POPULAR TANTRA: Two More Examples

The first is from 'Tantra: The Magazine, TARA 1991'
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Why Tantra?
By Robert Frey

The Tantric path with its diverse ways and practices, developed long ago
in several cultures, has begun to emerge from a lengthy dormant period
and now promises to flourish again.  A new Tantra is being created,
blending ancient and modern healing and transformational skills.  The
current flow of history is ripe for Tantra - why?

The nature of the modern industrialized civilization now dominating the
world is separation.  With all its focus on material possessions and the
intense preoccupation with 'getting', a deeply essential human/spiritual
need has been denied - the need to connect, to create union.  The desire
to share has been sublimated to the desire called greed, the urge to
have and control more power and possessions than others.  Getting (as
distinguished from receiving) usually precludes giving, and in doing so
disavows the honoring of Spirit, in others and in self.  Getting without
giving is the outward expression of the inner imbalance of push without
yield, assertion/aggression/control without surrender/flow/receptivity.
It is the yang without the yin.  Getting is about trying to dominate the
world without opening the heart.  The energy only flows one way, and
thus separation is created and maintained.

Separation, extreme as it has become, has begun to arouse in us all the
deep desire to be connected with others.  Separation is maintained by a
thinking aspect of the mind called the ego, whose primary motivating
energy comes from "fear thoughts", fears and thoughts of lack -
ultimately lack of love, for self and others.  Thus separation can be
said to have two components: An energetic pattern in which the open flow
of energy and sensation is blocked, incomplete, or unidirectional, and
secondly, a mental state that displaces love with thoughts and feelings
of lack and fear.  In a culture such as our modern Western materialistic
society, people are conditioned to be unaware of their energy or
unskillful in commanding it, thus habitually blocking its natural flow. 
Energetically they live cut off from others and from aspects of
themselves.  Likewise, most people are trained to run their lives from
their fear-based ego thinking, accepting a misconception that separation
and absence of intimacy with others is the human condition and to be
expected.  The pain of this pervasive separation has begun to arouse a
widespread interest in understanding and healing this "dysfunction".

Tantra offers relief from the components of separation on both accounts.
The classic partner energy meditation found in the major Tantric
traditions, as well as the practices for individuals, effectively serve
to train awareness and command of the natural energetic flows both
within each person and between people.  Given awareness and command,
anyone with Tantric skill can reclaim the natural experience of union
and connection. The meditations also serve to quiet the thinking mind
and with it the fears and fear thoughts which maintain and justify
separation, offering instead moments of relief and inner peace.  From
the place of peace, openness to others is possible and through the
Tantric practices, openness can lead to connection and even to the
blissful experience of union.  Indeed a popular definition of Tantra is,
"to connect, unite"; to make a deep connection, to create unity or union
is the healing of separation, the living of "bliss function" - Tantra.

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Robert Frey, M.A., Ph.D. candidate in Psychology, has 10 years
experience and teaching in a variety of Tantric schools; monthly
transformational Tantric workshops in San Diego area (619) 943-8639 and
San Francisco Bay area (415) 924-LIVE.  Private sessions and mystical
nature retreats in Sedona, Mt. Shasta, and other sites by arrangement. 
Direct contact: (602) 282-1894, or P.O. Box 2151, Sedona, AZ, 86336.
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'Tantra: The Magazine': P.O. Box 79, Torreon, NM 87061-0079, (505) 271-3155.
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From 'Utne Reader', an excerpt from 'The Advocate'


Learning From the Masters: A School for Sadomasochism
By David Perry
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Karen Mendelsohn is probably the only student of Tibetan Buddhism ever
to open a school for sadomasochism.  Mendelsohn, 46, says, "But I've
always had these schoolmarm fantasies, so..."

The school that mistress Mendelsohn oversees is Quality S/M (QSM), a
kind of community-college extension service for people interested in
exploring S/M.  Operating out of Mendelsohn's storefront apartment in
San Francisco's outer Mission district, QSM offers a wide variety of
classes, workshops, lectures, and hands-on sessions of interest to both
the novice and the expert.

"The average person's image of S/M is of crazed Nazis," says Mendelsohn.
"And certainly before I got involved in it, I thought that people who
did S/M were maladjusted and waiting around the waterfront to drink your
blood."

Mendelsohn first encountered S/M when she answered a personal ad placed
by a man looking for 'erotic adventures,' she recalls.  "There was no
sexual energy between us, but boy, did he turn me on to a bunch of
groups interested in the same thing."  She was soon a member of two San
Francisco S/M groups, Outcasts and the Society of Janus.

The magazine rack in Mendelsohn's classroom teems with titles such as
'Quim', 'Taste of Latex', 'Dungeon Master', 'The Sandmutopia Guardian',
and an especially graphic S/M 'zine titled 'Brat Attack'.  There's a
plastic apple on her desk, hooks in the ceiling - they're used in 'hanging
seminars' - and in the corner, a sturdy plastic-covered table used in the
Advanced Fisting class.

"This is not a sex club," Mendelsohn says.  "The fisting workshop is one
of the most extreme classes we offer, but we absolutely do not allow
students to participate in [fisting].  The class watches, listens and
learns."

Graphic descriptions aside, one might find it hard to keep an Advanced
Fisting class quiet.  Ditto for the snapping of whips and orders barked
during the Nazi Interrogation workshop or the Branding for Beginners
seminar ("There's no sound quite like the hiss of [a hot] brand meeting
flesh," the class description reads.)

"In the same way that Eskimos have many words for snow," Mendelsohn notes
in a carefully practiced analogy, "people who do S/M should have many words
for pain.  What people not into S/M don't understand is that there is a very
strong element of playacting.  If people in this community say 'Do you want
to play?' they mean 'Do you want to do S/M?'  This is the language of
childhood, and in some ways, S/M is a grown-up version of playing cowboys
and Indians."

Mendelsohn feels "somewhat lucky" that no one has ever been physically
damaged at QSM, although it's "certainly possible," she says.  "Do I
think that S/M can be dangerous?"  Mendelsohn asks.  "Yes.  And a lot of
people see that danger as exciting.  When I was a kid, I loved scarey
movies.  I enjoyed being scared.  Why do people get on a roller coaster,
scream their heads off, and get on again and again?  Fear.  It can be a
real rush."

While she is an active member of the S/M community, Mendelsohn does not
look down her nose at what some would consider vanilla sex, nor does she
believe that all people would enjoy S/M.  And she declines to draw a
hard-and-fast line between the "normal" and the "kinky."  "People into
S/M probably wear more leather than others," she says, "and enjoy a
power differential.  I mean, where does rough sex end and S/M begin?"
Mendelsohn adds that the AIDS epidemic has led to a marked increase in
S/M options and fantasies.

"There's a saying among the S/M people: They used to say we're sick, now
we're safe," she says.  "A lot of what constitutes S/M is very safe sex
and in no way involves the exchange of bodily fluids.  You don't have to
have a lot of props to do S/M.  You can practice S/M by serving someone
pizza or cleaning someone's apartment.  The defining element of S/M is
people being consciously aware that they are setting up a power dynamic
for erotic or spiritual purposes.

"Both S/M and Buddhism are about adding intensity to everyday life.
Tibetan Buddhism deals with energy - the chanting, the ceremony, the
ritual - and S/M is about bringing up energy.  And whatever else pain
does," says Mendelsohn with a grin, "it does get your attention."

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The Advocate: Box 590, Mt. Morris, IL 61054-7827; A gaylesbian biweekly.
Or call, (800) 827-0561.  This is an excerpt from the May 5, 1992 issue.