The Tantric Body

Tantra is the Hindu-based religion which links ecstatic sexual practice with meditation and direct spiritual experience. It originated in India some 1200 years ago, when the great sacred erotic temples were built. In the West it is best known for its inspiration of tantric yoga, and its associated ritualistic forms of sex. But is tantra just about esoteric sex or does it amount to something more? This lively and original book contributes to a more complete understanding of tantra's mysteries. Without minimising its sexual dimensions, Gavid Flood argues that within tantra the body is more than just a sexual entity. It is a vehicle for the spirituality that is fundamental to people's minds. "The Tantric Body" makes an important and fascinating contribution to the study of South Asian religion, and will have strong appeal to students of South Asian cultures and societies as well as to those of comparative philosophy.

Tantra occupies a unique position in Western understandings of Hindu spirituality. Its carnal dimension has made its name instantly recognizable, but this popular fascination with sex has obscured its philosophical depth and ritual practices, to say nothing of its overall importance to Hinduism. This book offers a clear, well-grounded overview of Tantra that offers substantial new insights for scholars and practitioners. André Padoux opens by detailing the history of Tantra, beginning with its origins, founding texts, and major beliefs. The second part of the book delves more deeply into key concepts relating to the tantric body, mysticism, sex, mantras, sacred geography, and iconography, while the final part considers the practice of Tantra today, both in India and in the West. The result is an authoritative account of Tantra’s history and present place in the world.

For those who wonder what relation actual Tantric practices bear to the "Tantric sex" currently being marketed so successfully in the West, David Gordon White has a simple answer: there is none. Sweeping away centuries of misunderstandings and misrepresentations, White returns to original texts, images, and ritual practices to reconstruct the history of South Asian Tantra from the medieval period to the present day. Kiss of the Yogini focuses on what White identifies as the sole truly distinctive feature of South Asian Tantra: sexualized ritual practices, especially as expressed in the medieval Kaula rites. Such practices centered on the exchange of powerful, transformative sexual fluids between male practitioners and wild female bird and animal spirits known as Yoginis. It was only by "drinking" the sexual fluids of the Yoginis that men could enter the family of the supreme godhead and thereby obtain supernatural powers and transform themselves into gods. By focusing on sexual rituals, White resituates South Asian Tantra, in its precolonial form, at the center of religious, social, and political life, arguing that Tantra was the mainstream, and that in many ways it continues to influence contemporary Hinduism, even if reformist misunderstandings relegate it to a marginal position. Kiss of the Yogini contains White's own translations from over a dozen Tantras that have never before been translated into any European language. It will prove to be the definitive work for persons seeking to understand Tantra and the crucial role it has played in South Asian history, society, culture, and religion.

The Great Goddess, in her various puranic and tantric forms, is often figured as sitting on a corpse which is identified as Shiva-as-shava (God Shiva, the consort of the Devi and an iconic representation of the Absolute without attributes, the Nirguna Brahman). Hence, most of the existing critical works and ethnographic studies on Shaktism and the tantras have focused on the theological and symbolic paraphernalia of the corpses which operate as the asanas (seats) of the Devi in her various iconographies. This book explores the figurations of the Goddess as corpse in several Hindu puranic and Shakta-tantric texts, popular practices, folk belief systems, legends and various other cultural phenomena based on this motif. It deals with a more intricate and fundamental issue than existing works on the subject: how and why is the Devi – herself - figured as a corpse in the Shakta texts, belief systems and folk practices associated with the tantras? The issues which have been raised in this book include: how does death become a complement to life within this religious epistemology? How does one learn to live with death, thereby lending new definitions and new epistemic and existential dimensions to life and death? And what is the relation between death and gender within this kind of figuration of the Goddess as death and dead body? Analysing multiple mythic narratives, hymns and scriptural texts where the Devi herself is said to take the form of the Shava (the corpse) as well as the Shakti who animates dead matter, this book focuses not only on the concept of the theological equivalence of the Shava (Shiva as corpse) and the Shakti (Energy) in tantras but also on the status of the Divine Mother as the Great Bridge between the apparently irreconcilable opposites, the mediatrix between Spirit and Matter, death and life, existence-in-stasis and existence-in-kinesis. This book makes an important contribution to the fields of Hindu Studies, Goddess Spirituality, South Asian Religions, Women and Religion, India, Studies in Shaktism and Tantra, Cross-cultural Religious Studies, Gender Studies, Postcolonial Spirituality and Ecofeminism.

Create the Sex, Love and Romance of Your Dreams Imagine yourself in a perfect soulmate relationship full of sex, love and romance. Open yourself to love and awareness. This 3-Books-in-One compilation of these beautiful, bestselling books teaches you how. Catherine Auman's Tantric Dating: Bringing Love and Awareness to the Dating Process was named one of the Best Dating Books of All Time by BookAuthority. Tantric Mating: Using Tantric Secrets to Create a Relationship Full of Sex, Love and Romance follows up this success by teaching you what to do next after attracting your perfect love to maintain the magic. In Tantric Relating: Relationship Advice to Find and Keep Sex, Love and Romance, you'll learn how to speak your truth and keep the love fires burning. In Tantric Dating: Bringing Love and Awareness to the Dating Process you will discover the true definition of tantra and how it is more about love than sex how by dating in the conventional way you may be getting further and further away from the love you crave how you can develop yourself into a person who feels love and thus attracts love how your dating life and your spiritual life can align and be one and the same In Tantric Mating: Using Tantric Secrets to Create a Relationship Full of Sex, Love and Romance you will learn how to be in partnership and create your perfect soulmate relationship how soulmate relationships are created how conventional advice has steered you wrong what kind of work to do on yourself In Tantric Relating: Relationship Advice to Find and Keep Sex, Love and Romance you will complete your knowledge by learning to speak your truth learn to set and keep agreements that support your togetherness find out the secrets of verbal and nonverbal communication Get Started Immediately Buy Now and take the first step on your journey to creating your perfect soulmate relationship by using tantric secrets. Scroll to the top of the page and hit the Buy button.

Chögyam Trungpa explores the the vajrayana teachings of the tantric path in this final volume of his masterpiece on Tibetan Buddhism This three-volume collection presents in lively, relevant language the comprehensive teachings of the Tibetan Buddhist path of the hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana. Considered Chögyam Trungpa’s magnum opus, The Profound Treasury of the Ocean of Dharma will resonate with new and senior students of Buddhism. In this third and final volume, Chögyam Trungpa’s examines the vajrayana teachings of the tantric path. The vajrayana, or "diamond vehicle," also referred to as tantra, draws upon and extends the teachings of the hinayana and mahayana. As with the hinayana and the mahayana, the formal acceptance into the vajrayana is marked by a vow, in this case the samaya vow. There is an emphasis at this stage on the student-teacher relationship and on the quality of devotion. Generally, students must complete preliminary practices, called ngöndro, to prepare themselves for initiation into the vajrayana path before going further. Having done so, they then receive the appropriate empowerments to begin tantric practices. There are empowerment ceremonies of many kinds, called abhishekas. The vajrayana includes both form practices, such as visualizations and sadhanas (ritual liturgies), and formless practices based on allowing the mind to rest naturally in its inherent clarity and emptiness. Although on the surface, there is much greater complexity in tantric practices, the principles of mindfulness and awareness and the cultivation of compassion and skillful action continue to be of central importance. The tantric path requires complete engagement and fierce dedication. It is said to be a more rapid path, but it is also more dangerous. There is a quality of directness, abruptness, and wholeheartedness. Tantrikas, or vajrayana practitioners, recognize that the most challenging aspects of life, the energies and play of confused emotions and frightening obstacles, can be worked with as gateways to freedom and realization. Other topics covered in detail in this volume include the four reminders, the mandala principle, mahamudra, atiyoga, and more.

As David White explains in the Introduction to Tantra in Practice, Tantra is an Asian body of beliefs and practices that seeks to channel the divine energy that grounds the universe, in creative and liberating ways. The subsequent chapters reflect the wide geographical and temporal scope of Tantra by examining thirty-six texts from China, India, Japan, Nepal, and Tibet, ranging from the seventh century to the present day, and representing the full range of Tantric experience--Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and even Islamic. Each text has been chosen and translated, often for the first time, by an international expert in the field who also provides detailed background material. Students of Asian religions and general readers alike will find the book rich and informative. The book includes plays, transcribed interviews, poetry, parodies, inscriptions, instructional texts, scriptures, philosophical conjectures, dreams, and astronomical speculations, each text illustrating one of the diverse traditions and practices of Tantra. Thus, the nineteenth-century Indian Buddhist Garland of Gems, a series of songs, warns against the illusion of appearance by referring to bees, yogurt, and the fire of Malaya Mountain; while fourteenth-century Chinese Buddhist manuscripts detail how to prosper through the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper by burning incense, making offerings to scriptures, and chanting incantations. In a transcribed conversation, a modern Hindu priest in Bengal candidly explains how he serves the black Goddess Kali and feeds temple skulls lentils, wine, or rice; a seventeenth-century Nepalese Hindu praise-poem hammered into the golden doors to the temple of the Goddess Taleju lists a king's faults and begs her forgiveness and grace. An introduction accompanies each text, identifying its period and genre, discussing the history and influence of the work, and identifying points of particular interest or difficulty. The first book to bring together texts from the entire range of Tantric phenomena, Tantra in Practice continues the Princeton Readings in Religions series. The breadth of work included, geographic areas spanned, and expert scholarship highlighting each piece serve to expand our understanding of what it means to practice Tantra.