Tantra in the East – origins and today
I came across a “Tantra in India” page online today …. This is more to do with the Tibetan and Hindu spirtual Tantric Paths to enlightenment but I put this page up to give those interested a deeper insight. I see Tantra as a blissful connect of myself with the universe and the world around me. It’s an opportunity to take some time to relax from modern stresses of daily life and be at peace with myself and the world. I found some of the text here amusing as one Tantric path claims to be better than another…perhaps a sign of human egotism that has no place in Tantra at all.
This page is here as a starting point into a journey into Tantra which has far more to offer than mind blowing sex and female ejaculation and male multiple orgasms. For many of us in the West this is a great and fun starting point. For thousands of years the East has been much further advanced !!
Tantra, or more properly tantrika, is a diverse and rich spiritual tradition of the Indian sub-continent. Although in recent years, in the Western world, it has become almost exclusively associated with sex, in reality this is one aspect of what is a way of life. In India itself, tantra is now, nearly always, associated with spells and black deeds.
Neither of these views is correct, and each wildly underestimates the wide-ranging nature of the different traditions. Further, there remains an ocean of tantrik and agamic literature still to be discovered and translated, spanning a period of time which at least reaches back to the 10th century of the common era (c.e.).
The tradition, or perhaps better, the traditions, underwent many phases and schools over this period of time, ranging from an extremely heterodox viewpoint to, in some cases, a very orthodox standpoint.
www.shivashakti.com is an excellent reference site for those looking for the real Tantra.
What Is Tantra?
by OSHO
Tantra is the total surrender, or letting go of all mental, emotional and cultural conditioning, so that universal life energy may flow through you like a river without any effort. It is a letting go to a universal oneness…to love. When fear is removed, Tantra remains.
The word “Tantra” has many definitions, and perhaps its real meaning has been lost to antiquity. Some say it comes from the Sanskrit or Hindi word for fabric or tapestry, meaning that it is woven into one’s life. Others say that it comes from two Sanskrit words, Tanoti and Trayati – Tanoti means to expand consciousness, and Trayati means to liberate consciousness. One might then say that Tantra expands and liberates consciousness.
The highest possible synthesis between love and meditation, Tantra is also the connection between the third dimension and other planes of existence beyond mere materiality. While not a religious philosophy, Tantra embraces a deep spiritual understanding of life, and an ancient art of living in harmony with existence.
It is treating sexual energy as a friend, rather than something to be suppressed or talked about in low tones. It does not deny sex, or consider sex a hindrance to enlightenment or Heavenly Grace. To the contrary, Tantra is the only spiritual path which says that sex is sacred and not a sin.
Tantrikas are God-loving rather than God-fearing. There is a most beautiful word for sex in the Sanskrit language, and that is Kama which means sex/love together, undivided and indivisible. Most everyone is familiar with the classic Kama Sutra, the 7th Century Tantric scripture. Kama is also the name for the Hindu Goddess of love… and love is what Tantra encourages-total love, including the mind, the spirit and the body. Let It All Go!
Meditation
Conscious thought, at least the way we usually do it, is the manifestation of ego, the you that you usually think that you are. Conscious thought is tightly connected with self-concept. The self-concept or ego is nothing more than a set of reactions and mental images which are artificially pasted to the flowing process of pure awareness.
Tantra seeks to obtain pure awareness by destroying this ego image. This is accomplished by a process of visualization. The student is given a particular religious image to meditate upon, for example, one of the deities from the Tantric pantheon. He does this in so thorough a fashion that he becomes that entity. He takes off his own identity and puts on another. This takes a while, as you might imagine, but it works.
During the process, he is able to watch the way that the ego is constructed and put in place. He comes to recognize the arbitrary nature of all egos, including his own, and he escapes from bondage to the ego. He is left in a state where he may have an ego if he so chooses, either his own or whichever other he might wish, or he can do without one. Result: pure awareness. Tantra is not exactly a game of patty cake either.
This is a part of serial articles, please read on our next post.
