Both/And Then/Now

Oh, Beloved. I continue our conversation — deepening here with this timely continuation. Both then/And now. Time is loosening. Hold me. ~LP
….The way of Tantra is not one of blind sensuality — and not only of spirituality either. It is of both/and. Tantra does not believe in the philosophy of either/or: it believes in the philosophy of both/and. It does not reject anything — it transforms everything. Only cowards reject. And if you reject something you will be that much poorer — because something has been left untransformed. A part of you will remain ungrown; a part of you will remain childish. Your maturity will never be total. It will be like your one leg remains on the first rung and your hand has reached to the last rung: you will be stretched along this polarity and you will be in anguish, in agony; your life will not be of ecstasy.

That’s why I say I preach Epicurus and Buddha together to you. Epicurus remains with the outer wall of the Khajuraho temple; he is right as far as he goes, but he does not go far enough. He simply takes a walk around the temple and goes home; he is not aware that he has missed the very point of the temple. Those outer walls are only outer walls; they exist for the inner shrine.
Buddha goes into the inner shrine, sits there. In that silence he remains, but he forgets about the outer wall. And without the outer wall there is no inner shrine.
To me, both are lopsided, half-half. Something has been rejected and something has been chosen — they have not been choiceless. I say to you: Accept all! the outer and the inner, the without and the within, and you will be the richest sannyasins upon the earth.
Drop guilt!

Tantra is the whole way — neither obsession with the world, nor withdrawal from it. It is being in the world lightly, with a little smile. It is playfulness. It doesn’t take things seriously. It is light of heart, it laughs. It is unashamedly earthly and infinitely other-earthly. The earth and the sky meet in Tantra; it is the meeting of polar opposites…

OSHO:

Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind, Chapter 10

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Beloveds come together

Beloved Punita, you found the text about the Khajuraho temples – what OSHO said about going from the outer by experiencing it all to the inner = going inside the temple by sex.    Premniri
” … Those are Tantra temples, the MOST sacred temples that still exist on the earth; all other temples are ordinary, bourgeois. Only Khajuraho and Konarak, these two temples, have a different message which is not ordinary, which is extraordinary. Extraordinary because it is true.

What is their message?

If you have been to these temples, you will be surprised that on the outer sunlit walls there are ALL kinds of sexual postures — men and women making love in so many postures! conceivable and inconceivable, possible and impossible. All the walls are full of sex. One is shocked. One starts feeling: What obscenity! One wants to condemn, one wants to lower one’s eyes. One wants to escape. But that is not because of the temple but because of the priest AND his poison inside you.

Go inside. As you start moving inside the temple, the figures are less and less, and love starts changing. On the outer walls it is pure sexuality; as you start entering inside, you will find sex is disappearing. Couples are still there, in deep love, looking into each other’s eyes, holding hands, embracing each other, but sexuality is no more there. Go still deeper figures are even less. Couples are still there, but not even holding hands, not even touching. Go still deeper — and the couples have disappeared. Go still deeper….

At the innermost core of the temple what in the East we call the GHARBA, the womb — there is not a single figure. The crowd is gone, the many is gone. There is not even a window for the outside! No light comes from the outside; it is utter darkness, silence, calm and quiet. And there is not even a figure of a god — it is emptiness, it is nothingness.

The innermost core is nothingness and the outermost core is a carnival. The innermost core is meditation, samadhi, and the outermost core is sexuality. This is the whole life of man depicted. …”

from: Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind
Chapter 10

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