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Subject: Sexuality: Taoism and Tantra (Alan Watts) ...It is true that in Taoism and Tantric Buddhism there are what appear to be techniques or 'practices' of sexual relationship, but these are, like sacraments, the 'outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace.' Their use is the consequence rather than the cause of a certain inner attitude, since they suggest themselves almost naturally to partners who take their love as it comes, comtemplatively, and are in no hurry to grasp anything from it. Sexual yoga needs to be freed from a misunderstanding attached to all forms of yoga, of spiritual 'practice' or 'exercise,' since these ill-chosen words suggest that yoga is a method for the progressive achievement of certain results -- and this is exactly what it is not. Yoga means 'union,' that is, the realization of man's inner identity with Brahman or Tao, and strictly speaking this is not an end to which there are methods or means since it cannot be made an object of desire. The attempt to achieve it invariably thrusts it away. Yoga 'practices' are therefore sacramental expressions or 'celebrations' of this union, in rather the same sense that Catholics celebrate the Mass as an expression of Christ's 'full, perfect, and SUFFICIENT sacrifice.' Means are irrelevant to what is already sufficient. Thus contemplation or meditation which seeks a result is neither contemplation nor meditation, for the simple reason that contemplation (kuan) is consciousness without seeking. Naturally, such consciousness is concentrated, but it is not 'practicing concentration'; it is concentrated in whatever happens to be its 'eternal now'. Sexual yoga or, as it is technically called, maithuna is a common theme of Hindu sculpture, though it has been suggested that its origins are Chinese, arriving in India as the backwash of the spread of Buddhism.... Scholars...have made it plain...that what [is represented] is at once a metaphysical doctrine and a sacrament at least as sacred as Christian matrimony.... They are emblems of the eternal spirit and nature [and] represent the consummation of contemplative love between mutually dedicated partners. The general idea of Tantric maithuna, as of its Taoist counterpart, is that sexual love may be transformed into a type of worship in which the partners are, for each other, incarnations of the divine. Perhaps this statement must be somewhat modified with respect to Buddhism and Taoism, to which the notion of worship is really foreign, and one must substitute the contemplation of nature in its true state. The embrace of maithuna involves also a transmutation of the sexual energy which it arouses, and this is described symbolically as sending it upwards from the loins to the head. Yoga, as is well known, involves a peculiar symbolism of human anatomy in which the spinal column is seen as a figure of the Tree of Life, with its roots in the nether world and its branches, or its flower, in the heavens beneath the 'firmament' of the skull. The base of the spinal-tree is the seat of the kundalini, the Serpent Power, which is an image of the divine life-energy incarnate in nature and asleep under the illusion of maya. Yoga consists of awakening the Serpent and allowing it to ascend the tree to the heavens, wherefrom it passes liberated through the 'sun-door' at the apex of the skull. Thus when the Serpent is at the base of the spinal- tree it manifests its power as sexual energy; when it is at the crown it manifests itself as spiritual energy. According to Tantric symbolism, the energy of the kundalini is aroused but simply dissipated in ordinary sexual activity. It can, however, be transmuted in a prolonged embrace in which the male orgasm is reserved and the sexual energy diverted into contemplation of the divine as incarnate in the woman. The partners are therefore seated in the cross-legged posture of meditation, the woman clasping the man's waist with her thighs and her arms about his neck. Such a position is clearly unsuitable for motion, the point being that the partners should remain still and so prolong the embrace that the exchange between them would be passive and receptive rather than active. Nothing is DONE to excite the sexual energy; it is simply allowed to follow its own course without being 'grasped' or exploited by the imagination and the will. In the meantime the mind and senses are not given up to fantasy, but remain simply open to 'what is,' without -- as we should say in current slang -- trying to make something of it. In trying to understand anything of this kind, the modern Westerner must be careful not to confuse the symbology of the kundalini and the ascension of the sexual force with any physiological situation. Indeed, anatomical symbolisms of this kind are so strange to us that they hinder rather than help our comprehension of the real intent. Furthermore, almost all ancient sexual ideas are bound up with notions of the semen and its properties which we no longer share, and thus we do not regard it as a vital fluid to be conserved like blood. Our physiology does not support the idea that the male orgasm is a debilitating leakage of strength, and therefore the mere avoidance of the orgasm will have little significance in any modern application of sexual yoga. The importance of these ancient ideas to us lies not so much in their technicalities as in their psychological intent. They express an attitude of sexuality which, if absorbed by us today, could contribute more than anything else to the healing of the confusion and the frustration of our marital and sexual relations. It remains, then, to separate the underlying sexual philosophy of Tantra and Taoism from symbolic and ritual elements which have no meaning for us, and to see whether it can be applied in terms of our own culture. ---------------------------------------------------------- Nature, Man and Woman, Watts p. 194 [...]- 204. The height of sexual love, coming upon us of itself, is one of the most total experiences of relationship to the other of which we are capable, but prejudice and insensitivity have prevented us from seeing that in any other circumstances such delight would be called mystical ecstasy. For what lovers feel for each other in this moment is no other than adoration in its full religious sense, and its climax is almost literally the pouring of their lives into each other. Such adoration, which is due only to God, would indeed be idolatrous were it not that in that moment love takes away illusion and shows the beloved for what he or she in truth is -- not the socially pretended person but the naturally divine. --------------------------- Ibid., p. 205. EOF
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