“Intentional sexuality” refers here to the use of sexual practices to attain religious, spiritual or mystical experiences. It is a very broad term, embracing such divergent practices as the yoga of the Kama Sutra, ancient Mediterranean rites of Cybele (at least insofar as such rituals are reported in literary accounts), contemporary breathwork such as that taught in the Body Electric school (which I discuss below), and even the interpretations of marital union found in such texts as the Zohar, the masterpiece of the Kabbalah. In today’s parlance, these practices are sometimes referred to as “sacred sexuality” or “erotic spirituality,” because they seek to reclaim the link between sexuality and spirituality, an ancient bond severed by the anti-carnal elements within early Christianity, Protestantism, and American Puritanism in its old and newer forms.

From a scholarly perspective, it is difficult to ascertain exactly how fundamental this bond was and whether such a split was ever so radical as it appears. However, my project here is not somehow to conduct a vast intellectual archeology of sexuality in world religions, but rather to explore how intentional sexuality operates in contemplative practice today. Obviously, the mystery of sexuality was extremely important to most earth-based (“pagan”) cultures and to primitive cultures around the world; artifacts from the lingam and the yoni to the pendulous breasts and large phalluses of African figurines indicate that our own culture’s discomfort with sexuality from a religious perspective is a discrete cultural phenomenon, and far from universal. The use of intentional sexuality in Tantric practice is well known. Moreover, in the West, intentional sexuality figures prominently in the accounts of many Christian mystics, Kabbalists, Sufis, and many others; sexual metaphors are central in these Western mystical traditions, and sexual practices, of one form or another, are described in many of them.

Nor is intentional sexuality confined to esoteric traditions. Since a scholarly survey is not my purpose here, I will limit myself to one example from the Jewish tradition: the figures of the cherubs. In ancient Judaism, the cherubs were angelic creatures who resided at the holiest place in the world: above the ark, in the Holy of Holies, in the Temple. According to rabbinic sources, they were in a permanent state of copulation – a later tradition emends that they were making love when the relationship between God and Israel was good, separated when it was bad. Moreover, the Talmud relates that the walls of the inner sanctum were decorated with images of sex.

The cherubs’ erotic union and separation an embodiment and metaphor for the Divine on earth, and, in their brazen sexuality, represent what some might deem ‘paganism’ enshrined in the most sacred place of Judaism.

The cherubs’ erotic union and separation an embodiment and metaphor for the Divine on earth, and, in their brazen sexuality, represent what some might deem ‘paganism’ enshrined in the most sacred place of Judaism. (Indeed, the Talmud in Yoma 54b relates that when the first Temple was destroyed, the cherubs were paraded in the marketplace as evidence of Israel’s paganism.) But say “cherubs” today, and you probably think of a fat, sexless baby.

Drawing on such traditions — and, more frequently, on non-Western practices such as Tantra or suppressed religious practices such as those thought to be practiced by the ancient Canaanites and elsewhere in the Near East — today’s erotic contemplatives see themselves as rediscovering ancient pathways of sacred sexuality. Whether they are renewing old ways or discovering new ones is debatable, but that intentional sexuality now exists as a contemplative practice, widespread in the gay spiritual community and increasingly prevalent in heterosexual communities as well.

It is worth emphasizing that, as its advocates use the term, intentional sexuality (or sacred sexuality) is not a mere code word for orgies and sex-play. Of course, “free love” is sometimes found in spiritual or other intentional communities, particularly since the 1960s, but, as is well known, for long before that as well. However, as I use the term, and as I have experienced its practices today, intentional sexuality does not refer to “free love” per se; it refers to the use of sexuality as a contemplative, mystical, or ecstatic religious practice. It is, in part, a mindfulness practice, because it directs the attention to a particular focus: the erotic energy (however that term is defined or understood) in the body. And it is an ecstatic practice, because it generates so much erotic energy that altered mindstates are created. These mindstates may be conceptualized on a purely physiological level (as, for example, flooding the neurons in the brain) or in terms of the “soul,” and the fruits of the practice may be understood as therapeutic, energetic or even prophetic. But the actual effect on the practitioner’s mindstate is as undeniable as the effects of sustained meditation. Whatever else is going on in intentional sexuality, the change in mindstate is real.
Before considering the opportunities and dangers of intentional sexuality, I will offer a brief description of the practice of ‘Taoist erotic massage,’ as taught by Joseph Kramer, Ph.D., a former Jesuit who now heads the New School of Erotic Touch. Kramer is the founder of the Body Electric School, which he left about ten years ago, and which is now perhaps the leading institution teaching intentional sexuality, to men and women, in the West. Essentially, Taoist erotic massage combines erotic massage techniques with breathwork in order to — in its language — generate erotic energy and spread it through the body. Like many other techniques, the practice is non-ejaculatory. In a metaphor often employed by Kramer, ordinary erotic massage (i.e. masturbation) is like blowing up a balloon so that it can pop and release tension. Taoist erotic massage (Kramer learned from several Taoist teachers, but the practice as it exists today is his own invention), by contrast, generates the erotic energy, through sensual touch, but instead of releasing it, spreads it throughout the body. (Indeed, practitioners often report orgasm-like sensations in their arms and legs, or moving throughout the body.)

These massage practices are complemented by breathwork, on the part of the person receiving massage, which culminates in a sustained hold called the “Big Draw.” The effects of the “Big Draw,” in my own experience and in that related by hundreds of other practitioners, can be profound. Some describe it as a “full body orgasm,” which can last for several minutes. Others describe it in terms of ecstasy or Divine union. On the purely physical level, the perception of energy is acute, and, of course, the level of pleasure is quite intense. On the emotional plane, the intensity of the experience often acts as a cathartic, therapeutic release, opening doors much in the way of ‘primal scream’ and other such practices. Intellectually, the mind after the ‘Big Draw’ can be in a state of clarity quite similar to that of samadhi, the concentrated state of mind produced by some forms of meditation. And spiritually, many practitioners report mystical experiences, which I will describe here.

So, what are the opportunities, from a contemplative perspective, offered by intentional sexuality? And what are some of the dangers?

1. Mystical Experience. Great, open awareness can exist in the silence of ecstasy. Essentially, intentional sexuality is an ecstatic practice, a concentration, and an energetic practice — all three of which lead to a quieting of the ordinary mind, with the attendant cognitive effects noted by mystics worldwide. It is an ecstatic practice not in the sense of the soul literally leaving the body, but in the broader sense of an excitement practice, which “turns up the volume” of sensory input (speaking loosely here) to flood the neurons of the brain. Like ecstatic dance or ecstatic vocal work, intentional sexuality drives out the ordinary faculties of discursive thought, creating a stillness akin to that experienced in samadhi meditative states; thus intentional sexuality becomes a concentration practice as well. Finally, intentional sexuality is an energetic practice because it leads to a direct perception of energetic phenomena — again, speaking quite broadly, and not specifying in any way what “energy” might mean in this context — throughout the body.
The result? With one’s attention focused, and one’s the life-energy flowing, one feels oneself so intimately immersed in the cosmic play (what the Vedas call lila) that many practitioners feel ourselves unified with it. Of course, it is possible to understand the unity of all things intellectually without doing any practice at all. But even if the mind knows unity, our hearts usually feel duality; they feel separation and yearning, and they feel joy at union. So, in ecstasy, we feel the truth with our bodies more than we could know it on a solely intellectual level. We gain true knowledge (in Hebrew, daat), which involves union not just between the “self” and the One but among the different parts of the soul as well: body, mind, heart, and spirit. This knowledge can take place because thoughts have been driven out of the body by ecstasy, and because the energies of the body are so activated that we become hyper-aware of the great love that radiates throughout Being.
Of course, different practitioners will have different experiences, and will also interpret their experiences according to their different conceptual matrices. What one person may experience as union, another may experience as contact with (but not union with) the Divine. Another may label the same experience merely a relaxation response, taking place purely within a materialistic, dualistic universe. But the phenomenal experience itself seems to be extremely widespread among those who practice intentional sexuality in a serious way.

2. Realization. In addition to an experience of union with the world as manifestation, sexuality also is a portal to awareness itself, to the great Emptiness (ayin) that lies beneath and conditions all that is. The sense of interdependence one gains in sexual practice is quite intense. In a different context, I wrote of the experience in this way: “By knowing ourselves to be a mere pattern of the great flux of Being, we know that everything else is empty of separate substance also. We can directly perceive, with the right intention, that this moment, that this occasion of you reading these words, is but a dream in the mind of God.” The mindstate which birthed this sense of realization was conditioned by the heightened awareness that was itself conditioned by intentional sexual practice. More than any drug, but like an entheogen in its seemingly involuntary nature (i.e., one feels oneself brought into a state, rather than cultivating a state) intentional sexuality excites the body and allows the conceptual mind to relax. It is not, by any means, the only way to attain such consciousness, but it is a powerful one.

3. Healing. In many Western religious systems, sexuality in particular and the body in general are often seen as sites of sin or impurity. “What the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit,” Paul wrote in Galatians 5:16. “If by the Spirit you put to death the needs of the body, you will live.” (Romans 8:13) Amplified by American Puritan attitudes regarding sexuality and the material world, these kinds of ideas have led many to conceive a split between the spiritual and the sexual, the sacred and the erotic.

Given that we all possess sexual desire, the demonization of that desire naturally leads to a sense of pain, or of alienation from oneself. This is true for many people, but even more so for members of sexual minorities (lesbians, gay men, etc.), whose sexuality has been especially demonized by religion.

Experiencing the body as holy can bring great emotional healing. Even if one never has a mystical or realization experience during the practice sacred sexuality, just knowing that the body is a temple instead of a latrine is a precious liberation. Many men in Body Electric, for example, have reported life-changing experiences of repressed emotional pain regarding their bodies, or of unresolved psychological trauma (especially, in gay male contexts, with respect to the father/father figure). The Body Electric practice has thus evolved to include what is sometimes termed “heart-work”; prior to the massage sessions, many hours are devoted to community-building and trust-building, and the “bonding” that takes place in these periods is, for many men, as significant as the practice of intentional sexuality itself. However, the level of sensory stimulation derived from intentional sexuality is so intense, and so grounded in the body, that even without such additional heart-work, the experience itself can often bring about catharsis, ecstasy, healing, and transformation.

Think of the fear, the taboos, the shame, and the insecurities that so many of us carry around when we think about our bodies and our sexuality. Even the most well-adjusted of women is still subjected to societal messaging, every day, about how her body should look. Even the most secure of men still lives in a culture with taboos around nudity, or talking about sexuality. And for those of us who have been wounded — by trauma, by homophobia, by sexism, or by any number of other factors — erotic healing is especially powerful. It can mend body, mind, heart, and spirit. And it can address the wound that many carry regarding their sexuality by utilizing precisely the site of woundedness as a site for transcendence.

Finally, healing does not mean a narcissistic licking of one’s own wounds and finding palliatives to ease whatever pain we feel. Healing means being more able to exist in the present moment, healthily, in an integrated way — and in a way that brings about more compassion. It is difficult for me to describe my own experience of compassion arising naturally from wisdom; it simply seems to occur. I remember riding on the subway after a weekend of Body Electric practice, being so vitally aware of the energies within everyone on the train, and so saddened by the way they are thwarted, repressed, twisted, and destroyed. This was true not only for those victimized by Western taboos and fears, but by those truly victimized by economic injustice, illness, and the myriad other causes of pain in the world. Like the compassion that arises in meditation, this compassion did not manifest as a vague “feeling sorry for the world”; it inspired me to change my own behavior, to act in a more gentle way, and to open myself more to the suffering of those around me (and myself). This, I think, is what true healing brings about: engagement, integration, skillful behavior.

4. Play. In case it hasn’t been clear by now, intentional sexuality is hot. It’s fun, it’s erotic, it’s a remarkable form of play. It’s okay that it’s hot. It’s great that it’s hot; it’s Divine that it’s hot. For pagans and polytheists, this play is all there is – I will return to this point below – and invoking the energies of nature is holy. But even for monotheists and monists, if the manifest universe is an expression of the Divine, playing with Itself, coming to know Itself, loving Itself, then the more we immerse ourselves in that cosmic drama, the more we ourselves are expressing God (or the Goddess, or the One). Becoming fully, electrically alive; growing exquisitely sensitive to eros – this is becoming and becoming aware of God Itself.

There are more benefits to intentional sexuality on the individual and community levels, and one of the interesting facts about it is that different practitioners can be on totally different individual ‘trips,’ unified with their co-practitioners more by acts than by intentions. However, I want to turn now to some of the perils I and others have encountered along the path of sacred sexuality, which, interestingly, tend to flow directly from the benefits. Some of these issues only affect monotheists and monists (e.g., followers of Buddhism or Vedanta), and I’ll try to be clear about my own Jewish and Buddhist biases as we go along. But here are some of the potential pitfalls, from my point of view and experience:

1. Idolatry: Mistaking manifestation for essence

A trouble with spirituality in general is that there is no one mind-state that is closer to God than any other. Wherever we are – in ecstasy, sadness, satisfaction, or yearning – if God fills the universe, or if “All is One,” then we are fully Divine at that moment. Yet many spiritual practices lead us to believe that ecstasy is enlightenment, or at least a prerequisite for it. There appears to be a goal, and a path to travel from where we are now (which is deficient in some way) to somewhere else (which will be better). At least two errors flow from this view of spiritual practice: first, that the feeling of ecstasy is itself the Divine – rather than one manifestation of It – and second, that other feelings are not quite as filled with God as is joy.

These errors are especially present in sacred sexuality. First, it is very tempting to label the ecstasy, the orgasm, the love as the Ultimate. From a polytheistic point of view, this presents no real problem; the energy of excitement may be experienced as a god. From a monotheistic or monistic point of view, however, it can lead to a mistake: that this is it, we feel, as our bodies take us to altered states of consciousness. But “this is it” is both right and wrong. This is it – the moment we are experiencing is nothing but the One Unfolding Now. And as ecstatic practice drives thought from the mind, we are especially open to be present. But what is “It” about this present moment is not that the body-mind happens to feel so turned on, or that the ch’i is flowing in an excited way. All the energy is no more Divine than boredom, delight, or sadness. And it is not, in any separate sense, real; like all forms, erotic energy is ultimately empty of separate reality.
The notion that a god or goddess is invoked, or summoned, by a given ritual practice has a very long lineage. And, for those who have practiced intentional sexuality, it is easy to see why. The energy shift is so dramatic, one cannot help but notice it, and it seems so other to the usual mode of being, one cannot help but label it as a kind of possession. Even if the sages of monotheism were not as prudish as they are sometimes made out to be, it is easy to see why they would disapprove of such practices.

Even apart from ideology, intentional sexuality can also lead to a kind of contemplative mistake. Spiritual practice enlivens the present, and elevates it to the sacred. But with the delicious, addictive sensations of intentional sexuality (more on the attachment to these feelings below), a very different sense can result. Instead of the practice causing us to appreciate every moment, it can cause us to flee the present in search of more ecstasy. After all, ecstasy is when we are closest to the Divine, and who doesn’t want that? To speak by way of analogy, intentional sexuality can make Sunday very special and the rest of the week rather dull.

Classically, this is one of the central problems of idolatry: not the idol so much as the stone which is discarded; the mistake that we can so easily make that “this” is more holy than “that.”

2. Confusion: Mistaking the ego for Reality

Another “error” of idolatry, replicated in intentional sexuality, is the easy mistake of supposing that the Power belongs to the self. Here, language can be tricky. If by “Self,” one means the True Self, the One that underlies all individuality, then the Power does indeed belong to that Self, because that Self is The One That Is. However, the error comes in when I imagine the power to belong to Jay, an individual with a history. I remember one time, practicing intentional sexuality atop a mountain, I stood in the wind, surveying the desert beneath me, and felt like a god–as if I, in particular, possessed this Power. Really, the Power possesses me — but it didn’t quite feel that way.

This ego danger is omnipresent in intentional sexuality practiced in sexual minority communities. Contemplative practice involves dropping our individual “story,” and dropping into the “Now.” Therapy, on the other hand, is all about going into the story. Intentional sexuality is a mix of both. When gay men, for example, gather for Body Electric, we mix healing with ecstasy with contemplation. In so doing, we are mixing modalities in a delicate way – at once too noisy for silence and too quiet for therapy. Intentional sexuality can bring up many important heart-teachings — about the ego, sexual health, emotional wholeness, and so on. Obviously, all of these things are very good! But engaging with the self way makes it all the more tempting to ascribe the powers of the body to the self.

To repeat, none of this is to denigrate the critical work of healing the self. In the world of form (yesh in Hebrew), our identities matter. Owning our histories is part of fulfilling our individual soul-prints, and is essential for well-rounded growth. All of us can name spiritual teachers who are very advanced in spiritual practice but still have a lot of work they need to do on their emotional or psychological well-being. This comes from neglecting the fact that, even if we are really all God, those of us who exist in the social world do so in selves which often need a lot of work and love.

So, it’s not dissolving in emptiness is good, but exploring form is bad. The problem lies in confusing one with the other. At the fruition of the contemplative path, being lesbian, or gay, or a survivor of abuse, means nothing. At other points along the path, it can mean everything. Intentional sexuality, which traverses the whole length of the path, can thus be very confusing. It’s not clear when to go into the story, go into the wound, explore the shadow – and when to drop all of that and bask in timelessness. It’s great that one practice can take you to all these places; it’s just tricky knowing where you are and where you’re going.

3. Attachment

I admit, I like meditating. It relaxes me, and I’ve gotten good enough at it that it is simply enjoyable. But, then again, it’s not as enjoyable as a ten minute orgasm. This is one of the delights of intentional sexuality, of course, but also one of the dangers. I found, when I practiced too much, that I started to crave it. I became very attached to certain feelings in the body, and my mind grew restless when it wasn’t experiencing them. It was very easy to see intentional sexuality as becoming yet another addictive behavior, and we all know, or have heard of, sex addicts for whom the opiate of orgasm has become an intoxicant. How does one ensure that one’s own ‘sacred’ sexuality does not function in the same way? And how not to attach to the sacred sexuality path at the expense of other practices which are so critical for balance and quiet?

There are answers to these questions, and skilled teachers who answer them. But, like any serious contemplative practice, the teacher is essential and the auto-didact is to be warned.

Moreover, since intentional sexuality often involves a partner, and since there are often multiple partners available, we often want some kinds of bodies but not others, or desire a form of pleasure not necessarily about healing, mysticism, or transcendence. I’ve experienced attachments in meditation, too–literally, and strongly, wanting a certain color cushion. But when the sex drive is in play, the attachment is far stronger and potentially more destructive.

4. Boundary questions

Connected to the perils of attachment is the critical need for boundaries in intentional sexuality. Mystical practice, one sometimes hears, is anathema to the boundaries of both religion and society. No limits, no walls, no rules; mystics (especially queer mystics) are the in-between people, the boundary-crossers. By defying conventional definitions, we show that these definitions (like everything else) are empty. The last thing we ought to do is import boundaries and limits into our spiritual-sexual lives.

But all creatures draw boundaries, even ants, fish, and doves. Humans designate, through sometimes arbitrary line-drawing, those objects and times which are valuable. For almost the entire world, the important bit of wisdom is that these lines are, in fact, arbitrary; that values are socially constructed; that every boundary can be crossed. But precisely for the sacred boundary-crossers, there is an equally-important reminder: that these arbitrary boundaries have function.
In intentional sexuality, it is essential to draw boundaries around the holy–I’d rather use the Hebrew word kadosh, which means both separate (from the ordinary) and intimate (with the One), especially because it is used, disapprovingly, to refer to hierodules (k’deshim) and other practitioners of intentional sexuality. The drawing of boundaries allows us to say, literally and figuratively, “we’re not just fucking around.” When I tell some people that I am involved in sacred sexuality, their assumption is that the sacred part is merely a pretext to get laid. In the gay community, I sometimes get the same response when I talk about the sacred, homoerotic circles of Kabbalists who would do yichudim (unifications) with one another: the raised eyebrow, the catty “uh-huh,” as if the whole edifice of Jewish mysticism is a pretext to allow “straight” people to fool around.

And sometimes, it is true. At one gathering I attended, there were occasions on which some participants were clearly more interested in fondling the hot guy than in unifying sexuality and spirituality. Of course, hot guys are hot, and that should not be denied; it’s fun to play sexually with people we find attractive. But clearly there is a difference between (a) opening up, through sexual intimacy, to the play of energies in the Divine manifestation and to the great Loving Emptiness that underlies all and (b) getting off because you’re fondling the hot guy. To be doing the latter practice, in my opinion, validates the skeptics and does a grave disservice and disrespect to God and God’s holy lovers.

And it is an idolatrous, mistaken inflation of the ego. The path of sacred sexuality is a path of self-fulfillment and self-annihilation. When I practice it, I fulfill my Divine mission, activate as many energies within my particular body and soul as I can, and I am fully “me” in that moment. And yet, precisely through that self-fulfillment, I cease to be the separate “me” at all. Separation disappears; “I am That.” But when I’m fondling the hot guy, I am a separate ego that’s getting some substitute-love by associating itself with a desired object. I am fulfilling “my” needs or wants. In contrast to becoming fully whole and thus fully empty, I am trying to balm my various wounds with a drug-like medication: the hot guy. It is not service of God; it is the service of the separate self, and eventually it will lead to suffering. This danger exists, and its negative energy can poison erotic rituals, and I’ve seen it happen.

Boundaries and intentions help keep us on track, which is why, in Body Electric and similar contexts, it is not thought of as repressive or “bad” to set them. On the contrary, most teachers of intentional sexuality embrace boundaries as necessary to create the safe kadosh space for sacred union to happen. In so doing, they are replicating the ancient forms of the k’deshim themselves, who worked in temples, not brothels or bars.

5. Energy Dissipation

The last of the five intentional sexuality hindrances I wish to discuss is a kind of dissipation of energy which I experienced over the course of practice, and of which I have heard many much more experienced practitioners complain. Most sacred sexuality practices do not involve ejaculation, and are said to enliven the body, not deplete it. However, I have found that even without ejaculation, there is a sort of erotic fatigue that can set in. Perhaps, like bodybuilders, or yogis who can sit, unmoving, for days at a time, experienced practitioners build up their bodies’ stamina and do not experience this sort of fatigue. But beginners can feel like Bilbo Baggins after he wears the Ring too long: like butter spread too thinly over too much bread. Like the Ring, intentional sexual practices can give power. But do we know enough about how they take power from us as well?

Once again, it is not that these questions are unanswerable, or even novel. They are omnipresent in spiritual practice. Every contemplative practice carries dangers with it; the fact that they exist is no reason not to engage in the practice. They just remind us that we are playing with serious energy that requires serious intention and attention. Whether we mythologize this energy in terms of angels, or ghosts, or even gods, or whether we regard it as purely physiological in nature, we must approach the quest as a shaman would, mindful of the dangers that await.

I am still working out how to integrate my sexual practice into my contemplative work. There have been times, recently, when I have felt its opiate-like pull, and so I’ve found it very important to be out in nature, alone, but not “go there” sexually all the time. I’m still working out, in my own Jewish-Buddhist context, whether there are practices or ideas that are in too much tension with my core principles, or whether the framing of the question in this way is itself an invitation to consider my own lurking spiritual materialism.

Most importantly, I am mindful of something that one of my teachers once said, when I asked him about working with eros along the contemplative path. Grounded in the Buddhist tradition, his sharp response gave me much to contemplate. It’s what I wrestle with most, these days, as I explore this particular path. “Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with it,” he told me. “But the energy of eros is so strong, it’s hard not to think it’s real.”

Jay Michaelson
jay@metatronics.net

Introduction

When Professor Miranda Shaw looks at women in Tibetan paintings, she does not see colorful two-dimensional figures born of an artists mind. She sees “numinous, sky-borne women,” “revelers in freedom,” “enchantresses of passion, ecstasy and ferocious intensity”—radiant reflections of the powerful, enlightened women who helped to shape the world of Buddhist tantra.

She writes: “One can almost hear the soft clacking of their intricate bone jewelry and feel the wind stirred by their rainbow-colored scarves as they soar through the tantric Buddhist landscape.” It was her encounter with these images at an art exhibit during her sophomore year in college that first captured her imagination and inspired the curiosity that fueled her lifes first major work—a research quest that carried her from the Harvard Divinity School to the remote reaches of the Tibetan plateau in search of an authentic firsthand understanding of the theory and practice of tantra.

Raised by Methodist parents in a small town in Ohio, Shaw first became interested in Eastern religions at the age of fourteen when a family friend showed her a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. Despite having been raised with little exposure to religious thought, she found herself mesmerized, unable to put the book down. It was the beginning of a love affair with religious literature, the tokens of which still line the hallways and rooms of her small apartment near the University of Richmond, where she is now Assistant Professor of Religion. Her zeal for religious study eventually propelled her into the doctoral program at Harvard, where working on her Ph.D. dissertation, she found her way to the forefront of research into tantric Buddhism.

The culmination of that research is her 1994 book, Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism. Now in its fourth printing, Passionate Enlightenment has been hailed as a groundbreaking contribution to the study of tantric history. Drawing on her exhaustive study of the central tantric texts in their original languages, as well as two and a half years of field research in India and Nepal, Shaws book presents a revolutionary reexamination of the nature of tantric practice, revolving around one simple point: In addition to serving the spiritual progress of men, tantra was also for the enlightenment of women. While there has been a great deal of scholarship on both Buddhism and tantra over the past quarter century, prior to Shaws work, the assumption underlying that research had always been that women were included in tantric practice only to the extent that they could support men in their pursuit of enlightenment. By setting that assumption aside and taking a fresh, in-depth look at both written and living sources, Shaw discovered a world in which women not only lived and practiced on an equal footing with men in their own pursuit of spiritual transformation, but in many cases even led the way. In fact, Shaw learned that for the serious male tantric practitioner, women were to be worshipped, honored and revered as the bringers of enlightened energy into the world. Through this revolutionary reinterpretation of the tantric texts, Shaw was finally able to make sense of many of the seemingly disparate strands of this complex tradition and, in so doing, to create a foundation for a new chapter in the study of tantric theory and practice.

… We knew as soon as we read Miranda Shaws book that we wanted to speak with her. As a pioneering thinker in her field and a researcher with firsthand experience among traditional teachers, she appeared to be in a better position than almost anyone to help us sort through the confusing message of contemporary tantra. And, in a manner uncharacteristic of the writing of many scholars, her adventurous prose revealed a dynamic and seemingly personal interest in her subject. What intrigued us most of all, however, were the apparent ease and confidence with which she was able to shift from subtle and insightful explications of esoteric Buddhist teachings to detailed descriptions of the more graphic dimensions of tantric sexual practice without missing a beat. Miranda Shaw, we thought, must be an unusual professor.

But despite having read her work and having spoken with her a few times on the phone, the day Miranda Shaw picked me up at the Richmond airport, I think I was still expecting someone more closely resembling a librarian than the attractive, spirited woman who greeted me. “I didnt expect you to be so young!” she said, shaking my hand and smiling warmly. And as we sped into town from the airport, tires screeching around at least one corner, I began to get a sense of the Miranda Shaw who had found so much inspiration in the images of the sky-dancing tantric heroines. Later, sitting lotus-style in the living room of her apartment, surrounded by erotic imagery from both classical and contemporary art, she shared both her understanding of the views and practices of Buddhist tantra and the personal passion for her subject that had taken her to the far corners of the earth.

WIE: In your book Passionate Enlightenment, you describe how tantric Buddhism began as a revolutionary movement or rebellion against the rigidity of traditional Buddhist monastic institutions. Who were these revolutionaries?

Miranda Shaw: The founders of tantra came from all walks of life. We find royalty and aristocracy as well as tribal people and people practicing all kinds of trades and crafts. But interestingly, we also find people from the monasteries. As tantra was being founded and shaped, some of those in the monasteries left because they didnt want to be removed from life-as-lived. The main impetus for the movement, though, did take place outside the monasteries, from what we would call laypeople—people who wanted to practice yoga and spiritual disciplines, but not necessarily in a monastic context as celibates, and not in separation from members of the opposite sex or outside of the context of their intimate and familial relationships.

WIE: Prior to the emergence of tantra, Buddhism was generally practiced only within a strict monastic setting, so if you wanted to become a serious spiritual practitioner within Buddhism, you joined the monastery?

MS: Thats right. There were ethical practices and simple meditations that laypeople did, but they wouldnt be the intensive spiritual pursuits in quest of enlightenment.

WIE: What were the pivotal events that spurred this new movement?

MS: The development of Buddhism has been marked by ever increasing expansion into new geographic areas and new social groups and cultural contexts. During the tantric period, we find Buddhism once again expanding its base and actually reaching out to people, for example, in the mountains, at the borders of society, and at the lower rungs of society. As these people entered Buddhism, they brought with them their own forms of spirituality, their own symbolism and ritual skills. So their insights became woven into the tantric Buddhist vision. One of the ritual skills that is associated with those groups is the shamanic practice of “transforming into deity.” These techniques of transforming into deity then combined with the tantric goal of attaining Buddhahood in this very life.

WIE: Transforming into deity—what does that mean exactly?

MS: Embodying the presence of deity on every level of your being: body, speech and mind. Not only mentally seeing the world as a deity would see it—as harmonious and pure and perfect as it is, as a realm of aesthetic splendor—but also speaking as a deity would speak: with words of insight, liberation and compassion. What I find very exciting about the tantric vision is the practice of realizing the presence of deities within your own body and manifesting divinity through your physical actions. But it is not only manifesting the presence of a deity so that the deity can receive worship, or to heal or to perform other activities, but to manifest the presence of full enlightenment, of Buddhahood, in the world.

WIE: This was obviously an entirely new context for the practice of Buddhism. What was actually happening at that time?

MS: The institutional pattern of tantra followed the ancient yogic model in India, which is that a teacher comes forth with teachings, revelations and methods, and then disciples who want to practice that gather around the teacher and often live near the teacher. They practice together and perhaps go on pilgrimage together and form a small community. There was no central organizing or authorizing body that would censor the teachings in advance or would limit who could teach, which is one of the reasons why it was such a creative period.

WIE: What were some of the key practices of the tantric approach?

MS: The basic mindfulness techniques and ethical teachings of Buddhism were already in place by this time. What was added at this point was the incorporation of a number of yogic techniques, specific ways of directing the breath and the inner energies of the body, which were drawn from the broader yogic knowledge of India. A lot of ritual elements were also incorporated, as well as magical techniques and dance practices. Probably what was most distinctive about this period, though, was the introduction of the yoga of union—the practices that men and women could do together in order to transform the energies awakened by sexual union into very refined states of consciousness, wisdom and bliss.

WIE: Until that time, there had been no sexual practice in Buddhism, right?

MS: Right. There were ethical teachings about sexuality but there were no yogas for using those energies to attain enlightenment.

WIE: How was sexuality or the practice of sexual yoga seen to be of benefit on the path to enlightenment?

MS: Sexuality is an extremely powerful, primal and irreducible aspect of human nature. One of the contributions of the tantric paradigm was the insight that sexual energies were being wasted in some forms of meditative practice. Some of the tantric pioneers felt that a celibate lifestyle did not, in fact, represent a mastery of ones sexuality, but rather a repression of and even a flight in fear from ones sexuality. One was in fact postponing for future lives work which must be done to integrate every aspect of ones being and to master every form of energy at ones command.

WIE: So the idea was that if you took a lifelong vow of celibacy, there was no way you could actually achieve mastery over the sexual impulse?

MS: There is a tantric teaching to the effect that without the practice of sexual union and without integrating ones energies at that level, it is impossible to attain enlightenment in the present lifetime.

WIE: I read in your book that one of the tantric texts goes so far as to state that even the Buddha did not in fact attain enlightenment under the bodhi tree, as is commonly believed, but while practicing sexual yoga in the palace with his wife.

MS: Thats exactly the teaching Im referring to. They say its impossible to attain enlightenment in the present lifetime without uniting with a yogic consort. So they claim that even Shakyamuni Buddha had a consort with whom he practiced—his wife, before he left the palace—and that if he had not done that, he could not have attained enlightenment.

WIE: You say in your book that although he had already actually achieved enlightenment in the palace, he renounced his kingdom, became a homeless wanderer and did years of austere practices in order to inspire people to take up the spiritual life—people who might be moved by such a powerful act of renunciation.

MS: Yes, he attained enlightenment in union with her. Then, in order to draw people who would be inspired by renunciation and who are in fact destined to follow a path of renunciation during this lifetime, he provided that illusory display of austerity.

WIE: Its a fascinating story. But I would imagine that the Theravadins or other more traditional Buddhists would argue that that was just a rewriting of history to serve the tantrics own ideological aims.

MS: What Shakyamuni actually did and attained and said is so lost in the mists of time that by the time we get the earliest written sources, its already hundreds of years later. I do feel that the tantric account is possible.

In speaking about this, though, I want to make it clear that the tantrics did not make a value judgment about people who could not or did not want to integrate their sexual energies into their spiritual path during this lifetime. They realized that celibacy is appropriate for some people because of where they are karmically. But what the tantric insight added was the recognition that some people have an abundance of passion—a very sensual, sensuous, aesthetically alive, emotionally intense character. They wanted to offer tantra as a way that those people could use this intensity so that they would not have to waste all this energy which was at their command, and which in all likelihood they could not really renounce or repress in any case.

WIE: In talking about it this way, you seem to be saying that there are different paths for different types of people and that tantra was intended for passionate people, those who expressed an unusual degree of fire and intensity in their character.

MS: Absolutely. The texts say this over and over again: Tantra is for passionate people.

WIE: How does that fit with the view you just described, that tantric union is the only way that anyone can actually attain full Buddhahood in this lifetime?

MS: Full Buddhahood in this lifetime is a tantric goal. It is not a Mahayana or Theravada goal. Therefore, its fully consistent.

WIE: But in whatever lifetime it happens, at that point it will be in this lifetime. So in the end, they do seem to be saying that the only way anybody is ever going to get there is through the practice of sexual yoga or tantric union.

MS: Thats right. Because, interestingly, they believe that in order to attain full enlightenment you have to contact and release the energy of your heart, which for them is the center, the core of your being, of your consciousness, at the deepest level. That is where you are storing the fears, hatreds and angers of many lifetimes. They felt that only the energy that is generated through the practice of union with a consort could have the power to blast through the residue of centuries of egoic behavior and immersion in illusion and negativity, and to dissolve the layers of hatred and fear within the heart.

WIE: How does this “blasting through” occur? In your book, you state that “practice with a [tantric] partner is believed to make it possible to open the heart fully at the most profound level, freeing it from all knots, constrictions and obscurations created by false views and self-cherishing emotions.”

MS: One of the purposes of the sexual yogas is to concentrate the energies in the abdominal area of the body, which is the seat of inner fire that the tantrics seek to kindle and fan into flame. Through the practice of sexual union, the attention is concentrated in that area, which is several inches below the navel, in the region where the sexual sensations would be arising. However, unlike ordinary sexuality, where the partners would simply allow the pleasure to take its course, tantrics would concentrate their energy and their thought at this one point and use it to arouse that inner fire. When that fire is kindled and starts to burn very brightly, there are several meditations that can be done to refine the energies at the heart. One of them is to direct the energy upward into the heart and, because of the quantity of energy involved, as it goes through the heart, it naturally unties a knot, as they say, and bursts through these residues. However, as the residues are being released, one will sometimes have an experiential sensation of the emotion that is being released as it floats up into conscious awareness. Sometimes if its a hatred, for example, or a fear thats floating up, one will actively experience the emotion as its being released. It takes a great deal of awareness to be able to process the emotions that are coming up from the past and release them as they arise, rather than project them onto the present situation.

WIE: It sounds as though the practice requires a lot more than just the generation of intense energy. It must also demand a cultivation of certain qualities, and of ones character, in order for the practitioner to be able to bear everything that such an intensity of energy is going to stir up.

MS: The potential for reattachment is there because as these emotions and powerful mind-states are being generated, if you are not really poised to detach from them, you can become reinvolved in these past neuroses. They demand at that time to be dealt with in one way or another, and thats why practicing tantra is said to be like walking along the edge of a sword. Its not without its danger. The intensity of energies youre working with and the level of psyche that you are excavating is potentially dangerous to your peace of mind.

WIE: What is it like to be working so closely and intimately with another person when dealing with such powerful energies and emotions? Tantric relationships must be unusually intense.

MS: The relationship provides an opportunity to observe ourselves, to mirror one another and to work with these energies as they arise in an ongoing way. When that direct involvement is combined with the power of the yoga, the entire relationship becomes a crucible of inner combustion and total transformation.

WIE: It would seem, then, that the spiritual involvement between two partners goes far beyond just doing the energetic practice together. Does it also confront the challenge of living together and finding a way to become decent human beings?

MS: It goes vastly beyond becoming decent human beings. It has to do with how we are going to support one another in attaining enlightenment, which is another level of interaction altogether. It might involve things that in an ordinary way dont look decent. Thats why its very important in choosing a tantric partner to find someone who has a comparable level of emotional, intellectual and spiritual sophistication. Because the processes involved require not only a high degree of emotional detachment, but also the possession of certain intellectual skills, such as the capacity to deconstruct the contents and interpretations of ones experience in a precise way.

WIE: It sounds as though getting into a tantric relationship is a serious event requiring a lot of forethought. This doesnt seem like something you could just add to your relationship.

MS: It would be harder to add tantra to an existing relationship than it would be to start it as a tantric relationship from the beginning, because in an existing relationship so many patterns would already be in place. And then youd have all those patterns in addition to all the patterns from the previous lifetimes that youre trying to clear up. I like to think that in theory it could be done, but thats not the way it seems to work.

WIE: One of the other practices that you detail in your book has to do with the combining of bliss and emptiness, or the attempt to bring the realization of emptiness to bear on ones experience of bliss. When you say “bliss” in this context, do you simply mean erotic pleasure—the same pleasure that most people are familiar with?

MS: In tantric practice, one goes beyond pleasure and follows the pleasure to its root, which is the core of the mind, which is made of pure bliss. You go into the realm of pure bliss which is beyond the senses, but you have used the senses to reach it. Youve used the sense pleasure and gone deeply into its core. But when youre in this deep level of bliss, its very easy to become attached to the object of the bliss, or source of the bliss—which is your partner—and also to the experience of bliss itself, and to turn the bliss into yet another experience of entanglement. That is why the experience of bliss is combined with meditation upon emptiness. It is necessary in tantra to combine this experience of very intense bliss with the realization of emptiness.

Tantrics would already have familiarized themselves with the philosophy of emptiness, the understanding that all phenomena are devoid of intrinsic identity, of permanent, independent selfhood. So in that sense, theres an understanding that the world is illusory and thus is not capable of providing satisfaction or ultimate bliss. What tantric partners do in the midst of the experience of bliss is to take this specific insight and apply it to the experience of bliss itself and to deconstruct it, to see that there is no self that is experiencing the bliss. The bliss has arisen in a kind of empty space. Theres no owner of the bliss. Theres no source of the bliss. The combination of bliss with this insight into its emptiness should then lead each partner into vast, skylike awareness, a decentered awareness—in essence, an experience of universal awareness.

WIE: Theres another point in your book where you describe the transformation of sensual pleasure into spiritual ecstasy.

MS: This is exactly how it happens. The ordinary pleasure is turned into transcendent pleasure by the application of insight into emptiness.

WIE: Okay. So theres this intense experience of erotic pleasure and youre completely concentrated in that.

MS: Yes, and then youre applying your insight into emptiness. Youre deconstructing it. Youre seeing it as empty. As you move through that process, youre actually removing any possible elements of attachment within it, so youre taking yourself out of the bliss as the experiencer. Youre taking the object out of the bliss as its cause. Youre taking even that interpretation of the experience as bliss, even the word “bliss,” out of it also. As you deconstruct the different aspects of the bliss, it is transformed from ordinary bliss or pleasure into the transcendent bliss that is devoid of characteristics, and which cannot be described.

WIE: So does the bliss actually change or do you just peel away everything that youve imposed on it in order to illuminate what it was already?

MS: In the tantric analysis, youre removing the obstacles to experiencing it in its fullness. According to tantra, that transcendent bliss is fully present in every moment of experience, but its covered over by what we have projected onto our experience, which are the demands of our ego upon that event.

WIE: One of the main topics of your book is male/female gender relationships and gender roles. You make it quite clear that in the practice of tantric sexual yoga, men are to worship women. Throughout the text, men are variously referred to as “devotees,” “servants” and even “slaves” of the women, and in particular, men are advised that they should “take refuge in the vulva of an esteemed woman” and should even “be willing to touch and ingest every substance discharged by a womans body.”

MS: And lick any part of her body, if requested to do so!

WIE: Thats an extreme degree of willingness to worship and to accept a decidedly subordinate relationship to the woman. Its literally treating the woman as a goddess.

MS: As a goddess, yes. The goal of tantric practice is to transform into deity. The womans path involves realizing that she is, in essence, a goddess or a female Buddha. The mans treatment of her supports her in her emerging realization of her enlightened essence. If he were treating her merely as an equal or as a subordinate, she would have to struggle against his vision and his treatment of her in order to realize her innate divinity. Tantric women do not want to do that.

WIE: If embodiment of deity is one of the main goals of tantra, is it also a goal for the man?

MS: Oh, absolutely.

WIE: Does she then treat him like a god?

MS: Hes also realizing his innate divinity and his Buddhahood, only he believes that the proper expression of his Buddhahood is to honor her divinity. In this worldview, it is the role of the female to channel enlightened energies, the energy of transformation, into the world in a powerful way. It is the role of the male to be the recipient of those energies and to honor them and their source. Some men may disagree, but that is the tantric view.

WIE: In your book you mention that in bringing the woman to arousal, “a man must be careful to incite arousal without detracting from her mindfulness.” How does he do that?

MS: Its a question of virtuosity, of precision, of delicacy. He cant approach it in a sloppy or -

WIE: A gross-minded kind of way?

MS: Yes. I guess delicacy is the best word for it. Not imposing himself and his advances upon her but eliciting her pleasure. Its a different orientation. It involves a great deal of attentiveness to her state of mind and her stages of arousal. It precludes the kind of aggressiveness in the sexual act where the man has a set of preconceived stages in his mind that hes going to get through before he reaches his goal, and the quicker the better.

WIE: That would distract her from her meditation?

MS: Undoubtedly.

WIE: You mentioned earlier that tantric union or sexual yoga is considered to be one of the highest, most advanced practices, requiring tremendous preparation, including intensive meditation practice, the cultivation of a sense of universal responsibility, compassionate motivation, and even the abandonment of the illusion of a separate, isolated self—all this simply to prepare to do the practice.

MS: Thats right. And it requires solitude. Its something that you would do in most cases in a retreat type of situation.

WIE: What kind of retreat?

MS: The couple might go to the woods, to a cave or a meditation hut—someplace where they have silence and solitude. Because of the rarefied states of awareness that one would be cultivating, one really wouldnt want interruption at that time. One would need to concentrate and go into the experience very deeply.

WIE: So this wasnt a practice that couples were doing in the evenings after work and dinner?

MS: Once the practice was stabilized and mastered, they could do that, but at the beginning, while they were developing it, it wouldnt be like that. You hear about people going on retreats, for example, for six months or a year, where they would perform sexual yoga practice intensively before they would try to integrate it into their lives on a more natural, ongoing basis.

WIE: Its interesting to hear that this is how it has historically and traditionally been viewed because our reference point for tantra these days is something much different. Looking through the spiritual magazines, we see countless tantra workshops being taught by couples, which other couples attend together or to which singles come and pair up for a one- or two- week “intensive.” Compared to the spiritual context youve described, from what Ive seen these workshops seem to be based on more of a Western therapeutic approach.

MS: The main distinction, I think, between some of the modern, more secularized or Westernized versions—but also some Indian versions—is that in these contemporary approaches, the relationship itself is the focus, and theyre importing elements and practices from tantra in order to enhance their relationship. Whereas in authentic tantra, youre using the contents of your relationship in order to pursue and attain enlightenment. So the focus, the goal, is completely different.

WIE: How much of whats currently going on around us in the West in the name of tantra do you feel actually lives up to the seriousness of what you have been describing?

MS: It seems that in general Westerners do not have the foundation that Eastern practitioners would have. For example, the practice of tantra in India, Nepal and Tibet presumes five years, on average, of study of the philosophy of emptiness. People who are considering doing tantric practice ask one another: “What philosophies of emptiness have you studied?” “What texts?” Theyll question one another on technical points of emptiness. What Westerner has done that? The fruition of tantric practice is the union of bliss and emptiness. If you do not understand emptiness, you cannot deconstruct your emotions, and that is essential to tantric practice. What do you do with fear when it arises, or anger or intense desire or lust? How do you deconstruct that if you dont understand emptiness? As you said, its not psychotherapy.

WIE: I understand that its also a tantric practice to imagine youre performing sexual yoga without actually having a physical partner.

MS: This is for monks, because they dont want to give up their vows of celibacy. They consider it preparation for that time when they can practice with a consort in future lives.

WIE: When theyre doing that visualization practice, is it actually something that theyre engaged in on every level, so to speak? Do they provoke arousal in themselves?

MS: Theyre supposed to.

WIE: Theyre supposed to get sexually aroused and do this visualization? Even in the monastery theyre doing that?

MS: Some of them. Thats the impression one gets. They learn to channel that energy on their own. Theyre not taking it to a point of release, but arousing it and controlling it.

WIE: In addition to your study of the tantric texts, you also did two and a half years of field research in Asia. You mentioned that you met a number of yogis and yoginis. How many did you meet whom you felt were true tantric masters?

MS: More than a dozen. They werent all teachers of it, but they were all serious practitioners and adept masters. I met some inauthentic ones, too.

WIE: What convinced you that they were true masters?

MS: I talked to them about the practices and I also looked at the level or intensity of their awareness, their capacity to be totally aware in the present moment. One also gets a feeling for the purity of the yogic body of a person to whom one is talking.

WIE: What do you mean by that?

MS: How much presence or absence there is in their system of egoic residue. You can tell that by the way they move and the way they comport themselves, the gravity, dignity and total mindfulness of their presence. Whether their movements appear to be the gestures of a deity, whether they communicate divinity and total impeccability. It was the quality of their embodiment and presence that I looked at. But I didnt stop there. If I thought I had found someone, I would question them. Its a very subtle process.

WIE: In your book you mention Lama Jorphel, who was in some sense a teacher to you. Did you have other teachers as well or was he the only one?

MS: I met many impressive people, but he was the one with whom I worked most closely for the longest period. He really became involved in the project and took an interest in guiding me personally as well as intellectually. As a tantric teacher, he would not be interested simply in providing information about tantra or spiritual development. His whole purpose as a teacher of course is to guide and to transform people. Shortly after we met, very early in our interaction together, he asked me if I had a meditation practice. At that time, I did not. He told me that if I were to work with him, I would need to do 100,000 prostrations, starting today. And 100,000 purification mantras as well. I just said, “All right.” I mean, how could I presume to ask for tantric teachings and not be willing to do any practice?

WIE: In your book, you also describe the way he worked with you ongoingly by spontaneously responding to your different emotional and mental states.

MS: Hes a person whom I would characterize as having total awareness of the present moment and the capacity to devise a teaching or a lesson on the spot that mirrors the state of mind of the student and reveals whatever aspect of ego or illusion that may be operative in them at that time. It was an extraordinary kind of interaction. I had never experienced such accuracy of feedback from any Western therapist or counselor. I realized that that was because he was bringing no ego needs or projections to the situation whatsoever and therefore he had the capacity to mirror it in a very clear way.

WIE: Did you also undergo some of the more advanced tantric trainings? It wasnt clear to me whether you yourself engaged in the tantric yoga practices weve been speaking about.

MS: Tantric practice is secret. You cant talk about it. You cant say, “I did this.” You cant say, “I did that.” Its absolutely forbidden.

WIE: People only speak about it in the abstract?

MS: You can speak about it with the people youre doing it with.
I talk about things in the abstract that I know to be true. Thats all I can say. I wrote about very little from a purely theoretical perspective. I either ascertained it or talked to someone who had experienced it.

WIE:Lama Jorphel obviously imparted a lot to you during your time with him. Can you speak about whats changed for you as a result of all this?

MS: I changed profoundly on every level from my research and study, even on a cellular level. I was completely transformed physically. People who knew me before I started my research and then saw me towards the end of that period did not recognize me.

Also, my understanding of men totally changed. I discovered that men were capable of decency, total refinement, and in fact, enlightenment. That its possible for men to be supportive of women in a profoundly spiritual way, not simply emotionally. I discovered a whole form of male celebration of women that I did not know existed. I was also surrounded by images of divinity in female form, and seeing the unclothed female body in a religious context rather than in a commercial, secular context as it is in the West was profoundly affirming for me as a woman. My understanding of what is possible in male/female relationships changed and my understanding of myself as a woman completely changed. I had internalized a lot of the shame-based attitudes of the West, not only the general attitudes of the culture at large but also specific forms of shaming that had been inflicted upon me in my own personal trajectory from which I was able finally to be healed.

I would really say that I encountered the power and full sacredness of being female, because the tantric teaching is that women are pure and sacred in the essence of their being. Youre talking about your very cells, your energy, not simply something that you can attain, but an ontological fact. That changes the orientation of your journey.

WIE: There have been so many abuses of power by spiritual authorities over the past twenty years, and in particular, many reported cases of sexual abuse by teachers in the Buddhist tradition claiming to be practicing tantra. Often it seems that the word “tantra” is used to justify what usually turns out to be nothing more than the pursuit of personal sexual gratification, often at the disciples expense. Even the great Kalu Rinpoche, revered as one of the greatest Buddhist masters of the modern era, often referred to as the Milarepa of the twentieth century and considered by many to have been a living Buddha, is now known to have been maintaining a secret sexual relationship with his young Western female translator, June Campbell, who claims with considerable support that she was intimidated into keeping the relationship secret.

MS: I have no doubt that it happened. She was emotionally coerced into a sexually abusive and exploitative relationship. Unfortunately, the word “tantra” does provide a shield behind which sexual predation can hide. But when you actually inquire into such sexual situations, you find out that tantric practice was not the intent of the relationship. The way, for example, that June Campbell describes their relationship, there was nothing even remotely tantric about it. It was not for their mutual pursuit of enlightenment. It was purely exploitative. This is not tantra.

I have been approached by people who would simply say something like, “Have sex with me and youll become more enlightened!”—which of course is not tantra. If someone is approached by a spiritual teacher and is told, as it was told to June Campbell and others, that this is for the benefit of the teacher, then they should know automatically that it is not tantra. Because in tantra, youre not allowed to use the other person on any level. It has to be totally voluntary. Any form of coercion is disallowed in tantra. I think the tantrics foresaw this kind of abuse because they made a rule that the man may not directly approach or request a woman to enter into a tantric relationship. He has to approach her and offer himself subtly, indirectly through body language, through signs and a certain secret language they use.

We need this kind of clarity in the West, because womens lives, their peace of mind and even their spiritual practice are being destroyed by ordinary predation. This is simply sexual abuse in Eastern garb. I hope that work like mine, interviews like yours and this issue of your magazine will help to clarify what tantra is so that people cannot hide behind that label.

WIE: In looking at this whole issue, though, it seems to me that something else is also revealed by the fact that so many great masters have failed to demonstrate an enlightened relationship to sexuality. Were not just speaking about charlatans. Everybody I know who met Kalu Rinpoche said he was an incredibly beautiful human being, a truly rare example of purity and humanity.

MS: He was unbelievable.

WIE: So my question is: If even a man like that, who has attained such a high level of practice, in a tradition where there is such an elaborate teaching around sexuality, is unable to live with integrity and decency in the face of the sexual impulse, then how wise is it for anyone to recommend that people take up sexual practice as a path to enlightenment?

MS: These abuses and distortions actually justify the original insight and intent of tantra, which was that if you do not work directly with your sexuality, if you simply repress it or try to ignore it without mastering it, then you cannot become fully enlightened. Its not going to take care of itself. And its not going to go away by itself if you have a lifetime of celibacy. What we see happening, even in the case of the great master, is that if sexuality is neglected, and at the same time, other sides of the personality, such as lust for power or accumulation, are also developing, then the sexual energies are simply going to be there to be claimed by the uncultivated and even possibly corrupt dimensions of the personality. This is the entire point of tantra: Enlighten your sexuality along with everything else!

WIE: Because if its not looked into, if its not reckoned with, then its bound to resurface somewhere?

MS: Yes, it will surface as part of the unenlightened dimension of your character and emerge in a way that causes you suffering and inflicts suffering on others. The purpose of the path to enlightenment is to cease to suffer and to cease to cause others to suffer. Cases like this simply demonstrate that no matter how enlightened you may be, you must also pay attention to your sexuality.

______________________________________________

Reprinted with permission from What Is Enlightenment? magazine; Spring-Summer 1998.
© 1998 What Is Enlightenment? Press. All rights reserved. www.wie.org

The concept of man as robot was both an expression of and a powerful motive force in industrialized mass society. It was the basis for behavioral engineering in commercial, economic, political and other advertising propaganda; the expanding economy of the affluent society could not subsist without such manipulation…. Only by manipulating humans ever more into Skinnerian rats, robots, buying automata, homeostatically adjusted conformers and opportunists (or, bluntly speaking, into morons and zombies) can this great society follow its progress toward ever increasing gross national product. L. Von Bertalanffy

Culture is Nature

Culture is Nature. It comes through us and is as natural as blades of grass in a field. Seen from this perspective, as from aeroplane, the city is as beautiful and natural a vision as the facets of a jeweled ammonite.

The uncountable interactions on every street, every moment, make the city a natural system of staggering complexity. City networks grow like organisms, emergent crystalline growths, stocks and shares, fluid transactions. Ecologies of corporations, non-linear trans-national octopi devouring each other in the economic system.

Amidst this vast and hyper-complex sprawl of re-configured stone and glass, flows the 0’s and 1’s from which it emerged : Us.

The skyscrapers and teeming valleys become illuminated by the rising sun, reflecting off wet stone and glass. Now the circuitry of the city looks like a nest of golden crystals. These gigantic skyscrapers, bustling streets, everything, are forms of emptiness, of ancient vibrational energy in a state of continual renewal. Time is nothing but the transformation of this energy.

We humans are timeless life forms in an infinite universe beyond comprehension, flame-like vortices of consciousness in a mysterious cosmos that vastly predates the language we use to describe it. The human race has a future of eternally receding mystery ahead of us. Everything that is known, subject and object, is the big bang, the universe manifesting into infinite patterns.

We are told in this scientific fable of ‘the Big Bang’, a blazing forth of supernal light, into something deeper and darker than night. The light, the fire, mixing with the darkness, the primal waters, swirls forth the myriad ten-thousand things, from shining stellar nurseries to spinning globes of rock, crystal, magma and waters, leaf and dew, eyes and lips. In these chthonic garden temples and templates of creation, pterodactyles, and salamanders, pumas and lithe, elfin women. In this giant mind metabolism of this world, has come forth bodily forms, vehicles of experience.

Over great historical swathes of time, world ages have risen and fallen, governed by mysterious archetypes, constellated by the great mind-lattices of the Zodiacal wheel. In the Kali Yuga, the Iron Age, the random throw of the dice, generations race forth from the forests and deserts, and gather in vast coral fortresses of the city.

Cities

The city is rock rearranging itself under the sun, sand crystalised in the glass spires, woven from the elements by children of star fire, birthed from and inseparably OF Gaia. Woven from a confluence of forces, histories, bio-regional pressures.

Cities reflect the resources of the land, express the mineralogical, hydrological and psycho-symbolic nature of the land it is built upon, replaces, and is surrounded by. Urban landscapes are of ‘artifice’. Whilst the natural creation is all one, a mysterious emergence, an unfathomable creation that self-organizes according to mysterious laws, the city is different, because it it birthed from human axioms. It is birthed from certain kinds of human principles, logistics, practicalities, conveniences, prejudices, philosophies. Generation after generation, it is the solidification of the human collective consciousness with its self-serving, anthropocentric priorities.

Now the city, constituted from assemblages of rock and sand, is the substrate for a digital and psychic holographic overlay of media streams that impell its cyborg inhabitants, through guiding their behaviour, toward a systemic pattern, that belongs to the city alone, and allows it to perpetually resurrect itself through the repetitions of its constituent human atoms.

The city is therefore a standing-wave expression of the state of mind within much of the human race… it is an expression of perennial, unresolved fears and appetites, as well as established economic and structural conventions. The haunted Gothic vistas of our psyche expresses itself as the economic cathedrals of wall street. Stilleto-boot vistas made of obsidian, shiny, crystallized lustrous portals of baroque, biomechanical social and institutional processes. It is a meta-pattern that perpetuates itself, by imposing certain laws of operation upon the subsystems that compose it.

Cities and Anthropocentrism

Like Oroborous, the mythical snake devouring its own tail, causality is cyclic, effects feed back into causes. First we make our buildings, then our buildings make us. As we dream, so we become. Urban conglomerates express primarily an anthropocentric world view; anthropocentric in the sense where our reality becomes honed down to the priorities and central preoccupations of human life alone, at the exclusion and detriment of its wider natural context. Cities of the Kali Yuga also reflect a cybernetic view of life, based upon mechanically determined processes of information and matter.

As people grow up within such environments, they are conditioned by all the philosophical presumptions and emotional charges that such urban assemblages express. This run-away process reflects a deep polarization throughout a greater part of the species mind, and in turn the ‘mind of Gaia’ which we are inextricably expressions of.

Anthropocentrism is fear. It is fear of other, it is fear of nature-crawling-under-your-skin, it is fear of being eaten, it is fear of disease. These are ancient sufferings and it is an old habit to shy away from anything associated with suffering. As the imagination of ego, the ’simulation of self’ crystallizes over countless generations, such a hallucination begins to actually manifest and embody itself in the walls, separations, divisions that sever the earths boundless flows and so cut off the human essence from the pranic logos flowing through deep currents.

Deep Ecological Communitas

What would happen if the human being created without an anthropocentric perspective ? What would its cities, its communities be like ? They would be permeable to nature. They would be yin, receptive in quality. They would represent something akin to a special moss or mineral formation growing in a particular fissure of rock. The emergent creativity would encompass all of natures systems and not just anthropocentric ones. Creation would occur ‘within’ and not ‘upon’ the land. The community would be a self-renewing food bowl, not just for humans but for many beings.

If we think of the awe-inspiring self-emergent growths of cells, crystals, forests, human beings would find themselves in that order, not within an ‘enlightened’ separateness and self-distinction. Humanity will find its pattern through an intimate relating, a great blessing that each being is heir to, to mingle its unbounded essence with all life, and discover a great world beyond that of human logistics, beyond that of form.
Baroque, Gothic, taoist realms of exquisite natural pattern, producing miracles of beauty and poesis, will flower within the post-oil shells of the city.

Such communities are rooted in an animist experience of the universe and the world, the great field of sentience, where whirling eddies and spires of mysterious perpetuating spirits and archetypes are en-nested with the physical world of nature; the physical world appearing at once as a grand nervious system, and also a great mind.

Facilitated by the plant teachers of the Earth, such as the psilocybin fungi or the great medicine Ayahuasca, it becomes perceptible. Speaking simply of the mystery of the forest – the living interconnectivity appears as a Great, Leafy Mind. Forests atop of hills appear like clumps and mounds of soft, living brain leaf matter. Tree trunks and branches, arches and curves of the glade temples of Gaia, are lattices supporting efflorence of receptor sites – flowers and pollen transmitters, symbiotic, form filling ergonomic sex uplinks between insect and flower consciousness, infinite sparkling synaptic panoramas of micro-nirvanic orgasms as flower stamen meets bee, distilling nectars in hives and combs. This living temple is the pulising, vibratory eternal energy, arrayed by divine evolution, the baroque creation of Gaia is the flowering fractal which ever transcends like an epiphany of luminous, self-organising mystery.

Tantra

The Sufi Hakim Bey does a lovely job of envisaging a life -not human- centered community of beings living in oneness and realisation of this Animist consciousness…

“The appropriate architectural form for a society based on radical conviviality might best be characterized as grotesque – that is, in the original sense of the word – the cave. Since the paleolithic, ritual space has always been envisaged as a hollow earth, and in Mao Shan Taoism, for example, heaven itself is honeycombed with countless grottoes of faeries and immortals, dripping with cinnabar and sprouting with magic mushrooms. As an aesthetic term, grotesque refers to the organic-looking forms of stalagmites, to the curving spiraling line of flesh and vegetation, which reappears underground and is transformed into the crystal architectural space, without losing its snaky, flowery, curviness or its matrix like slick wetness, or even its colors. The body is not separated from the rest of the world, it is not a closed, completed unit ; it is unfinished, outgrows itself ; transgresses its own limits.”

The radical conviviality that Hakim Bey is referring to is a sensual and tactile ‘information society’ which is bodily integrated, where humans are returned to full-body perception and relating, rather than the cerebrotonic and linguistic emphasis that we currently exist in. It includes a radical unboundedness and permeability which sounds almost orgiastic :

“Life uses and violates borders, and life constructs media of its own to fill up the extra spaces. Viral-like DNA are exchanged in gushes of juice and slime, liquid with paradoxical form – the very liminality of form itself, secret secretions, the viscous slippery in-betweenness of the organic.”

In the gushes of juices and subtle energies shared between the sexes, the yin and yang is balanced and the ten-thousand countless things find their place within the self-organizing tao. The sexual act is commensurate with the act of creation. Sexual connotations can hardly be removed from understanding the world of nature and spirit since a kind of cosmic sexuality or love-play powers manifest creation itself.

“Sexuality anywhere is a polyvalent function, whose primary and supreme valency is the cosmological function. To translate a psychic situation into sexual terms is by no means to belittle it. For except in the modern world, sexuality has everywhere and always been a hierophany and the sexual act an integral action, therefore, a means to knowledge.”- Mircea Eliade (1975:90)

A kind of desire attracts all things into compounded form to create the nebulous myriad realms of nature, through a play of complimentary pairs. Thus, health and harmony within human sexual relations maintains the flow of pranic, fertile energy throughout the interrelating systems of culture and nature, as we iterate on our own scale of experience the dance of atom and void, Sol and Gaia. This process of marriage of opposites occurs in the eagles flight to the sun, the mystic journey from the earthly to the solar so central in many forms of yoga and shamanism.

Sexual Energy, Life and Sun

Understanding the transmission of energy from the Sun into the ecological networks of the planet was experiential knowledge to the ancestors. It is a relationship that occurs not only on the level of observable nature, but analogously as a metaphysical understanding of the maintaining of the dynamic life and fertility of our own creative essences through shamanic gnosis:

“The Indians are deeply preoccupied with the concept of reproductive energy as manifested in nature and society by fertility and growth. The existence of plants, animals, and people and of a viable balance among them are thought to depend upon the continuity of this energy, and the payé’s or anybody else’s tasks consists in maintaining the cycle of reproduction and growth and in controlling it so that there will be a balance between society and the natural environment.”

The shaman often accomplishes harmonization of cycles of psycho-ecological energy through the re-creation of a passage of ‘higher energies’ between the life-giving Primal Sun with the fertility of Gaia and its beings. In Tukano cosmology the payé , the illuminate, the healer-visionary, exists as an agent of integration between the solar and the earthy, conscious and the unconscious, the natural and the cultural, the masculine and feminine, to re-fertilize the dense realms of matter with life-giving vibrancy, energy and information, thus maintaining the strength and potency of the people and the ecological web.

“The sun’s fertilizing energy is transmitted to the payé in the sense that he himself becomes a carrier of a force that contains procreative and fortifying components… There are the creative and enlivening rays (bogá), from the Sun above empowering the generative forces from below (dári) within budding and sprouting plant forms, the biological fecundity and fertility of Gaia. These circuits of energy regulate the reproductive and productive cycles in the forest, river, garden and village, as well as in animals and people. (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1996).

Wisdom, equality, balance, sacramental potions, tantric reconciliation of opposites regenerating the Tree of Life advanced spiritual development, sacred dances, crystallizing coherence in meditation, poesis and art, transcendence of anthropocentric ’self-simulations’, these fruits of the spiritual cultures of the earth, are all medicines in the earth. ‘Medicine culture’ assisting in building and maintaining the vigor and strength of the race, the strength of the species in its cosmic journey, to stand upright and face the dazzling vistas of the future with clarity, joy and vitality.

~

Bibliography

‘Boundary Violations’ by Peter Lamborn Wilson

von Hildebrand, M. (1988). In Gaia, the Thesis, the Mechanisms and the Implications – Symposium I (P. Bunyard and E. Goldsmith, eds.), pp. Wadebridge ecological Centre, Cornwall.

The Shaman And The Jaguar. A Study of Narcotic Drugs Among the Indians of Colombia. G.Reichel-Dolmatoff. Temple University Press. 1975.