An aware sexuality and the “western” Tantra
The evil is not into the “things” but in the use
we can do of them…
Some fond reader wrote to me, asking me to express my opinion
both in general on the Indian view of sexuality, and about
Tantra.
As many of you already know, to teach and to write are my total
occupations: the first one, in addition to give me joy, let’s me
live, the second one completes me and, compelling me to clarify
to myself, make it understandable to the others…and it’s because
of this second reason that I accept to treat this topic.
What is immediately clear to me is that this issue arouses today
a too strong interest, even a bit morbid, letting me think that
maybe is still away the day in which also this aspect of life
will find its right and natural location into the “normal”
everyday life.
I was born during the latest world war (I’d like it was the last
one) and, like other people, I lived the psychosis of who, as my
parents, that I love today more than I did when they were alive,
living the uncertainty of the survival, even after the war, had
the preoccupation of the food.
I think this is one of the reasons of the big success, at the
moment of the economic pick-up, of the restaurants. In some
period, I thought it was even excessive and, in my opinion, it
was a sign of a certain objective imbalance. Moreover, at that
time, the regular costumers ate into the same meal, with
appetite: first and second course, dessert, fruit, etc.
Today wellness is almost in every home, and we notice an
increasing difficulty in eating more than one rich course: if we
eat the hors d’oeuvre we have difficulties with the next course
or vice-versa if we eat the first we won’t have the second
course.
The same, again in my opinion, will happen with
sex. We could also discover that is surely better to choose, for
our health, the restaurants that use natural ingredients or even
to choose to stay most often at home. Concerning the Indian view
of sexuality, first of all I have to say that India, generally,
seems to be very frustrated about this matter and so I advice do
not sell and preach false illusions.
Anyway, I cannot deny that some great Indian
thinker produced very high thought-forms also on this topic.
Tantras, ancient Indian texts, as Purana, generally deal with
creation, dissolution, cult, “superhuman” powers and union with
the Supreme Being. The Absolute is seen in the “fusion” of Shiva
and Shakti and often the texts refer to the dialogue between
Shiva and the God. We think that Tantra originated in IV-V
century AD but it affirmed itself only from the VI century.
The idea, in a sense the religious idea of Tantra, is that the
divinity in its perfection is made from the union of the two
different aspects: male and female. From here, the attempt,
through the various practices, to test the Transcendent through
that union that, in “daksina” Tantra, called “of the right
hand”, in a certain monastic (from monos, alone) sense, the
ascetic tries to realize in his own microcosm, while in the left
hand’s one (rare) “vama”, with the presence of a partner.
Here is how fantasies of people got free of, thinking to find in
this last way the possibility to freely have sex without any
sense of guilty but, obviously, that approach to Tantra is to be
considered a topic on itself, interesting issue for sexologists
and western psychologists.
What is anyway essential, for a good total
realization of the existence, is a more aware approach even to
this aspect of nature and especially a bigger “knowledge” that
could bring to a correct and healthy use, the only one that can
generate happiness, where the love is never foreign.
by Amadio Bianchi