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happypandaSadhguru Exclusive
The Tantric Way
16 minutes - 1998
Location of talk: Isha Yoga Center - Volunteers Meet
Transcript
[video opens with various images of tantric deities and various yogis..then finally switches to Sadhguru sitting calmly draped in robes, rudraksh mala and swami turban]
When we say tantra, the word tantra has acquired a completely distorted meaning in today's world. Because the world generally - particularly in the western world - has invested so much in sensuousness that if you as much as utter the word 'body', their mind runs to sensuous thoughts. In such a state of mind and attitude exploring tantra is not only going to be ridiculous, it could be dangerous and damaging for individual people. Unless one has the ability to use this body and this mind as you would use any other gadget or a machine or an instrument, tantra is not a thing to explore. We need to understand this, the word tantra essentially means technology or a method. The essential distinction between yoga and tantra is yoga is a technology which is entirely internalized, not something that everybody is competent of because of it's so internalized. The work that needs to be done, to be able to access this body, access this being and use the internal nature of what this is needs discipline, lots of work and without a strong element of grace, may not even succeed. Incremental success - yes; a full-fledged success cannot be achieved unless there is a strong element of grace.
Tantra is another matter, it's more procedural in nature. If you learn the procedure right it could deliver you there. It's more like the physical sciences of today where many substances of the world are involved. The external nature of your body is involved. The imaginative part of your mind is involved and a strong emotional dimension is also involved.
Yoga is devoid of all this. Yoga is...(pauses with eyes closed)...has a lab like cleanliness. Tantra has no such cleanliness but to put it simply it's more people friendly. It's people friendly because it has many possibilities, many opportunities. It is not life-taking discipline, just learning to use the same things that you do with regular life, use the same things in a different way. Whatever is generally considered as entangling, trying to transform that itself - you like to eat food? Transform the way you eat the food and it becomes a spiritual process. You will see a whole lot of tantric teachers are huge.
Yogis are always proper and prim because what they have to eat and nothing more. [Sadhguru motions with slimness] Tantric teachers are big because they are not bothered about those things. [Sadhguru motions with hands a big human with big belly.]
So the same life processes which are considered samsara or cyclical, learning to ride that cycle in a way that it becomes liberating. The way of the yoga is not to get tangled up with the cycle, to stay away from it. It's a safe path, a clean path. This is a mix up, all kinds of things, but it's people friendly because people are anyway mixed up. The whole population is never going to become super disciplined as to how to do very internalized processes, it'll always be a small segment of people.
[video cuts to pan a long row of gold colored statues of Buddhist monks sitting in lotus posture with a larger statue of a gold colored Shakyamuni Buddha behind them all]
Gautama might have believed that he will make the whole world into monks. Well...forty thousand is not a world alright.
[video cuts to show many modern day Buddhist monks from around the world - China, Tibet, Malaysia, etc]
40,000 monks he made. I don't intend even that many. This is...that path is for those who have a certain kind of sam...samskara within them, certain kind of karmic background within them [video cuts to show a Tibetan monk twirling a prayer wheel]
Others if they go on that path, it'll become ridiculous, even those who have that samskara if they don't maintain a certain sense of discipline in this life all their samskara will go up in smoke and they will become lost.
[video cuts to a man walking on a tightrope...camera is looking upward and the man is clearly high above]
Because it's a tight rope walk. How many can walk on the rope? Everybody can walk on the road but the road has market place on the side, has other attractions on the side, many will get lost, they'll never go anywhere. But it's people friendly because they're walking on the road, the road that they know, already known in their life. Not different. Only thing is the same processes learning to use it differently, which is people friendly but at the same time in...(pauses)...on the long run it's far more complicated because till they arrive at that place - getting lost, finding your way, getting lost, finding your way - becomes a normal process.
I must tell you this, I knew a tantric in Mysore, I knew his son, who is little older than me but he ran a...a kind of a restaurant. It was....it was called Bug's Place. Not because it was full of bugs, his name was Bhaghat Singh and he called his little place as Bug's Place. This is a place where all the motorcycle riders of Mysore want to meet because the conversation is around the speed (Sadhguru laughs softly). So every day that is the conversation - how can you make a motorcycle go little faster than the way it's going right now, at the same time sometimes it's transcended and we discussed about how to make this world a better place. I got drawn to Bug's father because Bug's father was a tantric. He's an ex-army man but he became a Devi worshiper and he had a Devi at home.
[video shows a rough-looking biker man bowing to a Devi deity at a home alter]
And in the evening four o'clock he will sit there, people start coming in, he does his pooja whole day and evening four o'clock he sits with the public, open to the public. People start coming - the only offering is always rum bottles. If people bring full, full rum bottles, simply gudu, gudu, gudu, gudu - [Sadhguru is imitating rum-drinking noise - *gudu*] even water you cannot drink like that.
[video cuts to painting of same rough-looking man up-ending a rum bottle and drinking it all]
You cannot drink 750 ml of water straight, ok? I cannot at least. Drinks full bottle of rum like that - *drumm* - he'll keep it. And another half an hour later another person comes, he brings another rum bottle - *durrrrrrr* - he'll drink and keep it there, he'll just sprinkle something for the Devi, Devi takes drops (audience laughs)
[video shows painting of man sprinkling drops of rum on Devi statue].
He will drink fully, in at...in that evening three to four full bottles of rum he will drink and he will sit there, talk normally to people and give them all kinds of solutions, he predicts things for them and he sees things and all this. People came with great devotion to him. So our Bugs also took to his father's ways. Not all of it, just the drink and he died at 37, ok?
[video shows painting of younger man standing in front of the Devi statue and drinking a full bottle of rum]
His father died when he is in his late 70s, he died at 37 because he practiced only one part of tantra, the rum. Rest of the tantra never came to him. Only the rum he practiced and he died at 37. He didn't drink the...as much rum as...as his father drank. He probably drank 10% of it and died, ok? So that is the way of the tantra.
[Video cuts to painting of a monk striding purposefully]
So, you know this happened - Adi Shankara was walking with his disciples, he saw...you know outside a village at that time alcohol was always outside the town or outside the village, now it's coming to everybody's homes. It has to be outside the town, if somebody wants to drink they go out and drink, never inside the dwelling places. So he saw a group of people all inebriated in different states - he saw. He wanted to see what is is, he went. He...this is toddy, he took a pot full of toddy and drank and walked. The disciples who were walking behind him started debating, "Well our guru is drinking, what are we doing?" So the next village they went to they also drank not a pot but something and they started behind him. He just noticed they're all inebriated, so he waited for some time when they came to another town, he walked through the town, and he went to the blacksmith's place, there was molten iron, he drank that and walked on. They got the message; they didn't try to drink (laughter).
[video cuts to painting of disciples kneeling, bowing down with praying hands at Adi Shankara who is shown upright, unfazed, simply holding his walking staff gazing gently at his disciples].
So tantra has this problem because it's day-to-day things that you're using as a spiritual process, people may just get entangled in that. Right now in the West their understanding of tantra is just sexuality.
Because they (ie tantric yogis) used every possible way to attain to something. Nothing was barred, because they never saw anything as right or wrong. Whatever human beings are doing, use the same things to elevate yourself - this is the way of the tantra.
But when you have a discriminatory mindset this becomes a dangerous process, because now you will choose what to do. You chose only the rum - not the morning pooja that he did. He gets up at 4 o'clock in the morning, through the day he is doing his pooja - that did not seem very attractive to you, the evening rum looks nice, you did just that part of it. It take away your life but yoga will never do that.
[Video cuts to an outline of a man standing on one leg, other leg bent at angle over standing leg thigh while holding hands in namaskar (praying palms at chest level)]
In yoga you will either progress rapidly or slowly but you will not get lost because it's internalized path, you cannot get lost. You can go slowly or you can go rapidly depending upon what you're doing and how you're doing but you will not get lost. So, combinations were used.
[video cuts to same yogi doing various things like Pranayama, various yoga poses, etc]
When it comes to the disciple it's only yoga, when it comes to the guru, he exercises tantra on the disciple in different ways, in ways that they will not know, but as far as the disciple... disciple is concerned is yoga. This is a wise methodology for today, otherwise people will go somewhere else because is a big problem in today's world. You cannot instruct anybody anything. You tell them to do something, they'll do something else. Yes, always.
Because if they don't do that little something else their mind will suffer, they have to leave a footprint on everything that they do. Their own little stupid thing they have to do. Those who want to leave footprints must understand they will never fly. That is the bane of humanity right now. They want to leave a footprint on everything, that means they'll never fly.
The Tantric Way
16 minutes - 1998
Location of talk: Isha Yoga Center - Volunteers Meet
Transcript
[video opens with various images of tantric deities and various yogis..then finally switches to Sadhguru sitting calmly draped in robes, rudraksh mala and swami turban]
When we say tantra, the word tantra has acquired a completely distorted meaning in today's world. Because the world generally - particularly in the western world - has invested so much in sensuousness that if you as much as utter the word 'body', their mind runs to sensuous thoughts. In such a state of mind and attitude exploring tantra is not only going to be ridiculous, it could be dangerous and damaging for individual people. Unless one has the ability to use this body and this mind as you would use any other gadget or a machine or an instrument, tantra is not a thing to explore. We need to understand this, the word tantra essentially means technology or a method. The essential distinction between yoga and tantra is yoga is a technology which is entirely internalized, not something that everybody is competent of because of it's so internalized. The work that needs to be done, to be able to access this body, access this being and use the internal nature of what this is needs discipline, lots of work and without a strong element of grace, may not even succeed. Incremental success - yes; a full-fledged success cannot be achieved unless there is a strong element of grace.
Tantra is another matter, it's more procedural in nature. If you learn the procedure right it could deliver you there. It's more like the physical sciences of today where many substances of the world are involved. The external nature of your body is involved. The imaginative part of your mind is involved and a strong emotional dimension is also involved.
Yoga is devoid of all this. Yoga is...(pauses with eyes closed)...has a lab like cleanliness. Tantra has no such cleanliness but to put it simply it's more people friendly. It's people friendly because it has many possibilities, many opportunities. It is not life-taking discipline, just learning to use the same things that you do with regular life, use the same things in a different way. Whatever is generally considered as entangling, trying to transform that itself - you like to eat food? Transform the way you eat the food and it becomes a spiritual process. You will see a whole lot of tantric teachers are huge.
Yogis are always proper and prim because what they have to eat and nothing more. [Sadhguru motions with slimness] Tantric teachers are big because they are not bothered about those things. [Sadhguru motions with hands a big human with big belly.]
So the same life processes which are considered samsara or cyclical, learning to ride that cycle in a way that it becomes liberating. The way of the yoga is not to get tangled up with the cycle, to stay away from it. It's a safe path, a clean path. This is a mix up, all kinds of things, but it's people friendly because people are anyway mixed up. The whole population is never going to become super disciplined as to how to do very internalized processes, it'll always be a small segment of people.
[video cuts to pan a long row of gold colored statues of Buddhist monks sitting in lotus posture with a larger statue of a gold colored Shakyamuni Buddha behind them all]
Gautama might have believed that he will make the whole world into monks. Well...forty thousand is not a world alright.
[video cuts to show many modern day Buddhist monks from around the world - China, Tibet, Malaysia, etc]
40,000 monks he made. I don't intend even that many. This is...that path is for those who have a certain kind of sam...samskara within them, certain kind of karmic background within them [video cuts to show a Tibetan monk twirling a prayer wheel]
Others if they go on that path, it'll become ridiculous, even those who have that samskara if they don't maintain a certain sense of discipline in this life all their samskara will go up in smoke and they will become lost.
[video cuts to a man walking on a tightrope...camera is looking upward and the man is clearly high above]
Because it's a tight rope walk. How many can walk on the rope? Everybody can walk on the road but the road has market place on the side, has other attractions on the side, many will get lost, they'll never go anywhere. But it's people friendly because they're walking on the road, the road that they know, already known in their life. Not different. Only thing is the same processes learning to use it differently, which is people friendly but at the same time in...(pauses)...on the long run it's far more complicated because till they arrive at that place - getting lost, finding your way, getting lost, finding your way - becomes a normal process.
I must tell you this, I knew a tantric in Mysore, I knew his son, who is little older than me but he ran a...a kind of a restaurant. It was....it was called Bug's Place. Not because it was full of bugs, his name was Bhaghat Singh and he called his little place as Bug's Place. This is a place where all the motorcycle riders of Mysore want to meet because the conversation is around the speed (Sadhguru laughs softly). So every day that is the conversation - how can you make a motorcycle go little faster than the way it's going right now, at the same time sometimes it's transcended and we discussed about how to make this world a better place. I got drawn to Bug's father because Bug's father was a tantric. He's an ex-army man but he became a Devi worshiper and he had a Devi at home.
[video shows a rough-looking biker man bowing to a Devi deity at a home alter]
And in the evening four o'clock he will sit there, people start coming in, he does his pooja whole day and evening four o'clock he sits with the public, open to the public. People start coming - the only offering is always rum bottles. If people bring full, full rum bottles, simply gudu, gudu, gudu, gudu - [Sadhguru is imitating rum-drinking noise - *gudu*] even water you cannot drink like that.
[video cuts to painting of same rough-looking man up-ending a rum bottle and drinking it all]
You cannot drink 750 ml of water straight, ok? I cannot at least. Drinks full bottle of rum like that - *drumm* - he'll keep it. And another half an hour later another person comes, he brings another rum bottle - *durrrrrrr* - he'll drink and keep it there, he'll just sprinkle something for the Devi, Devi takes drops (audience laughs)
[video shows painting of man sprinkling drops of rum on Devi statue].
He will drink fully, in at...in that evening three to four full bottles of rum he will drink and he will sit there, talk normally to people and give them all kinds of solutions, he predicts things for them and he sees things and all this. People came with great devotion to him. So our Bugs also took to his father's ways. Not all of it, just the drink and he died at 37, ok?
[video shows painting of younger man standing in front of the Devi statue and drinking a full bottle of rum]
His father died when he is in his late 70s, he died at 37 because he practiced only one part of tantra, the rum. Rest of the tantra never came to him. Only the rum he practiced and he died at 37. He didn't drink the...as much rum as...as his father drank. He probably drank 10% of it and died, ok? So that is the way of the tantra.
[Video cuts to painting of a monk striding purposefully]
So, you know this happened - Adi Shankara was walking with his disciples, he saw...you know outside a village at that time alcohol was always outside the town or outside the village, now it's coming to everybody's homes. It has to be outside the town, if somebody wants to drink they go out and drink, never inside the dwelling places. So he saw a group of people all inebriated in different states - he saw. He wanted to see what is is, he went. He...this is toddy, he took a pot full of toddy and drank and walked. The disciples who were walking behind him started debating, "Well our guru is drinking, what are we doing?" So the next village they went to they also drank not a pot but something and they started behind him. He just noticed they're all inebriated, so he waited for some time when they came to another town, he walked through the town, and he went to the blacksmith's place, there was molten iron, he drank that and walked on. They got the message; they didn't try to drink (laughter).
[video cuts to painting of disciples kneeling, bowing down with praying hands at Adi Shankara who is shown upright, unfazed, simply holding his walking staff gazing gently at his disciples].
So tantra has this problem because it's day-to-day things that you're using as a spiritual process, people may just get entangled in that. Right now in the West their understanding of tantra is just sexuality.
Because they (ie tantric yogis) used every possible way to attain to something. Nothing was barred, because they never saw anything as right or wrong. Whatever human beings are doing, use the same things to elevate yourself - this is the way of the tantra.
But when you have a discriminatory mindset this becomes a dangerous process, because now you will choose what to do. You chose only the rum - not the morning pooja that he did. He gets up at 4 o'clock in the morning, through the day he is doing his pooja - that did not seem very attractive to you, the evening rum looks nice, you did just that part of it. It take away your life but yoga will never do that.
[Video cuts to an outline of a man standing on one leg, other leg bent at angle over standing leg thigh while holding hands in namaskar (praying palms at chest level)]
In yoga you will either progress rapidly or slowly but you will not get lost because it's internalized path, you cannot get lost. You can go slowly or you can go rapidly depending upon what you're doing and how you're doing but you will not get lost. So, combinations were used.
[video cuts to same yogi doing various things like Pranayama, various yoga poses, etc]
When it comes to the disciple it's only yoga, when it comes to the guru, he exercises tantra on the disciple in different ways, in ways that they will not know, but as far as the disciple... disciple is concerned is yoga. This is a wise methodology for today, otherwise people will go somewhere else because is a big problem in today's world. You cannot instruct anybody anything. You tell them to do something, they'll do something else. Yes, always.
Because if they don't do that little something else their mind will suffer, they have to leave a footprint on everything that they do. Their own little stupid thing they have to do. Those who want to leave footprints must understand they will never fly. That is the bane of humanity right now. They want to leave a footprint on everything, that means they'll never fly.