SEXUALITY: TAOISM AND TANTRA


"...It is true that in Taoism and Tantric Buddhism there are what appear
to be techniques or 'practices' of sexual relationship, but these are,
like sacraments, the 'outward and visible signs of an inward and
spiritual grace.'  Their use is the consequence rather than the cause of
a certain inner attitude, since they suggest themselves almost naturally
to partners who take their love as it comes, comtemplatively, and are in
no hurry to grasp anything from it.  Sexual yoga needs to be freed from
a misunderstanding attached to all forms of yoga, of spiritual 
'practice' or 'exercise,' since these ill-chosen words suggest that yoga
is a method for the progressive achievement of certain results - and
this is exactly what it is  not.  Yoga means 'union,' that is, the
realization of man's inner identity with Brahman or Tao, and strictly
speaking this is not an end to which there are methods or means since it
cannot be made an object of desire.  The attempt to achieve it
invariably thrusts it away.  Yoga 'practices' are therefore sacramental
expressions or 'celebrations' of this union, in rather the same sense
that Catholics celebrate the Mass as an expression of Christ's 'full,
perfect , and SUFFICIENT sacrifice.'  Means are irrelevant to what is
already sufficient.  Thus contemplation or meditation which seeks a
result is neither contemplation nor meditation, for the simple reason
that contemplation (kuan) is consciousness without seeking.  Naturally,
such consciousness is concentrated, but it is not 'practicing
concentration'; it is concentrated in whatever happens to be its
'eternal now'.

"Sexual yoga or, as it is technically called, maithuna is a common theme
of Hindu sculpture, though it has been suggested that its origins are
Chinese, arriving in India as the backwash of the spread of Buddhism....
Scholars...have made it plain...that what [is represented] is at once a
metaphysical doctrine and a sacrament at least as sacred as Christian
matrimony.... They are emblems of the eternal spirit and nature [and]
represent the consummation of contemplative love between mutually
dedicated partners.

"The general idea of Tantric maithuna, as of its Taoist counterpart, is
that sexual love may be transformed into a type of worship in which the
partners are, for each other, incarnations of the divine.  Perhaps this
statement must be somewhat modified with respect to Buddhism and Taoism,
to which the notion of worship is really foreign, and one must
substitute the contemplation of nature in its true state.  The embrace
of maithuna involves also a transmutation of the sexual energy which it
arouses, and this is described symbolically as sending it upwards from
the loins to  the head.  Yoga, as is well known, involves a peculiar
symbolism of human anatomy in  which the spinal column is seen as a
figure of the Tree of Life, with its roots in the nether world and its
branches, or its flower, in the heavens beneath the 'firmament' of the
skull.  The base of the spinal-tree is the seat of the kundalini, the
Serpent Power, which is an image of the divine life-energy incarnate in
nature and asleep  under the illusion of maya.  Yoga consists of
awakening the Serpent and allowing it to ascend the tree to the heavens,
wherefrom it passes liberated through the  'sun-door' at the apex of the
skull.  Thus when the Serpent is at the base of the spinal-tree it
manifests its power as sexual energy; when it is at the crown it
manifests itself as spiritual energy.

"According to Tantric symbolism, the energy of the kundalini is aroused
but simply dissipated in ordinary sexual activity.  It can, however, be
transmuted in a prolonged embrace in which the male orgasm is reserved
and the sexual energy diverted into contemplation of the divine as
incarnate in the woman.  The partners are therefore seated in the
cross-legged posture of meditation, the woman clasping  the man's waist
with her thighs and her arms about his neck.  Such a position is 
clearly unsuitable for motion, the point being that the partners should
remain still and so prolong the embrace that the exchange between them
would be passive and receptive rather than active.  Nothing is DONE to
excite the sexual energy; it is  simply allowed to follow its own course
without being 'grasped' or exploited by the imagination and the will. 
In the meantime the mind and senses are not given up to fantasy, but
remain simply open to 'what is,' without - as we should say in current
slang - trying to make something of it.

"In trying to understand anything of this kind, the modern Westerner
must be careful not to confuse the symbology of the kundalini and the
ascension of the sexual force with any physiological situation.  Indeed,
anatomical symbolisms of this kind are so strange to us that they hinder
rather than help our comprehension of the real intent.  Furthermore,
almost all ancient sexual ideas are bound up with notions of  the semen
and its properties which we no longer share, and thus we do not regard
it as a vital fluid to be conserved like blood.  Our physiology does not
support the idea that the male orgasm is a debilitating leakage of
strength, and therefore the mere avoidance of the orgasm will have
little significance in any modern application of sexual yoga.

"The importance of these ancient ideas to us lies not so much in their
technicalities as in their psychological intent.  They express an
attitude of sexuality which, if absorbed by us today, could contribute
more than anything else to the healing of the confusion and the
frustration of our marital and sexual relations.  It remains, then, to
separate the underlying sexual philosophy of Tantra and Taoism from
symbolic and ritual elements which have no meaning for us, and to see
whether it can be applied in terms of our own culture.

_Nature, Man and Woman, Watts p. 194 [...]- 204.

"The height of sexual love, coming upon us of itself, is one of the most
total experiences of relationship to the other of which we are capable,
but prejudice and insensitivity have prevented us from seeing that in
any other circumstances such delight would be called mystical ecstasy. 
For what lovers feel for each other in this moment is no other than
adoration in its full religious sense, and its climax is almost
literally the pouring of their lives into each other.  Such adoration,
which  is due only to God, would indeed be idolatrous were it not that
in that moment love takes away illusion and shows the beloved for what
he or she in truth is - not the socially pretended person but the
naturally divine."

_Ibid, p. 205.