A course in Tantra
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
I came across this text which describes a four-day Tantra foundations course, which was given in 2017. I found it interesting because there are certain common factors with Dhamma, mindfulness and meditation.
I’ve bolded a few things that spoke to me.
TANTRA FOUNDATIONS
This is about the fundamentals; a solid foundation course laying down the three pillars of a balanced Tantric practice. These are, techniques in mind confronting and working with your inner ego constructs, techniques for accessing vital life force through sexuality, body and emotional body, while cleansing the blocks that prevent that flow, and, the building up of a strong, balanced practice.MIND TRAINING
- Defining Mind
- Growing your awareness of mind
- Growing your capacity to catch the mind
- Developing the specific skillset to shift the mind
- Moving beyond mind into no-mind
- Rewiring the fundamental habit of building a mind
VITAL ENERGY
- Discovering through direct experience your own energetic nature and subtle energy body
- Connect to, free and love your emotional body, learning to listen and express it. Find your heart power.
- Discovering, embracing and cleansing our core woundedness.
- Access the wisdom of your body and heart, as opposed to techniques of your mind.
- Tap into the healing power of pleasure, relaxation and expand your sexuality and orgasmic potential.
A BEAUTIFUL PRACTICE
- Crafting, cultivating, balancing your own practice & Learning how to evolve this practice
- Sinking into and relying on really good, established forms within your journey a healthy body of habits that helps you through intense process
- Life Artistry; evoking your true self as an artistic, creative act
- Tuning in to your aesthetic in relationship, work and worship.
- Deep understanding of ritual and meeting the moment
The course was given by a friend who now lives in South Africa, who I haven’t spoken to in over a decade. I recently came across his website. When last we met he was a tech entrepreneur, now he seems to have given his life a turn, gotten married, had children and become an independent Tantra teacher.
The thing is, many of the elements of this course I have come across in my own spiritual journey. Things like discovering our core woundedness, the archetype of the wounded healer, cultivating a spiritual practice, developing awareness of mind, and awareness of awareness.
The one thing that is new to me, that I came across while wandering through my friends website and his mentor’s YouTube channel, was how to relate as a man to the divine feminine principle that all women carry. That was a beautiful find, and something that will take time to integrate.
Comments
Ah ha! You have become a tantric transsexual mayhaps? As somebody who identifies as Mx whenever I can, I know a thing or three about being our own sister and parenting.
I may well start posting a free course of gibbering for those not yet selling their serious incites ...
https://audio.com/lobster/audio/chan
This really is part of the 'many lives in one sitting' approach of Rasayana, Chen Yen Buddhism and of course Zen, which fortunately I know nothing about.
Now that I am more Catholic in my tastes,
Xavier Cabrini was the first American Saint ... they probably have a few more now ...
https://audio.com/lobster/audio/catholictantra
and here are some free bonus resources ...
https://www.openculture.com/
this speaks to me. this is my dao-zen. nonzenze is play with real zen. zen spirit is create a life for yourself. leading the summit of zen, or surfing the zensea, begin make you own circle life to sit and explore your own i-ness in doing stuff. a creative life can be had cause life is zen,laugh,cry,play, work..everyday zen.
no fear speaking from heart, my sexual tantra act resolved. what people perseive of me girlyman personna. i dryhump my pillow and died to self and ate my whole cum. that act of self love to be ok if people think i have a gay vibe. and as a bodhisattva want to be, im for sexual right in people w(h)et(h)er your gay,straight,bi . hense tara is my love. i did it for her. my plithy tantric act.
I wouldn’t go quite that far, though I am aware of male and female parts to my being. Maybe everyone is a little bit trans in that respect. Mostly I am straight hetero male.
But isn’t Tantra part of men becoming familiar with their female halves? And women becoming awake to their male halves? I know very little about it really. Just read the Wikipedia page.
funny, you be what u eat. hense gayhappy being a girlyman zen fool.
yes in hindu thought the goal like dao in the yin and yang symbol be whole in energy personna femine and masculine. be one with your own sameness nature be the 0 or complete with yourselve.
time to work,i grew to love doing landscaping.
^^^^^. Y’all??
WTF??? We really entertaining this kinda bullshit around here.?
SMH
I’ll let someone else flag it ……
It takes all sorts ...
The point of hard core insight meditation is to attain a zenith 'condition', that does not have attributes. So The Buddha (as this woke state) is not yin or yang, good or bad, crazy or sane and nothing to do with gender.
The purpose of our chosen method is reach this understanding and reside in it.
Otherwise we are just a product of our gut or other noise gates
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31316096/
tantra is a buddha path. tantra is onorthodox. but respect the mod discion if he or she ban me.
....a sneaze is the goal of the path...feel nirvana and be 0 without name and form, my tantric zen.
He had a similar post on another thread. My initial reaction was to let it go and see if it was a one off thing or became a problem. I think I'd call it strike two.
@paulysotoo I think you need to tone down the sexual stuff several degrees.
will do, no more tantra talk. traditional zen dao stuff.
First, I just want to make the point that this type of Tantra practice isn't the same thing as Buddhist Tantra even though the word is the same and there is some connection in working with bodily energies.
Regarding male and female parts of people. I really prefer the terms masculine and feminine, they're not so tied to someone's sex. A male can be feminine and a female masculine. Ever since I was young I had a very dual nature some masculine and some feminine, my attitude has been to seek authenticity and learn to accept and integrate these aspects of myself. I've always thought of myself as a man, never questioned it, only thought that the boxes of what counts as a socially acceptable man or woman needs to be expanded.
It seems that there is a distinction between Hindu Tantra and Tibetan Buddhist Tantra. Lots of people are drawn by their interest in all things sexual to look into Tantra, but most Tantra starts with energy, and not necessarily with sex. The flyer for the Tantra course which I quoted above doesn’t really go into sexual content either.
Even working with masculine and feminine energy is already a ways removed from the starting point which is the simple, plain energy of the body. The ideas of the subtle body and learning to feel it are very much to the fore. I’ve read about Tantra practitioners working with “feather massage” in order to stimulate a sensation of the energy body, which seems interesting.
But I’m also hearing some messages about it being dangerous to move into Tantra. If Tantra used rightly can remove karmic blockages, can Tantra used incorrectly create karmic blockages?
@Jeroen .
the goal of trantra is union whether in hinduism or buddhist approach. tantra just means
technique. both tradition use yantra,meaning objects, mantras, mudras, and tantric technique to awake the divine in you. for us buddhist is a wake up the divine buddha nature. tantra end goal is moksha, the end cycle reincarnation.in buddhist is nirvana.
in my tantra practice, in have a tara alter for object of devotion, tibetan prayer beads,ect. in that alter i patition my heart for well wishing such as may we be well and happy. the tranta is to derect the mind toward a moreloving kind heart or bocitta. yes tantra is to envite the teacher, in my case tara in your i-ness your soul. so that you become one in love and friendship. the namaste union is tara in me teaches her skillful means in my flaour religion dao. the union with tara is ace. the divine energy of her emptyness or infinite potential has bore fruits in my life. im awesome in my dao be and great in mundain zen. hence i say namaste.
yes there is a danger in shakti-power-corruption in kundalini arrising of shiva tantra.
that's why you need a guru in tantra be it hindu or tibet guru
my last thought about tantra. siddhartha was a great yogi who woke up his emptyness shakti mind heart energy to be a complete buddha. ma dharmakia the higher power in ma god earth is his witness. he genuine woke up his naga kundalini.
i can't stress it enough you need a realise guru to awake the namaste enrgy in our i "soul" on you tube new age kundalini gone wrong is very sad. but its free world. kundalini can wake up you divine natue or wreck you in psychosis. years of dao chi energy i dont think im in psychosis. but if i am what a ride being free in dao nature. my nirvana i think im ok.
its all bout breath practice be with the act or energy direction of your chakras.
I’m not so sure of that. A Belgian Buddhist friend of mine of wide experience — he did several initiations requiring 100,000 prostrations in Tibetan Buddhism — on the Dutch Buddhist forums told me of some of his experiences with Tantra, and he said with his work with Tummo, for which he had a proper guru teacher, things went rather wrong, and with Tantric sex he very gently found his own way and it went beautifully.
I think the key thing is a gentle, kind and very loving approach, and first dealing with your own inclinations towards death, self-harm, destruction and violence. If you haven’t dealt with these impulses then you’re not ready… I think almost everyone has some of these, and if you’ve been repressing them they will likely erupt at some point. So it’s best to bring them to the surface yourself. The things you’ve dealt with will drop away, and you will feel cleansed.
Once you have done that a guru is probably less necessary. It seems now is not the time for me to engage with Tantra, I had a look but even though it seems to be arising spontaneously I think it isn’t for me, I will stick with the steady path of meditation.
@Jeroen
i always loved your perspective. i ve learn a lot from you. ty for this discussion. mind you i only dab in tantra to be one, with my all time hero, fercely divine mind.her own trantra she is the moon and stars of our mother dharmakaya "s.a.m.-sara".only the lord and the lordette of power shakti can understand the rhime and reason of our mother. their conscious energy supreame buddha nature no human can understand,imo. there are beings who is perfect in nature.but our human buddha sidartha is our moon. the wonder of it all, the moon,the stars of a mothers divine love in our sam-sara state.
i also agree to the soft slow approach to tantra. in my own practice, my mantra,perfect love cast out fears helps me to be one with tara.tara is not for the faint of heart. i say this with sincerety, tara and i been in a relation ship for nearly 16 years. she guided my theravada practice and now she guide me the heart of daozen. shes my best friend.the heart of buddhism is have heart in u and others. loving kind of like minded people who cares honors the buddha dharma seal to wake up and serve yourself and your neighbor
to love is divine,imo in its array ways of human behavior. tantra is namaste practice what we call love.
tantra imo is one approach to awaken your life,buddha nature. my main gateway is dao with zen flavour. so many dharma, but the heart of the bodhissatva, vow to learn them.
i aggree what is suitable to us. tantra is not for everyone. only we know is whats right for us in this like, beside simple meditation on the cusion or out and about, suites me.
my tara is funny. she"s realy cool. the time of the post 6:09am. to honor person no sex tantra dirty talk.
zen time, work time with tara earth.
stop it tara, i know your a ten, eastern time:1:09pm. she is a perfect buddha nature. she never cease to amazeme. our joke im a 9 and she 0 so. time to make a living, have fun tara in the void internetz.
some might like american magic tantra displayed by the singer seal. his song 'crazy' is great. it shows yantra,mudra. to me its our dogstar zen of sex,drugs and roll the tomb of robert johnson, the king of the mississppi blues. still the age 4th star, buddha come to christ land your christ voodo0 is tantra not for the faint of heart, real christian haddles dukkha life with faith in christ nature....mu.
check it out on youtube. his music video for us justified the great black culture, i got the blues, lifes hard, but moving on the linage of the fourth lotus cross.