“Sex is more than an act of pleasure… it’s the ability to be able to feel so close to a person, so connected, so comfortable that it’s almost breathtaking to the point you feel you can’t take it. And at this moment you’re a part of them.”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Communication is the best sexual technique a man can have. Once you’ve learned how to talk with your partner and truly listen to what she says, you’re well on your way to enriching your sex life and helping her experience powerful orgasms during sex.

Some subjects, though, can be difficult to broach, especially when there’s the potential for embarrassment, confusion or hurt feelings, as is often the case when a couple tries to discuss the sexual aspects of their relationship. But you’ll find that if you approach these subjects tactfully and with sensitivity, you and your partner may learn a great deal about one another, even if you’ve been married for 25 years. Read more

In recent times, the intersection of sex and spirituality has become a topic of great interest in the yoga world, with media revelations about ritual sex, nude yoga, and “yogasms”. However, amidst this discussion, one group of women has been largely overlooked: the forgotten high priestesses of sex, the “debauched” yoginis of Tantra.

Despite conventional scholarship which has often labeled these women as low-caste “sluts” exploited for ritual purposes, religious scholar Miranda Shaw has uncovered a very different history in her book Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism. According to Shaw, these women were not mere “consorts”, but powerful gurus who were once held “in awe, reverence, and obeisance”. Read more

This is the third and the last part of the long article [The Original Tantra] . I have translated his article from Finnish. The article is based on the book Tantra Illuminated by Christoper Wallis.

You can read the 1st part here and the 2nd part here.

In non-dualistic Shaiva tantra, like in the Buddhist tradition, the cause of suffering is considered to be an erroneous view of our own nature. Or can we say that in that view of ourselves we consider all and everything?

You can look at it for a moment: try to create a picture of yourself in your mind. Does it include how you keep your blood running, how you use oxygen to convert nutrients to energy, or how you move your hands by sending signals from your brain through the nerves? Often our picture of ourselves does not include our relationship to our environment, does not include those relations that make our existence possible from moment to moment. Read more

This is a guest blog by a friend of mine, Anssi Pitkänen. Anssi has a great analytical mind and I admire his ability to coherently express complex topics. This text is an article he wrote about the book Tantra Illuminated by Christopher Wallis and ideas behind it, and I have translated the article from Finnish.

The article is quite long, so I will divide it into several shorter pieces so that we have time to assimilate all the information. This first part is an introduction to the entire article and the idea of Non-dualistic Shaiva Tantra.

I wanted to add this article to the blog, because through it we can explore the philosophy of tantra. It helps us to widen our understanding of tantra as a way of life and a spiritual path. Read more