The tantras can be very confusing for a person who is new to Buddhism, and for several thousand years the rule was not to expose a person or a new monk to the tantras until they had practiced for many, many years.
See how it's a philosophy that's been handed to you by a bunch of men who were afraid. So instead, they overcompensate with hatred and violence and repression.
We fall into states of illusion - we forget all this. We get caught up in desires, frustrations, political movements, philosophies, religions, the getting of a living, the pain of a body, the pleasure of a body.
Self-discovery is realistic. It's not built on ideas and philosophies. It's what works. Philosophies are nice if you like philosophies. But self-discovery is predicated on something that really brings you into enlightened states of mind.
Philosophers are all caught up in their philosophies. That's their house of cards. Religious leaders are caught up in their religious movements to the point where they forget about freedom. Everybody's got their drama going.
The sensual experiences in life are not to be avoided. This is the philosophy of Tantric Buddhism - nor are they particularly to be sought after.
It's not what you do that matters. It's not what you say. There's nothing that is not holy or spiritual. Be beyond definition, beyond categorization, be absorbed.
The emphasis in tantra is not what you find yourself doing, it's on meditation.
Tantric Buddhism is just a collection of things that work by doing them. And sometimes we add new things. We have electronic music; we did not have it in Tibet.
In the world of Buddhist mind, in the advanced states, we go beyond time, space, life, death and Newsweek.
Be neither attracted nor repulsed is the message of Tantric Buddhism. Don't be drawn to something, don't run away from it. Just naturally accept whatever comes into life.
Your soul wants experience. It wants the world. You're a human - and your eternal. The two are the same.
Be radical! The reason you feel so miserable is because you put spirituality in a form. You boxed it, franchised it. You decided spirituality was a certain way but then you got stuck in the way.
Tantra and adventure are very, very connected. Perhaps the greatest enemy for one who's journeying along the spiritual path is complacency.
There is nothing that you shouldn't do. Everything can be used as a tool for liberation.
There's no right or wrong in the study of enlightenment. There's only experience.
What we seek to do in Tantric Buddhism is to liquefy ourselves. Life will automatically bring us to the next stage. You don't really have to know where you're going - It's like breathing.
Tantra is non-dogmatic, in the sense that we don't care about the sensual world; we don't care about other religious traditions. To not care doesn't mean that we don't learn.
Tantra is spiritual, not religious. It deals with the spirit. Religion is just an applied body of doctrines that's believed or not believed by one or more individuals. Spirituality is the science of metaphysics.
If you find a Tantric master - he has you go and do all the things you hate to do.
There's a path in enlightenment called the path of negation where we intentionally throw ourselves into experiences that are extremely transient. In other words, we do all the stuff you're supposed to normally avoid to become enlightened, intentionally.
Why don't you like being you for a change? Just be different and don't hate yourself and feel very good about all your different desires and all the things you didn't want and want. Go get them all, and see what it's like.
Zen is Tantric Buddhism, Vajrayana is tantric Buddhism - these are various forms of it. Tantric Buddhism simply means cutting to the chase.
For the person who wants to get to the mystical experience directly, Tantric Buddhism is the path.
One person will eat meat and it will lower their attention field. Another person won't even be affected by it because they're not in the state of mind whereby they'll be affected by it.
