What The East Might Teach Us
Gavin Flood's The Tantric Body is a fairly dense academic text and not cheap, even if you can get it second hand, as I did, at a store like
Treadwells. I am also
not entirely convinced by Gavin Flood's almost obsessive thesis of the
'entextualisation' of Tantra in the body although, if accepted in
perhaps a less intense form, he offers some deep insights into how the
Tantric tradition relates spirit to matter. However, this is a
five star text if only because of its value as corrective to the soft
core 'namaste' tantric culture that has developed in the West as a form
of partner guidance counselling for anxious middle class liberals who
clearly have great personal difficulty either in escaping
Judaeo-Christian habits of mind or in understanding the real spiritual
use of transgression. This is as self-challenge rather than as palliative and as
something for the detached individual rather than for the bonding
couple.
Flood is not interested in later and sociologically
all-too-convenient reinventions of Tantra. He sees Tantra as embedded in
a particular time and place, in essence pre-modern South Asia, and as
fundamentally 'traditionalist' requiring a particular accepted vision of
being and of society against which to think and transgress. I
believe that he is right and that it is absurd either to try to recreate
this culture on Western soil where it can have no meaning without its
traditional base, based on principles that are fundamentally
conservative, or to pretend that liberalising it (to be acceptable to
intellectually lazy thirty-something beautiful people in California and
the East Coast cities of America) has anything to do with its real
meaning. As I will argue, Tantra can have meaning in a Western context
but that meaning cannot be one that refers to the ur-tradition because
that tradition is simply not relevant to Western society today. There is
no connection ...
What may not be so absurd is to study the
fundamental philosophy underpinning tantric thought and reconstruct it
as a radically transgressive alternative to Judaeo-Christian conventions
and assumptions. This is a project for which this book, though
definitely not the purpose of the author, would be admirably suited as
starting point for analysis and ideas. The book is in two halves.
The first explores the context for South Asian tantra - Flood's theory
of entextualisation, the Vedic origins of tantric thinking about the
body, the central core of tantric revelation and the nature of tantric
civilisation. The second half then analyses the three key traditions of
South Asian Tantra: the pancaratra, the saiva siddhanta and the
esctatic: and it makes observations of great value on the forms as well
as the substance of the tantric imagination.
It is the ecstatic
or perhaps shamanistic approach to Tantra that is the most transgressive
and, logically, the easiest basis for a Tantra that can exist outside
of tradition, whether as the sexual form best known through Anand and
Osho (and which has its virtues even if it bears less resemblance to its
original form than it likes to believe) or as the basis for a future
philosophical and transgressive adaptation that can be fitted to Western
traditions without the odd desire of Americans to be 'good' about
everything that they do. Tantra is interesting in part because it
is a 'way of seeing' that can be adapted to different religious systems
and cultures. There is tantric thought within Hinduism, Jainism and
Buddhism and it has influenced Western neo-pagan and existentialist
thought (the latter by a very circuitous route) so that there is no
logical reason why it could not be adapted once again to a Western
context despite Flood's vigorous defence of it as fixedly
traditionalist.
The book is valuable to a Westerner who is not
inclined to scholarship alone because it gets down to basics on what to
be tantric means to someone coming from the ur-tradition and is thus an
important corrective to later imposed meanings. Indeed, this book has
determined me on being extremely resistant to any attempts, even by
myself, to appropriate the tradition as tradition but rather, as
suggested above, to investigate it (beyond the scholarly) as a
psychological approach to the spiritual and to the relationship between
mind and body in a way that can be reconfigured for new social and
material challenges. What works for stratified royal low technology
cultures would need to be totally rethought for near-egalitarian,
democratic and internet-based cultures even as the core psychological
and even ontological propositions underpinning tantra might be preserved
almost whole. The enthusiasm of the 'namaste' brigade
increasingly looks like an attempt to preserve the forms rather than the
content of tantra in order to make transgression 'nice' when the lesson
of Tantra is that, through technique, one learns to detach oneself and
rise above inherited social obligation (dharma) in order to discover
oneself and one's place without necessarily seeking to tear apart the
fabric that keeps things together for the rest of humanity. It is not
'nice' at all - what it is not either is socially disruptive.
There
are complex paradoxes in tantric transgression that make it
anti-revolutionary except in relationship to oneself and, so, very
unlike the instinctive socially progressive impulse in the Western
religions even if they degenerate too frequently into institutional
sclerosis. Part of the paradox of Tantra as philosophy is that the
internal radical revolution it may cause has no immediate revolutionary
effects on social structures (the duty that is 'dharma') or economic
relations yet, in changing minds and attitudes, it might well ensure, in
a non-traditional society, that cultural sclerosis is impossible. A
tantric revolution in culture, and so in society and perhaps economy,
might come to be permanently creative in conditions where pre-modern
kingship has been replaced by the constant changeability created by the
internet.
Flood, of course, does not deal directly with any of
these considerations but he does give due weight to the political
dimensions of Tantra as socially embedded practice where the
divinisation of the body is associated with the divine king's
relationship to the land. These are ideas that recur independently
whenever a monarchy seeks legitimacy - the idea of a body politic with
the King at its head was a commonplace amongst seventeenth century
European royalists and was implicit in the 'as above, so below' thinking
of the Western esoteric tradition. The point is that an adept's
apparent transgression is, in fact, an endorsement of dharma and of
social order because it ritualises destructive or unconventional
impulses, individualises them and places them in a pot in which
transgressive activity is contained and not unleashed on society as a
whole.
This is suggestive for the future of the West since the
internet in particular permits, as never before, the democratisation of
contained transgression under conditions of relative safety where it
need not be disruptive of economic relations (capitalism) or of power
relations (essentially, the self-reinforcing elites who really run
capitalist democracies). Tantric thinking in the West can, therefore, be
either a form of displacement activity wholly disconnected from a
critique of social or economic power relations (which may be one reason
why political progressives are so often irritated by new age
individualism) or it can be harnessed into an ontology of power
relations as a method of revolutionary potential that turns entirely on
its head the conservative traditionalist assumptions of its South Asian
origins.
This is, of course, highly speculative thinking on my
part but in a West which is hard wired for struggle and where the elites
are clearly no longer fit for purpose within a democratic tradition
that is well past its sell-by date in its current form, a form of
transgressive radicalism that operates to shift the Bell Curve of
conformity (our modern 'dharma') towards radical individual liberation
but not libertinism for its own sake might well be the legacy of
tantrism in the West - if, that is, it can shake off its anodyne new age
'namaste' acolytes and cease to be a substitute for individuation in
favour of endless intellectual self-questioning and the clubbability of
anxious educated liberals looking for 'meaning'. In short, true
tantric liberation might well be liberation from Tantra itself and from
the long shadow of that spiritual Mandela or is it physical Mandala, the
Dalai Lama, and of Osho. If the search for meaning can shift to
interconnected individuals uncovering it from themselves and away from a
sub-culture of American small business interests flogging meaning by
mail order, then something could really change in our culture.
One
aspect of the tantric imagination that might strike a chord within a
Western mind embedded in the massive flow of images available through
the internet, through popular culture and through broadcast and other
media, as well as in the breadth of contemporary art and literature, is
the priority given to the imagination as an alternative reality that is
more real than the given world of matter. It is a way of thinking
that also exists ready-made in Western underground culture and in the
culture of romantic art, especially that of the symbolists and
surrealists. Tantra is visualisation - some of the 'notorious' sexual
practices are as potent imagined as actually lived - and there are
imaginings about the body (Flood's main theme) and about flows of energy
through the 'chakras' as well as about the creative use of sounds and
gestures made by the body that suggest an integration of body and mind
very different from the Cartesian norm.
Merleau-Ponty is
mentioned once by Flood and the emergence of his name seems apposite.
The body is the mediator between world and consciousness and to think
tantrically is as revolutionary as to think existentially in a world
where socially constructed reality is as alienating as the early Marx
suggested. Perhaps constructing a massive politico-religious movement
like Communism was never going to be able to deal with alienation but
anarcho-tantric thinking might if directed to radical social and
economic revolution as a matter of existential choice rather than
dharmic duty. Perhaps po-faced progressives might effect more change in
the world if they were prepared to become a little more ecstatic and
transgressive in their private lives.
But let us get back to the
book. Do not be put off by the fact that Flood makes no concessions,
takes no prisoners in his learning. Vedic and tantric culture within
Vedic culture is as or more complex than the scholastic theology of the
Christian West. There will be little context - no dimly remembered
catechisms or histories of the reformation or philosophy 101s - to get
the reader through some of these pages. If you are interested in tantric
thought, I advise you to persevere, mark out what you do not know and
return to such matters later. Treat it as a guide book to unknown
territory and you will not go far wrong. By the end of it, you will
either know that you have no interest in this tradition or that you will
want to read more deeply. The text and the extensive notes represent a
gold mine of further reading.
Where does Flood leave the debate?
He writes that "... there are elements within the tantric body that have
appeal in Western modernity but that have been distorted through their
extirpation from their historical and textual locations. This appeal is
inevitably linked to the critique of religion as the history of error
and the professed dliberation of the individual from a straitjacket of
conservative, Christian morality." He then adds, " ... the tantric body
does contain resources that could arguably contribute to discourse in
late modernity." Unfortunately, he goes little further than a
weak reference to environmentalism and personal transformative concerns
but the prospects for Tantra in the transformation of the West are not
the subject of this book and nor should they have been. What Flood has
done, if in a somewhat academic way, is open the doors of perception to
possibilities and sources for possibility - and for this he should be
thanked.
Flood emphasises text and tradition. He cannot see
any easy transplant of South Asian (as opposed to Tibetan Buddhist)
traditions. The hint to the future lies in a throwaway line that Tantra
shows us 'a particular way of conceptualising the body distinct from
either a Western dualism or materialism'. He contrasts this (rightly) as
representing a tradition-based subjectivity that stands against Western
individualism. His final message is deeply conservative - his last
words refer to 'subjecting self and body to master and tradition'. Romantic
though this is, I think he is wrong, not about historical Tantra (where
he is wholly right) but about the anti-traditional potential of turning
tantric transgressional modes and psychology against dualism but in a
context of given materialism and individualism that is far from
conservative. This neo-Tantra would, of course, not be Tantra at all,
much as Christianity is not Judaism even as it inherited certain key
ideas and prejudices from its spiritual forefather.
Will this
reconfiguring of perception take place in the West? Perhaps. The
insights of tantric psychology have drifted into esoteric and radical
spiritual thinking as well as into existentialist thought by the back
door for two centuries in dribs and drabs. They may well come to fit in
well with a world where there is no psychological or philosophical basis
for authority (which would immediately make this alternative thinking
suspect to Flood), where the phenomenological impulse has transformed
our understanding of what we can know and what 'is', where psychology
has been integrating rather than disintegrating mind and body at the
expense of rationalism and where individualist modes are crying out for a
methodology for thinking about ethical choices that can arise from
within without the forced 'dharmic' paraphrenalia of Kantianism. The
tantric mentality is undoubtedly socially dangerous in its potential
(as some South Asian kings and their advisers knew themselves) and it is
unlikely to appeal to more than a small minority of persons in the West
but, if re-directed to new ends, its long term effects might be
socially and culturally revolutionary. We'll see ... it has probably
outstayed its welcome in its increasingly petit-bourgeois homeland.
The particular version of the Tao Te Ching is, in itself, unremarkable. It is a small book in a series of Sacred Texts published by Watkins and I regret that I cannot easily recommend it but it does inspire some thoughts on the East Asian aspects of learning from the 'East' to parallel those Flood triggers about South Asian thought processes. Let
us deal with the original. Personally, I am highly sympathetic to
Taoist (or Daoist) thinking, considering it generally true to the
question of how we can find balance in our relations with the world and
with an ethic that 'works'. The technique of these verses is to present
the argument in poetic form as paradoxes for contemplation. Unfortunately,
there comes a point when the paradoxical becomes the obscure and the
repetitive - and it is at times like this that you need a deeper
commentary that distinguishes carefully between what the text may have
meant in its original context and what it should or could mean to us
today.
This suggests reading it in its social context of the
Sixth Century BCE (much as Flood sets Tantra in its original historic context) or uncovering a personal meaning relevant to the
Twenty-First Century AD (which I attempted to do above in reviewing the possible use of Flood's book) - but it is one hell of a task to give it a
viable social or political meaning today without a lot of intellectual
effort being applied. Unfortunately, the Commentary to this book does
not reach the necessary standard. Dale's commentary, which starts
well enough with a clarification of what he translates as the Great
Integrity, descends into some necessary repetition (of course, because
the original is repetitive), but also into an agenda that sustains a
mythic narrative that just does not stand up to scrutiny. It
offers one of those vague 'new age' political philosophies where what
ought to be is construed as really under the surface of things now.
Lovely and comforting perhaps but scarcely what Lao Tzu actually meant over two
thousand years ago.
Discomfort starts with occasional references
to Dale translating to fit the message for today. Well, that starts
getting me nervous because I have to trust a translator. If his
commentary has an agenda and he admits to one or two minor changes for
relevance, then I start to get very distrustful, fairly or unfairly. In
other words, this is a version of the text for the fluffy new age market and it is
neither a scholarly book nor an attempt to investigate the text more
carefully for any meaning that might be drawn out in the context of our
own cultural development or in the light of the explorations of our most
advanced thinkers - even in opposition to them. This is a shame
because Lao Tzu has a great deal to teach us about the nature of
Existence (Being) and our responses to it. A dialogue between it and
Western existentialism (and post-existentialist) thinking remains
fruitful. In a way, while not wishing to discourage Watkins' general
mission to bring the esoteric and spiritual to the Western mainstream,
the popularisation of such schools as Tao and Tantra for lightly worn
'personal development' has its downside.
It is not really fair
to ask most people to have the rigour of the professional thinker or to
challenge everything as a matter of course. The spiritual is a way of
constructing oneself as meaningful and the arrival of Buddhist,
Kabbalistic, Taoist, Tantric and Sufi modes (let alone, say, Wiccan)
amongst the anxious is of vital importance - similar to the role of
Mystery Religions in the late Roman Empire. It is a means of dealing
with overwhelming social forces at a time of maximum personal
insecurity. The spiritual is 'real' and to be respected. Those militant
atheists and rationalists are arrogant and cruel in trying to undermine
it. It can have an important social and personal purpose. However,
there are levels of engagement. All these forces range from the popular
(the equivalent to the worship of saints) to the highly scholastic
(equivalent to Thomism) through to the ecstatic and spiritual (as in the
experience of St. Theresa of Avila). They exist alongside each other,
regardless of the functional role of a church or mission.
It is
reasonable to hope that texts will be offered to the public that are
accurate in every detail and have their contents explained properly and
in context, without pandering to a vaguely fashionable green and
progressive ideology. This is a fairly common ideological trope in
neo-pagan and esoteric popular literature - a sort of save the whales
and stop climate change through a free love and drumming mentality. Do I
jest?! This particular book is fine as an attractive equivalent to
an icon but it is not one painted by a Master. If you do buy this for
contemplation, the meat lies in the first verses. There is real value to
be had in the way Lao Tzu faces existence head-on without flinching and
draws from this experience an ethic of calm, balance and distanced
compassion for oneself as for society. This should be as much part of
any civilised person's education as the Four Gospels even if you
end up believing in neither God nor the Way. I shall certainly be
looking for another copy of the original text to hold in my Library for
this reason.