Let the Moon Be Free- Conversations on Kashmiri Tantra

by Eric Baret

  Emotion, sensation... All is right, all is wrong. We cannot understand what we are talking about. Sometimes poets can express what cannot be conceptualized.

  When I feel the fantasy of understanding arise in me, I observe the way I function. Like the dog who wants the bone, I live in fear, I need to grab onto something, I need reference points to feel safe.

  Some people want to define the type of relationship that they are having with someone in their social environment. They want to know if that person is their lover, their husband, etc. They want to locate themselves... It is impossible to know anything. The beauty of a human relationship is to be undefined. In every instant, everything is new. Intimacy happens in the moment, not in memory nor in the future. When you approach someone, or life, without knowing anything, all is possible. The value of every situation that you encounter only exists in the present. One situation cannot be superior to the other.

  So, look inside this mechanism that wants to know, to understand, to own. It is the same fantasy as wanting to be realized. It is fear in action. I know this mechanism in myself. I respect it. I leave it free of pretense, of fear. I am available. I do not pretend that I should be free of anything. This vision is clarity.

  Wanting to understand is expecting something. Witness how often in life we are in expectation. There is nothing to hope for. What could be stronger, more beautiful, more amazing, more extraordinary than what happens in the moment, right now?

  Observe the fantasy: I'm not interested in what happens in the moment. It's always something else, somewhere else that grabs my attention, that excites me; the present moment is insignificant. We spend our life projecting: tomorrow, when I’m married, when I’m divorced, when I’m wise, when I do yoga, meditation, when I have a third car, a second child, then life will truly be beautiful... Observe the mechanism.

  You can't help your fantasy when it desires change. You can't be different. You carry your fears, your anxieties, your sickness, your violence, and it is wonderful as it is. There is nothing to change.

  To want to change is postponement. What I feel is essential—that is the tantric approach.

  We need to be open to all expressions of beauty. We need to read Nicolas de Cues, Ibn Ata Allah Iskandari, the great Taoists or the Chan masters. Every time the translators use different words so that we do not get attached to an expression. Beauty is without form. To understand it is to want to give it form.

  Does this imply that there is no meaning to life?

  There is: the meaning you assign to it. But at one point, you no longer justify anything. This sets you free from all concepts, all meaning-makers. Then only an emotion remains, independent of any story.

  Even meaninglessness it still a meaning that you project. Mind works in such a way that you cannot conceive of an absence of meaning without making it into a meaning.

  So, you get rid of both meaning and meaninglessness.

  When sensing, no question arises. When you get punched, when you fall in love, when you bite your tongue, when you contemplate the beauty of a child or a galloping horse, you are so taken by the power of the event that you don't try to find significance in it.

  Make yourself available to what is, before the psyche creates meaning or non-meaning; that is beauty. When you listen to poetry, you feel the beauty before understanding. When you say, “This is what it means,” you fall back in the soup. It’s the same thing when you look at a painting: you feel the charm before you understand.

  I'd like to hear about celebration, singing, dancing.

  In a deep sense, dance is the intuition that stillness is a thought. A still body is a concept: the body is always moving. The nature of the body, as of all things, is made of rhythms. In thoughtless moments of somatic intimacy, you become available to these internal rhythms.

  Music isn't anything else. Some dances arise from this intimate rhythm, just as some forms of music bring us back to peace.

  Depending on the sound frequency, we discover different chambers of resonance in our body. Some forms of music stimulate vitality, others mental clarity, emotions or affection.

  Beauty is everywhere, even if all forms of music are not identical. Even if a musician’s capacity to create is not always the same. Some of Bach’s or Mozart’s works were written for commercial purposes. Even if they seem less inspired than those more directly channeled, they still show the extraordinary signature of their composer. Similarly, in painting, Kaii Higashiyama’s folding screens made for the temple of Toshodai-ji are an explosion of beauty. Some of his paintings are less remarkable. For him, as for many other great painters, all expressions do not live in the same silence.

  The more you make yourself available to deep sleep, the more you get sensitized to what this space expresses. Pieces of music which evoke this tranquility and which, at a certain time, would have bored you, will now seem magical to you. Those who used to resonate in you on a vital, intellectual or affective level, while still keeping their value, will seem lighter to you. Just as children practice children’s sports and adults more mature sports, some forms of music are more adapted to children while others are more mature.

  Dances born out of the forefeeling of rhythm are extraordinary. The vital rhythms of African dance give it its infinite beauty. Other dances are more conceptualized. Well performed, the tango is magnificent; it is an art that influences our affectivity in a noble way, but it remains on the emotional level.

  Classical Indian dances reveal more in the form of mental clarity. They do not all resonate from silence because some of them were codified at a later stage. Nevertheless, Kathakali, reformulated in Kerala early in the twentieth century like a lot of its ancestors, offers a breach in time and space. Krishna Menon and Jean Klein were staunch admirers of it.

  Sometimes a dancer breaks free of the dance’s codification and bestows on us a moment beyond expression. Some of Caroline Carlson’s movements are perfect stillness. Modern art allows as much beauty as traditional art, yet with a different expression.

  Some time ago, Marie Chouinard, a dancer from Quebec, invited me to a rehearsal of her latest creation. For an hour and a half, she carefully observed her magnificent dancers and then, notes in hand, she made her comments. Nothing had escaped her. I was struck by the fact that her corrections were merely an invitation to feel more, to be more present. This feeling carries itself into expression. We go from the inside to the outside: that is art’s true teaching. That is when you understand the superb quality of her choreographies.

  What about the desire to celebrate?

  When you want to celebrate, you leave your deep resonance, which is celebration. There is nothing to celebrate. Celebration is living while knowing that there is nothing to celebrate—because everything is a celebration.

  It's a bit like late Japanese art which tries hard to point to the absolute, to the point of becoming superficial. Chinese art is rougher but more powerful; it causes space to explode in a bigger way. Japanese art tries so hard to talk about space that sometimes there is only talk left. We find the same observation in the second generation of Buto dancers.

  To want to celebrate is a lack of living celebration. Deep emotion is beyond all celebration. Your felt sense is celebration. Then, according to your mental, intellectual or affective capacity, you are going to transpose the moment. Make sure that the ritual does not become an attempt at perfection; make sure that what you are talking about does not become too framed into a ritual form of codification. As we can witness in late Japanese martial arts, this hollow ritualism locks the art form. When all fallen leaves have been raked, it is no use kicking the tree to get more. That which is natural does not need to be helped.

  It's like someone who would want to use the extraordinary expression of tantric art on a sexual level, while the emotion of which the tantras speak was conceptualized as “a couple united in the flesh” for purely metaphysical reasons. Tantras communicate something completely different from the usual male-female relations. Kha
juraho’s sculptures do not speak of eroticism but of silence. The same goes for the Song of Songs or for the drunkenness of great Muslim mystics, which does not evoke wine. Contrary to what often happens, the image should not be taken literally.

  It is from the emotion of being nothing that the tantric ritual will manifest on a sexual level. A hand, a body without intention will discover what the tantras are about. But these are not exercises to learn and to rehearse in order to celebrate something.

  Some fake forms are more intelligent than others, but all are caricatures. Parody brings a form of fatigue.

  Ajit Mookerjee, ex-curator of the New Delhi Arts and Crafts Museum and a famous collector, spent his life looking for so-called tantric objects. Later, he sold the collection to a family of merchants specialized in exports. More for commercial than metaphysical reasons, a new concept was thus created: tantric art. It is in this way that a part of the ritual art of India and the Himalayas was revealed to the lay world in the seventies.

  A member of the Mookerjee family was studying tantric rituals in Bengal. To my teacher who visited him, this man revealed that very big drops in energy happened a few weeks after each ritual union. In a ritual that goes from the outside to the inside, this is inevitable. The ritual must progress from the inside to the outside. Then only, in this resonance, can some technical elements be transmitted.

  Fire comes from the inside. To learn to fight, you must have the madness of combat in you. The teacher only points out to the student a few elements which will sharpen his natural inclination.

  But the one who comes without boldness learns only gestures and, even if his movements become fast and powerful, he often won't be able to apply them in the trauma of a real fight. Learning the art of combat does not create a fighter; you need to be a fighter first, and then acquire the art. Yes, you can teach competitive fighting... but that is not art.

  From the Kashmiri viewpoint, ritual always comes from the inside and moves towards the outside—there is its strength. The power and the craziness needed to live life have their foundation in that vibration, in that peace.

  What is a ritual? It is world creation and destruction. It is the person's creation and destruction. There is no other ritual. You cannot live it from the outside.

  I am often told that illness has a psychological origin. This makes me feel guilty. Do you think it is a concept?

  You cannot feel anything other than what you feel in the moment. You cannot choose what you feel either. That is determined by your heredity, your past, your gentle or violent childhood. Your nature will choose the way you react to situations. Some faint when they see blood, others get excited; you do not get to decide.

  There is no reason, period. A reason is a philosophical concept. Do not seek to justify events that take place in your life. Trying to analyze life is petty. Explaining one’s experience is a form of stupidity. You can only witness your own immaturity. Every year, you see more of your immaturity. So, put aside all attempts at understanding your life. Forget explanations, especially interpretations from therapists and psychologists. They may be worth something in the moment when they are spoken, but they are not a subject for reflection. Take them as life winking at you. The comments that your neighbor has about you are right, but right only in the sense that he cannot perceive you any other way than he does. What you are told is always legitimate for the one who tells it, but it is never your business.

  So, set aside anybody else’s judgments or interpretations. Set aside your own as well, for they only come from your environment’s opinions that you have internalized.

  When you no longer speak and you no longer listen to anything, what's left? A sensation is left: tension in your shoulders, your throat, your belly… all emotion is sensation. Come back to this level. Listen.

  What does listening mean? It means to love. Without love, listening is impossible. To love means to be available to what's here. There is nothing for you, you do not seek to understand anything, but to fully feel. You cannot do anything else in life. And that is enough.

  What we call our birth and our death is the birth and death of the body. On that level, there is only the body. Before the body leaves us, it would be appropriate to question what is being born and what dies. Not in a conceptual way, not the body of which doctors and psychologists speak, because that is the body of their fear. But another body exists, the feeling body in which fear, emotion, greed, desire, anxiety all register. The body that shakes, the body that clams up, the body that sweats, the body that resists, all these bodies are doorways to the real body.

  Put all understanding, all knowledge aside and, a few times during the day, especially at night when going to bed, give yourself to these moments when you remain silent and when you let the body speak. Everything else comes from that.

  As soon as you listen, all ideas of guilt disappear. There is no more responsibility, no more remorse, no more regret, and later, no more hesitation. You are present to what is here—there is no more direction. At that moment, you only wish for the body, the psyche, the money that you have.

  All this is only true in the moment; tomorrow everything will be different—but you are no longer trying to change.

  It is extraordinary when, just for a moment, you desire that which is here. The pain, the fear, the jealousy, the loneliness, the uncertainty which are here. To want that which is here is the ultimate and only step. There are none before, and none after.

  The present isn’t a concept but a felt sense. You will discover that there is nothing there either. Your availability will explode what is there; a sensation of freedom will remain. The more you notice how much you are made of conditioning, the more freedom you will feel. Whereas before, the more you wanted to be free, the more you felt conditioned. Feeling your conditioning opens you to the sensation of freedom. The more you discover that your body is only constriction and defense, the freer you will feel from constriction and defense. The more you feel that your psyche is only fear and greed, the more you set yourself free from these forces. Remain on a somatic level, there is nothing to think about.

  What happens to you is a gift that you give yourself. No one has chosen it for you. It is your own maturity in the making.

  When illness arrives in our life, there is no more happiness, as if happiness was conditioned by health. Thus, it is a concept, but I am happy when I am healthy.

  Enjoy it, it is a wonderful moment. If one day you are in poor health, you will notice that you can also be happy. You cannot prepare for that. When you live with a woman, you cannot prepare for being a widower, you live with her for all eternity, in the moment. If you are in radiant health, that is the only truth.

  Illness and pain are also extraordinary gifts. They teach us a lot about the way we function. Do not become sick on purpose, but use it when it's here. Your good health shows you that you do not need to be sick. When you need to know that side of yourself, your needs will be met.

  The practice of yoga makes the notion of illness disappear. Pleasure and pain are very abstract areas; yoga allows you to hover in those places. You become more and more intimate with your body. Then, disease is no longer a surprise; you feel it coming years ahead. You have a hunch without really knowing, and when it happens, there is a sort of smile. Past and future are concepts. That is also true on a psychological level.

  Observe a child's body; you can easily read everything it expresses. There is no causality, and in fact, it is your present life which explains your childhood and not the childhood that explains your current life. Past doesn't come before future. Thought cannot understand that. Your actions shed light on some of your past behaviors. That is inconceivable, yet that is the way it is.

  We are the ones who create a boundary out of fear. It's the same fear that makes us see our room the same way every day, the same fear that makes us say, “I know my room”—notions that a single LSD pill would easily question. You do not know your room, you know the fear room that you want stable, identi
cal, precise. Under the influence of LSD, you would see another room and it wouldn’t be more true or more false. Your room isn't fixed, it is movement; it constantly gets wider, narrower, longer. Out of fear we create a supposedly constant room, a reassuring room that we recognize with a sigh of relief when we “come home.” My garden, my body, my wife—I recognize everything. How safeguarded and how possessive! Out of fear of the elasticity of life, fear of knowing nothing, of having nothing.

  When you challenge the notion of a supposedly dense and localized body through the practice which you are familiar with, your body and your breath will appear different. In those moments, you feel that certain bubbles burst—past and future are in those bubbles. Worry leaves you.

  Everything that happens to you is a gift for dying. A gift that allows you to recognize your pretending to know. Stop fearing what challenges you; on the contrary, it's only about letting go of your immense suffering.

  Is there a last question before we end?

  Death... When we leave the body?

  Stop right there, with that first word. Death is death's business, not yours. But fear of death, fear of death is your gift for living. Just look, without criticism, at everything the word death evokes for you. When we leave this building, we can get run over, there is nothing to think about, everything is okay.

  If you're lucky enough to carry it with clarity, fear of death is beautiful. It is a very strong emotion. You need to approach it somatically. When you feel that death has become unavoidable, since you can't do anything about it, fear leaves you. Then something else presents itself; an extraordinary intensity, a joy arises. But if you hope for a chance to escape it, things become more complex.

  Once, on a journey on mescaline, I felt the sidewalk open under my feet and faced my incapacity to cope. I was lying down in an apartment overlooking the Vieux-Port in Marseille, overwhelmed by the music, the visions, the most horrible sensations according to my imagination of that time. I understood that I wouldn't come out of the experience alive. I didn't have the capacity to win that fight. I completely accepted defeat; faced with inevitable failure, I stopped struggling... and in a single moment, all the music, all the visions were transformed into something you could call divine. Then I understood with my senses what my teacher had tried to relate to me so many times.