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Y sí, es verdad que existe una práctica “secreta” alrededor del coito
sagrado. Se le llama Maithuna y fue desarrollada dentro de la ‘Vía de
la mano izquierda’ del tantra –opuesta y complementaria a la Vía de
la mano derecha, más ortodoxa y políticamente correcta–. La
práctica se mantenía en secreto, sobre todo porque la casta
sacerdotal de los brahmanes, que detentaba el poder religioso, la
consideraba inmoral. Desde luego, los brahmanes tenían que
defender su propio mercado espiritual. Uno de los gestos más
subversivos del maithuna es que ponía –y pone– a la mujer en el
trono del ritual, lo que iba en clara oposición a la tradición
brahmánica ortodoxa, patriarcal y rígida por definición. En el
maithuna, la mujer representa a la diosa Shakti, y durante la unión
sagrada es ella quien está activa y quien transmite los ritmos de la
naturaleza y del amor. El hombre, Shiva, debe permanecer receptivo
y al servicio de Shakti. Podríamos decir que es una práctica
feminista, un culto de lo femenino, como dice el yogui André Van
Lysebeth. Es una práctica, sobre todo, impregnada de altas dosis de
meditación, en la que se invierte muchísimo tiempo en la
respiración conjunta y en el juego de besos y caricias antes de la
penetración, pero aún más en el acto sexual mismo, que debe durar
hasta dos horas, y más. Los participantes deben prepararse
rigurosamente durante meses, o incluso años, para iniciarse en este
tipo de meditación. Desde luego, el objetivo del ritual no es el sexo,
menos aún la eyaculación o el orgasmo. El hombre debe ser un
yogui con suficiente control sobre sí mismo para no eyacular. Se
trata, justamente, del dominio y la trascendencia de los instintos. “El
maithuna no debe convertirse nunca en un coito profano”, dice Van
Lysebeth, mucho menos uno centrado en el atractivo físico o en el
performance sexual. Lo que se busca es el verdadero éxtasis, ir más
allá del sexo a través del sexo, entrar en contacto directo con Shiva y
Shakti, las energías supremas que están creando continuamente el
universo mientras hacen el amor. Lo que enseña el Maithuna es que
la unión sexual es sagrada al encarnar el acto creador de las fuerzas
cósmicas.
Todo hay que decirlo: esta práctica en pareja es sólo una ínfima
parte del océano de prácticas de meditación que se conoce como
Tantra, que tantas malinterpretaciones ha sufrido en occidente. No
sobra decirlo una vez más: el tantra no se centra en el sexo, como
tampoco lo hace el yoga. Son un conjunto antiguo y amplísimo de
textos sagrados y técnicas de meditación que buscan ante todo la
iluminación, y que han influido profundamente a todas las
tradiciones espirituales vivas de la India, así como influyen hoy la
cultura occidental. De hecho, lo que hoy llamamos yoga –un montón
de posturas complicadas e incómodas– es una curiosa mezcla de
hatha yoga, budismo tántrico –sí, los budistas también practican
tantra– y gimnasia sueca –sí, ¡gimnasia sueca de principios de siglo
XX!–.
¿Tienen los yoguis mejor sexo? Sí, por la sencilla razón de que saben
manejar su energía. Pero el objetivo del yoga no es tener mejor sexo.
Una sexualidad más rica y profunda es, digamos, un efecto secundario
de la práctica.
Chances are, "better sex" isn't at the top of your list of things to work
on to bring yourself closer to enlightenment. But the two go hand in
hand,
Like the richness of our spiritual lives, though, the depth of our
sexuality goes far beyond easy, quick satisfaction and often takes
years to unfold. Says Ogden, "Our sexuality is much more complex
than the Masters and Johnson model of arousal, orgasm, and rolling
over and going to sleep. It's spiritual, and the body has memories. Sex
always means something even if you deny that it does." That's why
exploring the spirit-sex connection is best done in a love relationship,
rather than with a variety of casual partners. As Whitwell puts it: "Dear
friendship must be established as the context for sex as spiritual
practice."
But if there are more than enough obstacles, there's also plenty of
evidence that we crave a more spiritual sexuality. A survey that Ogden
undertook in 1999, Integrating Sexuality and Spirituality, found that 67
percent of the 3,810 respondents (women and men) agreed that "a
spiritual element is necessary for sexual satisfaction" and 78 percent
said that "sex is much more than intercourse; it involves all of me—
body, mind, heart, and soul." There's even measurable evidence that
sex and spirit are linked, she notes: "Brain research shows that
orgasmic response and even vaginal stimulation in women lights up
the whole brain, including the parts associated with spiritual and
religious ecstasy, not just the physical-sensation parts. We're hard-
wired for multidimensional sex."
Fortunately, there's a venerable yogic tradition that teaches the
connection of spirituality and sexuality. In Tantric yoga, for example,
says Whitwell, the focus is on the merging of opposites—heaven and
earth, male and female, inhale and exhale, yin and yang, above and
below, front body and back body—to help us overcome our ego-driven
sense of separateness and achieve union with the Divine. "In the yoga
tradition of the nondual schools from which asana arose, God was
feminine, or shakti, energy. So, pleasing the feminine is the point of
Tantric philosophy," he explains. "When men surrender to receive
feminine energy, both men and women are strengthened." Put more
plainly, when a man's goal isn't just ejaculation but a true focus on his
partner's pleasure, both have a better time in bed. When that happens,
Whitwell says, a balancing of male and female energy takes place.
"You want to begin to shift the focus on the body from its being either
dirty or shameful, or as a tool to attract someone, to the body as
sacred—not in an inviolate, virginal sense, but as something to treat
responsibly," Ogden explains.
Tantra:
The fundamental thing to know about tantric sex is that it's based on a
loose collection of religious texts in Sanskrit known as tantra that come
from the non-mainstream of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain tradition. The
tantra were very much, in other words, challenging normal religious
practice, and haven't necessarily had the best reputation throughout
their existence.
As you may have picked up, what we now view as "tantric sex," and
Tantra in general, is pretty different from what's actually in the texts and
how it was practiced.
"As early as the romantic era, the "mystic Orient" has been imagined as
the exotic world of forbidden sexuality and dark sensuality," Hugh Urban
notes in Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power In The Study Of
Religion, adding that a lot of our interpretation of the tantras comes from
our own weird stuff about sex in the Western world, particularly in the
Victorian era, when they first appeared via colonial translations.
The fact that we conceive of tantric sex as a sex thing and not a religion
thing comes from a few things. One of them is undoubtedly the fact that
we first learned about it in the West from the writings of horrified
Christian missionaries who witnessed practitioners doing rituals
involving eating meat and other "forbidden" practices. The French
missionary Abbe Dubois, who published a book on his travels through
India and elsewhere in 1807, noted in disgust:
"Among the abominable rites practiced in India is one which is only too
well known; it is called sakti-puja; sakti meaning strength or power.
Sometimes it is the wife of Siva to whom this sacrifice is offered;
sometimes they pretend that it is in honor of some invisible power. The
ceremony takes place at night with more or less secrecy. The least
disgusting of these orgies are those where they confine themselves to
eating and drinking everything that the custom of the country forbids,
and where men and women, huddled together in indiscriminate
confusion, openly and shamelessly violate the commonest laws of
decency and modesty."
Other missionaries would write with horror of other bits of ritual Tantric
practice, all, of course, in contrast to the expected chastity and purity of
Christianity. Our picture of tantric sex as delightful and decadent
probably dates from the horrified Abbe.
Podemos adelantar, por supuesto, que el tantrismo de mano izquierda (aquel que
confiere carácter de bondad a las convencionalmente "cinco cosas malas", entre otras la
unión sexual) ha dado paso a toda clase de abusos, engaños y autoengaños.
El tantrismo de mano izquierda, también debemos decirlo ya, exige unos requisitos
estrictos -y no fáciles de observar-, dispone de sus propias leyes y no es en absoluto un
pasaporte para el libertinaje, sino una técnica psicomental y espiritual para trascender la
mundanidad a través de la misma mundanidad.
Oxford:
large sections of Hinduism and Buddhism. Depending upon the background, the
origins, and the local influences, the evolution was more or less marked by a
rejection of orthodox Vedic rules and notions; it included more or less local
autochthonous cults and beliefs, local religious behaviors, and magical and/or other
practices.
Ojo los kaulas como adoradores de la madre: The Śākta tradition is closely
related to the Śaiva tradition, and the textual basis of many Śākta traditions are
rooted in the goddess-oriented Vidyāpīṭha and Kaula traditions. The Kaula tradition,
being almost entirely goddess oriented, is as much a Śākta tradition as it is Śaiva.
This is because these are clearly overlapping categories. The nondual Śaiva and
Śākta traditions both focus on the “bipolar, bisexual divinity within one’s own body,”
as Goodriaan described it.49 This divinity is typically conceived as a male deity (Śiva
or Viṣṇu) in union with his wife, Śakti. The distinction between Śaiva and Śākta in
the Kaula tradition is largely one of emphasis, the deity upon which one primarily
focuses.
The Kaula tantras provide the early scriptural basis for the Śākta tradition. Of
particular historical importance is the Kaula Southern transmission, which
constitutes the tantras of the clan of the goddess Śrī (śrīkula), and the Northern and
Eastern transmission, which gave rise to the tantras of the clan of the goddess Kālī
(kālīkula).52 These became by far the most popular Śākta tantric traditions. The
former, focusing on beautiful and erotic goddess Śrī, gave rise to the Śrī Vidyā
tradition, which is an orthodox, “right handed” tradition that became particularly
popular in South India.53 It is also the tradition that gave rise to the Śrī Yantra, a
mystical diagram consisting formed by nine interlocking triangles that is probably
one of the most widespread and best known tantric images.
The South Asian traditions that were influenced by the tantric traditions to some
degree include Jainism, Islam, and Sikhism. Daoism and the Shintō tradition in
East Asia were influenced by East Asian tantric Buddhist traditions, and the Bön
tradition of Tibet was thoroughly transformed by its encounter with tantric
Buddhism. Lastly, the “New Age” spiritual movement that developed in the West
during the latter half of the 20th century was also strongly influenced by Hindu and
Buddhist tantric traditions.
Yogui Bhajan: Tantric yogic practice was also adopted by some Sikhs. One of the
best known advocates of this practice was Harbhajan Singh Khalsa (1929–2004),
better known as Yogi Bhajan, who widely taught Kundalini Yoga in America and
Europe. Yogi Bhajan claimed to be part of a practice lineage going back to Guru
Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. While there is no evidence supporting this claim, it
appears that, as Michael Stoeber suggests, “some form of Kundalini Yoga was
practiced historically by some Sikhs, albeit perhaps secretly and in very small
numbers. Regarding this practice see Michael Stoeber, “3HO Kundalini Yoga
and Sikh Dharma,” Sikh Formations8.3 (2012): 358 (351–368).
Lastly, the growth of interest in tantric practice in the West has led to the
development of a number of new spiritual traditions deeply influenced by Hindu and
Buddhist tantric traditions founded by Westerners, which Hugh Urban has labeled
“New Age Tantra.” These include Pierre Bernard’s Tantrik Order, Aleister Crowley’s
Ordo Templi Orientis, and Nik Douglas’s New Tantric Order in America. 94 These
traditions have adapted venerable tantric ideas and practices to meet the needs of
spiritual seeker in new and contemporary contexts.
Yoga: mezcla
The first evidence of Shiva comes from the pre-Vedic era, from a seal from the
Indus Valley civilisation. It shows a naked man with an erect penis, sitting in
the yogic “throne” position or Bhadrasana, wearing horned headgear,
surrounded by animals. Since the script has not been deciphered one can only
speculate what this image represents. But most scholars believe it is an early
form of Shiva because it captures at least three attributes of Shiva: Shiva as
Pashupati, lord of animals; as Yogeshwara, lord of yoga; and as Lingeshwara,
lord of the phallus.