Tantra is really juicy, very alive

OSHO – The man who brought modern tantra to our modern world. After reading this passage I remember why I do the work I do. Why touch, massage and connection creates such change, cathartic openings and tears of release.

This passage speaks of how the body is key to all things and how tantra is based in the body with great roots. I encourage you to discover how to ground yourself – bare feet in earth, sandy toes or just hugging a tree.

This week is one of movement for me – challenges to move through to newness and letting go of what no longer serves me. This isn’t always an easy task but I truly believe in the Buddhist beliefs of NON attachment.

Tantra: The Supreme Understanding – OSHO

Tantra trusts in your body. Tantra trusts in you. Tantra does not deny anything but transforms everything. How to attain to this Tantra vision? This is the map to turn you on, and turn you in, and turn you beyond.

The first thing is the body. The body is your base, it is your ground, it is where you are grounded. To make you antagonistic towards the body is to destroy you, is to make you schizophrenic, is to make you miserable, is to create hell. You are the body. Of course you are more than the body, but that ‘more’ will follow later. First, you are the body. The body is your basic truth, so never be against the body. Whenever you are against the body, you are going against God. Whenever you are disrespectful to your body you are losing contact with reality, because your body is your contact, your body is your bridge. Your body is your temple.

Tantra teaches reverence for the body, love, respect for the body, gratitude for the body. The body is marvelous, it is the grandest of mysteries. But you have been taught to be against the body. So sometimes you are over-mystified by the tree, by the green tree; sometimes mystified by the moon and sun, sometimes mystified by the flower – but you are never mystified by your own body. And your body is the most complex phenomenon in existence. No flower, no tree has such a beautiful body as you have, no moon, no sun, no star has such evolved mechanism as you have.

You have been taught to appreciate the flower, which is a simple thing. You have been taught to appreciate a tree, which is a simple thing. You have been taught to appreciate the stones, rocks, mountains, rivers, but you have never been taught to appreciate your own body, to be mystified by it. Yes, it is very close, so it is very easy to forget about. It is very obvious so it is easy to neglect. But this is the most beautiful phenomenon.

If you look at a flower people will say, ‘How aesthetic!’ And if you look at a woman’s beautiful face or a man’s beautiful face, people will say, ‘This is lust!’ If you go to the tree and stand there, and look in a dazed state at the flower, – your eyes wide open, your senses wide open to allow the beauty of the flower to enter you – people will think you are a poet a painter or a mystic. But if you go to a woman or a man and just stand there with great reverence and respect, and look at the woman with your eyes wide open and with your senses drinking in the beauty of the woman, the police will catch hold of you. Nobody will say you are a mystic or a poet; nobody will appreciate what you are doing.

Tantra teaches you to reclaim respect for the body, love for the body. Tantra teaches you to look at the body as the grandest creation of God. Tantra is the religion of the body. Of course it goes higher, but it never leaves the body, it is grounded there. It is the only religion which is really grounded in the earth: it has roots. Other religions are uprooted trees – dead, dull, dying; the juice does not flow in them. Tantra is really juicy, very alive.

The first thing is to learn respect for the body, to unlearn all the nonsense that has ever been taught to you about the body. Otherwise you will never turn on, and you will never turn in, and you will never turn beyond.
“Start from the beginning. The body is your beginning.”

• Osho, “Tantra: The Supreme Understanding”