Tantric sex
Ritual sexual practices in Hindu and Buddhist tantra for liberation.
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Tantric sex encompasses ritualized sexual practices within Hindu and Buddhist tantra, often involving antinomian elements like alcohol and meat offerings. These practices, termed Maithuna in Hindu sources and Karmamudra in Buddhist ones, are aimed at liberation rather than pleasure. They are distinct from the Kāmashāstra literature, which focuses on sexual enjoyment.
Quick Facts
- Also known as
- Karmamudra (Buddhist), Maithuna (Hindu)
- Part of
- Hindu and Buddhist tantra
- Key texts
- Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, Hindu and Buddhist tantras
- Associated with
- Panchamakara, five makara
- Goal
- Liberation (moksha)
Facts from the source article.
History
Early forms of tantric intercourse aimed to generate sexual fluids as offerings to deities. Around the start of the first millennium, tantra adopted semen retention practices like asidharavrata and vajroli mudra, likely from older celibate schools. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad describes sexual rituals focused on procreation and male power, equating intercourse with Vedic sacrifice and ejaculation with an offering.
Late Vedic texts treat sexual intercourse as symbolically equivalent to sacrifice, but substantial evidence for sexual yoga appears only from the 7th and 8th centuries in Śaiva and Buddhist tantric circles. These practices are considered exceptional and elite, not accepted by all sects, and are absent from Jain tantra. In traditions like Kaula, where sexual fluids are power substances, scholars disagree on translations and practical significance.
Practice
In Hindu tantra, Maithuna is part of the five makara, or tantric substances, which also include alcohol, meat, fish, and pound grain. These taboo-breaking elements are practiced literally by left-hand path tantrics (vāmācārins), while right-hand path tantrics (dakṣiṇācārins) use symbolic substitutes. The 9th-century scholar Jayanta Bhatta criticized the Nilambara sect for engaging in unconstrained public sex during festivals, calling it immoral and a threat to societal values; this sect may have been an offshoot of the Pashupata Shaivite school or a Buddhist cult of Vajrapani. Ascetics of the Mantramarga school reenacted Shiva's penance by worshipping with alcohol, blood, and sexual fluids from orgiastic rites.
In some Kaula traditions, antinomian elements challenge the devotee to break down distinctions between Brahman and the mundane world, combining erotic and ascetic techniques to become Shiva-like. In Kashmir Shaivism, transgressive ideas were internalized for meditation. Sexual yoga often recommends consorts from taboo groups, such as close relatives or low castes, who must be young, beautiful, and tantric initiates.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Tantric sex (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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