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Sw. Rahasya on the Politics of Tantra and Tantra and Politics |
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There's many points of view, and finger pointing, political posturing going on in the world of sacred sexuality about this word, Tantra. To get an idea of the range of tantric Practice, let's look at two schools: Mystic Yogins of Tantrinieseque
Holierthanthouness (M.Y.T.H) and Skewl of Kewl Adorable Newage Kinkmerchants (S.K.A.N.K)
There's schools that insist on the eating of meat and drinking of alcohol before participation in certain practices. There's others who say Bhang, and others who forbid anything of the sort, but teach the chanting of a mind-numbing mantra. Some advocate celibacy and the endurance of pain, others advocate unconditional love in a real practical, physical way. Some go to great lengths to increase their masculine dimensions. Others think nature did an OK job. There's a good and healthy reason for this. There's many kinds of schools with all sorts of spiritual teachings and practices around sexuality. This is perfectly good, because there are people who at different times need different teachings, different approaches, and there are different types of people. Quite a few schools point fingers at each other over these and other differences. (BTW - I didn't model the parodies above on any schools, past, present, or future, I hope.) Often the most bitter, persistent disagreements are between schools that to all appearances have a lot in common. This too, is perfectly good. Schools feel a need to keep students focused on their particular teachings, It's often a useful strategy to criticise some teaching by way of communicating or revealing a deeper truth. Often too, it's not a matter of criticism. Just there's one level of understanding available from a certain state of knowledge, and a completely different view on things is available from another. (e.g.The blind men and the elephant, or Newtonian and Quantum Physics.) As in any human endeavour, even the divinely inspired, there's going to be a few who don't do anyone any good. There are bound to be a few that do harm. Some of the weirder Indian offshoots are really scary, and not in an "i'm drawn to this, but am unnecessarily fearful" kind of way. There's only one answer I've found useful for this dilemma. Talk to a couple of people that have worked with him/her. Endorsements on a website are all very well, but a few minutes chat with someone that's taken a course with a teacher can be worth so much more. Talking to people who "know of" the school, or who's ex wife/husband was once a student - that's generally worse than useless. The few exceptions aside, most people working with and teaching tantra have a depth, a sincerity to their work. They have their differences, and for their students sake, will willingly criticise each others' teachings, but the work itself has shown them that it's all love. This school's central teaching, advaita, is all about the dissolution of polarity. The method is secret, not because anyone's trying to hide it, just because it cannot be described in any useful way. It's purely experiential. To be precise, languagewise, and unintentionally unhelpful, the method is experiencing, just experiencing. See? The secret of secrets is still a secret after it's told. Outward from that core, I encourage the release of repression through tantric techniques, catharsis, active meditations, running, whatever works. I encourage those working with me to take on Dakini work when they are able. Teaching something deepens ones own understanding of it with tantra, just as much as with anything else. The healing work we do is of great value. Better for the sex life than a 4x4 or even a Porsche. More blissful than a sushi feast. The money we charge enables us to be available, doing this work. It also goes to help this website and other publishing ventures. It's also required as exchange, so that a client has given fair exchange for the help they've had. If this isn't done, innapropriate archytypes come into play, bringing unnecessary confusion and suffering. By way of making our teaching asccessible, I've been holding evenings of discussion, hosted by Dakinis, exploring meditation, tantra and related issues. We've had two in Wilderness and two in Johannesburg at time of this edit, and information about upcoming tantra talks is posted on the groups page. Please contact us via our contacts page, or this mail link if you're interested in hosting a Tantra Talk in your town, or to express interest should one be aranged in your area.
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Tantra and politics |
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A long time ago, one
culture got the idea that all other peoples should do it their way
too. That culture now dominates the planet. Signs it can be known
by are: Ice in your drink, a state religion, money-at-interest and
ownership of women.
Most of the great spiritual masters had something to say about the situation. Jesus forgave the adulterous woman and whipped the money changers. Mohammed spoke against alcohol, and banned his people from getting involved with usury. Stories of him and his nine wives also hint that he was more or less a tantric adept. This doesn't make Christians avoid banks (though Muslims don't do too badly there) or forgive adultery of course, because the religion is subordinate to the culture which has absorbed and editited it to suit. Seekers, artists, poets, mystics, tantrikas and free-thinkers reach a point in their lives where they are repelled by the culture's way, particularly how it attempts to regulate ownership of sexuality. There's a tendency to assume that everyone would be able to enjoy freedom if social constraints were removed. That's why anarchists bombed police offices and assasinated politicians. Also why communists in some places still make a ritual out of having sex in a public place on May Day. My suggestion: Most people go along with the culture's way, and howerver much it may be out of unawareness, they are choosing it. It's an irritation to the seekers in the population, but has the positive effect of making us aware of our own urge to truth, more aware that the answers aren't likely to be found in the culture's institutions. The culture, I suggest, is useful in that it forces those with the potential, to wake up, and helps us recognise our peers by contrast with the pasha (pasha = old sanskrit, meaning those who are not due for awakening, for a few lifetimes yet). People who will take direction from today's (or any other era's)
politicians, who'll buy into the standard mainstream media's crap
without investigating alternatives are not equipped to deal with
existence, life, as it is. They don't want the truth, and will
even kill in order to keep their point of view in line with what "everybody" knows,
to hold on to the thin comfort of knowing that they are doing what
they "should". I suggest to seekers that there's no point in getting into annoyance with the culture's way, no real kindness in telling those of a fixed mindset that they've got it wrong. To rub it in, I point out that seekers are numerically inferior, are disturbing to the culture, and are quite legitimately destroyed by it if they give offence. I tell them to drop their ideas of what "should be" and accept that which is. There's possibilities for influencing the culture, maybe making improvements, but only within a framework that the culture can accept. When it comes to trying to get the culture to accept that a fundamental axiom of it's credo should be scrapped, it's not likely to be an easy process, and any gains will always be subject to conservative "snap back". This is why some of the culture's members react so badly to the sacred sexual. We challenge, just by existing, the basis of all ownership - ownership of the woman, and through that, her offspring. By twisting sexuality the way it does, the culture makes a lot of "productivity" and "consumption" happen. How many people buy a car, or clothing because it'll help them get laid - a male making it clear that he can pay - a female making it clear that she's "premium goods". If you look closely, you'll see that the fuel the culture runs on is sexual frustration. The culture is never going to appreciate any effort to attack it at it's base. The zen guys knew this, and elegantly expressed it in their story of the lion, living among the sheep, believing it too was a sheep, until another lion saw it and helped. There's sheep, there's the wolves who herd them and prey on them, and, occasionally, there's lions. The sheep have a perfectly good place in the scheme of things, being what they are, and if you're a lion, only gratitude that they make fellow lions easier to spot is appropriate. Those of us who have the potential for awakening, Samhadi, Moksha, whatever we call it, escape cultural control. We reject it's fundamentals, and don't easily fit in well with the "sheep". We're in the minority, severely so, and are marginalised by the culture in many ways. It sees us as "enemy" and it's not wrong. I believe it is a valuable lesson for us to pass through the culture's training, both by way of us discovering strength we'd otherwise never know about, and by way of developing a burning desire for truth. The sacred sexual path is the fastest path, but one has to go through what one has to go through. Faster doesn't mean easier, or less thourough. Once awake, no variation on the main cultural theme is really more bother than any other. For an arahat, there's the bliss of his own attainment, and scant regard for the body's comfort or survival, because it's purpose is complete. For a bodhisattva, the cultural background helps him notice who's available to be helped. Things that are especially ugly, exploitative and cruel in the culture do annoy the enlightened masters, even the greats, but attempts at rectifying things are often messed up by their followers later, or get absorbed into the culture, which simply censors out whatever's threatening or neutralises the threat with childhood training. Christian sunday schools for instance, leave most kids with the impression that Jesus was pissed off at the market stall holders for trading on a Sunday, when good people should be in Church. Also the emphasis given to the adulterous woman story is not the forgiveness, but the "go and sin no more" line at the end of the story, implying, "I'll stone you myself next time, bitch". The cultural cycle of liberation and repression is just a couple of generations thing, with regional variations in which parts of the woman's body are covered from public view, giving even reproduced images of those parts "value". That I'm currently taking full advantage of a liberal constitution to practice sacred sexuality openly, have a website to help those interested to find me and so on is fortunate, and may be a symptom of a general awakening in the culture itself. More likely, it's a temporary situation, and we'll be doing the secretive mystery school thing again some day. We can tinker with the way the culture does ownership. It's probably more pleasant to be a regular modern American woman, with a repressed sexuality, convinced that her daughter should be socialised likewise, than a Muslim woman, repressed sexually, that takes her daughter for a clitoridectomy. We can tinker with it, but the fundamentals will remain. What will be there, as long as the culture as such endures, is some way to prevent the woman's energy going beyond chakra 1 (a fear in the area of survival, associated with sex works well), a retail woman market (sex work, prostitution) and a wholesale woman market (marriage). If the culture gets to accept sacred sexuality on the basis of how it's regulated, that regulation itself will entrench the culture's way and will mess seekers around by fooling some that the culture has a home for them. I'm not at all comfortable with the idea of certification or "qualifications" in our area. One knows a teacher by the movement one sees in the students. Some are teachers because they have great personal challenges in some areas, and supporting others in those areas advances their own healing. They teach best that which they most need to learn. (Buddha: If you would really learn a thing, teach it.) Others teach because they have completed the path, and have been persuaded (or it's in their aesthetic) to help. The first flavour is more helpful for 99% of the journey. The other fellow's generally the finishing school. Neither can in truth be assessed by "qualifications" or what their "peers" say. In the Buddhist tradition, the way "regular people" recognise the Tatagata (enlightened being) is by his "marks". These are things like his stillness, grace, very pleasant body odour and so on. Addressing an awakened disciple, Buddha says “Wherever there is possession of marks, there is fraud ; wherever there is no-possession of no-marks, there is no fraud. Hence the Tathagata is to be seen from no-marks as marks.” Every "condition" one could come up with to test can be learned just as a trick, with the right training. There's the fellow that can sit and watch outrageous hot xxx porn, tailored to his sexual history and be unmoved by it on account of his attainment, and there will be the fellow who is unaroused because he's managed to torture himself, twist his sexuality into compliance. Someone seldom ejaculates, even after prolonged coitus, comfortably choosing how the energy in his body moves, and someone else has developed his musculature to the point where he clenches up and semen is retained, erection is maintained. Qualifications based on data-retention of a curriculum are just silly, in all fields, but especially in ours. A medical degree doesn't make somone a healer. Niether will passing some examination - written, oral or genital - make someone a tantrika. The general population could benefit from some of the techniques that we use, but it's seekers that we're here for. Learning discernment, developing a bullshit detector and maintaining an openness to truth are skills they need to develop in order to find us. In business terms, our market is around 2% of the general population. Most of that 2% aren't on a specifically sexual path, and need relatively little work, mainly release of repression. Seekers will always need to develop a centered will and a degree of awareness in order to find their teachers. The journey through the distractions of the "world", the help found in others on the path, and finding their teachers are wonderful archetypal struggles, great preparation. I believe we may have to be careful not to be too available! Historically, Tantra schools tended to get in trouble when they got into the business of dealing with the general population, simply providing a healthier and more enjoyable experience than "regular" sex workers. What's done them in is a combination of their sudden wealth (attracts insincere friendships and greedy, insincere disciples, provokes jealousy from once friendly religions), the angry brothel owners' association (obviously), the police (they miss their quid pro quo badly, one of their very few worthwhile perks), and the culture's elite (the "market value" of their daughters is ruined). The only successful "deal with the culture" that I've heard of was the Indian Tantra Temples being available to heal soldiers physically and emotionally after battle. I wouldn't be comfortable with healing anyone's soldiers these days. I believe that trauma needs to get back into the population, so they feel some of what they politically support. Good feedback. Maybe sports? Can you imagine what a few Dakinis could do for a team's motivation, their focus, their totality! It would be the mother of all distractions, a perversion of what should probably be our principles, but fun, and coaches in the major sports have big budgets when such a powerful advantage is available. Another very profitable area could be the world of "personal coaching". Dakini empowered executives... we could have the corporations destroying the planet at twice the rate they are going now, thereby hastening mankind's next maturity test. I don't know if this would be a good thing or not. There's also the strong possibility that the Dakini in question would get the exec's heart all open and vulnerable and quench his repression-driven greed. This may mean it wouldn't be that good for business. If seekers are really our only legitimate market, it may be useful to take the approach of being a persecuted religious movement, and say that we have a different sexual way from the culture at large - we just want their passive tolerance for what we do with "each other", not everybody, generally. It's true that to be available to "our" 2%, the 98% get to be aware that we exist. Maybe we need to explain that we'll only do these strange things with "our people", however we define that. Rahasya
===== the original article was posted to a forum at sss-now.org
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