Fast food and drive-thru sex

i am on my way to a tv station to do an interview on tantra. it is for a mainstream morning show. i will be sandwiched between segments for cooking bbq ribs and the local weather forecast. they will want to know about sex, what tantra has to do with sex. it is funny to me that i am somehow turning into a sex guru. i didn't intend it professionally, though i have dabbled in it liberally and recreationally since the first time i got drunk in high school and let a boy grope my breasts at a party i threw at my house when my parents went to japan. so maybe i have a liberal arts degree in sex guru-ship?

how to explain tantra to this audience?

when people ask me what tantra is on the street, i often smile and get a mystical and mischevious look and tell them it is difficult to explain. it has to be your own experience. but today is not a day for zen mystery school riddles. today is a day to muster my skills to speak in a way that meets the viewers.

who are my viewers?

i look out the car window with the freeway, trees, cars and a body of water speeding by. freeways are like the arteries of our society. all the cars zipping along the veins of the road like red and white blood cells. traffic. the outer world always reflects the inner world. these roads are the same as the freeways in my body.

we turn off the freeway. i look at the city peopled with tall, gray buildings, their glass tinted windows winking in the cold morning sun. i think, god help us be free.

tantra is about weaving together opposites.
flesh and spirit. sex and god. why do these feel so opposite, so far from each other?
why does it feel like we are fighting ourselves, like we have split personalities?
the flesh is the spirit and the spirit is the flesh
isn't that what jesus meant when he said, "my body the bread, my blood the wine"?
didn't he mean that these bodies, our human bodies, are the holy communion?
tantra means weaving, weaving the opposites to mend back to wholeness.
and beyond healing, there is the glimmer of transcendence rippling on the membrane-thin skin of reality.
as another prophet, jim morrison said, "break on through to the other side"

we have put god so far away from ourselves.
tantra is about reclaiming the sacredness of our bodies, including sex. sex has gotten a bad rap. tantra says that sex does not keep us from god, it brings us closer to god. it can be a beautiful act of worship.

where do we put our worship? where do we put our capacity for worshippfulness? it is in our nature as humans to worship and adore. so what objects have we raised like monoliths and pyramids? we stare at the one-glass-eyed cyclops god of tv. we let the churches of science gather dust, the largely unquestioned and ignored priests of science babble to each other in ceremonies only the initiated attend. meanwhile, the unwashed masses gather for evening services at the bars, strip clubs and happy ending massage parlors. we live in a world of religious non-believers. we worship money, fear, power and pornos. fast food and drive-thru sex. worship is a verb. it is an act. it is as simple as a shift in our attitude.

you do not need to go to the temple to worship, to pray. the temple is your own body. the temple is the warm sun making playful giggles on your skin. god is not so far away. just a slight adjustment, a recalibration to magic, can turn every moment into worship at the church of the life that is. don't stand so far from me friend. let us go worship the lover together. with our eyes and with our breath. with the grape clusters of your breasts woman. with the strong root of your tree man.

Click here to watch the TV Interview