Life as Practice: the 3-fold path of Tantra
Tantra was the first - and for centuries the only - South Asian tradition intended for householders. Spiritual practice had been reserved for a privileged class and/or considered separate from life in society. If you wanted to study Yoga, you had to renounce civic life and find a guru or a priest who would initiate you into the practice. Tantra encouraged people of all walks of life to adopt spiritual practice as part of their everyday. Daily life, in turn, becomes part of spiritual practice. Tantric practice consists of a three-fold path of daily life, ritual, and study/practice (similar to the three-fold path of Buddhism, which was developing alongside Tantra from about the 5th to the 12th century).
nonduality: the physical and the spiritual are one
Tantra asserts that the divine permeates - rather than transcends - the physical realm. There is no separation between the physical and the Divine. Thus, life in this world, and in this body, is to be embraced rather than overcome. Tantrikas seek to realize liberation and bliss in this lifetime, in this earthly body.
It’s not really about sex, though. This might be a good time to address the elephant in the room. If the word Tantra makes you blush and you’re not sure why, if your first thought is the Kama Sutra or Tantric sex, you’re not alone. In Anglo-Western culture, these are common associations with Tantric philosophy, thanks to an entirely Western (mostly American), modern interpretation of Tantra known as Neo-Classical Tantra. For the purposes of this article, when I refer to Tantric philosophy, I’m talking about Classical Tantra, in which sex can totally be part of spiritual practice (along with literally every other aspect of your life), but it’s not the focus. Cool? Cool. Moving on.
how to practice Tantra in daily life
In a sense, there’s no path to the Divine, since it’s all around you all the time. Instead, you might think of Tantra as a path to awareness. We seek deeper awareness of the Divine within all things, awareness of our interconnection and our inherent freedom. According to Tantra, you’re already free. You just don’t know it yet. How do we hone this awareness? Mostly it’s about attention and intention.
Pay attention to goodness. While Tantra regards everything that exists and everything that happens in the world - yes everything - as an expression of the divine, our mortal brains love to label and categorize. So it might be easiest to start with the “good stuff.”
Look for the beauty, kindness, and grace in the world around you. This in itself is a practice, and the more we practice, the more easeful it becomes. I can tell you from experience: once you start seeing grace, you can’t unsee it. It will seem like you’re attracting and multiplying goodness. You’re just waking up to what was already there.
See the sacred in the mundane. Daily life is practice. Approach the dishes with intention, as you would a meditation. Be present to your morning commute, as you would an asana practice. Move through the world with gratitude for your ability to do so. Every day.
Know that you are divine (and so is everyone else). If you’re aiming to treat everything in existence with reverence and love, you’re gonna have to include yourself - your body, your breath, your mind, your heart. I know this isn’t always as easy as the words make it seem. It’s a practice. Show yourself grace.
From here our awareness becomes action, as a natural extension of the divine within us. If your breath is sacred, so are your words. Choose them with intention. If your hands are sacred, so are your actions. Act with intention. You see how this starts to ripple out quickly? Next, extend the same grace to the people around you - yes all of them - the same appreciation to the objects you interact with every day.
Seek liberation for all. To say that everything is divine doesn’t mean everything is love and light and “good vibes only.” Things happen and exist in this world that are abhorrent to our human morality, our sense of justice, and indeed the Tantric value of liberation. Even as we recognize these happenings as expressions of the divine in her wild and infinite freedom, we are called by our interconnection to act against injustice and violence. We are called by our shared divinity to do so without denying the humanity (nor indeed the divinity) of the perpetrators. Oof, this is a practice.
Also, if there’s a ‘goal’ of Tantra, it’s to realize liberation in this lifetime. Interconnection means individual liberation isn’t possible without collective liberation. (And it’s hard to know the freedom of your spirit while your body is being oppressed, you know?). So we are called to stand against oppression as an act of care, and as a step toward realizing the truth of liberation for all. If Tantra has an answer to the question “what are we doing here?” collective liberation is it.
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p.s. I also talked about life as practice in a short video over on our YouTube channel. Check it out here, and share your thoughts!