What does sex have to do with Tantra?

Tantra is an ancient path of meditation with roots in both Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist spirituality. It is called the "Royal Path" because, in ancient times, Tantra was the

spiritual path taken only by those who had mastered all other paths. Tantric writings date back over 5,000 years and are still used in many modern meditation teachings today.

Of these writings, perhaps the best known is the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. The Vigyan Bhairav is a Hindu Tantric text which consists of 112 meditations designed specifically to center, to bring the meditator to a single point of focus, that point being this moment, and this moment only. It has been said that Tantra is the fast track to enlightenment by virtue of the sophistication required to practice its meditations. It is the Tantric's ability to surrender to the paradox of duality in every moment that hones him or her to the sharpness of adeptdom.

Of the 112 Tantric meditations given in the Vigyan Bhairav, only 3 of these are sexual meditations. So, why the focus on sex in Tantra?

Why are so many Tantric explorations begun in the sexual realm? If Tantra is a science of meditation that includes all of life and living, why do the teachers of modern times bring so much emphasis to the sexual aspects of the path?

It's true that Tantra views every facet of human experience, including sex, as potential for personal transformation and self-actualization. For the Tantric, life is a meditation. Every activity . . .eating, drinking, breathing, dancing, making love . . . can be entered into with awareness, bringing a quality of meditation into even these simplest of acts. Yet, the

emphasis given to sex and sexual ecstasy within Tantra today is cause for much controversy. Yes, sex is a basic human experience; in fact, none of us would be here without it, but isn't all the focus on sex in Tantra today just a hedonistic indulgence for spiritual gluttons?

Truly, sex is a very important part of human life for the purpose of procreation, but sex as meditation? What does sex have to do with Tantra?

Because Tantra finds its momentum in surfing the abyss created by duality, what better more challenging - abyss than that of yin and yang? That chasm between action and receptivity? The basic duality of being alive. And what better place to dive in and experience it all than in sexual orgasm? No other human experience demands such a tenuous balance between focused activity and total surrender. And there is such power in it, so much of life and death in it. To enter this moment with total awareness, to taste the orgasm as meditation, is to invite the abyss within . . . to experience the chasm fully. Intimacy with reality brings to the meditator the direct experience of oneness. Not oneness as a concept.

Not oneness as an attainment. But oneness as a living reality, as the natural state of the universe, oneness felt through the human senses.

The meditations of Tantra center, for the most part, around the five senses: sight, smell, hearing, tastes and touch. It is through these five senses that we experience our world. Our senses bring the world "inside" us and make it possible for us to interact with it intimately. Each of our senses has yin qualities and yang qualities. In order to taste one must take a bite, in order to hear one must listen, to see one must look. Sensual, and very sexual. To enter and be entered, the weaving of the two bringing forth a third quality that cannot exist with out the other two. The flavor cannot exist without the meeting of the fruit and the mouth . . . the color cannot exist without the meeting of the rainbow and the eye . . . and orgasm itself cannot exist without the meeting of desire and fulfillment.

The polarity of the opposites reveals the single point of the center and delivers it to the Tantric via the doorway of the senses in every moment of living, in every activity of life. Tantra seeks not to encourage nor deny free sexual expression and sexual experience,

Tantra simply acknowledges that, as human beings, we are sexual beings. And that sex, as any other human experience, holds within it the mystery of life.