Desire: The Tantric Path to Awakening
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Our cultural and religious heritage seems to tell us that we must choose: the spiritual against the body or the body against the spiritual. D. T. Suzuki, the eminent scholar of Zen Buddhism, one day made this sarcastic comment on the Christian tradition to his friends, American mythologist Joseph Campbell and psychoanalyst Carl Jung: “Nature against Man, Man against Nature; God against Man, Man against God; God against Nature, Nature against God; very funny religion!”1
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Nostalgia for Unity One of the causes of our suffering comes from the presence, in the deepest part of ourselves, of a kind of nostalgia for unity that sometimes surfaces with great force not only during infancy and adolescence but also in adulthood. This powerful feeling of unity with the world is generally interpreted disfavorably. Adults speak of daydreams, of distraction, of merging states more or less suspicious and destined to disappear over time. And unfortunately this is, in general, how it happens.
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This feeling, this need for freedom, this “high” is what we call the passions, and even though we know they give life back to us, they generally trigger in us a certain guilt that goes hand in hand with social disapproval, as if to live is to become progressively used to suffocation, to slow death. No one, not even the paragons of virtue, escapes these jolts, these cataclysms, and if they are most often misinterpreted, it is simply because we all know how essentially marvelous it is to be awakened from our torpor by the passions. Those who have lost this state of grace are the first to condemn ...more
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The Power of Woman Kashmiri Shaivism stands in opposition to Indian tradition because it does not recognize castes and disagrees that mystical teachings and intimacy with the sacred texts be reserved for one of these castes, the brahmans. It disagrees as well with all discrimination between men and women, and all social or ethnic discrimination. Indeed, not only do women have access to the teachings, but Kashmiris have also always believed that their capacities are deeper and more direct than men’s. The tradition therefore includes a great number of yoginis and women of knowledge who serve the ...more
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Yoginis, like all women, enjoy immense respect from Kashmiris; there is not a single text in which their value is minimized. They are often given the role of mothering the cyclical vision of things, a characteristic of Tantrism, as well as that of a teaching linked to an immediately comprehensible reality—one that knows how to avoid the trappings of a superfluous philosophical sophistication while reaching the greatest depth. It is also said that Tantrism’s attachment to reality rather than to the concept of illusion shared by certain Buddhists (from which Ch’an and the Yogacaras must be ...more
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Our main fear—fear of dissolution, of being nothing—keeps us from realizing that when we think we are one particular thing, and therefore isolated, we indeed become only that thing and lose the rest. In accepting that we are nothing, we gain the world. This logical progression is the key to the Tantric vision and to the creative role of desires and passions, which through our sensorality are seen as the fastest steedlike messengers for leading us to the Self. We must, however, agree on the way in which the tantrikas view desires and passions, and how they live them in an absolute manner.
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The first question that bears asking is this: Is it possible to lead our whole lives with passion, and thus avoid feeling the earthquakes of passion’s emergence into a life that has previously negated it? Many reasonable people would answer that passion inevitably leads to suffering. Indeed, the word passion comes from the Latin passio, which means “suffering.” This is a warped view that we are subjected to from a very early age. Adding to it is the fact that in general, those who attempt the experience of continual passion get burned, suffer, and fade away. We lack therefore any convincing ...more
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We have all experienced the profound inner tremoring of existence for a few seconds or a few hours. If we examine our past, we will remember having been, during our childhood or adolescence, completely connected to the world. Remembering this ecstatic communion with a person or an ...
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When we have become conscious of our way of breathing, we can allow the breath to find its proper place and its plenitude, very progressively encouraging complete breathing—on the condition that the process be founded on the emergence of consciousness and not on the idea of “doing,” of applying a technique to obtain an effect. Nothing is done in Tantric yoga to obtain some future gratification; on the contrary, it offers “practices” whose fruits are immediately present in “the practice” itself. In this way we breathe solely to experience the profound harmony of breathing—nothing else.
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The success of the later practices, all of which deal with full consciousness of the sensations, depends uniquely upon the ability to breathe consciously.
Jamie Zigelbaum
Problematic. It puts stress on achieving tgis state rather han enjoying each breath we can be present for.
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African and Asian women massage their babies a lot to get all the branches of their nervous systems working. They readily tell us, to use a common expression, that they “finish” their babies, because they deeply feel that the process of entering the world is not completed with the physical birth. Today we know that brain circuits that are not stimulated during the first few months of life automatically self-destruct.
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The Kashmiri masters understood well this process of absence to reality in the spiritual quest. Over the course of a few thousand years, they considered all angles of this issue and invented a simple and refined practice whereby human beings choose as their domain of practice the whole of day-to-day reality within society, without either renouncing or separating themselves from anything whatsoever, but instead simply allowing consciousness to emerge in each act of life.
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For Devi, a person who aspires to spirituality is a person who allows all actions or movements that connect her to the world to circulate freely and unendingly, as much on the interior level of sensations, emotions, and thoughts as on the level of action. She would say that a single instant of total presence was worth the reading of all the texts, all the poets, all the philosophers. Devi was a great sahajiya, a totally spontaneous, awakened being.
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There was no ritual other than to breathe, walk, bathe in the icy water of the waterfall; to look at the earth, the lichens, the trees, the leaves, common objects; to enter deeply into contact with life, reality. “Adhere deeply to reality with the heart of your being; there is nothing else to look for!” she would say.
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For tantrikas, consciousness does not proceed from activity; on the contrary, it is activity that flows from consciousness. Thus, our senses do not perceive an outer object in order to pull it inward, toward the perceiver; on the contrary, it is consciousness that emerges, goes out and touches the world, and in this way brings back the whole manifestation to its source.
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All these teachings begin with this very simple observation: There is only consciousness. The various yogas are not means to reach this consciousness. Abhinavagupta, the tenth-century Tantric philosopher and one of India’s greatest thinkers, says in his monumental work Tantraloka (“light on the Tantras”): “All that is proscribed, all that is upheld, the yogas based on such limbs as the control of breath or other things, all that is false.”
Jamie Zigelbaum
Feels like nonmanagement
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As can be seen, this constant recourse to the source of existence exonerates the tantrika from all adherence to any moral or ethical precepts. The tantrika rejects all interdictions, all exterior and progressive quests that involve the intervention of ritualistic forms or beliefs or dogmas and even metaphysics, which has no effect on the practical level. This is also one of the fundamental teachings of the Buddha, who never responded to these types of questions.
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There is neither transcendence nor purification. The masters define purity as “all that is lived with consciousness,” and impurity as “all that is lived with automatism and nonpresence.” Consciousness replaces everything, and without it there is no spirituality.
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Thus it is no longer a question of cutting off the senses, desires, and passions; on the contrary, it is a question of mounting these high-spirited, steedlike messengers in full consciousness so that they may carry us rapidly to a continuous presence to the world. This all-encompassing, larger conception of the profound dignity of the human being is often misunderstood. Certain people imagine that it refers to permissiveness, and in allowing themselves to follow their egoist inclinations they bind themselves increasingly in suffering and absence. This is the battle of impulsiveness against ...more
Jamie Zigelbaum
Impulsiveness is shadow spontenakty
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“The body immediately confers perfection, that is, certainty with regard to the true nature of things . . . thanks to the contact with the power of the Self,” says Abhinavagupta.
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Here again, the Tantric masters have fully and completely rejected all prejudices. They have considered with both awareness and full consciousness all the jolts that pass through a human being and, rather than deny these lively and intense forces, they have forgotten what humans claim to know about their passions and instead examined them directly, with naked attention.
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Stanza 105 of the Vijnanabhairava Tantra,17 one of the most ancient Tantric texts and the source of all nonpostural yoga, describes this choice position: “Desire exists in you as in everything. Realize that it also resides in objects and in all that the mind can grasp. Then, in discovering the universality of desire, enter its radiant space.”18
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For tantrikas, desire is the very movement, the very nature, of the universe itself.
Jamie Zigelbaum
Desire is the movement of he universe
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“What if desire were to desire something other than objects?” the Tantric masters then wondered. If desire were simply the incandescence that gives us the feeling of being alive, were intensity, were the tremoring vibration that carries us, then it would be absurd to allow it to be consumed by objects and to lose it once we possess the object or realize we cannot attain it. This profound movement is life itself, and this tremoring is the one that all yoginis and yogis experience, precisely because they remain in the incandescence of desire without rendering it dependent upon the object. In ...more
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The obstacle to our continual satisfaction is that we reduce our desire instead of allowing it to blossom out over all objects. A reduced desire blocks the fluidity of consciousness, sensations, thoughts, and emotions. When a single object takes an exclusive place in our mind, when our being reaches toward this object in a sort of contracted tension, movement ceases within us and suffering finds its home in us.
Jamie Zigelbaum
Outcomes are overspecified
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On the other hand, when our desire occupies all of space the absence of one object goes totally unnoticed, because the flow of our awareness remains free to come into contact with thousands of others. This is the way tantrikas live: in constant presence to the whole of reality. They are thus incessantly showered by the world’s infinite variety. They no longer have to seize, to stifle, objects; they leave them free, and the contact they have with the world is of such richness that lack, frustration, or solitude never comes and finds its home in them.
Jamie Zigelbaum
They are the lines in indra's web, not the nodes
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What is it that comes to block us in this spherical unfolding of the senses, in the fire of desire, and causes our experience of reality to be unceasingly torn between pleasure and suffering? What keeps us from having a taste of continual presence of desire? Here again the Kashmiri masters return to the source, consciousness. We are capable of living the reality of the world directly, without the mental faculties incessantly deferring this enjoyment by coming in to comment on it, judge it, ensconce it in differentiation.
Jamie Zigelbaum
The mind makes stories or objects it binds to desire, battery to hold the charge for fear. When he crjtical mind finds no case to safisfy its story tge charge stagnates
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Chinul, the twelfth-century Korean Ch’an master, expresses this freedom magnificently in his treatise Secrets of Cultivating the Mind: Thus for adepts the principle of equally maintaining concentration and insight is not a matter of effort; it is spontaneous and effortless, with no more particular time frame. When seeing
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and hearing, they are just so; when defecating and urinating, they are just so; when conversing with people, they are just so; whatever they are doing, walking, standing, sitting, reclining, speaking, silent, rejoicing, raging, at all times and in everything they are thus, like empty boats riding the waves, going along with the high and the low, like a river winding through the mountains, curving at curves and straight at straits, without minding any state of mind, buoyantly going along with nature today, going along with nature buoyantly tomorrow, adapting to all circumstances without ...more
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When the mind finds itself calmed in this way, it is at last able to reflect reality as it is and not as we would like it to be. This incessant reorchestrating of our mind, which makes every effort to see the world as it imagines it, tires us and causes us suffering. A peaceful mind realizes that it has the ability to grasp everything instantaneously. It no longer has to “stockpile” the materials of reality in order to deal with them later.
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To keep oneself sharp, lively and quick, spontaneous, and alert to the instant when things arise is considered the Mahayoga by the tantrikas because the success of this small miracle of presence dispenses with all expedients, all techniques, all spiritual practices, all the specific yogas. It is supreme nonpractice, since in the lightning flash of the moment all becoming and all progression on the spiritual path are annihilated. This is the quintessence of Tantrism, of Ch’an, of dzogchen, the Great Seal, or Mahamudra (as the Tibetans and Kashmiris call it).
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As soon as you awaken, enter into consciousness in your body, considered the temple of the divine. Observe physiological changes (sensation of breath, of tensions, of the heartbeat, of blood flow, of the diaphragm, of the intestines, and so on); note the start of mental activity, the flow of sensations and emotions. Do this for twenty or thirty seconds, like an extended interior cinematic moving shot of the inner landscapes, zooming forward and back; then, consciously, withdraw from this awareness and return to your habitual manner of doing things—that is, to automatic pilot.
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A little later, while getting up, for example, bring the same naked and nonjudgmental attention to the movements of your body and muscles. After a few seconds, withdraw your attention. A little later, as you walk barefoot on the floor, for four or five steps be present to your feet, to your movements, to your sensations, then come back to the habitual course of things. Be present to a few sips of whatever you are drinking and return to automatism. Next, in the time it takes to butter a slice of bread, do this same back-and-forthing with presence. When you taste your piece of bread, return once ...more
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You will discover that if you can find such pleasure in presence, then your joy no longer depends on exceptional circumstances waited for in a state of neurotic tension but on simple reality, as it presents itself to you from moment to moment. In this way you will gain immense autonomy from the intense pleasures that you once needed in order to be satisfied.
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Having understood that the world is only latent tendencies and being devoid of self and the initial seeds of pain,
Jamie Zigelbaum
Latent tendencies=wants
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A Ch’an story tells of how two adepts, one of the Ch’an school, the other of a different school, meet along a river. The adept of the other school says that his master possesses extraordinary powers. Seated on one side of the river, this master can draw in the air the marks printed on a piece of paper that one of his disciples is holding on the other side of the river. “And your master, of what marvels is he capable?” “My master is a great magician,” answers the Ch’an adept. “When he is thirsty, he drinks; when he is hungry, he eats; when he is tired, he goes to bed.” This is the kind of elegy ...more
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But there is a specific way to do this. This way is presence to the emotions, to the movements of the body, to the enslavements we suffer under. When the body-mind becomes calm, there are very often jolts of the unconscious, as if it were taking advantage of the clarity of the mind to come to the surface. At this moment, if we succeed, with the suppleness of a tiger, in staying with presence, whatever arises naturally goes toward the sensory. We can then completely feel the first symptoms again and live them without there being any obstruction or any tie to the ego. Then this suffering, rather ...more
Jamie Zigelbaum
Feeling everything
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This is one of the important stages, a kind of massive cleaning of the deepest part of our being. It is a very moving and powerful moment when we feel that all the absorbed marks and refuse of the past are being filtered by absolute consciousness. It is the work of a whole life, a work that comes after awakening, but it is done spontaneously and is not the object of a practice. It cannot be said that when the tiger sets out on the hunt, it is doing its “practice.” When everything that arises is no longer stopped by the mental, ego-tied consciousness, there is then what Asanga and the ...more
Jamie Zigelbaum
Cleaning up well described. So clesr how nonmanagement allows natural flow of shadow into light and trauma felt. But i think big Trauma needs more help
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Tantrism believes that the body is the temple and that seated at the heart of this temple is divinity. In their teachings the masters of this tradition often refer to the body as a stringed instrument, the sarangi, and compare presence to the world with the tuning of this instrument.
Jamie Zigelbaum
Ive been a tantrika tis whole time...
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Our difficulty in being present comes principally from the fact that we do not accept reality as it is because we see neither its beauty nor its depth. We wrongly imagine that life as we reorchestrate it is more worthy of being lived. Hence we lose considerable energy wanting to transform reality so that it corresponds to our plans, ideals, and beliefs. Unfortunately, reality is not made to conform itself to our desires. Thus do we lose a lot of time in this absurd occupation. That is the chief difficulty in living a more freely flowing, fluid life, one in which reality is no longer frozen by ...more
Jamie Zigelbaum
Why accepting is etter than controlling
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All our projections, all our expectations, all our desires, all our blockages of the flow of life are thus negations of love’s freedom. Love without freedom does not exist. Freedom cannot coexist with the ego, and the ego can only be dissipated by total presence to reality, presence deprived of all fear, all strategy, all planning. Then the only thing remaining is the fundamental desire to be in space, to be in the nonperson, in the nonrelationship—because we are in total and nondual presence.
Jamie Zigelbaum
It all about letting love flow. Breaking down want lyramids or cleankng sadow until low level want can flow unblocjed
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Yoginis and yogis live in a more isolated way, as was the case with my master Devi, who taught only one person at a time. The personal relationship is so important to the Kashmiri masters that they do not even have ashrams.
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They teach in the familial setting. Disciples live in the master’s and her family’s house, and the family takes them under their wing. Sometimes disciples live next door in a village house. Tantrikas are women and men who fill a role in society. They work, they plan, they meet their objectives. Their quest is completely inner. No one suspects they are tantrikas. They are indistinguishable from anyone else.
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Fidelity, which worries many people, is not a problem. The more fully you live, the more desire will find itself in constant tremoring vibration, with or without an object. This tremoring will come from you, from your consciousness, from your heart, and will shower down both on those close to you and on those you meet. Even those sitting near you on the bus will benefit from it.
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Curiously, you will see that the more incandescent your desire, the less it will turn toward objects of desire, because it no longer needs them to mask incompletion. This is what the tantrikas experience and know, and this is what is so misunderstood by those who see Tantrism as a quest for ego-tied sexual satisfaction.
Jamie Zigelbaum
Want - story = outcome. But bstiry isnt right word, its more like need or illusion or MAP
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Your desire will therefore pour out in a new, continuous way. There will no longer exist an accumulation of energy that can find calm only in orgasmic release. You will enter into a sphere in which you will be unceasingly in the process of making love, and enjoying immense pleasure, coming, with the whole world—which leaves hardly any room for what we call “affairs.” You will live the Great Affair, the one that never ends. That is the life of an aspirant, of a tantrika, of a yogini, of a master.
Jamie Zigelbaum
Constant flow and no shadow battery
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In a pellucid ocean, Bubbles arise and dissolve again. Just so, thoughts are no different from ultimate reality, So don’t find fault; remain at ease. Whatever arises, whatever occurs, Don’t grasp—release it on the spot.
Jamie Zigelbaum
Nigouma's poem
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When the ego enters into play, this is accompanied by a mental performance. We anticipate, we judge, we weigh the forthcoming pleasure by trying to know in what way this pleasure will truly satisfy us. We become strained and tense. Our mind becomes agitated. We set up a choice, we apply a strategy, we grasp onto the object of our desire, use it, and then reject it once we are satisfied.
Jamie Zigelbaum
Ego or shadow want vs soul want
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Tantrikas hardly ever use the word compassion, because it implies a slightly condescending duality, whereas love is a non-differentiated state.
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The maithuna ritual has made a lot of ink flow, and rare are the Westerners who have received initiation into it by an authentic master. As I received it, this initiation—you may come to understand it by reading Abhinavagupta’s texts—is one of the tremoring vibration of all the senses, which return through it to their home, consciousness. For us, there is no difference between a sexual, genital relationship and the sensory relationship that we enter into with the reality that is all around us. What the masters call the Great Union sometimes refers to the sexual union, as is the case in stanzas ...more
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