One of the axiomatic truths of all yogic and tantric practices is that we must use the same ground upon which we have fallen in order to stand up, and as we know, the mind, which is so deeply the cause of our suffering, must use itself to relieve our own misery. Tantric practices are one means of seeing through this suffering by facing the avidyā, or the ignorance, that wrongly perceives reality through dualistic mental filters. These practices help us to recognize our tendency to confuse that which is permanent with the temporary forms that manifest within our mind. Of course we must use the mind in order to wake up out of the field of avidyā, and so tantric practices are designed to spread out the whole spectrum of the imagination and the emotions, and then to engage the mind in any and all of its aspects with a sharp, penetrating focus, so that the present circumstances can be experienced directly as the interpenetration of Śiva and Śakti. This automatically brings relief from the suffering because it allows the mind to follow a thread of insight deep into the core of reality.
Tantric practices are deliberately constructed to use form and language in this way, as a means of focusing the mind so that it can use itself—its own perceptions—to stand up and awaken from the ignorance of confusion. Constructions of mind can be seen with utter clarity because even the simplest function of life or the tiniest detail are considered to be the very center of experience. Experience is observed, faced, and penetrated with intelligence; there is no turning from or denying of it. Through the practices we are able to experience the forms of the mind as empty, as having no permanent structure; we experience all form as sacred and specific forms as pure radiance. This is why one of the characteristics of tantric schools is that they become involved in such tiny details, so that everything can be momentarily pulled out of and then threaded back into the full matrix of its background. Each particular, unique thing interpenetrates and shines through all other unique and particular things. This too is the ideal vision of the divine body of the goddess. Tantric rituals are excellent methods for drawing us into the present moment, but because of their focus on detail the tantric schools also have the potential to become lost in the concept and particulars of form.
When you mention the word tantra in India, many people will raise their eyebrows and give you a disapproving look at the mere thought that you even know the word. This is because the vast study of tantra has not only the deepest insights that fulfill the purposes of the Vedas, the Upaniṣads, and the Yoga Sūtra, but also some practices that can easily be (and often are) misused and abused. For example, over the course of time some tantric practices have evolved to include recitation of mantra and the contemplation of yantra for the accumulation of power and personal sensual experience, without any concern for others or for the practices’ true significance within the bigger scheme of reality. In the modern world we have to recognize the vague, secretly erotic, illicit, exploitive, ungrounded sense that is invoked when we use the word tantra. Due to its misuse, today the idea of tantra can conjure up images of sexual orgies or of exotic, repulsive practices and rituals. Many tantric practices are done from an egocentric perspective, out of context and without a teacher. The yogic context of the practices is to examine closely every corner of life—even normally taboo and repressed corners—so as to embrace rather than deny the shadow sides of our own mental constructions.
It is a shame that tantra is sometimes reduced to its eye-catching aspects, because higher and deeper tantra looks on everything within our experience as sacred and as part of an interrelated matrix of experience and understanding. The misperceptions of tantra arise in part because it specifically looks on those things we typically do not like to look at (or things our culture does not like to look at) as being sacred. Consequently, tantric practices often involve the extreme realms of the mind and the senses. We find within Indian mythology various deities, goddesses and gods, involved in exciting stories of extreme violence or extreme passion. For instance, there is the image of a goddess with skulls dangling around her neck, which could easily be perceived as demonic or wildly exotic. In fact the skulls are often considered symbolic of the letters of the alphabet, indicating that the goddess has severed words from their objects and meanings, thereby liberating us (and the objects)from the maze of language that reduces objects to mind-constructed names and thoughts about them. Ultimately you could say that tantra examines those parts of our mind and our existence that we do not want to face: the foremost of these being impermanence and selflessness. For example, there are stories of the vast slaughter of beings, which in fact is something that the universe is actually engaged in and also something most of us do not like to dwell on. But if we step back and take a look at the process of time, we see that the universe, from certain points of view, is a giant death machine, an unending slaughter of beings from which no one will escape. All the emotions and all the aversions and fears that the mind can generate when we contemplate this idea of death—or any other aspect of life that is difficult to face—are drawn out within Indian mythology and within tantric practice so that we can experience the entire potential of our own imagination without superimposing theory onto it.
This process of bringing attention to even the most unpleasant aspects of what is arising is also something we do in our everyday yoga practice as we work with āsana within the realm of feeling and sensation. We explore and open the joints of the body, we uncover fields of sensation and tone, and we expose our deepest emotions in order to experience them without attachment. In this way we open up all the realms of experience and the fields of potential in the mind, just as we would fan out a deck of cards. The effect is that the mind is stunned as it momentarily drops its presuppositions; we become free of the imagination and liberated from the heavy hand of dominance of the ego within the mind. In that instant, when the yoga is working, we can actually have a direct experience of reality. Tantric yoga practices in particular allow us to explore the extremes of the imagination, from the most positive and heavenly to the most negative and hellish. So even though some might prefer to think of tantra as exclusively a means of exploring the world of sexuality, this of course is just one corner of what it is about. Since sexuality is sublimated in so many cultures, and because sexual practices can free the mind from its thinking function, the tantric notion of experiencing reality through the present moment could translate into the misperception that tantra means only sex. Tantric rituals were considered by some ancient scholars as the best method for sublimating and also for fulfilling the immense power and urge that embodied beings have toward sexual fulfillment, and indeed sexual awareness is integral to any disciplined practice of yoga that addresses the body fully. In fact, as we go deeply into hatha yoga through āsana, prāṇāyāma, and meditation, we are tapping into our own sexual energy as we touch the prāṇa in the core of the body. If this energy is denied, it can come back and sabotage even a sincere yogi in subtle or gross ways. This same prāṇa, or pattern of sensation, branches through many levels of desire, attachment, and imagination as it constructs our world experience so that if it is unresolved at a deep sexual level, the very same prāṇa can move the mind in devious ways.
The misperception that tantra is exclusively a group of practices having to do with sexuality also stems from the fact that yoga involves the awakening of the power of the serpent kuṇḍalinī, which is imagined coiled up and asleep, blocking the opening of the central channel. When awakened she uncoils, opening the mouth of the central channel; she then turns around and enters the suṣumnā. Her movement in this central channel, the middle path of the subtle body, causes the mind, the citta, to drop into deepening layers of profound meditation. There is an obvious parallel between the sexual potential that rests within the body and the presence and awakening of this serpent that dwells above the center of the pelvic floor. This coiling of the sexual energy, which is the normal state for most people, blocks the central channel and causes us to project our sexual desires externally onto sense objects. The citta (mind and intelligen
ce), which follows the prāṇa, also then coils and superimposes symbols onto processes, creating in the mind the appearance of separate sense objects. In this light we can see that kuṇḍalinī represents more than just sexual desire; she is also the desire to know things, the craving not to suffer, and the aspiration for liberation for oneself and for all others. A balanced study and practice of yoga brings attention to the true nature of others and the mind, and to how many aspects of life are interconnected. An unbalanced, exclusive focus on obscure tantric practices having to do with uncoiling our sexual energy, without proper grounding in the truth of impermanence, may put us in the situation of being obsessed by imaginary powers and ruled by the ego. There are high intoxicated states of mind in which we still split desire, sensation, and feeling into subject and object. The subject-object divide revolves around the ego and stems from the primordial ignorance (avidyā), which has gotten us into this situation in the first place. In the skilled practice of tantric yoga there is the awakening of internal energy and an experience of the full intensity of sensation and feeling we term sexuality. In that awakening, when the practice is balanced, there is a release of the ego’s tendency to grasp onto the division of subject and object, so that the cause of great frustration and suffering does not occur.
One of the teachings of the Bhagavad Gītā is that kāma, which means “lust,” is considered to be a great sin and an immense enemy because it inevitably causes hatred or anger. Intense emotions typically arise from a state of lust because it is an ego-based mind state that represents an absolute split between subject and object. Due to this division, it is virtually impossible to fulfill the kind of endless desire that arises from lust, and the residue from that lack of fulfillment results in cycles of confusion and delusion. In fact, it is the nature of ego that it can never be truly satisfied or fulfilled, no matter how much enjoyment and gratification it gets. A deep sense of satisfaction is accessible only when the union of opposites is perceived, when the interpenetration of foreground with background is experienced. As such, since by definition the ego is separate from all else, it can never be completely fulfilled. The practices of yoga and of tantra cultivate the complete reversal of the tendencies of mind and ego to split things into subjects and objects. Proper practice does not try to eliminate desire; it eliminates the perception of their being a subject and object. So practice opens a source of unending and lasting contentment and pleasure through the realization of desire without projecting that desire onto any object. Kuṇḍalinī, the summation of deep desire on many levels, awakens from her coil in the pelvic floor and flows on the middle path to her true love Śiva, or pure consciousness, at the crown of the head. The goddess kuṇḍalinī is of course prakṛti from the Sāṁkhya system, and Śiva is puruṣa. Yoga is then total satisfaction and complete pleasure within the present moment without the ego; without the self (the ultimate subject) trying to define and then grasp or reject an object that it perceives as separate.
In tantric yoga it is postulated that the awakening of the kuṇḍalinī stimulates an immensely satisfying flow of joy and pleasure and of deep emotion far more profound than any feeling or sentiment we can think about or describe. The awakening allows a quality of awareness that is neither conceptual nor imagined to flourish so that perceptions become immediate, essential, vibrant, and living. Without the arousing of this energy deep in the core of the body, there is more potential for fantasy, an element of unmet desire or of intellectualization arising at the core of your yoga practice. This is because the body holds the history of our mental activities within its habitual patterns, in muscles and connective tissues as well as in habits of perception and movement. The closing verse of the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā summarizes this: “As long as the prāṇa has not entered to flow in the middle path and the bindu droplet does not become firm from binding the prānic winds; as long as the mind does not assume the form of effortless spontaneous arising, all talk of wisdom is unfounded prattle and nonsensical hypocrisy.”
Another important aspect of tantra is that it deliberately uses what you might call a “gross-out factor” as a method of bringing awareness into clear focus. In other words, tantric teachings often include practices that focus on facets of ordinary life that are not usually dealt with, sometimes not even acknowledged in proper society. For instance, for many people it is virtually impossible to grasp and deal with the fact that we will all die and that the body we so dearly love and identify with will become disfigured, decompose, and transform into what might be considered a disgusting state. This unavoidable dissolution of the body can cause great fear and avoidance. In order to face this part of reality and to not separate subject and object in a pattern of fear, rejection, and avoidance when considering death, some schools of tantra actually encourage students to locate dead bodies—dig them up if they are buried or find them before they are cremated—and to sit on the corpse for meditation. There are mantras and offerings that are specifically prescribed for the charnel grounds. The Vedic fire sacrifice is given a nice twist as the body itself is considered to be the best and most complete offering into the sacred cremation fire. Some tantrics will actually even engage in eating the flesh of the dead body. These practices are carried out not for the sole purpose of revolting the practitioner or anyone unlucky enough to be watching, but as a means of demonstrating and contemplating impermanence and mentally constructed perceptions of the nature of most of our preferences and repulsions. This is only one small example of how some tantric practices initially appear quite extreme. They are powerful as a means of focusing the mind, ridding it of its preconceptions, and as a method of facilitating the dissolving of ego.
A well-known practice within tantric yoga is called the pañcamakāra, or the five m’s. The five m’s are: madya, which means “wine” or “alcoholic beverage”; māṁsā, which means “meat”; matsya, meaning “fish”; mudrā, which means “parched grains,” “toasted grains as an aphrodisiac,” “a seal which presses opposites together” (or within Buddhist tantra it means a sexual partner); and finally maithuna, meaning “sexual intercourse.” For members of proper Hindu society, engaging in some of these five activities is considered taboo and even thinking about them creates a certain queasy feeling. Within what is called the left-handed schools of tantric practice, wine is ingested and meat and fish are ritualistically eaten—which can be intense if you are vegetarian as many Hindus are. The idea of mudrā or pressing is practiced either as eating grain or by experiencing the presence of a sexual partner. This is followed at the end of the rite by engaging in sexual intercourse. Usually the pañcamakāra practice is not looked upon lightly; the activities are carried out ritualistically with great care and the use of many, many mantras. Though it can be a very formal practice, it can be done with lighthearted ease. Even within most left-handed schools of tantra there is usually very little sense of debauchery. The ritual is carefully designed to prevent our habit of reducing other people and ourselves to our theories about them.
For people in modern society who eat meat or fish on a regular basis, who drink wine with every meal, and who have been exposed to sexual practices since their early teens, there is very little gross-out factor with the pañcamakāra practice. Indulging in the five m’s for some is like a standard Friday night out, so the tantric effect is not quite the same for them as it would be for a devout Hindu. Perhaps for modern people a different type of five m’s ritual could be established. This of course would involve finding things that for us have an equally engaging sensual quality to them but that are somewhat taboo; tantric sexual rituals for someone who engages in sexual activity regularly would have to have a twist to them. Many of us who equate tantra with sex might assume that simply having excessive amounts of sex, attending orgies, or performing sex in unusual manners is the equivalent of participating in a tantric practice. However, a truly tantric practice might mean having sex with a sexual partner whom you are not particularly attracted to, or if you consider yourself a highly sex
ual person, it might even mean abstaining from sex altogether. Within tantric yoga there is the reversing of taboos, making you cross lines that are not only boundaries that society has laid down, but also lines that your own mind has drawn. Stepping over this type of line has a very potent effect and can practically drive you crazy if you are not fully conscious and if you do not keep your ego at bay. At the same time, these types of practices can induce or offer the opportunity to have a profoundly deep core experience about the nature of your own mind and your own reality if you remain centered and clear.
Many schools of tantra are considered to be right-handed, meaning that the practitioners are celibate or married and are usually very conservative people within those contexts. A right-handed tantric would consider the five m’s practice as something that can be practiced symbolically as a means of waking up the internal process of yoga. Accomplished yoga practitioners consider deep internal experiences to be that which is most exciting, and practicing a symbolic version of the five m’s would suffice to open the senses and the mind. It is interesting to note that celibate monks feel compassion for those who must practice the external five m’s in order to get any sense of the nature of the internal experience. It is also true that many tantrics feel sorry for celibate monks.
The Mirror of Yoga Page 17