Part of the way in understanding Tantra

books:

	• Desire: The Tantric Path to Awakening Daniel Odier Inner Traditions, 2001 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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open to the "luminosity of existence"

According to almost all the great world religions including Buddhism, desire is an enemy blocking the path to enlightenment. Contrary to this, Daniel Odier maintains that desire is the only true path to liberation. According to Odier, the primary requirement for a spiritual seeker to fully awaken is simple, direct, personal experience. He refers to his disciplined approach as "micropractices" involving the conscious withdrawal from habitual activities for just a few seconds several times a day. There is no goal in this practice, no seeking to get somewhere or accomplish something, but rather the purpose is simply to be fully aware, fully awake, and fully present to your own divinity in the now moment. Odier describes his Tantric path as "nothing spectacular...lack[ing] in the exotic, the magickal, the extraordinary....there was no ritual other than to breathe, walk, bathe... to look at the earth, the lichens, the trees, the leaves, common objects; to enter deeply into contact with life, reality." He suggests that the "luminosity of existence" pervades everything including you. Odier received direct personal Tantric initiation from a Kashmiri Shaivite yogini, Lalita Devi, in the Tantric lineage of the Tibetan master Kalu Rinpoche which dates back several thousand years.

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An excellent book

If you are interested in learning about tantra, this is an excellent starting point. Written by a professor from the University of California, he describes how he was initiated by Devï. Of course, tantra is still a very exotic form of meditation and considered as a very unusual sexual technique. Odier describes how he learned the technique and what effects it had on him. More important he illustrates how sex can become a way of opening up your mind. After you have read it, you'll want to learn it, but you'll see how the sex you've had so far is nothing comparedd to what awaits you with tantra. At the same time, it is not a guide, but rather an account of Odier's personal experience. Being a university professor of the Western world, this books makes it the more interesting as his description is what we would probably say as well. I definately recommed you to read it!

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Wholistic Tantra

The best thing about this book, for me, is its easy-to-understand (if not always easy-to-practice) wholistic view of Tantric practice. Tantric practice is NOT just about sex -- it's about falling in love with the whole universe on a much subtler level, if I may put it into my own words. Odier mixes chapters that give solid, Western-life examples of new ways to look at the world with chapters on readings from ancient texts. Frankly, the latter are mostly over my head, but the book is engaging enough that I plan to come back to those chapters I didn't "get" on first reading and try again. My two minor quibbles are that the book seems somewhat disorganized, and perhaps related, Odier spends part of the book talking about how Tantric practice is not really or only about sex and part of the book describing the sexual aspects -- with the transition between the two being mostly buried in one of those more mystical chapters. That being said, I am impressed with how accessible AND useful the teachings were, especially the modern-life illustrations of everyday non-sexual Tantric practice.

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Part of the way in understanding Tantra

Daniel Odier's Desire: The Tantric Path to Awakening is a good introduction to Tantra but I did not lose the feeling that Tantra was just an excuse for licentiousness until I read his subsequent book Yoga Spandakarika. In the latter Odier relays a fuller understanding of and feeling for Tantra. I would read them together as a set.

? Explains how the primal energy generated by physical desire can be used to achieve enlightenment

? Reveals the techniques used by Tantric adepts to attain mastery over breath, thought, and all physical processes

Nothing can match the explosive energy created in the body by pure desire. For millennia, Tantric adepts have harnessed this force as a means of attaining the summits of the mystical life. The energies fueled by passion are used to nourish the inner flame that burns away the egotistical perception of the mind.

Desire explores the subtle techniques of Tantra that enable the seeker to attain the triple mastery of the breath, thought, and the natural processes of the body. Tantrics believe that the body is the temple and divinity lies at its heart. In order to arrive at profound awareness, the body needs to be perfectly tuned and working toward a state of perfect fluidity. Desire reveals many of the secret practices intended for this purpose that have been passed down in the major Tantric treatises such as the Vijnanabhariva Tantra and Ch'an master Chinul's treatise on the Secrets of Cultivating the Mind, including the important techniques of the ritual sexual observances known as Maithuna.

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