Tantra (pronounced tahn'trah)
today in the Western world
has come to mean
spiritual sexuality
Indeed, tantra has almost become the generic term
for all styles/traditions of spiritual/meditative sexuality

Tantra
which is part of both
some Hindu and some Buddhist teachings
actually is far more encompassing
than sex done spiritually

Tantra embraces all:
birth, death, pleasure, pain
wealth, poverty, beauty, ugliness
joy, sadness, anger, fear, ecstasy
sex, celibacy

Tantra basically is a teaching of acceptance
a teaching of non-attachment

When we are grasping an object / action / outcome
we are attached
there is no freedom

When we are avoiding an object / action / outcome
we are attached
there is no freedom

It is through the acceptance of all
as it is
that we become/are free

Acceptance

is not submission
is not giving up
Here, acceptance means non-attachment

By embracing the present
while letting go of
expectations of the future and
comparisons with the past

we can fully dance with life
(and death)

There is no good / bad
no right / wrong
no spiritual / evil
only suffering
unless/until we let go of our attachments

Nothing
is preferable

If we feel superior/inferior because we are / aren't

we are attached

There are other words for superior:

pious, proud, arrogant, egotistic, patronizing, condescending

There are other words for inferior:

guilt, shame, worthless, incompetent, unimportant,
dumb, awkward

It is neither in the doing-ness nor in the non-doing-ness
It is in how we relate to an object / action / outcome
that makes the difference

If we are attached to an object / action / outcome,
sooner or later we will be in
physical / emotional pain / discomfort
when the object is no longer there
or is there when we don't want it there
when the action is too slow, too fast, too...
when the outcome is different than
we had hoped / expected
sooner or later we will be in
what the Buddha termed dukkha
(pronounced doo' kah)
which is loosely translated as suffering
So, do we simply
stop doing the bad behaviors?
start doing the good behaviors?
The answer is not in the stopping or starting
Rather, we shift how we relate
to what we be / do / have

We transform the grasping energy
We transform the avoiding energy

**********************************************************************************

The following are some exerpts regarding and about Tantra that I have taken from the web. I do not agree with some of the ways that they are presented. They speak of Evil, of which I do not believe. Perhaps they are merely speaking in contemporary terms, or perhaps not. Either way, the concepts are of interest and I shall presume that anyone who has reached this far into my website is capable of discernment, and can thus extract these concepts and meanings without getting all caught up in the verbiage.

**********************************************************************************

The body is only layers of invisible energy in form, and it can be awakened if we let go to the sexual energy. This is the way of Tantra. It affirms the life energy within you in totality, so that those on this path find themselves whole and self-confident, with a positive panoramic view of everything.

Today, many people have been exposed to the use of energy for healing, as with Chinese medicine, Reiki, Touch for Health, etc. Yet, few people, except for the Taoists, use the body's most powerful energy center--the sex center--for the achievement of divinity, immortality and enlightenment.

In Tantra, sex is used as the Cosmic union of opposites to create the polarity charge, or potential, that connects with the primordial energy from which everything in the universe arises--the totality of ALL.

On the Tantric path, we learn to use sexual energy in an extended way, not denying the physical (though nothing is really physical), but going further...deeper...higher. We dance with the electromagnetic force field of our partner, and that dance leads to Cosmic oneness. When this energy is matched and balanced correctly through a loving surrender with a partner, the sparks fly. In that moment of sexual embrace and energy exchange, a couple may achieve a Cosmic orgasm, with their essential selves exiting the body. In Tantra we learn to open ourselves to others, not only on the physical but on all levels.

Tantra, the art of spiritualizing your sexuality, offers practical tools to transmute fear and attachment into love and universal power. Jealousy, possessiveness, guilt and other negative emotions that drain your life-force energy, drop away.

Physical instincts, natural urges and actual needs, were installed in human beings by Brahma when he created them. Therefore, they cannot be thought of as 'evil' or something to get rid of. If you don't eat, you will die. So, rather than seeking to control your physical body through severe fasting and starvation, the Tantras teach that one must nourish the body, and *more importantly but less understood* that the act of eating can become sacramental in and of itself. Similarly, the repression of sexual desires may lead to eruption of the sexual energy in other ways. Although the Tantras do not condemn those who practice celibacy as a way of channeling the energy, they *do* say that the energy can be channeled during lovemaking as well. It is the intent that elevates the merely physical to the sublime.

Behind these thoughts is basic common sense: if you don't eat, you will die. If no one has sex, the entire human race will die. Rather than attempting to 'master the flesh' by punishing it or ignoring it, master it by using it as it was given to you, freely and naturally; master if by using it as a vehicle to spirituality. Without the "body" where would the "mind" be? How could anyone even think about merging with god if he had no body, no mind? The body is a temple, to the deity within. It can be used for worship. Do *not* despise the flesh or wish it gone. Believers in reincarnation as it applies to the law of karma may be said to be 'evil' even as they call the left-hand path evil and dark: for encouraging all to be celibate as they burn up their own karmas, they per se urge all to stop populating the earth, to refuse the non-realized soul another vehicle in which to work out his/her karma. What could be more selfish? "I got mine, so you abstain from anything fun and meanwhile, who cares if you work out your karma or not?" There is but a fine line between pleasure and Bliss, and Tantra recognizes both as valid. Partake of pleasure, realize Bliss.

The denigration of women by certain Hindu treatises is hypocritical and could also be called 'evil.' Only women are able to give birth. What could be more sacred than the act of creation? Thus, woman *is* Brahma. When she preserves the child, or the lover, or her place in the world, she *is* Visnu. And when she transcends mere being and knows the purity and grace of Being, she *is* Lord Siva. Sakthi and Kundalini are both thought of as feminine. As is water, without which all would very soon die. Honor each woman as divine Sakthi, and recognize the feminine contained within every male as well: the kundalini, the sakthi, the creative power without which none could continue.

It is often said "Within each yoni is a lingam." Physically, this refers to the clitoris; meta-physically, to the masculine powers within each woman. Truly we all have Siva/Sakthi within our bodily temples. Recognize, unite, be free from the pain of confusion!

To be fair, many Tantric texts were written rather allegorically or with symbolic language, Twilight Talk, so that the inner meanings behind the literal meanings were unable to be grasped by the ignorant. This was done purposely, so that any who studied the Tantras alone would either realize all three meanings of every text: the literal, the allegorical, and the mystical; or shake his/her head in confusion and say 'Get outa here, Jack.' Or words to the effect.

In my personal opinion, the reason that tantra persists as a religion despite the persecution of sexuality in most modern civilizations, the reason it arises spontaneously in different eras and places, and the reason that it crosses socio-cultural lines is that it is based upon some neurological hard-wiring of the human body; something which, when practiced correctly, allows the participants to experience what seems to be -- what IS, for all intents and purposes -- the presence of deity in the person of the sex partner.

**********************************************************************************

I knew that all of the religious mumbo-jumbo i had read about tantra was just a bunch of socio-cultural veneer laid over a basic biological-spiritual truth.

What that truth is has been obliquely approached by research John C. Lilly did on monkeys in the 1950s (before he got into dolphin brain research). As documented in his book, "The Center of the Cyclone," he found that there are four points in the brain, arranged in a row, that control the sexual response of (male) monkeys. He used males because their sexual responses (tumescence, ejaculation, etc.) were easier to see and thus to quantify than the responses of female monkeys -- but the mechanism is the same in both sexes.

The first neural point in the series regulated arousal (erection, ). The second point regulated muscular contraction (ejaculation). The third point regulated the orgasm itself (sensation of sexual culmination). The fourth point he called the "master switch," for when it was stimulated, it entrained the three previously-mentioned centers, causing the monkey to experience erection, ejaculation, and orgasm in the usual predictable order.

The discovery of these four points in the brain indicates that through conscious and learned control, one can separate the entrainment center from the process and thus experience erection (circulatory system), ejaculation (muscular system), or orgasm (neural system) independent of each other.

We all have experienced this disassociation of the entrainment center at one time or another (not always under our conscious volition) as when, for instance, we achieve tumescence but not orgasm, or have an 'involuntary" ejaculation, or have an "unsatisfying" orgasm in which the contractions do not bring the normal degree of sensory pleasure. What tantra teaches is how to control these things so that one can experience orgasm without contraction, thus prolonging it beyond the biologically-regulated constraint imposed by the amount of time it takes to complete the 8-25 contractions you would normally have.

So -- in strictly biological terms -- the practice of tantra becomes somewhat akin to the practice of biofeedback training. It is sort of like learning to wiggle your ears -- it's something you have to work at, because the volitional control of the musculature involved is not part of our usual training in life.

Where does the experience of spirituality come from? That, i have come to believe, is part of our neurological hard-wiring. Human beings seem to be naturally equipped to experience the metaphysical world. Many ages-old techniques for perceiving the realm of spirit make use of repetition (of hymns, prayers, chants, dances) while engaging in single-minded attentiveness to cosmic forces. Tantra provides both repetition and attentiveness. It is not the only way to achieve spiritual bliss, as its religious practitioners assert, but it is one way, and that is good enough for me.