"I teach you how to make exquisite love"
Tantra’s Path to Embodied Bliss
Dr. Patti Talks to Daniel Odier, PhD.
A Renowned Tantric Master in the Tantric Tradition of Kashmiri Shaivism
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In this amazing show you'll hear from a living Tantric master. Learn why your passion is precious and get practices to develop and deepen your desires. Discover your bliss... it's always there and why it's always in your body for you to enjoy and share with lovers.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Welcome to the “Expanded Lovemaking” show. I am your host, Dr. Patti Taylor, and I teach people how to make love. Today on the show we are talking about the sacred vibration: A Tantric Path to Embodied Bliss. Our guest is Daniel Odier, a Tantric master from the tradition of Kashmiri Shaivism.
Daniel Odier: Everything based on consciousness. When the attention goes back, the consciousness is manifesting and is clear. And we try to have a deep consciousness of what desire is and to share all desire. We all know that as much as we desire something the minute we get it its less interesting than before.
Dr. Patti Taylor: For those of you new to all of this, Tantra is an eclectic collection of practices passed down through the ages leading to the expansion of consciousness, divine bliss, and awakening. Welcome, Daniel Odier.
Daniel Odier: Yes.
Dr. Patti Taylor: We are talking to Daniel Odier in France. I understand you are in Normandy at the moment?
Daniel Odier: Yes
Dr. Patti Taylor: Daniel Odier is a Tantric Master initiated into the lineage of Kashmiri Shaivist Tantra. He has been ordained as well into the Zen Soto tradition and received transmission into the Chinese Chan lineage. As a university professor, Daniel taught both Tantra and Buddhism. Presently he gives workshops and seminars all over the world. He is a prolific author. Two of his best-selling books include Desire: The Tantric Path to Awakening, and Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love.
I am pleased to have with you today. I think our listeners would love to hear what these masters of consciousness have to say about desire. I think there a lot of confusion out there: Can desire really be a good thing, or better yet be a path to bliss? And if so how can we have more of it? So today we will find out what Kashmiri Shaivist Tantra is, why is desire is considered a blessing and what happens to our lives, including our love lives when we infuse our every waking moment with desire? So let’s get this started.
Kashmiri Shaivist Tantra—Daniel, can you tell us what it is?
Daniel Odier: It comes from the sacred tradition from the Hindu valley that thrived very widely in Kashmir in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. There were many, many great masters. Then in the thirteenth century it disappeared a little bit and became more secret. This is really the tradition that seems to disappear and surface again. But it is rejoicing to see that it never disappears; in fact it just goes into hiding and suddenly reappears. The very original approach is based on the vision of Vasagupta in which he links the all desire to all movement of the human mind on the path to awakening.
So, there is absolutely nothing which is withdrawn or forbidden. We use absolutely all emotion, all desire, all tradition, very much in the world, to become more vibrant.
The whole thing is based on the idea of Spanda. Spanda means vibration. It is a little bit like a musical instrument. In order to get the vibration, which is our own nature, we have to practice very special yoga which is called Tandava, which is a dance. It is a most ancient form of pure efforts of mystical dance, very beautiful, that may look a little bit like tai chi but is completely different.
Dr. Patti Taylor: So you interpret one of the most beloved Kashmiri Shaivist doctrines, the Yoga Spanda Karika, which I might say is one of the most incredibly poetic and amazing Tantric doctrines I have every read. The principles in there could have been written on the subway yesterday. They are so relevant and crisp. Could you just tell us a few of the principles as well as the part about desire, just as a foundation for where we’re are going? Just a few more of these Tantric principles for us, perhaps from the Yoga Spanda Karika?
Daniel Odier: The main idea of the Spanda Karika is to take the whole human being as one and not to divide it into purity or impurity. And this is really the whole tradition of Tantra which is the vision of the most ancient text of yoga. Of course, to achieve this unity you have to go back and to accept all the different faces of yoga. Finality and the liberation are going to blow this finality to a state of illumination where all the choices are going to vanish into space. Space is another word for Spanda. if you reach liberation you reach illumination and space.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Wow. So the whole point of the Kashmiri Shaivist is to go into liberation and to get that we are this beautiful space, and to end the separation, and to get that we are this amazing wholeness. And these separations, that I think we all have, we see a lot of people that say well, how do I reconcile my sexuality with my spirituality? But I guess for a Kashmiri Shaivist that’s kind of a silly question, wouldn’t that be?
Daniel Odier: Yes because the practical event is completely open to sexuality. There is absolutely no contradiction, no difference. The fact is that the body is totally the integrated to the past. We have to reconcile the body and the mind and the emotion as one thing. This is the yoga, to be one again without separation, without distinction, without anything that is taken off of the body to be considered impure. Impurity is a word that does not appear in the Tantra. It is a concept that we don’t have.
Dr. Patti Taylor: So, thank you. But you do have Shiva and Skakti now and many listeners may be hearing that word for the first time. That is the essential male and female principle, is that correct?
Daniel Odier: Yes. In the constant love play they are one in every Tantric text. Most of the Tantric texts state that Shiva and Shakti are one in the knowledge and one in the body. It just divides the dialogue which is the teaching of the Tantra.
When the Tantra is explained, or shown, the sexual union is one again. The teacher is teaching that they should be regarded as one thing. This is exactly what the yogi or yogini try to achieve— to be this one thing. Not to be a male, not to be a female, not be anything but the space where everything is alive.
Dr. Patti Taylor: You tell a beautiful story in your book Desire, about an ancient legend where the gods and goddesses gave the power of divine pleasure to women to give to men to absorb all the strong male energy back into balance on the earth. And everyone was happy with this arrangement. I love that story from your book Desire. And I was wondering what does that story have to say to us today in today’s world?
Daniel Odier: I think it’s very important today because there is still a kind of struggle between the genders with each one try to get the most. If you consider the human being as the unity of both, then you can explore the path you miss and integrate the path you miss. Good yogis or yoginis integrate both parts of Shiva and Shakti and this is one of the ends that you get to—to be this one union of the masculine and feminine.
In the past it was very frequent that the male master would wear women’s dresses or a female master would wear men’s dress to express this unity that they were not really a man or not really a woman but the union of both.
Dr. Patti Taylor: So it’s more about really embracing our fullness of all of our energy. So for the woman, is it really for the woman to embrace her Shiva nature and for the man to embrace his Shakti nature? Is it for all of us to come into that balance within ourselves then?
Daniel Odier: Yes because in a way the yogi or yogini has to be sensitive to vision, and if he is not the incarnation of the Shiva/Shakti then a part is missing. The beautiful thing is that when you are one you feel that nothing is missing because you are both parts.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Well I’d like to get down to the practical here. I am guessing that a lot of our listeners might be getting very excited about the thought of the world coming into more balance and maybe themselves coming into some more balance. And I am just wondering, you talk about some wonderful micro-practices in your book that people can start to do right away. And I was wondering, some of them are really incredibly beautiful. If you could maybe give us a few examples of some micro-practices that people could start to do just right away.
Daniel Odier: The micro-practices are a very interesting form of yoga which is really typical of Shaivism. It is based on the fact that the mind is fast and the mind likes to be fast. The masters, the yogis of the past had a wonderful idea to invent a practice which goes to the same speed as the mind. You don't counteract the mind, so they are very short. You practice for three, five, ten, or fifteen seconds at the most. They are simple, based on the present. You feel for ten seconds exactly what you are doing and you do this practice with everything that life brings you. You do them every day, but they are different every day because every day life brings you something else.
You just take something very simple. For example, you take a cup of tea. You try to be totally present to the cup of tea, to the smell of the tea, to the space of the tea just for a few seconds then you leave it. And then you do the same with all of the experiences you have during the day. When you do that very often, very lightly, and for a very small, very short time then suddenly very easily the presence will give you much more joy. And the world suddenly starts to go to the present by itself because it is much more fulfilling than anything else. It is very easy to practice and very efficient. If somebody does that for a few weeks, suddenly their level of attention of presence of the capacity to be one with things is going very, very fast.
Dr. Patti Taylor: You know you call them micro-practices and I think that really resonates with the modern mind that is going very fast. But these are also talked about in the Vijnana Bhairava, which also goes back to ninth century A.D., so these are also rooted in very ancient practices.
Daniel Odier: Yes, and truly it is one of the most original ways to practice. It is very old, and very efficient, and very simple, and everyone can understand this. It is very easy.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Thank you very much. I'd just like to ask you maybe one more micro-practice before we go to a break and maybe that one might be one on the breath. If you could just suggest one that we could do with using our breath.
Daniel Odier: Just to be conscious when you breathe in and out a few times a day. Not to practice really, but much more to bring the consciousness to the breath and to feel that you are breathing completely, relieving the breath completely. And then suddenly when you give the permission, quite easily the body goes back to its spontaneity.
In fact, we are not crazy about practicing a lot. Many practices give you so many things to do. We just do them continuously. Many give you many things to do. We do ours lightly, and without much thought. And that is very, very important.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Well, really what you say is that the consciousness comes first, right?
Daniel Odier: Yes. Everything is based on consciousness. When attention goes back, the consciousness is manifesting and is clear.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Then you don't really need to practice. That's what I love Kashmiri Shaivism. There's really nothing to do. It's really to me the ultimate.
Daniel Odier: So we are not doing. There is no “doing” yoga. And this is really interesting because many people think that they are to “do” the yoga but no, there is nothing to do. This is something that many people don't understand.
Dr. Patti Taylor: When you are in that state of grace, when you're in that awareness, it's all just happening. Then whatever you do is in that state of grace is coming out of the consciousness, isn't it?
Daniel Odier: Yes.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Wow. Well no wonder this is such an amazing tradition. Is there a cosmology set of practices? How would you call it?
Daniel Odier: I would say it's much more practical because it is a mystical tradition. And this is truly different. And so it's a tradition which continues to be taught to any human being whatever conditioning, or race, or nature. It's really very simple, but these practices work. They produce a change and they work exactly on the contrary to many practices where you have to accumulate so many good things to become a yogi.
They work exactly on the contrary because we don't accumulate, but we are taking away everything that we have accumulated in the past. It is much as if we have a beautiful apartment which is all white and clean and finished and suddenly we decide to take out of this apartment every object that we have—less and less— and the more we do that the more the apartment is clear, beautiful, and light. We do that with the yoga. We take out all of the accumulation just become space. And the body is just becoming space.
Dr. Patti Taylor: Well, they do work. I know from my own practice and I know when I talk to the people who are real masters in the art of giving pleasure, they all say that the psychic energy and the genius comes from the consciousness. Awareness of this practice really teaches you how to do that.
Anyway, we are going to take a short break to support our sponsors. So this is Dr. Patti Taylor and I'm with Daniel Odier. And we'll be right back. Daniel Odier is the author of Yoga Spanda Karika which we've just been talking about which has some fabulous information on desire which I just referred to. He is also the author of Desire: A Tantric Path to Awakening, Tantric Quest, and more. So you can visit him at danielodier.com.
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