Book review: Karmamudra: The Yoga of Bliss, by Dr. Nida

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’. 

This book is a good introduction and fills a gap in the currently available material on Tibetan Buddhism, and is therefore worth reading.