I’m calling
this a book review, but it’s not a real book review. Yet I think this book
deserves attention, and I will explain why.
I met Dr.
Nida for the first time at a conference on Tibetan Medicine at Shechen
Monastery in Nepal. I was taken by his very modern view on things (which is
unfortunately often lacking with Tibetan doctors, despite the great potential
the system has). For some years I have been slightly skeptical about him as
well. How can one teach things like tumo
and karmamudra publicly? According to
my understanding from the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition, that is not done. But in his book The Yoga of Bliss, Dr. Nida explains very clearly that these
are special teachings from the Yuthok Nyingtik tradition. Regarding karmamudra,
yes, there are the classical methods (of the third empowerment) which are based
on the tsa-lung practices (of the second empowerment). But these are difficult,
require years of preparation and training, and so Dr. Nida does not discuss
these in the book. Yet Dr. Nida offers a wealth of advice on the topic and
places ‘tantric sex’, as it is often called, in the right context. He also
discusses exercises that can be done by anyone.
Unfortunately,
the topic has been stained with misconceptions and so he starts with dispelling
a number of misconceptions, like:
- - Karmamudra
is so secret it can never be discussed
- - Karmamudra
is the same as karmasutra
- - For
karmamudra you need many sexual partners
- - Karmamudra
is for the purpose of exploiting women
- - Almost
no one is qualified to practice karmamudra
In the
past, with a few notable exceptions, most of –Tibetan- Buddhism’s experts have
been monastics. The students as well: if you had any serious inclinations for
the spiritual life, in most cases the monastic life was the only option (on the
side, I think the appreciation for monastic life is still lacking in many
Western Buddhists - perhaps especially in the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism).
But at the moment, most of the Western practitioners are living a lay person's life. Unfortunately, serious teachings and advice on one aspect of lay life,
sexuality, has been painfully lacking. The introduction by Ben Joffe and Dr.
Nida discuss this at length.
On the contrary, sex has been mostly or even solely associated with scandals and abuse. But that is a pity. In the vajrayana, there are teachings on each of the ‘four states’ of consciousness: of the day-time, deep sleep, dream and sexual union. There are plenty of teachings available on working with the day-time state, the deep sleep and dream state. Yet there are hardly any instructions offered for working with the state of the blissful conscious of sexual union. And most of us will, as human beings, have experiences of this. Thus Dr Nida argues that it is better to take it onto the path than to think that it is something dirty and something that belongs to ‘samsara’.
On the contrary, sex has been mostly or even solely associated with scandals and abuse. But that is a pity. In the vajrayana, there are teachings on each of the ‘four states’ of consciousness: of the day-time, deep sleep, dream and sexual union. There are plenty of teachings available on working with the day-time state, the deep sleep and dream state. Yet there are hardly any instructions offered for working with the state of the blissful conscious of sexual union. And most of us will, as human beings, have experiences of this. Thus Dr Nida argues that it is better to take it onto the path than to think that it is something dirty and something that belongs to ‘samsara’.
This book
is a good introduction and fills a gap in the currently available material on
Tibetan Buddhism, and is therefore worth reading.
