Answers to Issues on Sexuality and Dharma
by Kali Ma

The inherent awakened state, our natural state and the basic nature of existence is invincible in its purity. Nothing can reduce it. Through dharma, we do not build up this state, we discover it as the underlying fabric of all that is, all that always was, and all that will be. It is a matter of recognition. We re-cognize, or re-member, and that recognition constitutes an end to all the problems and confusions of the dualistic trance that formerly caused us to ignore this base awareness of reality. In MahaSiddha Dharma, within which is Dzogchen, it is known as the great perfection, referring to the vast and awake nature within the mind of every being. This is missed because of people’s habitual trances, within their heart-mind, the trance of poisonous and dualistic reality habits is projected repeatedly. These reality habits are so compelling, that though they are merely a projection they are taken to be reality and so people ignore or miss basic awake nature. Dualism is the way that these reality habits function, because they are based in part on reality, they are taken to be real. However they are not the whole story, they are only part of it. If you have ever been angry yourself you can see how your rationale for why it is justified to be angry becomes more compelling to you than love and kindness. For the moment, in a dualistic trance, you found yourself separate from other, separate from cause and effect, separate from truth, sanity and perspective. For those moments, you project onto the situation your version of reality and take that to be real, even though it is not the ultimate truth. Later you might realize how confused or mistaken you were. The anger turned out to be unfounded, and unjustified. The path is about seeing mistaken views as mistaken views when they are arising, seeing through to the direct nature of things. The spiritual path is about seeing the transparency of ones deluded projections and seeing through to the open, nature of reality, recognizing awareness beyond duality but not to the exclusion of it. We can describe what seeing like this feels like in many ways. It is liberating because it liberates us from confused view to clear view. It is enlightening because, where we were once blind and “in the dark,” we can now see reality before us illuminated. It is non-dual because it is the whole thing, rather than assessing situations on partial information and misconceptions. It is non-dual because it is not pit in opposition to itself. It is the discovery of the presence of awareness, because awareness was always there, we were just disconnected from it because of fascination with the hypnotic, trance like state of reality habits (the six realms teaching I given every year illuminates this in more detail). It is awake, because previously, we were asleep to the truth of what actually is.

The methods of the MahaSiddha Dharma are all aimed at developing a clear perception so this basic awareness can be discovered, recognized, realized. However it is not these methods, which are most important, it is actually the fruit that is most important, awake mind. Whatever method used, must actually work to bring forth awareness, to invoke recognition. It must be actualized, and experienced completely. For this reason, various yogic traditions use different methods according to what actually is clarifying and liberating for the different kinds of people. In regards to sexuality, the methods to discover awareness may vary, but the purpose is the same, to discover it.

There are many cultural confusions about sexuality, dharma, spirituality… how they relate how they do not relate. It is told often that sexuality is wrong, bad, evil, impure, or for whatever rationale, an obstacle to spiritual practice. It is also often told the opposite, especially in our often bizarre, though interesting, New Age culture in California, where sexuality, orgasm and pleasure have been made synonymous with spirituality and mistakenly also has been made synonymous with the Tantra. It is common to hear the two extremes; sexuality is not spiritual, spirituality is all about sexuality and pleasure. What is less common is a middle ground that admits to both but understands that there are significant exceptions. Sexuality can be an obstacle to spiritual practice AND sexuality and pleasure can be a part of spiritual practice. However sexuality is not always an obstacle, and sexuality and pleasure are not always aids to the path. Like everything, sexuality can be used consciously or unconsciously. It can create more attachment, solidify identities, create confusion, and suffering. It can also be a part of spirituality, since all of life is made up of the basic nature of awake-ness and one need only discover how this is true and that this is true, then ones relationship to sexuality changes. It can become conscious and an aspect of skillful means to help grow awareness and remove obstacles to the path.

In truth, spiritual people who practice celibacy and tantric people who have personal romantic relationships and sexual activity share a fundamental idea in common: Unconscious sexuality is a waste of energy and a lost opportunity for spiritual growth. Both agree that much suffering, confusion and attachment come from unconscious sexuality. However the two groups chose a different method to deal with it. In one method, renouncing sexuality all together and dealing with the causes of attachment within ones mind is the strategy. In other method, applying the skillful means of the dharma one changes relationship to sexuality so that rather than having a neurotic sexuality that perpetuates ignorance, the relationship to sexuality becomes a spiritual discipline that helps one to discover greater awareness, wisdom and compassion. It is not that one or the other of these methods is “right” and the other is “wrong.” Instead, they are different. They are different according to the differing needs of the differing kinds of people.

In the last one thousand years, eastern spirituality has been dominated by renunciate ideals and this influence is felt in the eastern spirituality that has landed in the West. It is often said that renunciation is the superior path, and many people view those who are householders, married practitioners or active in the world are considered less holy some how. This is just dualism, appearing again, as it often does, in the guise of spiritual ideals. There is a higher motivation than “right,” and “wrong,” for ones activity, it is the motivation to use that which WORKS, that which is actually liberating, and clarifying for you and all sentient beings connected to you and that moment. What can be actually liberated are the perceptual habits of dualism that cause everything to appear according to preconceptions of right and wrong. What can actually be liberated are the perceptual habits of dualism that cause attachment to arise. Just to say one is more liberated by one method or another based on preconceptions is misinformed. Because one method is not your method does not mean it is a faulty method. And even if it is your method and perhaps it is not actually producing the fruit of a more sane, realized mind-stream and enlightened emotional life. In that case, perhaps it is not the method for you after all, or perhaps you need more training to apply it correctly. Some people grow more in awareness by renouncing the world, others by engaging in it, in all its aspects. Which you choose can be based on which method inspires you and expresses your highest nature, rather than because you think it is the “right” way. You can choose your path to include or exclude intimacy and sexuality based on your actual experience of what is most growth-ful for you and all, and based on the instructions and inspiration given to you by your own personal teacher and path.

A few years ago, I was visiting a dharma center, which had Yogic spirituality on the “hindu tip” but also was very eclectic. The teacher there, during our three minutes of meeting made a point to tell me that when I was wise one day, I would realize that the celibate path was the higher path and how “wrong’ sexuality is. She herself had been married and divorced three times. I wondered, was she not practicing the higher path back then? That seems somehow strange, since at those times she was claiming to be an enlightened teacher, yet she was teaching the path of relationship. Had she been mistaken? More likely, she practicing what was highest at that specific time in her life, and now practicing what in this moment was most liberating for her and her community. Most people in her community were celibate, and sadly many others having “secret” sexual relationships in conflict with the teaching they were receiving and the ways in which they actually desired to live their life. This is the trouble with fixed notions of right and wrong, they create all kinds of internal dualistic struggles. It is convenient to use “right,” and “wrong,” to justify ones path. But if your path needs such justification something is wrong. Awakening is its own reason. It needs no justification or reference point. Actions that produce liberation in an individual are their own evidence.

What method brings awakening to you is the method that brought that to you, not the method that will bring such a state to every one, everywhere, all the time. Tilopa slapped Naropa with a sandal, and Naropa was enlightened instantly! It wasn’t the slapping of the sandal that did it, otherwise, everyone who has ever been slapped with a sandal would be awakened. It was Naropa’s ripeness and the use by Tilopa of the perfect method, the method that would actually catalyze ultimate awareness in that specific moment. Perhaps Naropa had been slapped with the sandal many times before that. Perhaps that was the first time, and yet Tilopa had waited for Naropa to perform years of austere service to him before offering the slap- because those activities ripened Naropa. For us to say, that to be enlightened everyone must be slapped with a sandal is quite ridiculous. The path is specific to each person. Yet people attempt to make such blanket statements all time, not only in regards to sexuality, but also in regards to all aspects of spirituality and of life. This is one of the reasons I respect Ayurveda so much. Rather than try to come up with some super diet for every one, everywhere, or some super herb, there is the recognition that each person is unique and there is no one diet, lifestyle or herbal regime that is appropriate for everyone. Instead each person’s own unique constitution, imbalances, issues, history and desires must be specifically and skillfully addressed. This is the attitude of the MahaSiddha Dharma, not to learn set rules and fixed conceptions that one then takes into life and rigidly attempts to force onto live circumstances, and then uniformly impose on everyone else. Instead it is to simultaneously develop awareness and skillful means so that one can directly perceive what is actually liberating for self/all in that moment and to spontaneously enact it. Rules and exercises are temporary and recognized for their empty nature because realization is the point, the essence and lived experience of the true meaning of the teaching is what is important. As practitioners mature on the path, this sense of entering into situations for what they are and relating on the terms that are inherent to that moment develops as skillful means, the activity of accomplishing wisdom.

Our awake, enlightened nature is so open, playful and spaciousness that it can be experienced in infinite ways according to what actually is liberating for each one. What good would enlightenment be, if it could be wilted by relationship, romance or sexuality. That would be a pale in enlightenment. Awakened state is resilient enough to emanate within everything, but most people are lost to how this is actually true. It is people’s ignorance of sexuality and relating that causes it to be obstructive to the path. Relationship and sexuality are not the only areas, so many are ignorant of. This is the task of MahaSiddha Dharma to reveal how awakened state is there within all things.

It is a profound test and challenge to relate with other constantly, to deal with ones own and another emotions in relationship, to deal with living in a body-mind and sharing relationship with another body-mind. Most people, because of the ignorance they have, due to lack of training, never reap the tremendous growth that could come from relationship. Instead, already overwhelmed by their own dualism, confusion, neurosis, they enter into relationship with someone else who is also overwhelmed by their own dualism, confusion and neurosis. It doesn’t take long for the love feeling to suffocate under such weight, and so most relationships are destroyed. Of course then another relationship is attempted, and mysteriously suffers the same fate and endlessly on and on. It continues until the one can find another who allows them to remain comfortable in their dualism, confusion and neurosis, and those relationships last. It is not just sexuality that is encumbered and also encumbers people, it is also their view of love, of self, of other, of life- all these interwoven with their sexuality. That this is so common is such a poor reflection of the liberating, revealing, catalyzing nature of LOVE and its inner essence, enlightenment. To train and learn about conscious relationship, dharma and conscious sexuality is an opportunity to see through this pattern, to see its transparency and begin to discover relationship as a wellspring of growth and awareness. There has been so much conditioning about human relationship and sexuality that for too many people, this seems nearly impossible. But our basic awake nature is invincible and the tools of Dharma are inevitably victorious for those who apply them with discipline and devotion. Then Love can reveal itself as none other than enlightenment. Then it can be revealed that the purity or impurity of sexuality is in the eye of the beholder, in the view and activity of the being in question.

Much neo-Tantra , the pleasure oriented, identity building spirituality in the New Age community, mistakes the traditional Tantric notion of including sexuality and pleasure. In the MahaSiddha Dharma, we understand that all of life can be the means to realization if your view is clear and activities are in accordance with that view. To take the view of all of life as the path, and to have an understanding of how that can be so, is to mature on the path of true Tantra. To just decide it is so and pretend you have attained a high and “pure” state is a fantasy that is too often reflected in spiritual circles. To indulge in pleasure, attachment and identities in the name of spirituality is also just delusion dressed up spiritual clothes. To actually develop the Tantric view in order to discover ones basic awake nature takes a disciplined, clarified being. When Tantric teachings espouse that all of life can be the means for realization, this includes relationship and sexuality. That is not the same as Tantra IS sexuality; instead it is included as one of the aspects of ones life. Sexuality of course is one of the more emotionally, energetically and socially charged areas of life, and therefore, for most people the most difficult. But through exposure to the teachings and training oneself, it can become more and more obvious when your confusion arises and how to dissolve it. Then sexuality, with all its charge, can be a powerful vehicle for insight, purification and awakening.

In the MahaSiddha Dharma and with the traditiona Tantra in general, sexuality is approached as a means for supporting awakening. In fact all aspects of our life are approached in this way. One reason most people, even those with good intentions, find their sexuality creates obstacles for their spiritual path is because they don’t approach it or the other aspects of their life with such clarity of purpose- that it is for awakening oneself and all beings. This is crucial to transforming all of life into the means of realization- we must begin by knowing that is our intention. Then we must engage with the teachings and teacher in order to discover how. Of course there are many other reasons people use sexuality besides for their enlightenment and the enlightenment of others. They might use it for emotional reasons, power reasons, or biological reasons. In conscious sexuality, it is not that emotion, or biology are not factors involved, they are, but ones motivation, ones intention for enlightenment is the driving factor. Because of this, the way we approach sexuality is very different. We approach it in ways that help us realize emptiness rather than strengthen our attachment. We relate to pleasure in ways that help us to release attachment rather than strengthen it. We relate to self and other in ways that heal, evolve and liberate rather than further fragmentation and confusion.

The neo-Tantra of the West, which has made sexuality, pleasure, spirituality and the word Tantra infamous, has many different kinds of practitioners with many different messages. The practices vary but the emphasis in general can be obstructive to those whose goal is to discover the basic awake state. Yogic paths have always been about dissolving identities, not building them and going beyond attachment to pleasure and avoidance of pain. These traditions have also been about preserving and directing the vital fluids rather than leaking them out in search of constant orgasms. Yeshe Tsogyal, the MahaSiddha who was the consort of Padmasambhava advised her followers to “bind their sexual organs, and not be loose,” while many neo-Tantric practitioners seem to promote promiscuity. Romantic notions of initiating one another through sex prevail in these circles, while the actual experience of both people being initiated and liberated by the experiences is extremely rare. There have been so many confused messages that I understand why few people with legitimate traditional Tantric traditions based on enlightenment refuse to comment on the issue, lest they be associated with the pleasure-addicted, ego-building paths being presented. However, for me, there being so much confusion on the matter is not an incentive to be quite on this issue, it makes it more important that a balanced view is shown and that teachings that actually bring liberation from confusion be revealed. There has been so much hurt caused by unconscious sexuality and unconscious sexuality and spirituality. Someone must speak what isn’t been said- not all sexuality and spirituality is neurotic! Since I received a transmission like this from my own first teacher who initiated me in the MahaSiddha dharma style, and since I received the Red & White Essence transmission, I feel responsible to share this view and these methods with my own personal students and also in public teaching intensives.

Conscious Sexuality can be profoundly healing for the planet. It is the basis of how the species of humans continues and evolves. It is the basis for profound experience of relationship. One gem of the notion of “original sin,” which is quite different than the view of the Great Perfection, is that it recognizes that original impurity in ones sexuality is a breeding ground for further impurity in future generations and in the lifetime of those born in unconscious conception. Unconscious sexuality is the breeding ground for karma, for bad health, for false views, for suffering, for separation…

There is so much to be said on this subject, so very much, and perhaps little of the details should be written so that only the eyes of pure devotion to dharma can hear it and in order to limit misunderstanding. When we contemplate sexuality, it is not just sexuality that we can contemplate alone, as if it can be isolated. Instead sexuality is related to the whole of what it is to be male, female, human, emotional, perceptual, conditioned or unconditioned, in a body, in love, in relationship, in life… the whole of ones life is interwoven with ones sexuality, one’s experience of it and one’s view of it. Sexuality when it becomes conscious and subject to ones Dharmic view, therefore, can be an opening to dissolving major obstructions in all areas of ones life because you cannot address it without addressing ones entire being and how one approaches life.

I explain this more elaborately in the teaching that I share once every year, the Red & White Essence, much of which is open to the public in the form of two retreats. In this teaching I give an elaborate transmission about how human relationship and sexuality reveal ones habits of duality and potentially ones experience of the basic awake nature that the habit conceals. For now though, I leave you with a message about the possibilities of liberation within ones sexuality and relationships, a message about the importance of training in conscious sexuality, as well as a message about non-dual view which understands sexuality and renunciation as two different methods rather than two opponents in a war between right and wrong. The rest, lets discuss in person at the Red & White Essence teachings. Check out our events page of our internet site www.MahaSiddhas.org for the dates. See you there!

May All Beings Everywhere relax deeply, open profoundly, heal completely and realize ultimately.

With Love
Kali Khadro Ma
Sunday, July 31st, 2005
at the Trigug, Santa Cruz California