How Is Tantra Different From Tantra In Sexual Activity

Tantra literally means loom, weave, warp, and denotes the esoteric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism that developed in India from the middle of the 1st millennium CE onwards. The term tantra, in the Indian traditions, also means any systematic broadly applicable “text, theory, system, method, instrument, technique or practice”. Tantric Hindu and Buddhist traditions have also influenced other Eastern religious traditions such as Jainism, the Tibetan Bön tradition, Daoism, and the Japanese tradition. Certain modes of non-Vedic worship such as Puja are considered tantric in their conception and rituals. Siddha Spirituality of Swami Hardas Life System brings out in-depth about tantra and tantra in sexual activities.

What exactly is Tantra?

“At its core tantra is about connecting with your own energy to establish a deeper understanding of yourself,” Rose says. While some of that energy is sexual, not all of it is. While tantra has evolved over the last thousand years, “tantra is still first and foremost a personal practice of liberation,” according to Carrellas.

It’s a technique that allows you to use energy and go deeper into yourself and experience enlightenment.

Tantra Definition

Ancient and medieval era

The 5th-century BC scholar in his Sutra 1.4.54–55 of Sanskrit grammar, cryptically explains tantra through the example of “Sva-tantra”, which he states means “independent” or a person who is his own “warp, cloth, weaver, promoter, Karta (actor)”. Patanjali quotes and accepts Panini’s definition then discusses or mentions it at a greater length, in 18 instances, stating that its metaphorical definition of “warp (weaving), extended cloth” is relevant to many contexts. The word tantra, states Patanjali, means “principal, main”.

The ancient Mimamsa school of Hinduism uses the term tantra extensively, and its scholars offer various definitions. For example:

When an action or a thing, once complete, becomes beneficial in several matters to one person, or to many people, that is known as Tantra. For example, a lamp placed amidst many priests.

Medieval texts present their own definitions of Tantra. Some, for example, give the following explanation of the term tantra:

Because it elaborates (tan – first three alphabets of tantra) copious and profound matters, especially relating to the principles of reality (tattva) and sacred mantras, and because it provides liberation (tra – last three albhabets of tantra), it is called a tantra.

Modern era Tantra

The occultist and businessman Pierre Bernard (1875–1955) is widely credited with introducing the philosophy and practices of tantra to the American people, at the same time creating a misleading impression of its connection to sex.

According to David N. Lorenzen, two different kinds of definitions of Tantra exist, narrow and broad. According to the narrow definition, Tantrism, or “Tantric religion”, is the elite traditions directly based on the Sanskrit texts called the Tantras, Samhitas, and Agamas. Lorenzen’s “broad definition” extends this by including a broad range of “magical beliefs and practices” such as Yoga and Shaktism.

Richard Payne states that Tantra has been commonly but incorrectly associated with sex, given popular culture’s prurient obsession with intimacy. This is far from the diverse and complex understanding of what Tantra means to those Buddhists, Hindu, and Jains who practice it.

The Tantric Age

From the 8th to the 14th century, Tantric traditions rose to prominence and flourished throughout India and beyond. By the 10th century, the main elements of tantric practice had reached maturity and were being practiced in Saiva and Buddhist contexts. Tantra also spread into Tibet, Indonesia, and China. Gavin Flood describes this “Tantric age” as follows:

Tantrism has been so pervasive that all of Hinduism after the eleventh century, perhaps with the exception of the vedic Srauta tradition, is influenced by it. All forms of Saiva, Vaisnava and Smarta religion, even those forms which wanted to distance themselves from Tantrism, absorbed elements derived from the Tantras. 

Though the whole northern and Himalayan part of India was involved in the development of tantra, Kashmir was a particularly important center, both Saiva and Buddhist, and numerous key tantric texts were written there according to Padoux.

Tantric Traditions

Hindu Tantra

Within Hinduism, the word tantra often refers to a text, which may or may not be “tantric”. There are also tantric Upanishads, which are late Upanishads as well as tantric Puranas. Besides these types of texts, there are also various types of tantric “sastras” (treatises) which may be “commentaries, digests, compilations, monographs, collections of hymns or of names of deities, and mantras and works on mantras.”

Buddhist Tantra

The Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition has been dominant in Tibet and the Himalayan regions.

Buddhist Tantric practices and texts which developed from the 5th to the 8th centuries were translated into Chinese and are preserved in the Chinese Buddhist canon as well as in the Dunhuang manuscripts. Chinese Esoteric Buddhism was only influential for a short period of time during the Tang Dynasty. It mostly disappeared from China due to the great Buddhist persecution of the Wuzong emperor, but it spread to Korea and to Japan, where it survives today as an independent tradition called Shingon.

Tantra in other religions

The Hindu and Buddhist Tantric traditions significantly influenced many other religions such as Jainism, Sikhism, the Tibetan Bön tradition, Daoism, Shint, Sufi Islam, and the Western “New Age” movement.

In Sikh literature, the ideas related to Shakti and goddess reverence attributed to Guru Gobind Singh, particularly in the Dasam Granth, are related to tantra ideas found in Buddhism and Hinduism.

Tantra Practices

One of the main elements of Tantric literature is ritual Rather than one coherent system, Tantra is an accumulation of practices and ideas from different sources. As Samuel writes, tantric traditions are “a confluence of a variety of different factors and components.” These elements include:

• Mandalas,
• Mantras,
• Internal sexual yogic practices,
• Fierce male and female deities,
• Cremation ground symbolism, and
• Concepts from Indian Philosophy.

André Padoux notes that there is no consensus among scholars as to which elements are characteristic for Tantra, nor is there any text that contains all those elements. 

Features of Tantra

According to Anthony Tribe, a scholar of Buddhist Tantra, Tantra has the following defining features:

1. The centrality of ritual, especially the worship of deities
2. Centrality of mantras
3. Visualization of and identification with a deity
4. Need for the initiation, esotericism, and secrecy
5. Importance of a teacher (guru, acharya)
6. Ritual use of mandalas
7. Transgressive or antinomian acts
8. Revaluation of the body
9. Revaluation of the status and role of women
10. Analogical thinking (including microcosmic or macrocosmic correlation)
11. Revaluation of negative mental states

Techniques of Tantra

There are a wide array of Tantric techniques or spiritual practices (sadhana) such as:

• Dakshina: Donation or gift to one’s teacher
• Guru Yoga and Guru devotion (bhakti)
• Diksha or Abhiseka: Initiation ritual which may include shaktipat
• Yoga, including breathing techniques (pranayama) and postures (asana), is employed to balance the energies in the body/mind.
• Mudras, or hand gestures
• Mantras: reciting syllables, words, and phrases
• Singing of hymns of praise (stava)
• Mandalas and Yantras, symbolic diagrams of forces at work in the universe
• Visualization of deities and Identification these deities in meditation (deity yoga)
• Puja (worship ritual) and other forms of bhakti
• Ritual sacrifice, including animal sacrifice
• Use of taboo substances such as alcohol, cannabis, meat, and other entheogens.
• Nyasa, installing mantras on the body
• Ritual purification (of idols, of one’s body, etc.)
• Yatra: pilgrimage, processions
• Vrata and Samaya: vows or pledges, sometimes to do ascetic practices like fasting
• The acquisition and use of siddhis or supernormal powers. Associated with the left-hand path tantra.
• Ritual Music and Dance.
• Sexual yoga: ritual sexual union (with an actual physical consort or an imagined deity).
• Dream yoga.

Tantra worship and ritual

Puja

Worship or puja in Hindu Tantra differs from Vedic forms somewhat. While in the Vedic practice of yajna there are no idols, shrines, and symbolic art, in tantra they are important means of worship.

Shaiva Siddhanta

Rituals are particularly important in the dualistic Shaiva Siddhanta. These rituals are not so much a succession of actions as a play of mentally visualized and experienced images, a situation common to all Tantric traditions, where rites, meditation, and yoga are exercises in creative identifying imagination.” 

Kali cults

In the non-dualistic and transgressive traditions like the Kali cults and the Trika school, rituals and pujas can include certain left-hand path elements that are not found in the more orthodox traditions. These transgressive elements include the use of skulls and other human bone implements, fierce deities like Bhairava, Kubjika, and Kali which were used as part of meditative visualizations, ritual possession by the deities (avesa), sexual rites, and offering the deity (as well as consuming) certain impure substances like meat, alcohol and sexual fluids. 

Yoga, Mantra, and Meditation

Yoga

As noted by Padoux, tantric yoga makes use of a “mystic physiology” that includes various psychosomatic elements sometimes called the “subtle body”. This imaginary inner structure includes chakras (wheels), nadis (channels), and energies like Kundalini, Chandali, different pranas, and vital winds, etc. According to Padoux, the “internalized image of the yogic body” is a fundamental element for nearly all meditative and tantric ritual practices.

Mantra

The use of mantras is one of the most common and widespread elements of tantric practice. Mantra recitation (Japa) is often practiced along with nyasa (depositing the mantra), mudras (seals i.e. hand gestures), and complex visualizations involving divine symbols, mandalas, and deities. Nyasa involves touching various parts of the body while reciting the mantra, which is thought to connect the deity with the yogi’s body and transform the body into that of the deity.

Meditation

Mantras are also often visualized as being located within the yogi’s body as part of tantric meditations e.g. in the “Yogini Heart” tantra, the yogi is instructed to imagine the five syllables (HA SA KA LA HRIM) of the deity’s mantra in the Muladhara chakra.

This practice goes through various increadingly subtle stages until it dissolves into the silence of the Absolute.

Tantra sex and eroticism

In the tantric traditions which do use sex as part of spiritual practice. Because these practices transgress orthodox Hindu ideas of ritual purity. They have often given tantra a bad image in India. 

What is Tantric sex?

It is a Sanskrit term that translates to “weave.” It refers to weaving together or uniting the masculine and feminine forces within all of us, heaven and earth, the human body with the transcendent, collapsing the polarities. The purpose is to discover an ecstatic union with all of life beyond the separate sense of self. Sacred or tantric sex—an aspect of tantra—is seen as one doorway to that transcendent truth, once we learn how to harness it.

The simplest explanation of tantric intimacy is that it’s about bringing the fire of your sexual energy, passion, and desires into alignment with your heart, your spirit, and a sense of goodness in your life. When these forces come into balance and harmony, the sparks of interpersonal magic really start flying, and sex becomes something healing, empowering, transcendent, and profoundly beautiful.

Benefits of Tantric sex

• Getting more of what you want in sex
• Releasing sexual blocks and shame
• Finding healing from sexual trauma
• Awakening your sexual energy to flow freely within your body
• Accessing your fullest pleasure and desire
• Tuning into subtle energy
• Discovering full-body and/or multiple orgasms
• For people with penises, delaying orgasm or experiencing non-ejaculatory orgasms
• Experiencing a new level of heart connection with your partner, a profound sense of intimacy, and a loving presence
• Longer lovemaking sessions, relaxation, and quality of spaciousness
• Enhanced communication and communion
• Holistic mind-body-spirit connection with yourself and with your partner

There are many myths about tantra that can make people feel like it’s not for them. I believe most people have a ton of their power and truth locked up in their sexuality, right alongside all the messed-up cultural conditioning and trauma most of us carry.

How is Tantra different from tantra in sexual activity?

Tantric yoga and tantric sex are from two different branches of tantra.

Traditional Tantra is divided into red tantra and white tantra. White tantra is the solo practice, which incorporates yoga and meditation. Red tantra is the sexual practice.

While both use sexual energy, the goal of the two practices is different. The goal of red tantra is to create a deeper bond with a partner, while white tantra is about creating a deeper bond with yourself.

While the Western practice of tantra might suggest otherwise, you actually can’t have red tantra without white tantra, according to Piper.

“Red tantra is your opportunity to bring everything you’ve learned in your solo practice into an exchange with a lover,” explains Piper. No solo practice? No way to bring that to a lover.

“Tantric yoga can still make you a better lover,” says Rose, who has used tantric yoga to help people overcome dependence on porn or erotica, premature ejaculation, and erectile dysfunction.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are a few frequently asked questions regarding Tantra. Before posting your query, kindly go through them:

Q: What is Tantra? tantra is about connecting with your own energy to establish a deeper understanding of yourself. While tantra has evolved over the last thousand years, “tantra is still first and foremost a personal practice of liberation. It’s a technique that allows you to use energy and go deeper into yourself and experience enlightenment.

Q: What are the tantric practices? One of the main elements of Tantric literature is ritual Rather than one coherent system. Tantra is an accumulation of practices and ideas from different sources. As Samuel writes, tantric traditions are “a confluence of a variety of different factors and components.” These elements include Mandalas, Mantras, Internal sexual yogic practices, Fierce male and female deities, Cremation ground symbolism, and Concepts from Indian Philosophy.

 

Q: What is tantric sex? It is a Sanskrit term that translates to “weave.” It refers to weaving together or uniting the masculine and feminine forces within all of us, heaven and earth, the human body with the transcendent, collapsing the polarities. The purpose is to discover an ecstatic union with all of life beyond the separate sense of self. Sacred or tantric sex—an aspect of tantra—is seen as one doorway to that transcendent truth, once we learn how to harness it.

 

DISCLAIMER

The opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the concerned site owners. Siddha Spirituality For Health is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this article. However, it is advisable to consult a specialist in the concerned field before availing of the benefits. Hence we do not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.

 

Reference:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantra
• https://www.healthline.com/health/tantric-yoga#tantric-yoga-vs-tantric-sex
• https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-23332/tantric-sex-101-what-it-is-how-to-do-it.html