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Erotic Hindu Spirituality
The erotic carvings of medieval Indian temples, such as those of Khajuraho in central and Konarak in eastern India, have always puzzled people of other religions. If there is one clear and unambiguous message in the sensuality of these sculpted representations, it is that the human soul is preeminently amorous, and nothing if not amorous.
At the same time, many wonder that if the sexual act in Hindu religious tradition does not lie outside but within the holiness of life, then why are contemporary Indians so embarrassed by Khajuraho’s sculptures and feel the need to explain them away in convoluted religious metaphors and symbols or to dismiss them as a product of a ‘degenerate’ era?
The answer is that since centuries Hinduism has also set a high value on the ascetic ideal and the virtues of celibacy. There is a whole mythology around semen, shared by Hindu saint and sinner alike, which sees its emission as enervating, a debilitating waste of vitality and essential energy. In the Hindu theory of sublimation, if semen is retained, it can be transformed into a source of creativity and spiritual power.
The ascetic ideal, too, is quintessentially Indian, perennially in competition with the erotic one for possession of the Indian soul. Although the ascetic ideal, reinforced by the Victorian morality of India’s British colonial rulers, held sway for many centuries, today there are again signs of a change, a tentative re-emergence of the erotic in upper class urban elite.
This change, spurred by the globalization of communications, is evident in the Indian media, especially in the proliferation of magazines that celebrate the sensual and the erotic.
The strain of asceticism, the road to spirituality through celibacy, held aloft through centuries by the Hindu version of William Blake’s “priests in black gowns... binding with briars my joys and desires,” however, has not disappeared and it continues to influence Indian religious and sexual discourse.
Just as it is very unlikely that ancient Indians could be or were ever as unswerving in their pursuit of pleasure as, for instance, the ancient Romans, similarly I believe that in the coming decades sex will assume its rightful position in the Hindu view of life--a spirituality without the excesses of either flesh or the spirit.
Sudhir Kakar is a psychoanalyst and writer who lives in Goa, India. His translation--with "On Faith" panelist Wendy Doniger--of the Kamasutra was published in 2002.
By Sudhir Kakar |
February 16, 2007; 6:20 AM ET
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I notice I forgot to add the Bible passages I meant to in my post above. I wish to note that Mahatma Gandhi and Hindu reformers like Vivekanda were inspired by Christian teachings although they did not become Christians themselves. Just like the Bhagavad Gita in Hinduism, neither Judaism nor Christianity advocate celibacy as a necessary prerequisite to reach God.
The Old Testament:
1. The Ten Commandments. Exodus 20:1-17
2. The Book of Proverbs
The New Testament:
Sermon on the Mount.
Gospel of Matthew, chapters 5-7
-----------------------------------------------------
Two works of fiction that I found extremely useful in helping form my sexual values as a young woman are:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach & Siddharta by Hermann Hesse.
When one feels out of place in a highly sexualised society, it is comforting to know that one is not alone. It is the knowledge that there are others out there who have wanted to rise above the permanent search for sexual stimulation in every human interaction, that gives one hope and inner strength.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull brought home the point that human beings live at different levels of consciousness sexually. It is impossible to have a relationship with someone who happens to be at a different level of consciousness. One must seek out someone whose level of consciousness is the same in order to be happy. Each species of animal has a predictable pattern in terms of searching for mates and bonding is inevitable in species that do bond and is absent in species that don't. Unfortunately there is no way of predicting whether or not a human being is ready to bond, or is at the level of an animal that is merely out to mate. Only real love is the equaliser, but real love is so hard to find, for most people are content to settle for less, far less. The mental and physical discipline necessary to submit to love is simply too hard. The search for stimulation, the game, the conquest, to start the process all over again in unending circles, becomes an end in itself. The experience is ultimately the same, yet the illusion that it is different each time drives them addictively. To rise above the games, to step out of line of meaningless competition like Jonathan Livingston Seagull did, takes courage for one finds oneself quite alone. The suffering of loneliness must be endured in order to transform it into creative solitude. Only then is one ready for real love; love that is a free choice and a precious gift; love that stands the test of time; love that is consciously renewed and grows priceless with each passing day.
Siddharta takes us further. Beyond the joys of love and life with a soulmate, there is more. The human soul longs for things greater and wider. One finds peace with life as it is, with all its losses and pain. One is in tune with one's God, is in harmony with the universe, and one hears music in solitude and silence. Finally life begins to flow with the beauty of a river.
Posted by: Soja John Thaikattil, Sydney, Australia | April 28, 2007 7:21 PM
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Suggested reading for a balanced view on sexuality and a way to true spirituality:
1. C S Lewis essay ‘On Sexuality’
2. Erich Fromm ‘The Art of Loving’
3. M Scott Peck ‘The Road Less Travelled’
4. Patrick Carnes ‘Don’t Call it Love’ &
‘The Betrayal Bond’
5. Robin Norwood ‘Women Who Love too Much’
6. Peter Trachtenburg ‘The Casanova Complex’
7. Bede Griffiths ‘River of Compassion’
Posted by: Soja John Thaikattil, Sydney, Australia | March 31, 2007 2:17 AM
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On second thoughts Victoria, maybe you should request the moderator to have the explicitly offensive post removed.
Posted by: Soja John Thaikattil, Sydney, Australia | February 22, 2007 10:40 PM
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Victoria
I feel awful for you about the comment that Anonymous wrote. But if I were you I would ignore it completely. The comment reflects the sick mind of the person who wrote it and therefore does not deserve your attention.
Posted by: Soja John Thaikattil, Sydney, Australia | February 22, 2007 7:45 AM
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how can someone like anonyous say such a pornographic and ugly thing and get away with it?
i get censored if i post more than once on these boards- hmmm-
Posted by: victoria | February 22, 2007 2:28 AM
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PS:
Some more reflections of a Christian Indian woman, highlighting some aspects of Hinduism as I understand it, although I'm sure Dr Kakar (myriad apologies if I did not get your title right the first time!)as the expert in his field has better knowledge of the details:
1. Considering Hinduism is at least five thousand years old, of the thousands of Hindu temples in India, how many have erotic carvings on them?
2. In the main Hindu Scriptures - The Vedas, The Upanishads, The Bhagavadgita (including Mahabharata), Ramayana, writings of the various schools of Vedanata among others - how much reference is made to the soul that is amorous in a way that would justify the sex cult of Tantric practice?
3. How many Hindu reformers, who sought to integrate the various philosophies of Hinduism and present it as a unified whole, gave weight to Tantric practice which had been practised by some as a hidden cult?
4. The Bhagavad Gita is considered the Bible for the Hindu householder. As part of the Mahabharata, it was composed between sixth century BC and completed by first century AD, and Mahabharata contains much of the rules for Hindu society. Ramayana, supposedly completed between fifth and first century BC, portrays Rama as the ideal husband and Sita as the ideal wife - a lifelong monogamous relationship, without adultery on either side, is idealised. So one can conclude that the ideal of lifelong monogamous marriage, which is the same as the Christian ideal, was revealed to the Hindu more than hundred years before the birth of Christ.
5. In Hinduism, child marriages were common (remember that Gandhi mentioned his child marriage in his autobiography?). It turned out to be terribly disadvantageous to the women only because she could not "remarry" even if her "husband" died as a child, without them ever having been together as partners. (It remains unfair to the women that Hindu widows are not allowed to remarry while widowers are allowed to remarry.) But those who didn't die as children started to live together as partners as soon as the child bride attained puberty. Thus the sexual needs of both male and female were taken care of by the society in a safe and adequate manner, without imposing a burden on women to learn the art of seducing men into marrying them or burden men with the necessity to excel at the courting game. To this day, with rare exceptions, marriages in India are arranged. All but few marry quite young. The singles culture is non-existent. Sanyasis and Sanyasins who remain celibate abandon society altogether and hence are beyond its rules. In Hindu marriages, the ceremony usually takes place in front of fire, and the couple go around the fire, to evoke the fire God to sanctify the union and guard it. It is believed that fire God protects the marriage and will burn anyone who tries to break out or break into the sacred lifelong union.
Where in all this is room for the Tantric cult or sacred fornication and adultery?
However no Hindu is exempt from falling short of the ideal and is sometimes guilty of seductive manipulation, fornication and adultery, resorting to sexual hypocrisy to cover it up. The sex instinct is the same in all human beings, irrespective of colour and culture, and an Indian is neither superior nor inferior in this regard. The Hindu society took great care to put strict measures in place to keep human failings to a minimum (early marriage, rules regarding the social interaction of the sexes), precisely because it was fully aware of the destructive power of sex as well.
6. The social rules regarding marriage and interaction of the sexes, were in place long long before the British came to India. A trade treaty was signed by the British in India only in 1615, and the British ruled India from 1776 to 1947. In that short period, the British had very little interaction with and influence on the Hindu customs and culture of the average Indian.
7. Considering that the average Indian follows a moral code imposed on them by centuries of tradition, and follow the impulses of the unconscious, it might be vital for some to assess the origin of those values consciously, in order to make informed and wise decisions when exposed, as part of global communication, to the deluge of material that celebrates the sensual and erotic.
There is nothing new about hedonism among the rich. I may venture to add that among the tribals, and the extremely poor and uneducated, it is not uncommon to find a morality that is no different from the hedonism of the rich, only it is a free expression of the instinct. One may conclude for that reason that only the morality of the middle classes truly reflect the morality of a culture. Only a shift in the morality of the Indian middle class would reflect a true shift in Indian culture.
Posted by: Soja John Thaikattil, Sydney, Australia | February 20, 2007 12:15 AM
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While I do applaud the psychological-psychiatric-psychotherapeutic-pyschoanalytical skills of Dr Kakar, I must suggest that he seems to read Indian history very much in a reductionistic manner: he mentions exclusively the British colonization, ignoring several other intervening "colonizations" even including Indian ones. If the Sacred Texts and the Architecture of India seem so highly and openly bare out the sexuality of Indian psyche, how explain the shyness of the average Indian?
May be it's pathology, whose history dates back long beore the Westners setting their foot in the Indian Shores?
Alphonse Bernard.
Posted by: Bernard | February 19, 2007 3:24 PM
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sexis a beautiful thing,as long as it is within the walls of marriage.it makes a man complete and a woman more than that.
Posted by: sameer suleiman | February 19, 2007 5:44 AM
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Dear Mr Kakar
Thank you for your insightful views on Erotic Hindu Spirituality and the Indian culture. You have mentioned several significant aspects that I feel compelled to raise some questions and share my perspective as an Indian (Keralite) woman who was exposed to the Hindu culture in three South Indian states for over two and a half decades. I wish to state at the outset that I’m a lay person with regard to religious philosophies.
You wrote “I believe that in the coming decades sex will assume its rightful position in the Hindu view of life – spirituality without the excesses of either flesh or the spirit.” As a practising psychoanalyst you must know better than most about the taboo there is in India with regarding to discussing sexual issues openly. In fact the taboo is causing a serious problem in dealing effectively with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India. But I doubt whether reluctance to talk openly about sexual matters reflects an inability to give sex its rightful position in the Hindu view of life. There is definitely an urgent need for Indians to learn to discuss sexual values in an open way if global communication has led to a greater celebration of the sensual and erotic. If global communication leads to India soon catching up with the sexual revolution of the West in the 1960s with the same consequences and shift in consciousness, the Indian society needs to learn to show as much acceptance and support for the women as was done in the West. The HIV/AIDS epidemic in India (5.7 million infected in 2005) which has not spared any class (primarily transmitted to healthy partners by men who pick up the disease from sex workers), and the prevalence of arranged marriages where the parents of the bride have to pay huge sums of money as dowry, still reflect a double standard which is not in favour of the woman. I hope too that sexual freedoms being opened up for the elite due to global communication will be available to all classes of society.
How excessive is really the spirituality of the average Hindu? The Hindu householder and the temple priests (who always married) have practised Hinduism without remaining celibate since time immemorial. Since only a rare Hindu abandons family and society, choosing celibacy to devote his/her entire life to the call of God as a Sanyasi, could one refer to it as the ideal propagated to be practised by every Hindu? Notwithstanding the erotic sculpture of the Khajuraho temples depicting practises of the Tantric sect of Hinduism (a Hindu website explains that no erotic sculptures are found within the temple and that the gods and goddesses in the temple are fully clothed), there is not much to suggest from Indian history that Tantric sect of Hinduism was ever allowed to take hold as mainstream form of Hinduism at any time in the long history of the religion. Your statement “The ascetic ideal, reinforced by the Victorian morality of India’s British colonial rulers, held sway for many centuries,” is quite confusing because I fail to see how the Victorian morality of the British colonial rulers (whose time in India was very short compared to the history of Hinduism) could have any bearing on an ascetic ideal, leave alone the ascetic ideal of the Hindu religion. Hinduism has long held the virtue of the woman as paramount, using the example of Sita as the ideal wife.
You are right that the soul is amorous for God and mystics of all religions have reflected that view. Tantric Hinduism however got it quite wrong when they translated the spiritual longing of the soul for God into genital terms, creating a sexual cult out of it. That is the reason why Tantric Hinduism was never allowed to become part of the mainstream religion, and is kept extremely secretive when it is practised.
At the International HIV/AIDS conference in Berlin 1993, the poster that was considered the best was an Indian one which showed several poses from the Kamasutra. The poster was titled: “Many positions with one is better than one position with many.” Old fashioned religion wasn’t in conflict with cutting edge science at all.
Soja John Thaikattil
Sydney, Australia
Posted by: Soja John Thaikattil | February 18, 2007 5:32 AM
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If any contemporary Indian is embarrassed by Khajuraho’s sculptures, it is purely due to the pseudo morality inculcated by various religions in India and western education. Sex was given equal importance by ancient Indian tradition and this can be found in the Tantric texts. It is Brahmanism that corrupted all natural instincts and called it vulgar. The arrival of Victorian morality and missionaries – to the land which gave the world ‘Kamasutra’ – made things more worse.
Posted by: Hindu blog | February 16, 2007 11:00 PM
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Victoria! As a Muslim woman (more fool you) the only 'erotic pleasures' you are allowed are those your backwards Muslim Husband allows and I doubt there is anything erotic about them.
You are a hole for him to take his sexual aggression out on.
Posted by: Anonymous | February 16, 2007 4:25 PM
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i would definitely agree that a balance and middle way is a superior spiritual path-
Posted by: victoria | February 16, 2007 3:59 PM
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