This blog is the fourth installment in a series of recent conversations between Adi Suyash and one of his disciples on Tantric Buddhism. These conversations are lucid and spontaneous, the questions are asked on the spot, unplanned, and the answers are given without preparation or much elaboration. The aim is not to provide an in-depth, traditional, understanding of every topic, but to offer simple, clear explanations that are sufficient to give the reader a basic understanding and a sense of the subject.
Sadhika: How can we use even the strongest human energies, including passion, as fuel for awakening and compassion, rather than as fuel for ego and gratification?
Adi Suyash: [Pauses thoughtfully.] The very first thing is this: in order to use something, you have to make it your servant and yourself the master. Only then can you command it. When we speak about the strongest of human energies or emotions, it sounds very appealing to say that we should use them. “Yes, this is something incredibly powerful. It is powerful, isn’t it? And if it is powerful, then let us use it for our own benefit.”
[He smiles slightly.]
It is just like being handed an AK-47 and being told to use it. You pick it up, put your eye to the sight, and fire—and the recoil kicks back violently into you, hitting your eye so hard that your eye swells up. [Raises an eyebrow.] Right?
Adi Suyash: Look, when you are talking about something powerful and about using it—whether it is an emotion, passion, lust, whatever it may be—the first thing you have to realize is: will you actually be able to control it? Hmm?
Suppose you want to get out of a jungle by riding a lion. A lion would be an excellent vehicle for getting through the jungle. It knows the jungle, everyone is afraid of it, and it can run incredibly fast. If you could simply sit on its back and ride it out of the jungle—the jungle of the world—what could possibly be better?
[Looks at Sadhika.]
But will you be able to control the lion?
Sadhika: No.
Adi Suyash: If you want to make something your servant, you have to master it, rise above it. You have to become stronger than it. Only then can it become your servant.
You cannot allow it to overpower you. You have to overpower it.
[Brief pause.]
You remember those old video games—Street Fighter and things like that? To unlock a character, you first had to defeat that character. Only then could you use them to fight in the game. Do you understand?
So, if you want to use passion, lust, or any of these forces, first you have to defeat them.
Sadhika: So how do we defeat them?
Adi Suyash: By gaining control over them. [Nods.] People say, “Lust and passion are such powerful forces. Why suppress them? Why control them? Why not simply use them for our benefit?”
But how are you going to use something until you don’t gain control over it?
Sadhika: Yes. If we try to use it without defeating it, we’ll become addicted to it.
Adi Suyash: You won’t be able to use it at all. It will use you.
How can you ride a lion without first controlling the lion? If you fail to control it and still try to ride it, you will simply become the lion’s breakfast.
[Smiles.]
Right?
You want to ride a horse. A horse is a wonderful vehicle. But if you don’t know how to control the horse, what happens? You break your bones. The horse throws you to the ground.
Sadhika: So this means that if we haven’t gained control over our lust, we’ll become addicted to it, and then awakening…
Adi Suyash: [Gently interrupts.] I would use another word. I would say that if we try to use lust without first gaining control over it, as your question was asking, lust will use us. We will not be able to use lust.
Sadhika: Right.
Adi Suyash: If we try to ride a horse without having control over it, we won’t be able to tell the horse where to go. The horse will take us wherever it wants to go.
[Smiles.]
And eventually, we’ll find ourselves standing in a field of grass.
So, if you want to use something, whether it is a device or some powerful force, first learn to control it.
Most people ask this question with the expectation that there must be some way to use it without mastering it, without controlling it, without denying it, while still getting what they want out of it.
But it doesn’t work that way.
First, defeat it. Learn how to live without it.
Sadhika: That’s why brahmacharya comes first.
Adi Suyash: [Nods.] Yes. First, you have to become more powerful than it.
And how do you become more powerful than something?
By learning to live without it.
Sadhika: By living without it.
Adi Suyash: If I cannot live without someone or something, that means that thing is more powerful than I am.
Sadhika: Hmm.
Adi Suyash: Isn’t it?
Sadhika: Hmm.
Adi Suyash: If I need something in order to live—if I am dependent upon something…
Take a country like India. Suppose India were dependent upon America for its very survival—suppose all the food it needed, all its crops and supplies, came from America. Would India ever be able to use America?
Sadhika: Hmm-mm.
Adi Suyash: America would use India.
[Brief pause.]
Because America is the one supplying India.
That is in fact what happened during the war. When India and Pakistan went to war in 1965, America refused to provide assistance. India was fighting, and America wanted India to “de-escalate tensions” and accept terms favorable to regional balance. When India refused to listen, US President Lyndon B. Johnson implemented what became known as the “ship-to-mouth” policy. Instead of approving long-term food aid agreements, they released grain shipments month-to-month, literally keeping Indian grain silos only weeks ahead of famine.
Because India had become dependent on food supplies from America. [During the 1950s and early 1960s, India faced severe structural food shortages and successive monsoon failures. To prevent widespread starvation, India imported millions of tons of subsidized wheat from the US under the PL-480 (Food for Peace) program. At its peak, nearly a third of India’s wheat consumption was met by American grain.]
So it could be used as a tool of blackmail: “We simply won’t give you food.”
If India is dependent upon another country for anything, then India is not more powerful than that country. And it can never truly use that country to accomplish its own purposes, because I am dependent upon it. How, then, am I more powerful than it?
So first, you have to become more powerful than the thing you wish to use.
And becoming more powerful than it means learning to live without it.
What does it mean to control the mind? What does it mean to rise above the mind, to dominate this powerful mind, to become more powerful than the mind?
It means that I can live without the mind.
Without thoughts.
Sadhika: “Isn’t the mind itself Shakti? Why do we need to eliminate the mind?”
Adi Suyash: The mind is Shakti too. The absence of mind is Shakti too. Unmana (no mind) is Shakti too. The issue is not whether Shakti appears as mind; the issue is whether consciousness becomes compelled to remain confined to that particular form.
I should be able to remain without thoughts for an hour, two hours, perhaps an entire day. Only then will I be able to use thoughts for my own purposes.
Sadhika: How? Give me an example.
Adi Suyash: [Gestures as though directing something.] Suppose I want to place a particular thought somewhere. I can do that, because I have become more powerful than the thought.
Now it listens to me.
And if it doesn’t listen, it simply doesn’t exist, because I will not allow it to exist.
If I want to use lust for my own benefit, then first I have to kill lust. First, I have to rise above lust.
Sadhika: First, I have to learn to live without it.
Adi Suyash: Exactly. [Nods.] Only then can I use it. Only then am I powerful enough to say to lust:
“Look, you are not necessary in my life.”
Sadhika: [Smiles.] “I’ll use you whenever I choose.”
Adi Suyash: Yes.
Even if you want to control another human being, if you want to use them, first make them understand that you do not need them in your life.
You survive on my crumbs; I do not survive on yours.
[Pauses.]
This has been depicted symbolically in many ways. For example, take the mouse, the demon. You’ve heard the story of Ganesha?
The mouse becomes his vehicle.
Sadhika: Hmm.
Adi Suyash: The mouse is actually a demon.
Sadhika: The mouse?
Adi Suyash: [Nods.] Yes. Some demon—Gajamukhasura, something like that. Ganesha defeats him first, and only afterward does he become Ganesha’s vehicle.
You cannot simply become friends with him and live happily alongside him and expect him to serve your purpose.
First you have to defeat him.
If you want to use something, you must first bring it to an end—to defeat its power over you.
Now, Shiva is depicted wearing gajacharmāmbara—the hide of an elephant.
“Gaja” means elephant. So He covers His body with the elephant’s hide.
But first, He had to slay Gajasura.
First came the destruction of Gajasura; only afterward could Shiva wear his hide.
So it is the same with passion, with lust, with anything—even something as ordinary as a device.
I’m talking about the phone as well.
First, you have to gain control over yourself so that the phone does not use you; you use the phone.
Instagram does not use you; you use Instagram.
First, you have to gain control over it.
You have to demonstrate—by defeating its hold over you—who is actually powerful here.
Only then can you use it.
Not before.
So the first step in using passion or lust is to gain control over it.
You should be able to live without it.
And not merely survive without it—you should be able to live efficiently, happily, joyfully, without even missing it.
Only then can it move according to your will.
Does that make sense?
[Looks toward Sadhika.]
You are essentially asking: how do I turn something into a tool?
Well, that is precisely what a tool is.
You use a tool, don’t you?
A tool is something like a bicycle or a motorcycle. The motorcycle does not control you. You control the motorcycle.
Isn’t that so?
Sadhika: Hmm.
Adi Suyash: And when you don’t need the motorcycle, it stays in the garage.
[Smiles.]
It doesn’t climb on top of you and say, “Get up! Take me for a ride!”
It doesn’t grab you by the collar.
When you don’t need it, it simply lies quietly in the garage.
But the passion you’re talking about—the lust—remains perched on our heads even when we don’t need it.
It keeps saying, “Come on. Do what I am telling you.”
So how is that a tool?
If you want something to be a tool, then when it is not needed, you should be completely at peace.
It should simply be sitting there.
You shouldn’t be thinking about it again and again.
You should be able to remain joyful without it.
And when you actually need it, then you use it.
So if you can remain joyful without passion, without lust, only then can you turn it into a tool.
You should be able to exist without passion or lust without any problem.
You should not constantly feel compelled to do something, to seek something, to use it.
Until then, you cannot use it.
First learn to live without it.
First gain control over it.
First show it who the master is here.
[Grins.]
You want to ride the lion?
First defeat the lion.
Show it: “I am more powerful than you.”
First become stronger than the lion. Then you can use the lion.
Understand?
Sadhika: [Nods.] Hmm.
Adi Suyash: Good.
[A short pause.]
Sadhika: [After a brief pause.] Guruji, I understand that Karmamudra is an advanced Tantric practice and is more than simply having mindful sex. Could you please explain what Karmamudra actually means, and how it differs from ordinary sexual intimacy?
Adi Suyash: [Pauses.] The purpose behind an action determines whether it is ordinary or extraordinary.
If the purpose is extraordinary, the action becomes extraordinary.
If the purpose is ordinary, the action remains ordinary.
Suppose the purpose is very ordinary: I simply want pleasure. I want sexual pleasure. I just want to satisfy my lust.
And then I give it some fancy name—“Karmamudra,” “Twin Flame,” “Soulmate,” “Tantric Sex.”
[Raises his eyebrows.]
That changes nothing.
It remains just as ordinary as before.
Suppose my purpose is to eat meat simply to satisfy my hunger, to satisfy the craving for blood that has arisen within me. I kill an animal in the process, and then give it the name Bali, saying, “I am doing this to please the Goddess.”
Nothing changes.
So, first of all, we have to understand that we must not deceive ourselves.
The purpose of what we are doing must be absolutely clear.
There should be no duplicity or hypocrisy in our intention—no, “Well, I’ll use this as an excuse to satisfy my lust as well.”
It doesn’t work that way.
Karmamudra is quite different from ordinary sex because, first of all, it is not being performed for pleasure.
In Karmamudra, the pleasure that you experience in ordinary sex—the pleasure that comes from sexual activity—is not really there.
In fact, you feel discomfort…
Sadhika: Discomfort? How?
Adi Suyash: Because your attention is not on the sexual process itself.
You are doing many other things simultaneously.
In ordinary sexual activity, you have no such restriction. Your breathing becomes extremely rapid, and you are thinking about all sorts of things—lustful things, different images, different scenes from pornography, whatever happens to arise in your mind.
None of that can happen there.
There, you are controlling your breathing completely. The practice involves sophisticated manipulation of the breath and subtle energies into the central channel.
You are regulating the breath.
Try having sex while consciously controlling your breathing.
[Smiles knowingly.]
It doesn’t feel pleasurable at all.
It is a very different experience.
It won’t feel particularly pleasant to do.
You may do it once thinking, “Yes, this is a spiritual practice,” but after that, you probably won’t even feel like doing it very often.
Sadhika: Then why do people do it?
Adi Suyash: It is a process undertaken for enlightenment.
That is the purpose.
Pleasure is not the purpose.
You are visualising your partner as the deity within the setting of the deity’s mandala—the yidam. In the Tantric Shaiva-Shakta traditions, mantra recitation is performed alongside the practice.
Sadhika: During sex?
Adi Suyash: [Nods.] What you are calling Tantric sex.
Mantra is being recited—in fact, the mantra is being repeated throughout the entire process.
There is a certain number of repetitions—one hundred thousand, one million, whatever the prescribed number may be—and that mantra has to be perfected.
So when the mantra is running continuously in your mind and you are simultaneously maintaining control over your breathing, and visualisation, you don’t experience that ordinary pleasure.
Sadhika: So when we can perform the mantra practice individually, as you said, why do we perform it in a sexual position?
Adi Suyash: There are different processes, and there are different reasons for each.
Sadhika: What is the reason?
Adi Suyash: [Raises a hand gently.] I’ll come to that. Let me first finish what I was saying.
When you perform something like this, trying to control your breathing, trying to recite the mantra for a certain period of time, and that is your actual goal throughout the process, then forget pleasure.
It actually becomes very difficult to even maintain arousal.
If you are a woman, your sexual organ may become dry.
And if you are a man, maintaining an erection can become very difficult.
And yet you have to maintain it.
You have to keep the erection.
Sadhika: You mean there has to be an erection?
Adi Suyash: Hmm.
There has to be a balance between the two.
You should neither be completely swept away by lust nor should you reach to the point where there is absolutely no pleasure or arousal.
You have to remain somewhere in between.
The middle path.
Sadhika: But if there is no erection, what is the problem? Why is it necessary?
Adi Suyash: If there is no erection, how will you have intercourse?
And if the vagina remains dry, what pleasure will there be? How will there be any?
In fact, it will become painful.
Sadhika: So this is performed while the sexual intercourse itself is taking place?
Adi Suyash: Yes.
Mantra recitation, all of these things—maintaining the breath, practicing tummo.
Yes.
Sadhika: Then what exactly is relevant about doing it this way? Why do we do it? Why can’t we practice individually? What is the benefit of doing it together?
Adi Suyash: One of its most important benefits is that you gain complete control over lust.
Sadhika: If we practice individually, can’t we gain that control?
Adi Suyash: No. One of the purposes of this particular process is precisely to gain control over it through this process.
Sadhika: Yeah, okay. Through repeated practice…
Adi Suyash: [Nods.] Until you gain complete control over it.
Control is necessary because gaining control is extremely important.
Our entire lives are dictated by two things: our sexuality and our fear of death.
Isn’t that what governs our lives?
From the perspective of evolution, that is essentially the goal: sex and survival.
The desire to reproduce and the desire to remain alive, these two forces drive our entire lives.
Whatever we do is ultimately connected to these two things.
We even seek fame for this reason: to increase our chances of survival.
The more people who know us, the more people there are who can help us when we need them.
When we live alone in a city, especially when we first arrive in a new city, it is frightening because there is nobody there.
If something happens, there is nobody we can call.
So we build connections: ten people know me, twenty people know me.
Why?
So that when we are in need, when our life is threatened, we have people we can call upon.
So even our desire to become known among ten people, twenty people, hundreds of people, is ultimately connected to survival.
And the more people who know us, the greater our chances of finding a mate with whom we can have sex.
That’s one aspect.
The second is that the desire for sex is itself another expression of the desire for survival.
Sex is symbolic immortality.
For nature, having sex and reproducing are the same thing. When we have children, we are, in a sense, continuing ourselves.
A father looks at his child and sees himself: “That is me.”
At the level of genes, you can see it very clearly: sex is about survival of genes.
Sex means survival because the gene survives.
What difference does it make whether an individual human being survives? The individual will die in eighty years anyway.
From the evolutionary perspective, sex is therefore far more important.
The more reproduction, the better the genes survive.
So an entire human life is, in many ways, governed by these forces.
We earn money for this.
We perform so-called good deeds so that ten people will know us.
And beneath all of it are these drives toward sex and survival.
Even the desire for fame is rooted in this.
So these two things keep us bound to being human, to being a living organism, a species.
Therefore, if we want to rise above them, we have to gain control over both:
the fear of death and the sexual drive—lust.
So, in Karmamudra, sexual practice is being used to gain control over lust itself.
And, by the way, these practices are not particularly pleasurable.
The purpose is to move beyond this feeling of “I need this.”
To move beyond what we crave.
There is another aspect as well.
The source of the pleasure we experience sexually—
Think about it.
Other than samadhi, the spiritual bliss, what is the strongest pleasure a human being can ordinarily experience?
Sex.
Orgasm.
Only samadhi, or spiritual bliss, surpasses it.
So we experience this extraordinarily powerful pleasure, and almost everyone can experience it.
Almost every human being can experience this.
So we want to find its root.
What is the source of this pleasure?
Where is it coming from?
Because the pleasure is so powerful, we want to know where this great flood is coming from.
Where is the glacier from which all this sweet water is flowing?
[Gestures as though tracing a river back toward its source.]
We want to reach its source.
Where within us is the source of this pleasure—the source of this bliss?
And so we investigate it through practice.
We continue the practice, and then we ask:
The bliss I am experiencing right now, where is it actually coming from?
We search for its source.
And in order to find that source, we first enter a calm state.
Because if the mind is extremely agitated during sex, because the breathing is rapid and everything is happening intensely, how are you going to find the source?
So first we enter a calm state, the central channel.
Then we investigate:
Where is this coming from? What is the source of this bliss that I am experiencing right now?
And when you find that source, you realise emptiness, the clear light.
Because that source is Chidananda.
That bliss is the source of everything else.
Sadhika: But it wouldn’t happen all at once, would it? For example, if someone tried it for the first time, wouldn’t they need several attempts, repeating the same process, before enlightenment occurred?
Adi Suyash: Yes. [Smiles.] How would you find the source in a single attempt?
So yes, this is another way it can be practiced.
I’ve explained it in a very, very shallow way.
There is considerably more to it.
Sadhika: I think that’s why so much importance has been given to the consort…
Adi Suyash: Hmm.
Sadhika: Perhaps precisely for performing these practices, so that enlightenment can be attained through them.
Adi Suyash: Hmm. In Tantra, yes.
In order to receive initiation into certain Tantric practices, one sometimes has to be a householder.
In some of the higher practices, that is the case.
So yes, that is also one aspect.
Just as you said earlier: How can passion and all these other powerful forces be used for enlightenment?
This is one way they can be used.
But, as I said, to use something, you have to make it your servant and yourself the master.
Only after gaining control over lust, transforming it through advanced yogic methods can you undertake these sexual practices.
All the practices I have described are possible only when you have complete control over your lust.
Understand?
Sadhika: Hmm.
Adi Suyash: Clear?
Sadhika: Hmm.
But those who don’t have control can also practice Karmamudra, can’t they?
Because isn’t Karmamudra precisely about rising above lust—transcending lust?
Adi Suyash: First you have to gain control. You have to do preliminary purifications, you work with the channels and prana, particularly through tummo (inner heat). In many presentations, mastery of inner heat is regarded as an important prerequisite.
Then you rise above it.
How can you transcend something before you have gained control over it?
You gain control first. Only then can you rise above it, only then can you transcend it.
Sadhika: Because if someone has a lot of lust and then becomes involved in these practices, wouldn’t that actually increase their lust even more?
Adi Suyash: No—two things will happen.
First, if you are full of lust, you simply won’t be able to perform the practice properly.
How will you do it?
I told you: during sexual activity, you are supposed to recite the mantra, or do whatever else the practice requires.
You won’t be able to.
You’ll simply get swept away by the sexual experience.
The mantra won’t remain in your mind.
So first of all, you won’t actually be able to perform the practice.
And if you cannot perform it properly, it will simply become ordinary sex—with one major difference:
[Raises a finger.]
Now you have a justification.
“This is a spiritual practice.”
And then you may simply become even more immersed in lust.
It’s like when people take ordinary physical attraction and justify it by calling someone their spiritual partner.
“I have a spiritual connection with this person.”
[Smiles wryly.]
You may have nothing of the sort.
You may simply have a hormonal connection.
And ten years later, you may end up divorced, or tearing each other’s hair out.
Sadhika: Right.
Adi Suyash: So, perhaps the worst thing human beings have invented for justifying their vices and their ugly behavior is God or religion.
People commit jihad in the name of Allah and suddenly it becomes justified.
[His expression becomes serious.]
Suppose one religion attacks another country and then commits rape against the women of that religion. The person committing it may feel no guilt internally because he tells himself:
“I am doing this for my God.”
So perhaps the most terrible thing we have invented to conceal our immorality beneath a veneer of morality, to cover up our animalistic tendencies, is spirituality.
Or religion.
Therefore, we have to make absolutely certain that spirituality itself does not become something degraded.
And for that, it is extremely important that you rise above lust.
First gain control over lust. Then transcend it.
Only after gaining control over lust do you become ready for the practices through which you can transcend it.
First, learn how to remain completely satisfied without it.
Learn how to live joyfully without lust.
Without sex.
Once you can do that, then you can undertake the practice through which you investigate the bliss that sexual experience gives you.
Understand?
Sadhika: Hmm.
Adi Suyash: Clear?
Sadhika: Yes.
