholars like Abhinavagupta (c. 1000 c.e.)" Davidson also notes that the list of pithas or sacred places "are certainly not particularly Buddhist, nor are they uniquely Kapalika venues, despite their presence in lists employed by both traditions." Davidson further adds that like the Buddhists, the Shaiva tradition was also involved in the appropriation of Hindu and non-Hindu deities, texts and traditions, an example being "village or tribal divinities like Tumburu".
Davidson adds that Buddhists and Kapalikas as well as other ascetics (possibly Pasupatas) mingled and discussed their paths at various pilgrimage places and that there were conversions between the different groups. Thus he concludes:
The Buddhist-Kapalika connection is more complex than a simple process of religious imitation and textual appropriation. There can be no question that the Buddhist tantras were heavily influenced by Kapalika and other Saiva movements, but the influence was apparently mutual. Perhaps a more nuanced model would be that the various lines of transmission were locally flourishing and that in some areas they interacted, while in others they maintained concerted hostility. Thus the influence was both sustained and reciprocal, even in those places where Buddhist and Kapalika siddhas were in extreme antagonism.
Davidson also argues for the influence of non-brahmanical and outcaste tribal religions and their feminine deities (such as Parnasabari and Janguli).
Tantra techniques
Mani stones, stones inscribed with the "om mani padme hum" mantra.
A Japanese Handscroll depicting various mudras, 11th–12th century.
See also: Tibetan Tantric Practice
While all the Vajrayāna Buddhist traditions include all of the traditional practices used in Mahayana Buddhism such as developing bodhicitta, practicing the paramitas, and samatha - vipassana meditations, they also make use of unique tantric methods that are seen as more advanced. These include mantras, mudras, deity yoga, other visualization based meditations, subtle body yogas like tummo and rituals like the goma fire ritual. Vajrayana teaches that these techniques provide faster path to Buddhahood.
A central feature of tantric practice is the use of mantras, and seed syllables (bijas). Mantras are words, phrases or a collection of syllables used for a variety of meditative, magical and ritual ends. Mantras are usually associated with specific deities or Buddhas, and are seen as their manifestations in sonic form. They are traditionally believed to have spiritual power, which can lead to enlightenment as well as supramundane abilities (siddhis).
According to Indologist Alex Wayman, Buddhist esotericism is centered on what is known as "the three mysteries" or "secrets": the tantric adept affiliates his body, speech, and mind with the body, speech, and mind of a Buddha through mudra, mantras and samadhi respectively.[64] Padmavajra (c 7th century) explains in his Tantrarthavatara Commentary, the secret Body, Speech, and Mind of the Buddhas are:
Secret of Body: Whatever form is necessary to tame the living beings.
Secret of Speech: Speech exactly appropriate to the lineage of the creature, as in the language of the yaksas, etc.
Secret of Mind: Knowing all things as they really are.
These elements are brought together in the practice of tantric deity yoga, which involves visualizing the deity's body and mandala, reciting the deity's mantra and gaining insight into the nature of things based on this contemplation. Advanced tantric practices such as deity yoga are taught in the context of an initiation ceremony by tantric gurus or vajracharyas (vajra-masters) to the tantric initiate, who also takes on formal commitments or vows (samaya).[63] In Tibetan Buddhism, advanced practices like deity yoga are usually preceded by or coupled with "preliminary practices" called ngondro which includes prostrations and recitations of the 100 syllable mantra.
Vajrayana is a system of tantric lineages, and thus only those who receive an empowerment or initiation (abhiseka) are allowed to practice the more advanced esoteric methods. In tantric deity yoga, mantras or bijas are used during the ritual evocation of deities which are said to arise out of the uttered and visualized mantric syllables. After the deity's image and mandala has been established, heart mantras are visualized as part of the contemplation in different points of the deity's body.
Deity yoga
An 18th century Mongolian miniature which depicts a monk generating a tantric visualization.
A Japanese depiction of the Amida Triad in Seed Syllable form (Siddham Script). Visualizing deities in the form of seed syllables is a common Vajrayana meditation. In Shingon, one of the most common practices is Ajikan (阿字觀), meditating on the syllable A.
The fundamental practice of Buddhist Tantra is “deity yoga” (devatayoga), meditation on a chosen deity or "cherished divinity" (Skt. Iṣṭa-devatā, Tib. yidam), which involves the recitation of mantras, prayers and visualization of the deity, the associated mandala of the deity's Buddha field, along with consorts and attendant Buddhas and bodhisattvas. According to the Tibetan scholar Tsongkhapa, deity yoga is what separates Tantra from Sutra practice.
In the Unsurpassed Yoga Tantras, the most widespread tantric form in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, this method is divided into two stages, the generation stage (utpatti-krama) and the completion stage (nispanna-krama). In the generation stage, one dissolves one's reality into emptiness and meditates on the deity-mandala, resulting in identification with this divine reality. In the completion stage, the divine image along with the subtle body is applied to the realization of luminous emptiness.
The Indian tantric scholar Ratnākaraśānti (c. 1000 CE) describes the generation stage cultivation practice thus:
[A]ll phenomenal appearance having arisen as mind, this very mind is [understood to be] produced by a mistake (bhrāntyā), i.e. the appearance of an object where there is no object to be grasped; ascertaining that this is like a dream, in order to abandon this mistake, all appearances of objects that are blue and yellow and so on are abandoned or destroyed (parihṛ-); then, the appearance of the world (viśvapratibhāsa) that is ascertained to be oneself (ātmaniścitta) is seen to be like the stainless sky on an autumn day at noon: appearanceless, unending sheer luminosity.
This dissolution into emptiness is then followed by the visualization of the deity and re-emergence of the yogi as the deity. During the process of deity visualization, the deity is to be imaged as not solid or tangible, as "empty yet apparent", with the character of a mirage or a rainbow.This visualization is to be combined with "divine pride", which is "the thought that one is oneself the deity being visualized." Divine pride is different from common pride because it is based on compassion for others and on an understanding of emptiness.
A Tibetan depiction of the perfection stage practices of tummo (Skt. candali, inner heat) and phowa (transference of consciousness).
Following mastery of the "generation stage", one practices the "perfection" or "completion" stage. The Indian commentator Buddhaguhya (c.700 CE), in his commentary on the Mahavairocana Tantra, outlines the "perfection stage" practices thus:
First you should actualize all the four branches of recitation for a while as before, and then analyze the manifestation of the created (parikalpita) colour, shape, and so on, of your tutelary deity who is identical to yourself, breaking them down into atoms. Or it is also acceptable to do this by way of the reasoning that is unborn and unarising from the very beginning, or similarly by way of the technique of drawing-in the vital energy (prana) through the yoga of turning your mind inside, or by way of not focusing on its appearance [as colour and shape]. In accordance with that realization, you should then actualize the mind which is just self-aware, free from the body image of your tutelary deity and without appearance [as subject and object], and mentally recite your vidya mantra as appropriate.
The Tibetologist David Germano outlines two main types of completion practice: a formless and image-less contemplation on the ultimate empty nature of the mind and various yogas that make use of the subtle body to produce energetic sensations of bliss and warmth.
The subtle body yogas systems like the Six Dharmas of Naropa and the Six Yogas of Kalachakra make use of energetic schemas of human psycho-physiology composed of "energy channels" (Skt. nadi, Tib. rtsa), "winds" or currents (Skt. vayu, Tib. rlung), "drops" or charged particles (Skt. bindu, Tib. thig le) and chakras ("wheels"). These subtle energies are seen as "mounts" for consciousness, the physical component of awareness. They are engaged by various means such as pranayama (breath control) to produce blissful experiences that are then applied to the realization of ultimate reality.
Other methods which are associated with the completion stage in Tibetan Buddhism include dream yoga (which relies on lucid dreaming), practices associated with the bardo (the interim state between death and rebirth), transference of consciousness (phowa) and Chöd, in which the yogi ceremonially offers their body to be eaten by tantric deities in a ritual feast.
Other practices
A Newari Buddhist mandala used for Guru Puja, Nepal, 19th century, gilt copper inlaid with semiprecious stones.
Video of a Shingon Goma Fire Ritual at Yakuōin Yūkiji, Mount Takao
Another form of Vajrayana practice are certain meditative techniques associated with Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen, often termed "formless practices" or the path of self-liberation. These techniques do not rely on deity visualization per se but on direct pointing-out instruction from a master and are often seen as the most advanced and direct methods.
Another distinctive feature of Tantric Buddhism is its unique and often elaborate rituals. They include pujas (worship rituals), prayer festivals, protection rituals, death rituals, tantric feasts (ganachakra), tantric initiations (abhiseka) and the goma fire ritual (common in East Asian Esotericism).
A video of the Cham dance, a traditional practice in some sects of Tibetan Buddhism.An important element in some of these rituals (particularly initiations and tantric feasts) seems to have been the practice of ritual sex or sexual yoga (karmamudra, "desire seal", also referred to as "consort observance", vidyavrata, and euphemistically as "puja"), as well as the sacramental ingestion of "power substances" such as the mingled sexual fluids and uterine blood (often performed by licking these substances off the vulva, a practice termed yonipuja).
The practice of ingestion of sexual fluids is mentioned by numerous tantric commentators, sometimes euphemistically referring to the penis as the "vajra" and the vagina as the "lotus". The Cakrasamvara Tantra commentator Kambala, writing about this practice, states:
The seats are well-known on earth to be spots within the lotus mandala; by abiding within it there is great bliss, the royal nature of nondual joy. Therefore the lotus seat is supreme: filled with a mixture of semen and uterine blood, one should especially kiss it, and lolling with the tongue take it up. Unite the vajra and lotus, with the rapture of drinking [this] liquor.
According to David Gray, these sexual practices probably originated in a non-monastic context, but were later adopted by monastic establishments (such as Nalanda and Vikramashila). He notes that the anxiety of figures like Atisa towards these practices, and the stories of Virūpa and Maitripa being expelled from their monasteries for performing them, shows that supposedly celibate monastics were undertaking these sexual rites.
Because of its adoption by the monastic tradition, the practice of sexual yoga was slowly transformed into one which was either done with an imaginary consort visualized by the yogi instead of an actual person, or reserved to a small group of the "highest" or elite practitioners. Likewise, the drinking of sexual fluids was also reinterpreted by later commentators to refer subtle body anatomy of the perfection stage practices.
Symbols and imagery
Dagchen Rinpoche's hand holds a vajra drawing lines that close the Hevajra Mandala, after the empowerment, Tharlam Monastery of Tibetan Buddhism, Boudha, Kathmandu, Nepal.
Vajrayāna uses a rich variety of symbols, terms, and images that have multiple meanings according to a complex system of analogical thinking. In Vajrayāna, symbols, and terms are multi-valent, reflecting the microcosm and the macrocosm as in the phrase "As without, so within" (yatha bahyam tatha ’dhyatmam iti) from Abhayakaragupta’s Nispannayogavali.
The Vajra
Bronze Vajras and Bell from Itsukushima, JapanThe Sanskrit term "vajra" denoted a thunderbolt like a legendary weapon and divine attribute that was made from an adamantine, or an indestructible substance which could, therefore, pierce and penetrate any obstacle or obfuscation. It is the weapon of choice of Indra, the King of the Devas. As a secondary meaning, "vajra" symbolizes the ultimate nature of things which is described in the tantras as translucent, pure and radiant, but also indestructible and indivisible. It is also symbolic of the power of tantric methods to achieve its goals.
A vajra is also a scepter-like ritual object (Standard Tibetan: རྡོ་རྗེ་ dorje), which has a sphere (and sometimes a gankyil) at its centre, and a variable number of spokes, 3, 5 or 9 at each end (depending on the sadhana), enfolding either end of the rod. The vajra is often traditionally employed in tantric rituals in combination with the bell or ghanta; symbolically, the vajra may represent method as well as great bliss and the bell stands for wisdom, specifically the wisdom realizing emptiness. The union of the two sets of spokes at the center of the wheel is said to symbolize the unity of wisdom (prajña) and compassion (karuna) as well as the sexual union of male and female deities.
Imagery and ritual in deity yoga
Chöd ritual, note the use of Damaru drum and hand-bell, as well as the Kangling (thighbone trumpet).Representations of the deity, such as statues (murti), paintings (thangka), or mandala, are often employed as an aid to visualization, in Deity yoga. The use of visual aids, particularly microcosmic/macrocosmic diagrams, known as "mandalas", is another unique feature of Buddhist Tantra. Mandalas are symbolic depictions of the sacred space of the awakened Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as well as of the inner workings of the human person. The macrocosmic symbolism of the mandala then, also represents the forces of the human body. The explanatory tantra of the Guhyasamaja tantra, the Vajramala, states: "The body becomes a palace, the hallowed basis of all the Buddhas."
Mandalas are also sacred enclosures, sacred architecture that house and contain the uncontainable essence of a central deity or yidam and their retinue. In the book The World of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama describes mandalas thus: "This is the celestial mansion, the pure residence of the deity." The Five Tathagatas or 'Five Buddhas', along with the figure of the Adi-Buddha, are central to many Vajrayana mandalas as they represent the "five wisdoms", which are the five primary aspects of primordial wisdom or Buddha-nature.
All ritual in Vajrayana practice can be seen as aiding in this process of visualization and identification. The practitioner can use various hand implements such as a vajra, bell, hand-drum (damaru) or a ritual dagger (phurba), but also ritual hand gestures (mudras) can be made, special chanting techniques can be used, and in elaborate offering rituals or initiations, many more ritual implements and tools are used, each with an elaborate symbolic meaning to create a special environment for practice. Vajrayana has thus become a major inspiration in traditional Tibetan art.
Mani stones, stones inscribed with the "om mani padme hum" mantra.
A Japanese Handscroll depicting various mudras, 11th–12th century.
See also: Tibetan Tantric Practice
While all the Vajrayāna Buddhist traditions include all of the traditional practices used in Mahayana Buddhism such as developing bodhicitta, practicing the paramitas, and samatha - vipassana meditations, they also make use of unique tantric methods that are seen as more advanced. These include mantras, mudras, deity yoga, other visualization based meditations, subtle body yogas like tummo and rituals like the goma fire ritual. Vajrayana teaches that these techniques provide faster path to Buddhahood.
A central feature of tantric practice is the use of mantras, and seed syllables (bijas). Mantras are words, phrases or a collection of syllables used for a variety of meditative, magical and ritual ends. Mantras are usually associated with specific deities or Buddhas, and are seen as their manifestations in sonic form. They are traditionally believed to have spiritual power, which can lead to enlightenment as well as supramundane abilities (siddhis).
According to Indologist Alex Wayman, Buddhist esotericism is centered on what is known as "the three mysteries" or "secrets": the tantric adept affiliates his body, speech, and mind with the body, speech, and mind of a Buddha through mudra, mantras and samadhi respectively.[64] Padmavajra (c 7th century) explains in his Tantrarthavatara Commentary, the secret Body, Speech, and Mind of the Buddhas are:
Secret of Body: Whatever form is necessary to tame the living beings.
Secret of Speech: Speech exactly appropriate to the lineage of the creature, as in the language of the yaksas, etc.
Secret of Mind: Knowing all things as they really are.
These elements are brought together in the practice of tantric deity yoga, which involves visualizing the deity's body and mandala, reciting the deity's mantra and gaining insight into the nature of things based on this contemplation. Advanced tantric practices such as deity yoga are taught in the context of an initiation ceremony by tantric gurus or vajracharyas (vajra-masters) to the tantric initiate, who also takes on formal commitments or vows (samaya).[63] In Tibetan Buddhism, advanced practices like deity yoga are usually preceded by or coupled with "preliminary practices" called ngondro which includes prostrations and recitations of the 100 syllable mantra.
Vajrayana is a system of tantric lineages, and thus only those who receive an empowerment or initiation (abhiseka) are allowed to practice the more advanced esoteric methods. In tantric deity yoga, mantras or bijas are used during the ritual evocation of deities which are said to arise out of the uttered and visualized mantric syllables. After the deity's image and mandala has been established, heart mantras are visualized as part of the contemplation in different points of the deity's body.
Deity yoga
An 18th century Mongolian miniature which depicts a monk generating a tantric visualization.
A Japanese depiction of the Amida Triad in Seed Syllable form (Siddham Script). Visualizing deities in the form of seed syllables is a common Vajrayana meditation. In Shingon, one of the most common practices is Ajikan (阿字觀), meditating on the syllable A.
The fundamental practice of Buddhist Tantra is “deity yoga” (devatayoga), meditation on a chosen deity or "cherished divinity" (Skt. Iṣṭa-devatā, Tib. yidam), which involves the recitation of mantras, prayers and visualization of the deity, the associated mandala of the deity's Buddha field, along with consorts and attendant Buddhas and bodhisattvas. According to the Tibetan scholar Tsongkhapa, deity yoga is what separates Tantra from Sutra practice.
In the Unsurpassed Yoga Tantras, the most widespread tantric form in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, this method is divided into two stages, the generation stage (utpatti-krama) and the completion stage (nispanna-krama). In the generation stage, one dissolves one's reality into emptiness and meditates on the deity-mandala, resulting in identification with this divine reality. In the completion stage, the divine image along with the subtle body is applied to the realization of luminous emptiness.
The Indian tantric scholar Ratnākaraśānti (c. 1000 CE) describes the generation stage cultivation practice thus:
[A]ll phenomenal appearance having arisen as mind, this very mind is [understood to be] produced by a mistake (bhrāntyā), i.e. the appearance of an object where there is no object to be grasped; ascertaining that this is like a dream, in order to abandon this mistake, all appearances of objects that are blue and yellow and so on are abandoned or destroyed (parihṛ-); then, the appearance of the world (viśvapratibhāsa) that is ascertained to be oneself (ātmaniścitta) is seen to be like the stainless sky on an autumn day at noon: appearanceless, unending sheer luminosity.
This dissolution into emptiness is then followed by the visualization of the deity and re-emergence of the yogi as the deity. During the process of deity visualization, the deity is to be imaged as not solid or tangible, as "empty yet apparent", with the character of a mirage or a rainbow.This visualization is to be combined with "divine pride", which is "the thought that one is oneself the deity being visualized." Divine pride is different from common pride because it is based on compassion for others and on an understanding of emptiness.
A Tibetan depiction of the perfection stage practices of tummo (Skt. candali, inner heat) and phowa (transference of consciousness).
Following mastery of the "generation stage", one practices the "perfection" or "completion" stage. The Indian commentator Buddhaguhya (c.700 CE), in his commentary on the Mahavairocana Tantra, outlines the "perfection stage" practices thus:
First you should actualize all the four branches of recitation for a while as before, and then analyze the manifestation of the created (parikalpita) colour, shape, and so on, of your tutelary deity who is identical to yourself, breaking them down into atoms. Or it is also acceptable to do this by way of the reasoning that is unborn and unarising from the very beginning, or similarly by way of the technique of drawing-in the vital energy (prana) through the yoga of turning your mind inside, or by way of not focusing on its appearance [as colour and shape]. In accordance with that realization, you should then actualize the mind which is just self-aware, free from the body image of your tutelary deity and without appearance [as subject and object], and mentally recite your vidya mantra as appropriate.
The Tibetologist David Germano outlines two main types of completion practice: a formless and image-less contemplation on the ultimate empty nature of the mind and various yogas that make use of the subtle body to produce energetic sensations of bliss and warmth.
The subtle body yogas systems like the Six Dharmas of Naropa and the Six Yogas of Kalachakra make use of energetic schemas of human psycho-physiology composed of "energy channels" (Skt. nadi, Tib. rtsa), "winds" or currents (Skt. vayu, Tib. rlung), "drops" or charged particles (Skt. bindu, Tib. thig le) and chakras ("wheels"). These subtle energies are seen as "mounts" for consciousness, the physical component of awareness. They are engaged by various means such as pranayama (breath control) to produce blissful experiences that are then applied to the realization of ultimate reality.
Other methods which are associated with the completion stage in Tibetan Buddhism include dream yoga (which relies on lucid dreaming), practices associated with the bardo (the interim state between death and rebirth), transference of consciousness (phowa) and Chöd, in which the yogi ceremonially offers their body to be eaten by tantric deities in a ritual feast.
Other practices
A Newari Buddhist mandala used for Guru Puja, Nepal, 19th century, gilt copper inlaid with semiprecious stones.
Video of a Shingon Goma Fire Ritual at Yakuōin Yūkiji, Mount Takao
Another form of Vajrayana practice are certain meditative techniques associated with Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen, often termed "formless practices" or the path of self-liberation. These techniques do not rely on deity visualization per se but on direct pointing-out instruction from a master and are often seen as the most advanced and direct methods.
Another distinctive feature of Tantric Buddhism is its unique and often elaborate rituals. They include pujas (worship rituals), prayer festivals, protection rituals, death rituals, tantric feasts (ganachakra), tantric initiations (abhiseka) and the goma fire ritual (common in East Asian Esotericism).
A video of the Cham dance, a traditional practice in some sects of Tibetan Buddhism.An important element in some of these rituals (particularly initiations and tantric feasts) seems to have been the practice of ritual sex or sexual yoga (karmamudra, "desire seal", also referred to as "consort observance", vidyavrata, and euphemistically as "puja"), as well as the sacramental ingestion of "power substances" such as the mingled sexual fluids and uterine blood (often performed by licking these substances off the vulva, a practice termed yonipuja).
The practice of ingestion of sexual fluids is mentioned by numerous tantric commentators, sometimes euphemistically referring to the penis as the "vajra" and the vagina as the "lotus". The Cakrasamvara Tantra commentator Kambala, writing about this practice, states:
The seats are well-known on earth to be spots within the lotus mandala; by abiding within it there is great bliss, the royal nature of nondual joy. Therefore the lotus seat is supreme: filled with a mixture of semen and uterine blood, one should especially kiss it, and lolling with the tongue take it up. Unite the vajra and lotus, with the rapture of drinking [this] liquor.
According to David Gray, these sexual practices probably originated in a non-monastic context, but were later adopted by monastic establishments (such as Nalanda and Vikramashila). He notes that the anxiety of figures like Atisa towards these practices, and the stories of Virūpa and Maitripa being expelled from their monasteries for performing them, shows that supposedly celibate monastics were undertaking these sexual rites.
Because of its adoption by the monastic tradition, the practice of sexual yoga was slowly transformed into one which was either done with an imaginary consort visualized by the yogi instead of an actual person, or reserved to a small group of the "highest" or elite practitioners. Likewise, the drinking of sexual fluids was also reinterpreted by later commentators to refer subtle body anatomy of the perfection stage practices.
Symbols and imagery
Dagchen Rinpoche's hand holds a vajra drawing lines that close the Hevajra Mandala, after the empowerment, Tharlam Monastery of Tibetan Buddhism, Boudha, Kathmandu, Nepal.
Vajrayāna uses a rich variety of symbols, terms, and images that have multiple meanings according to a complex system of analogical thinking. In Vajrayāna, symbols, and terms are multi-valent, reflecting the microcosm and the macrocosm as in the phrase "As without, so within" (yatha bahyam tatha ’dhyatmam iti) from Abhayakaragupta’s Nispannayogavali.
The Vajra
Bronze Vajras and Bell from Itsukushima, JapanThe Sanskrit term "vajra" denoted a thunderbolt like a legendary weapon and divine attribute that was made from an adamantine, or an indestructible substance which could, therefore, pierce and penetrate any obstacle or obfuscation. It is the weapon of choice of Indra, the King of the Devas. As a secondary meaning, "vajra" symbolizes the ultimate nature of things which is described in the tantras as translucent, pure and radiant, but also indestructible and indivisible. It is also symbolic of the power of tantric methods to achieve its goals.
A vajra is also a scepter-like ritual object (Standard Tibetan: རྡོ་རྗེ་ dorje), which has a sphere (and sometimes a gankyil) at its centre, and a variable number of spokes, 3, 5 or 9 at each end (depending on the sadhana), enfolding either end of the rod. The vajra is often traditionally employed in tantric rituals in combination with the bell or ghanta; symbolically, the vajra may represent method as well as great bliss and the bell stands for wisdom, specifically the wisdom realizing emptiness. The union of the two sets of spokes at the center of the wheel is said to symbolize the unity of wisdom (prajña) and compassion (karuna) as well as the sexual union of male and female deities.
Imagery and ritual in deity yoga
Chöd ritual, note the use of Damaru drum and hand-bell, as well as the Kangling (thighbone trumpet).Representations of the deity, such as statues (murti), paintings (thangka), or mandala, are often employed as an aid to visualization, in Deity yoga. The use of visual aids, particularly microcosmic/macrocosmic diagrams, known as "mandalas", is another unique feature of Buddhist Tantra. Mandalas are symbolic depictions of the sacred space of the awakened Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as well as of the inner workings of the human person. The macrocosmic symbolism of the mandala then, also represents the forces of the human body. The explanatory tantra of the Guhyasamaja tantra, the Vajramala, states: "The body becomes a palace, the hallowed basis of all the Buddhas."
Mandalas are also sacred enclosures, sacred architecture that house and contain the uncontainable essence of a central deity or yidam and their retinue. In the book The World of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama describes mandalas thus: "This is the celestial mansion, the pure residence of the deity." The Five Tathagatas or 'Five Buddhas', along with the figure of the Adi-Buddha, are central to many Vajrayana mandalas as they represent the "five wisdoms", which are the five primary aspects of primordial wisdom or Buddha-nature.
All ritual in Vajrayana practice can be seen as aiding in this process of visualization and identification. The practitioner can use various hand implements such as a vajra, bell, hand-drum (damaru) or a ritual dagger (phurba), but also ritual hand gestures (mudras) can be made, special chanting techniques can be used, and in elaborate offering rituals or initiations, many more ritual implements and tools are used, each with an elaborate symbolic meaning to create a special environment for practice. Vajrayana has thus become a major inspiration in traditional Tibetan art.
Tantric sex
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tantric sex or sexual yoga refers to a wide range of practices carried on in Hinduist and Buddhist tantra to exercise sexuality in a ritualized or yogic context, often associated to antinomian or impure elements, like consumption of alcohol, and offerings of impure substances like meat to fierce deities. In particular, sexual fluids have been viewed as "power substances" and used ritualistically, either externally or internally.
The actual terms used in the classical texts to refer to this practice include "Karmamudra" (Tibetan: las kyi phyag rgya, "action seal") in Buddhist tantras and "Maithuna" (Devanagari: मैथुन, "coupling") in Hindu sources. In Hindu Tantra, Maithuna is the most important of the five makara (five tantric substances) and constitutes the main part of the Grand Ritual of Tantra variously known as Panchamakara, Panchatattva, and Tattva Chakra. In Tibetan Buddhism, karmamudra is often an important part of the completion stage of tantric practice.
While there may be some connection between these practices and the Kāmashāstra literature (which include the famed Kāmasūtra), the two practice traditions are separate methods with separate goals. As British Indologist Geoffrey Samuel notes, while the kāmasāstra literature is about the pursuit of sexual pleasure (kāmā), sexual yoga practices are often aimed towards the quest for liberation (moksa).
The actual terms used in the classical texts to refer to this practice include "Karmamudra" (Tibetan: las kyi phyag rgya, "action seal") in Buddhist tantras and "Maithuna" (Devanagari: मैथुन, "coupling") in Hindu sources. In Hindu Tantra, Maithuna is the most important of the five makara (five tantric substances) and constitutes the main part of the Grand Ritual of Tantra variously known as Panchamakara, Panchatattva, and Tattva Chakra. In Tibetan Buddhism, karmamudra is often an important part of the completion stage of tantric practice.
While there may be some connection between these practices and the Kāmashāstra literature (which include the famed Kāmasūtra), the two practice traditions are separate methods with separate goals. As British Indologist Geoffrey Samuel notes, while the kāmasāstra literature is about the pursuit of sexual pleasure (kāmā), sexual yoga practices are often aimed towards the quest for liberation (moksa).
History
Vajradhara in union with consort | Mithuna, Lakshmana Temple, Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India. |
According to Samuel, late Vedic texts like the Jaiminiya Brahmana, the Chandogya Upanisad, and the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, "treat sexual intercourse as symbolically equivalent to the Vedic sacrifice, and ejaculation of semen as the offering." The Brhadaranyaka contains various sexual rituals and practices which are mostly aimed at obtaining a child which are concerned with the loss of male virility and power.[4] One passage from the Brhadaranyaka states:
Her vulva is the sacrificial ground; her pubic hair is the sacred grass; her labia majora are the Soma-press; and her labia minora are the fire blazing at the centre. A man who engages in sexual intercourse with this knowledge obtains as great a world as a man who performs a Soma sacrifice, and he appropriates to himself the merits of the women with whom he has sex. The women, on the other hand, appropriate to themselves the merits of a man who engages in sexual intercourse with them without this knowledge. (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 6.4.3, trans. Olivelle 1998: 88)
One of the earliest mentions of sexual yoga is in the Mahayana Buddhist Mahāyānasūtrālamkāra of Asanga (c. 5th century). The passage states:
"Supreme self-control is achieved in the reversal of sexual intercourse in the blissful Buddha-poise and the untrammelled vision of one's spouse."
According to David Snellgrove, the text's mention of a ‘reversal of sexual intercourse’ might indicate the practice of withholding ejaculation. Snellgrove states:
It is by no means improbable that already by the fifth century when Asanga was writing, these techniques of sexual yoga were being used in reputable Buddhist circles, and that Asanga himself accepted such a practice as valid. The natural power of the breath, inhaling and exhaling, was certainly accepted as an essential force to be controlled in Buddhist as well as Hindu yoga. Why therefore not the natural power of the sexual force? [...] Once it is established that sexual yoga was already regarded by Asanga as an acceptable yogic practice, it becomes far easier to understand how Tantric treatises, despite their apparent contradiction of previous Buddhist teachings, were so readily canonized in the following centuries.
According to Geoffrey Samuel, while it is possible that some kind of sexual yoga existed in the fourth or fifth centuries, Substantial evidence for such practices, however, dates from considerably later, from the seventh and eighth centuries, and derives from Saiva and Buddhist Tantric circles. Here we see sexual yoga as part of a specific complex of practices. On the Saiva side this is associated with a series of named teachers in South and North India, the Cittar (Siddha) teachers in the south, including Tirumülar and Bogar, and the so-called Nath teachers in the north, where the principal names are Matsyendra (Matsyendranath) and Gorakh (Gorakhnath). On the Buddhist side, it is associated with so-called Mahayoga Tantras. These developments appear to be happening at more or less the same time in all three areas.
Jayanta Bhatta, the 9th-century scholar of the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy and who commented on Tantra literature, stated that the Tantric ideas and spiritual practices are mostly well placed, but it also has "immoral teachings" such as by the so-called "Nilambara" sect where its practitioners "wear simply one blue garment, and then as a group engage in unconstrained public sex" on festivals. He wrote, this practice is unnecessary and it threatens fundamental values of society.
Douglas Renfrew Brooks states that the antinomian elements such as the use of intoxicating substances and sex were not animistic, but were adopted in some Kaula traditions to challenge the Tantric devotee to break down the "distinctions between the ultimate reality of Brahman and the mundane physical and mundane world". By combining erotic and ascetic techniques, states Brooks, the Tantric broke down all social and internal assumptions, became Shiva-like.[9] In Kashmir Shaivism, states David Gray, the antinomian transgressive ideas were internalized, for meditation and reflection, and as a means to "realize a transcendent subjectivity".
Tantric sexual practices are often seen as exceptional and elite, and not accepted by all sects. They are found only in some tantric literature belonging to Buddhist and Hindu Tantra, but are entirely absent from Jain Tantra. In the Kaula tradition and others where sexual fluids as power substances and ritual sex are mentioned, scholars disagree in their translations, interpretations and practical significance. Yet, emotions, eroticism and sex are universally regarded in Tantric literature as natural, desirable, a means of transformation of the deity within, to "reflect and recapitulate the bliss of Shiva and Shakti". Pleasure and sex is another aspect of life and a "root of the universe", whose purpose extends beyond procreation and is another means to spiritual journey and fulfillment.
This idea flowers with the inclusion of kama art in Hindu temple arts, and its various temple architecture and design manuals such as the Shilpa-prakasha by the Hindu scholar Ramachandra Kulacara.
Practices
Her vulva is the sacrificial ground; her pubic hair is the sacred grass; her labia majora are the Soma-press; and her labia minora are the fire blazing at the centre. A man who engages in sexual intercourse with this knowledge obtains as great a world as a man who performs a Soma sacrifice, and he appropriates to himself the merits of the women with whom he has sex. The women, on the other hand, appropriate to themselves the merits of a man who engages in sexual intercourse with them without this knowledge. (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 6.4.3, trans. Olivelle 1998: 88)
One of the earliest mentions of sexual yoga is in the Mahayana Buddhist Mahāyānasūtrālamkāra of Asanga (c. 5th century). The passage states:
"Supreme self-control is achieved in the reversal of sexual intercourse in the blissful Buddha-poise and the untrammelled vision of one's spouse."
According to David Snellgrove, the text's mention of a ‘reversal of sexual intercourse’ might indicate the practice of withholding ejaculation. Snellgrove states:
It is by no means improbable that already by the fifth century when Asanga was writing, these techniques of sexual yoga were being used in reputable Buddhist circles, and that Asanga himself accepted such a practice as valid. The natural power of the breath, inhaling and exhaling, was certainly accepted as an essential force to be controlled in Buddhist as well as Hindu yoga. Why therefore not the natural power of the sexual force? [...] Once it is established that sexual yoga was already regarded by Asanga as an acceptable yogic practice, it becomes far easier to understand how Tantric treatises, despite their apparent contradiction of previous Buddhist teachings, were so readily canonized in the following centuries.
According to Geoffrey Samuel, while it is possible that some kind of sexual yoga existed in the fourth or fifth centuries, Substantial evidence for such practices, however, dates from considerably later, from the seventh and eighth centuries, and derives from Saiva and Buddhist Tantric circles. Here we see sexual yoga as part of a specific complex of practices. On the Saiva side this is associated with a series of named teachers in South and North India, the Cittar (Siddha) teachers in the south, including Tirumülar and Bogar, and the so-called Nath teachers in the north, where the principal names are Matsyendra (Matsyendranath) and Gorakh (Gorakhnath). On the Buddhist side, it is associated with so-called Mahayoga Tantras. These developments appear to be happening at more or less the same time in all three areas.
Jayanta Bhatta, the 9th-century scholar of the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy and who commented on Tantra literature, stated that the Tantric ideas and spiritual practices are mostly well placed, but it also has "immoral teachings" such as by the so-called "Nilambara" sect where its practitioners "wear simply one blue garment, and then as a group engage in unconstrained public sex" on festivals. He wrote, this practice is unnecessary and it threatens fundamental values of society.
Douglas Renfrew Brooks states that the antinomian elements such as the use of intoxicating substances and sex were not animistic, but were adopted in some Kaula traditions to challenge the Tantric devotee to break down the "distinctions between the ultimate reality of Brahman and the mundane physical and mundane world". By combining erotic and ascetic techniques, states Brooks, the Tantric broke down all social and internal assumptions, became Shiva-like.[9] In Kashmir Shaivism, states David Gray, the antinomian transgressive ideas were internalized, for meditation and reflection, and as a means to "realize a transcendent subjectivity".
Tantric sexual practices are often seen as exceptional and elite, and not accepted by all sects. They are found only in some tantric literature belonging to Buddhist and Hindu Tantra, but are entirely absent from Jain Tantra. In the Kaula tradition and others where sexual fluids as power substances and ritual sex are mentioned, scholars disagree in their translations, interpretations and practical significance. Yet, emotions, eroticism and sex are universally regarded in Tantric literature as natural, desirable, a means of transformation of the deity within, to "reflect and recapitulate the bliss of Shiva and Shakti". Pleasure and sex is another aspect of life and a "root of the universe", whose purpose extends beyond procreation and is another means to spiritual journey and fulfillment.
This idea flowers with the inclusion of kama art in Hindu temple arts, and its various temple architecture and design manuals such as the Shilpa-prakasha by the Hindu scholar Ramachandra Kulacara.
Practices
Tantric sex is strongly associated to the practice of semen retention. While there is already a mention of ascetics practising it in the 4th century CE Mahabharata, those techniques were rare until late Buddhist Tantra. Otherwise, intercourse is usually directed to generate sexual fluids that constituted the "preferred offering of the Tantric deities." Some extreme texts go further, such as the Buddhist text Candamaharosana-tantra advocating consumption of bodily waste products as "power substances", teaching the waste should be consumed as a diet "eaten by all the Buddhas" without slightest disgust.
It was around the first millennium that Tantra registered practices of semen retention, like the penance ceremony of asidharavrata and the posterior yogic technique of vajroli mudra, probably adopted from ancient, non-Tantric celibate schools. Buddhist Tantric works further directed the focus away from sexual emission towards retention and intentionally prolongued bliss, thus "interiorizing" the tantric offering of fluids directed to the deities. In Buddhist Kalachakra Tantra, emission of semen is mostly reserved only to masters and enlightened ones.
It was around the first millennium that Tantra registered practices of semen retention, like the penance ceremony of asidharavrata and the posterior yogic technique of vajroli mudra, probably adopted from ancient, non-Tantric celibate schools. Buddhist Tantric works further directed the focus away from sexual emission towards retention and intentionally prolongued bliss, thus "interiorizing" the tantric offering of fluids directed to the deities. In Buddhist Kalachakra Tantra, emission of semen is mostly reserved only to masters and enlightened ones.
Kamabandha (erotic sculpture) at Khajuraho temple according to Kamakala Tattva in Silpasastra, a Tantra text.
A quote from a Tanta text on Hindu temple arts, sex and eroticism
In this context, hear the rationale for erotic sculpture panels, I will explain them according to the received tradition among sculptors.
Kama is the root of the world's existence. All that is born originates from Kama, it is by Kama also that primordial matter and all beings eventually dissolve away.
Without [passion of] Shiva and Shakti, creation would be nothing but a figment, nothing from birth to death occurs without activation of Kama.
Shiva is manifest as the great linga, Shakti essential form is the yoni, By their interaction, the entire world comes into being; this is called the activity of Kama.
Canonical erotic art is an extensive subject in authoritative scriptures, as they say, a place devoid of erotic imagery is a place to be shunned.
By Tantric authority, such places are considered inferior and to be avoided, as if tantamount to the lair of death, of impenetrable darkness.
— Shilpa-prakasha 2.498–503, 11th-12th century,
Hindu Tantra text, Translated by Michael D Rabe
In this context, hear the rationale for erotic sculpture panels, I will explain them according to the received tradition among sculptors.
Kama is the root of the world's existence. All that is born originates from Kama, it is by Kama also that primordial matter and all beings eventually dissolve away.
Without [passion of] Shiva and Shakti, creation would be nothing but a figment, nothing from birth to death occurs without activation of Kama.
Shiva is manifest as the great linga, Shakti essential form is the yoni, By their interaction, the entire world comes into being; this is called the activity of Kama.
Canonical erotic art is an extensive subject in authoritative scriptures, as they say, a place devoid of erotic imagery is a place to be shunned.
By Tantric authority, such places are considered inferior and to be avoided, as if tantamount to the lair of death, of impenetrable darkness.
— Shilpa-prakasha 2.498–503, 11th-12th century,
Hindu Tantra text, Translated by Michael D Rabe
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Tantric sex originates from ancient Hinduism and revolves around sexual practices that focus on creating a deep, intimate connection.
During tantric sex, the aim is to be present at the moment to achieve a sensual and fulfilling sexual experience.
This blog explores what tantric sex is, the processes of getting to know one’s body and one’s partner’s body, how to prepare, and building the moment both alone and with a partner. It also covers breathing techniques, positions, and tips.
What is tantric sex?
Taking things slowly and focusing on deep breathing can help move sexual energy during tantric sex.
The concept of tantric sex came from ancient Hinduism and ideas around tantra. Tantra stems loosely from religious texts that focus on spiritualism.
Tantric sex is a slow, meditative form of sex where the end goal is not orgasm but enjoying the sexual journey and sensations of the body. It aims to move sexual energy throughout the body for healing, transformation, and enlightenment.
Proponents of tantric sex believe that tantric techniques may help resolve sexual complications such as premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, or anorgasmia.
Knowing one’s body
Tantric sex encourages people to get to know their bodies and become in tune with them. By understanding the desire of one’s own body, one can incorporate this during sex with a partner. The process may lead to greater sexual fulfillment and more intense orgasms.
To understand what one’s body wants, it can be useful to engage in tantric self-love or masturbation.
If a person finds that they have emotional blocks around self-touch, they should be curious and gentle with themselves as they explore what is preventing them from getting to know their own body more intimately. The more a person knows about their body and pleasure zones, the more likely they are to have a satisfying sexual experience.
If someone does not wish to engage in masturbation and has a partner, however, they may feel more comfortable learning about their own body through partnered sex.
During tantric sex, the aim is to be present at the moment to achieve a sensual and fulfilling sexual experience.
This blog explores what tantric sex is, the processes of getting to know one’s body and one’s partner’s body, how to prepare, and building the moment both alone and with a partner. It also covers breathing techniques, positions, and tips.
What is tantric sex?
Taking things slowly and focusing on deep breathing can help move sexual energy during tantric sex.
The concept of tantric sex came from ancient Hinduism and ideas around tantra. Tantra stems loosely from religious texts that focus on spiritualism.
Tantric sex is a slow, meditative form of sex where the end goal is not orgasm but enjoying the sexual journey and sensations of the body. It aims to move sexual energy throughout the body for healing, transformation, and enlightenment.
Proponents of tantric sex believe that tantric techniques may help resolve sexual complications such as premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, or anorgasmia.
Knowing one’s body
Tantric sex encourages people to get to know their bodies and become in tune with them. By understanding the desire of one’s own body, one can incorporate this during sex with a partner. The process may lead to greater sexual fulfillment and more intense orgasms.
To understand what one’s body wants, it can be useful to engage in tantric self-love or masturbation.
If a person finds that they have emotional blocks around self-touch, they should be curious and gentle with themselves as they explore what is preventing them from getting to know their own body more intimately. The more a person knows about their body and pleasure zones, the more likely they are to have a satisfying sexual experience.
If someone does not wish to engage in masturbation and has a partner, however, they may feel more comfortable learning about their own body through partnered sex.
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