Tantra

Tantra is a doctrine of enlightenment as the realization of the oneness of one's self and the visible world.

Tantra (Sanskrit: "weave"), tantric yoga or tantrism is any of several esoteric traditions rooted in the religions of India. It exists in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Bönpo, and New Age forms. Tantra has persisted and often thrived throughout Asian history. Its practitioners have lived in India, China, Japan, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Korea, Cambodia, Burma, Indonesia and Mongolia. No form of medieval Hinduism, Buddhism, or Jainism has been without a Tantric component.

In its Hindu forms, tantra can be summarized as a family of voluntary rituals modeled on those of the Vedas, together with their attendant texts and lineages. These rituals typically involve the visualization of a deity, offerings (real or visualized), and the chanting of his or her mantra. These practices are usually said to require permission from a qualified teacher or guru who belongs to a legitimate guruparampara or teacher-student lineage. Thus tantra shares some similarities with yoga.

Tantric practices seek illumination through the unification of quintessential polarities inherent in the world and one's self.

These opposites are symbolically subsumed as Shiva and Shakti or consciousness and energy, personified as male and female.

Shiva represents universal consciousness diffused throughout the galaxies, while Shakti, divine mother, is the power swinging in a celestial dance, between energy and matter, giving birth to all creation, both Tangible and Transcendent.

Two paths are available in Tantric philosophy.

1. Dakshina Marga or the "right-hand path"
2. "Vama Marga" or the "left-hand" way

Dakshina Marga or the "right-hand path" which means the individual practices meditations designed to unite Shiva and Shakti forces within his own body and without recourse to a partner.

Vama Marga or the "left-hand" way, and it is this way that is sometimes termed "sacred sex" or sexual Tantra. The couple, with their "coupling" worship each other as incarnations, or murtis (forms), of Shiva and Shakti, and the Shakti is the dominant psychic energy that, with worship, can lift them beyond mundane connecting to an ultra-dimensional realm of ego-loss.