Desire: The Tantric Path to Awakening

by Daniel Odier

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 excluded) and by the Vedantins is due, in part, to women’s vision. For yoginis, there is absolutely no philosophy that cannot be understood and presented clearly to all people. No rituals, dogmas, beliefs, or biases isolate their followers from the rest of the world.