13 Reasons Why I Love Tantra
Roar Ramesh Bjonnes
- I love Tantra because it is about walking your spiritual talk.
2. I love Tantra because it is a comprehensive body-mind-spirit tradition that includes the practice of physical yoga exercises, devotional dancing, mantra meditation and chanting, breathing exercises, visualization techniques, sacred cosmology and even alchemy and holistic medicine.
“The techniques of yoga have their source in Tantra and the two cannot be separated, just as consciousness, Shiva, cannot be separated from energy, Shakti.” –Swami Satyananda Saraswati
In other words, when you practice a contemporary yoga studio version of a more ancient version from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, or sit in lotus position, or simply cross-legged, at home reciting a mantra flowing like water over your silent tongue, you are a Tantrika.
3. I love this comprehensive tradition of dual mind-body energies entwined like lovers in a tight embrace, entwined like the ida and pingala nadis of your esoteric spine, entwined like a oneness-flower in each chakra of your sacred body. I love this body-positive practice which they refer to as Tantra Yoga.
In this microcosmic architecture of my own body-mind, I also see the architecture of the whole macrocosm. I always see my own dance, whether in the shade or in the light, or in the mirror of reality.
Hence it is said in the Vishva-Sara-Tantra: “What is here is elsewhere, what is not here is nowhere.” Hence the alchemists of Europe were also Tantrikas when they said: “As Above, so Below.”
4. I love Tantra because when we practice our asana in harmony with our breath, we are the whole universe moving in one Tantric flow. So, when we meditate knowing that the breath we are breathing is the cosmos breathing through us, then we know we are in the rasa, the cosmic flow.
5. I love Tantra because it is hardly just about sex. Indeed, it’s about making love to the Universe.
Since health is not gained by gorging on organic food and true wealth is not found in the desire for more money, Tantra is not the path of indulgence, Tantra is not the path of mere sensual gratification. Hence, on the subject of indulgence in drink and sex as a path to liberation the Kularnava Tantra speaks with a straightforward voice:
“If [you] could attain perfection (siddhi) merely by drinking wine, all the wine-bibbing rouges would attain perfection. If mere intercourse… would lead to liberation, all creatures of the world would be liberated…”
6. I love Tantra, because Tantric yogis embrace both unity and duality, both wholeness and opposites. They have realized that these opposites dissolve in Brahma, in Spirit, and that the inner essence of all life and all things is bliss and love.
That is why Tantra is often called the path of ecstasy, or the path of love.
7. I love Tantra because of its notion that everything is Divine. This essential realization — that every form, particle, atom, or rock in this universe has an inherent capacity to reveal the Divine.
8. I love Tantra for boldly claiming that not just everyone, but everything, even this book, is at its core, God.
9. I love Tantra because it understands there is no free spiritual lunch. So, jump into action, engage in a sustained spiritual effort (sadhana) in order to realize this inherent Divinity. Do it now! Because it is highly unlikely that weekend seminar you are looking forward to in a few months will give you instant enlightenment!
Tantric spirituality means that in order to experience sacredness in everyday life, we must practice spirituality — Hatha Yoga, meditation, prayer, chanting, dancing — diligently and with total abandon. We must walk (or dance) our spiritual talk. It’s that simple.
In other words, daily spiritual practice is essential in achieving results on the path of Tantra. Indeed, all sacred paths worthy of its mala beads would agree.
10. I love Tantra because it signifies a spirituality that is vigorous and fearless, a spirituality that encourages and enables us to overcome limitations, phobias, worries and egotistical tendencies head-on. Just Do It! (Tantra said that thousands of years before the Nike advertisement made the slogan popular.)
11. I love Tantra because of its alchemical use of energy, its ability to transform desire into bliss, and violence into peace.
For the Tantric understands that all dualities, all conflicts and opposites, all forms and energies are different expressions of God that ultimately dissolve in a state of nondual unity and peace. That is, if you compost all your shadow stuff in a Tantric way. That is, if you do as the Spanish poet Antonio Machado did: he let the bees in his heart make honey out of all his past mistakes, all his past samskaras. That’s Tantric psychology in action.
12. I love Tantra because it’s more science than religion, more art than science, more spiritual practice than doctrine.
“Tantra is 99% practice and 1% theory.” –Shrii Anandamurti
13. I love Tantra for its adherence to nondualistic dualistic nondualism — the understanding that the One created the many and that we, the many, are all part of the One. This ability to see the oneness of everything is the essence of Tantra.
In India, both Tantrics and Vedantists are nondualists — they both believe in the Oneness of existence — however, when the Vedantists say the world is really an illusion, the Tantrics says the world is really Divine.
It is perhaps this holistic and practical attitude — that Divinity is everywhere and that sacredness can be realized anywhere — which makes Tantra so appealing to contemporary seekers. At least that is why I love Tantra.