"What is the role of a woman in tantra?"

TANTRA FAQ: "What is the role of a woman in Tantric meditation?"
I thought I would share a very good question that was emailed to me this morning:

Q:
in one of your talks, you mentioned "playing roles". 
within the context of a tantra partner meditation, is there a role that a woman plays?
or is it a crapshoot of experiences?  or both?

or when a woman softens to the energy of her partner, 
is her experience that of his energy and how that energy flows and what it needs?  
the sit then becomes a cutting through all the external structures to
a deeper understanding of how your energy interacts 
with the energy in front of you.
I woke up today wondering ;)

A:

well...the masculine and feminine dynamics are fluid in both males and females
some sits with a man i find they move more towards the shakti feminine energy expression and i sit in the grounding shiva masculine position
think of the male/female sacred energy dynamic like the positive/ negative ends of a battery
and then think of that range as being fluid, no one is entirely feminine or masculine energy

the "role" of a woman in the sit, i think is to be in self-enquiry of the experience happening inside herself and awareness of the play and exchange of energy with her partner

when i have sat with a very solid "base" male partner, i find that the serpentine energy really begins to flow and move because it is grounded in safety, and i really enjoy this feeling of flow in my body and appreciate being based to have that experience

there is a lot to look at here, when we think of the "role" of a woman both in tantra sitting partner meditation and in how we live in the world...
in relationships, i think that the feminine needs to be able to surrender to the masculine, but that it is difficult as a woman to surrender to men who are not stable or safe
of course we are all evolving, so there is no "perfect partner" who makes us feel perfectly safe
but as i travel the world and see so many communities where the women have become the bread winners and the mothers, and there is a wounding in the masculine causing alcoholism and abuse, i see a deep pain in the soul of the world
a deep pain in the sacred masculine soul and the sacred feminine soul
i hope we are finding ways to mend this deep soul pain mirrored in the masculine and feminine

the "role" of a woman in these tantra practices is not the old idea of woman= passivity
i have been told before that i can be masculine, because i can be very directed and dominant
but look at the tantric goddesses, they are very powerful, so i think there is a place for a very powerful woman to meet with a very powerful man
and both give and take the dominant position in a natural flow
this dynamic calls both partners to be in their power, to face their weak places and to be humbled and grow
but what do i know?

Tantra and the Void

"Closing the doors and windows of my body, I seized the thief, prana, and shut him in. I bound him tightly inside the chamber of my heart, And lashed him hard with the whip om.

I pulled the reins of the steed of the mind; I compressed the life force circulating through the ten channels; Then, indeed, did the lunar particle (shashi-kalв) melt and dissolve, and the Void merged with the Void.

Concentrating on the om-sound, I made my body like blazing coal. Leaving behind the six crossroads, I travelled the path of Truth. And then I, Lalla, reached the Abode of Light."

This quote is from Lalla, a wandering female mystic from Kashmir in India. She was a saint and poetess who was married as a girl of 12, but later took sanyas (renunciation) in Kashmiri Shaivism, a tantric lineage. She was said to have wandered naked. In India, many of the gods are depicted nude, this is called "sky-clad", when the body is clad only in innocence, the sky, truth. The sky is also associated with the throat chakra, when we speak truth, we are liberated from constraints. Then we are naked, free.

She is describing a tantric yoga practice of using pranayama, bandhas and mantras to awaken kundalini. Kundalini is the feminine shakti energy that is symbolized as a sleeping snake at the base of the spine. Once it is awakened, it begins to climb upward through the spine to the crown of the head where she merges with the shiva, or masculine pole at the top of the spine. Their union there, at the thousand petalled lotus, is the Void, the center of all creation where space and time merge.

"I bound him tightly inside the chamber of my heart, And lashed him hard with the whip om", here she describes using mantra to focus the energies of the mind into the heart.

"I made my body like a blazing coal", here she is describing the tremendous heat that is released from the kundalini awakening. That is because the shakti is the positive pole (heat), and the shiva is the negative pole (cooling). Together, the two opposite poles attract and charge each other like a battery. From this energy the whole universe dances, being swallowed up and re-birthed from the Void.

"There was a day when One became two. When two become one again, what will you do?" -Jesus, Gospel of Thomas

One is the non-dual Void, before God created the world as a mirror to see itself. Two is the dual nature of the created world. "When two become one again", one explanation for this mystical saying is merging the solar and lunar channels within an individual. This inner marriage is the magical working of learning to weave and transverse the two sides of the brain. The left side of the brain experiences time (male), the right side of the brain experiences space (female).

Another explanation is the literal joining and union of two individuals representing the shiva and shakti. When male and female are joined, a seed of life is given. In the physical realm, this can create new human life. In the subtle realm, it can create new spiritual life.

The practices of tantra and yoga are real techniques and technologies to become more aware of the play of these energies. One of the things I love about tantra, is that it uses the romantic archetypes of the lovers, shiva and shakti, to describe the energies and forces of nature. In this way, life is seen as a lila, love-play between them, to be mastered and enjoyed, not a burden of illusion to be transcended.

This human life is a blessing. Eternity is in the present moment. God is in the world and people around you. Tantra is the acceptance of naked reality as the ground of illumination. Seek the simple things. The kingdom of heaven is given to the children.

a day and night in india...

the still of morning

woke up 5am yesterday at the ashram, it was still black out. i like to wake up before the sun, before the day, before everyone else starts stirring. it is like a pregant pause, a secret world for me alone. i dressed quickly and walked into the cool darkness of the earth, the only thing stirring is the powdery dust between my toes. in the dark i have to feel each step, reading the ground like braille with my bare feet. i was excited to sit outside my teachers door. i could hear him awake, but he had not come out yet so i sat and felt our exchange of energy. it is up to me if i want to feel alone. it is a good example here, as i sit outside the door, waiting. an example for everything in my life. i cannot have everything when i want it or how i want it. sometimes i must cultivate the art of waiting, which becomes a sublime partner in itself.
who is with me as i wait alone?
my thoughts are with me.
my heartbeat is with me.
the smell of the morning, carrying the burnt ashes from the fires they use to burn trash, that is also with me.
my body is with me. i listen to my body. she is a little achey. it will be alright.
i send my energy into my teachers room and connect to it, then it is like a wave moving between us. every moment of life is full.

the roosters begin to sound the day. now their is more world awake than me. the cook brings me chai from the little kitchen. they still cook with fire from wood, squatting in front to stir the food. i think it tastes better this way.

i walked up to the rooftop to watch the mists still covering the hills in violets, lavenders and grays. the hills seem to fade off into another world. It seems a land time has forgotten. I expect a dinosaur any moment. The shapes of the hills are like the curves of a woman's body, who has gracefully draped her form here. one looks like a profile of a face with parted lips, another looks like a hip and another pointed like a breast. The hills here are lush and green and the earth is an orange-red color.

only the sound of the crows. I can see the path snaking through the jungle from where i sit up high on the roof. there are a few lonely figures with baskets of coconuts on their heads walking the dusty red road from the local village. beginning the work of the day. earning a living to care for their families. a friend told me once, god moves like a snake, in an unpredictable zig zag movement.

the soul's body

the mother is so present here. she has so many faces. the one that changes in my dreams, stirring up all the undigested bits of my psyche. dreams are so vivid and yet the sleep is so heavy here. i feel her in a heat that feels like physical burning, but which i have come to love as a physical experience of her presence. this morning is her breath. i dream her dreams. my body is her body and my eyes are her eyes.
my sufi teacher in turkey used to ask me,
"who sees through your eyes?'.
the Soul sees through your eyes."
yes, we are the soul and the soul's body made flesh. india is the heart of this body, pumping with blood and life. a land of contrasts. this world, this life is made of contrasts, isn't it?

Nakedness

later, i went to the city, such a change. bustling with dirt, people, a naked boy stands in the street touching himself. his black eyes stare out at the world unapologetically. it feels good to him, he has yet to become aware of shame. of course, i guess it wouldn't do to walk around with my pants down all day!

the forgetfulness of sleep

when i finally fell asleep last night, i truly fell. i was given the key to a devotees apartment in the city, and i let myself and my into the empty place. i went to the bathroom. i believe bathrooms in prisons are nicer. i thought, "dear jesus, i am so tired, is a nice bathroom too much to ask for?" too tired to wash my face, my dusty feet or brush my teeth, i fell asleep in the strange bed drooling. matresses were there, but no sheets. i was too tired to think of the cleanliness of the bed. i took my dress and laid it on the bed for some smell of myself rather than all the strangers who had slept and sweat here before. sleep came heavy and brought forgetfulness. my companion sang over my body, gently stroking my face and hair. i am grateful for love and human kindnesses. it did not matter where i was or the bed. i folded gently into myself, into my mind and dreams.
a contemplative question in the yogi path is:
"who is dreaming when i sleep?"

Sleepless nights and Spiritual Insomnia

"ïn this state there is no Siva (sun),
nor any holy union..
only a somewhat something moving
dreamlike on a fading road."
-lalla, female kashmiri mystic

and so it is...i woke up this morning early. my two travelling companions still asleep on the matresses that were laid out on the marble floor. it was nice to sleep last night. i hadn't slept for 3 days before that. not because of insomnia...but because when i come to india, it's like sticking my finger in a light socket of electricity...shakti. the land is very strong with this energy, and i feel it running through the soles of my bare feet , up my legs and electrifying my whole system. also, this happens when i am near my teacher. the last 3 nights i have laid down exaughsted from long days and found myself lying in the dark completely alert. i could feel the different energy centers whirring with energy, especially my heart. there was no self-doubt or anxiety that makes sleeplessness painful for the mind. a deep sense of peace, expansion and weightlessness as if i were floating in an ocean. i was aware of thoughts drifting by in the stream of consciousness. there was not much emotional weight connected with the thoughts, and so they floated past me easily. i would use the time to chant my guru mantra, over and over, folding time into circles of syllables like rolling haybales in a great field. even though i was not sleeping, i felt timeless.

No sleep for the saints?
there are many stories of saints and gurus who never sleep, or need very little sleep. a contemporary guru, Amma, performs the super-human feat of staying up for days, without eating or using the bathroom, hugging all the people who come to see her for blessings. my own guruji goes to bed around 10:30pm, gets up at 2am and works on returning emails or writing until around 5am, then lays down again to get up for morning chai between 6-7am. I have heard him snoring, so I do know he sleeps sometimes!

Kundalini affects your sleep
Since I began practicing tantra, which awakens kundalini, I have gone through periods of not sleeping, and being very creative and active. I have also gone through periods of sleeping many hours, the sleep descending on me like a heavy syrup that doesn't allow me to keep my eyes open. I always consider this a "re-booting"of my computer, after installing a new software program.

My body, my slave?

Though my spirits are good my eyes are still burning from no sleep. My poor body! It reminds me of one of my teachers I met on my first trip to India. He was a tiny, very intense swamy who came from the Sivananda and Bihar lineages of yoga. I loved to watch his excitement as he demonstated asanas and bandhas, his small, lithe body like a live wire. He would wrap his orange swamy sheath around and around, tucking it here and there, until he could flip upside down on his shaved head without exposing anything immodest. One day, after demonstrating a particularly difficult asana, he said, "I use my body like a slave", and he grinned from ear to ear. I don't use my body like a slave. I am very grateful for her and I listen attentively to her inner tunings and the ocean of intelligence moving constantly just under my skin.

Kundalini and insomnia:
"It is also likely that the practioner will experience insominia. However, yogis do not call it insomnia. They say, "Why should I sleep?" If you love a person very much and he stays with you and does not allow you to sleep, will you call that insomnia? There are yogis who do not sleep and are happy about it because yogis have an entirely different attitude. They say 1/3 of the life is wasted in sleeping. So when kundalini awakens in a yogi and consciousness is constant and consistent, and there is no waking, sleeping and dreaming, they are happy about it. Therefore, insomnia does not usually bother a person who has awakened kundalini. Just accept your sleeplessness and enjoy it. You can do japa meditation or just do some spiritual reflection. If this is not possible, just lie down and let it happen as it will."
-Kundalini Tantra, Swami satyananda Saraswati

Sex, Spiritual Awakening and Stimulating the Brain

Sexual Energy and Prudishness

in my practice of yoga and tantra, i have especially worked with moolah bandha, the cultivation of sexual energy. the seat of kundalini is said to be in the lower chakras. primarily the root and sex chakra. How can this be! The seat of evolution or untapped creative potential is in the no-no zone of the body?! It always makes me laugh how prudish spiritual seekers become about sexual energy, trying to refine it to more sublime spiritual states. this denial of the body seems a hard way to go, and a mirroring of the basic shame humans seem to have about living in a body. why are we ashamed to live in a body, why are we ashamed of sex? isn't it sex that brought us here, in the orgasmic embrace of our own human mother and father? what a god-like experience in creating a whole new life! But there seems to be an inherant struggle for us to accept or harmonize our spirit with our human side.

Original Sin and Reincarnation

why are we subjected to death and suffering in this life? In christianity this is explained as original sin. in hinduism, the soul is reincarnated succesively until the karma is burned up and the soul can be free of reincarnations. Is it so bad to be alive? The christians become obseesed with going to heaven and the hindus become obsessed with avoiding reincarnation. Why? I think it is because it is so hard to live in a world of opposites. Here, in this human form, it is inevitable that we will experience death as well as birth, that we will experience sorrow as well as joy. Pain is the opposite hand of pleasure, and both hands open the heart. in trying to avoid pain, we often deny the basic pleasure of being human, of enjoying the world life and the body. In tantra we say the body is not just the vehicle to God, the body is itself God. The marvel of the body must be proof of higher intelligence, whether you believe that exists outside in the form of a God or creator, or exists from within as a human attribute doesn't matter as much as learning to marvel at the wonder of your body and present human existence.

Money, Sex and Power, Punk Rock Yoga!

My teacher says shame is debilitating human evoltion and personal healing. if there is a blockage in your heart or mind, he says, the origin of that blockage is coming from the lower 3 chakras or development centers. the lower 3 chakras are Mooladhara (root, survival), Swadhistana (sex organ, creativity) and Manipura (navel, power). Or as I like to call them...Money, Sex and Power! Rock and Roll, this is some serious punk rock shit! Who says spiritual practice is boring?!

Here is some science (or esoteric propaganda if you are more skeptical):

Only using 10% of your brain:

"The awakening of kundalini and its union with Shiva is immediately and intimately connected with the whole brain. to explain it simply, we can say the brain has 10 compartments, and of these 9 are dormant and one is active. whatever you know, whatever you think or do is coming from one-tenth of the brain. the other nine-tenths, which are in the frontal portion of the brain, are known as the inactive or sleeping brain.

why are these compartments inactive? because there is no energy. the active portion of the brain functions on the energies of ida and pingala, but the other nine-tenths have only pingala. pingala is life (energy) and ida is consciousness (awareness). if a person is living but is unable to think, we say he has prana shakti (life force)but no manas shakti (intelligence energy). similarly, the silent parts of the brain have prana, but not consciousness.

therefore, a very difficult question arises, which is how to awaken the sleeping compartments of the brain? In kundalini yoga, it was discovered that the different parts of the brain are connected to the chakras. Certain areas are connected with moolahdara chakra...when you want to turn on an electric lamp, you do not have to touch the lamp itself, you operate it by means of a switch on the wall. Likewise, whem you want to awaken the brain, you cannot deal with it directly, you have to flip the switches which are located in the chakras. Mooladhara is only a manipulating center or switch, like the other chakras, but it happens to be easier to operate this switch."

-Kundalini Tantra, Swami satyananda Saraswati

freedom, fornication and the bondage of love

i was talking to a woman yesterday, she came to see guruji because she is married and had a lover outside her marriage. life is complicated. who is free of sin? what is sin? a state of mind we are living in or the karmic ripples of our choices? i live in a glass house. i relax my hand and set down my stone. no broken windows today.

I was reminded of a parable from the New Testament Bible:

As Jesus approached the temple, he was met by a group of the hired agents of the Sanhedrin who were dragging a woman along with them. As they came near, the spokesman said: "Master, this woman was taken in adultery -- in the very act. Now, the law of Moses commands that we should stone such a woman. What do you say should be done with her?"
Jesus knew the men who had brought her, they were politicians and he knew it was a trap set for him. He also knew her husband was an unkind man who cheated many people. He took a stick and silently wrote something in the dirt before her husband. He quickly left. He wrote something in the dirt in front of her accusers, and they too left.
Jesus said: "Woman, where are your accusers? did no man remain to stone you?" And the woman, lifting up her eyes, answered, "No man, Lord." And then said Jesus: "I know about you; neither do I condemn you. Go your way in peace."




this woman who came yesterday is a good woman who wanted to taste more in life. this is hard on her husband. I admire them for trying to find a solution beyond name calling. They have two children. It would be an extroardinary relationship that could hold so much.

She had been practicing tantra.
many people say tantra is dangerous because it opens up the shadow of our sexuality.
most of us hide our shadows. what to do when they are loosed, illuminated? most of us keep a tight reign on our desires...many "moral" people satisfy sensual desires through food and drink or other means. what to do when directly confronted by it? what to do when it is not true that you only want to know one person carnally?
what to do when your tantra practice begins to unravel you?
you could hide behind the "spiritual" aspect of your practice to defend yourself. you could say you only did it for spiritual awakening. but is that true? isn't there a human part that was lustful? is it wrong to follow desire and passion? must we always make more light and shadow in our spiritual practices too?
there is a truth of nature that does not take into account man's morals...like a volcano that kills men, woman, children, good and evil alike. the sun shines on saint and sinner equally.
there is a deep, primal desire to rub bodies together to create friction and fire that is in itself a song in worship of life. of course there are consequences...there is pregnancy, disease and there is betrayal in relationships.

do we practice for the sake of practice? or do we practice to change ourselves?
what happens if we begin to change and that threatens to change our whole lives?
we are responsible for our own free will, there is no escaping this.
we must find the balance between freedom and discipline.
they hoped guruji could give them answers. he did not, how could he?
he said that since he married them, they are both his children and he does not want to see his children breaking apart. he told them to find the balance and figure it out. strong medicine.
he told them to focus on their friendship. maybe marriage creates too much rigidity, think of a living friendship that is flexible.
what does it mean to be married? to be a family? can we extend these definitions?
find the balance. no one can give the answers, the answers must be found by living, making mistakes, trying a again. maybe we know ourselves a little better each time we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off.