Weight Loss

The very first step in losing weight is to get your head in the right space. Unless you are absolutely committed to changing how you look, nothing will happen.

I remember it was 1997 when I decided that being 140 kg (308 lbs/22 Stone) was bad. Prior to this I had had no issues with my obesity. If anything I was happy with my increasing weight, and remarked once with great pride that I was the same weight as a friend, his wife and young child...COMBINED. Never mind that I couldn't see my feet, struggled to tie my shoelaces, had a low libido and  high blood pressure. I was morbidly obese and I was happy.

It was on a bus in the middle of the Nullarbor Plain, on my way home from a Theravadin Monastery near Perth, WA, that I realized that at this weight I was begging for a heart attack. The very first thing I changed was how I viewed myself. I was no longer a "fat" person, because fat people laid on the lounge all day and ate shit. I was now a "thin" person and thin people exercise and don't eat entire family sized Meat Lovers pizza in one sitting by themselves nor do they wash the pizza down with a 6 pack of beer. Thin people exercise and eat properly.

Self identifying as "thin" was important. Never mind that I manifestly wasn't. I didn't suddenly step out of a fat suit and reveal my gorgeous self. Because I was now "thin" I went and did all the thin things. The junk food bit the dust first and over the next three years I dropped about 20 kg (44lbs).
I exercised. Mostly in the form of long walks.

I plateaued at 120 kg (264.5 lbs) for the next 10 years. I had reduced fish and chips to an uncommon event, yet still wasn't exercising as much as I should have. I was also unhappily married and saw no point in looking good for someone who simply wasn't appreciating what she had. My head space had improved a little and I had moved from an intensely dangerous place to a dangerous place. My cholesterol had fallen from a high of ~ 9.7 to the low 6's.

It was when I met my wife, Selina, that my head space changed again. I lost 5 kg in a week from not eating, sleeping and stressing incredibly over the fact I had managed to fall in love with a woman who is 24 years my junior. She was 19 and I wasn't far off turning 43. So in early 2008 I was 115 kg (253.5 lb). In retrospect, that I had the 5 kg to lose so fast is frightening.

Another change of head space came when Selina and I decided to start a family. I ate more carefully and certainly exercised more often...and lost 5 kg (11 lbs). There was a lot of information available on the connection between fitness and fertility. So by 2009 I had lost a total of 30 kg and a marriage in 12 years. So I was now just obese.

Insults are wonderful things. In October 2011 I was insulted by someone I seriously wanted to fuck. I was told, in no uncertain terms "Why should I fuck you, a fat Middle Aged man, when I can fuck toned men in their 30's?" No, it wasn't Selina who handed out this little gem. I put my nose back into joint and set about changing the head space...again...whilst vowing that "This bitch will fuck me when Hell freezes". I developed a desperate need for muscle definition. My new head space. It was at about this time we began to investigate Tantra.

Between October 2011 and April 30 2012 I dropped 10 kg. Yep, you read it right, in SEVEN  months, I lost TEN KILOGRAMS OR  22.0462 LBS. I was now at 100 kg. I ate an awful lot of leafy green salads and chickpeas. I exercised like crazy....yoga, weights and lots of walking.

On April 30 2012, Salmonella struck. The medications I was on blew me back to 108 kg (238 lb). I bitched like crazy to my GP. I hated Prednisolone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prednisolone) and the weight gain it was inflicting on me. I was being blown backwards by a chemical...after I had broken my arse losing the weight.

The insult still smarted. I lost the 10 kg plus another 2 for good measure and then plateaued again at 98 kg (216 lbs). Part of this Tantra is looking your absolute best. My third head space. I still have a belly. I can't fit into the swimming shorts I bought at the beginning of the weight loss, which were tight on me at the time...because they fall down before I can tie them. I have lost a total of 22 kg ( lbs) in 20 months. My goal is 90 kg (198 lbs).

I am now in the head space of wanting to make as much of my current wardrobe look like I'm wearing a tent as quickly as I can. I told my GP "I intend to throw my weight out the window". Portion control is the method. I have a set of measures at home and measure almost everything. Psyllium husks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyllium_husk) are very much in my diet. Psyllium is entirely dietary fibre. It has no nutrients of its' own and serves to bulk out whatever it is that I'm eating.  My diet is lean, almost entirely sugar free and Flexitarian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexitarian).

The current head space is one of great patience. Leaning out and not seeing the numbers change is tough. In the last week I have been cooking up a mixture of equal parts brown rice, quinoa, red lentils,  and burghul with about a tablespoon of Psyllium added. A cup of this with about a litre of water keeps me full for the day. I'm getting a shitload of protein and my carbohydrates are hard to get at. My breakfast is the shake...or rather with the addition of Psyllium...paste, I blogged about 18 months ago. It's a mix of:

600 mls (1 pint) of Lite Milk,
~ 250grams   (1/2 pound)  tofu,
3/4 cup of rolled oats,
1.5 tablespoons of Sustagen powder,
1 banana
 and  depending on size half a large or an entire small avocado. Lasts me between 3 - 4 days.

and 1 tablespoon of Psyllium powder.

Controlling the cravings is the hard part. Simply getting used to not eating in the evening is tough. There is a deep seated behaviour attached to eating in the evening, especially if you have a young child. Mind you, I followed my cravings last night and ate an entire 450 gram tin of tuna in one sitting, but tuna is full of lean protein and considering I'd done two weights workouts I could see why my body was demanding it.

My current head space is: I am doing my best to lose weight, and look fantastic.  The changes in my diet are a mixture of permanent and transitory. The Psyllium is a passing thing. It is here until I achieve my desired look and stabilise it. The Flexitarianism is permanent. I'm not that keen on eating a lot of meat. The need for exercise is permanent.

With this I bid you adieu.

It's ALL about me!

I have been pursuing a healthy Tantric life for about 18 months now. Major changes to my diet happened last year with Salmonella doing just nasty things to me...and blowing a 6 month hole into my weight loss programme. Even before then I had made changes, I was eating healthier and exercising a lot more. I lost 5 kg in 2 months.

Since Salmonella I have been even more picky about what I eat and drink. I am a softdrink free zone these days. Have moved to drinking green tea because it is less jolting and because it has no milk there are less kilojoules to it. I live a life without numbers....220, 632 etc. I eat clean and green. I'm also eating more fruit than I ever have. I have included Psyllium Husks into my diet. Psyllium is interesting. It's function in my diet is a bulking agent. If you take 5 grams of Psyllium Husks, 4.5 grams will be pure fibre, the kilojoules are precisely zero, Psyllium is nothing more than indigestable fibre. The logic is simple: if something has zero nutrient value

I exercise with a vengeance. I walk as often as I can and have taken to actively avoiding the lifts in buildings. I dropped the weight on my dumbells from 15 kg to 10 kg, but I will do 100 repetitions a day and do them 4 - 6 days a week.

O.k. that's a nice little wrap, but it doesn't explain why it's ALL about me.
It's ALL about me because that's who I'm doing this for. The main reason is common sense and ego. I'm tired of my wife getting all the attention. I see no reason why a 48 year old can't be eye candy, why I cannot look absolutely delicious. Why is it that I cannot become an object of mass distraction? This is my ego in action in a very positive way. The fitter we are, the better the sex, and the more sexual partners we will attract. Why be content sitting in front of a computer looking at the types of people we would like to fuck, when if we invest in ourselves, we will be able to attract them and fuck them?

I don't want my knees to wear out before time. I don't want a glob of fat to separate itself from an artery and clot in my brain. I don't find bowel cancer or diabetes sexy. I want to look absolutely fuckable. There is no point in having a great personality if you look like a sack of shit.

The practice of Tantra begins with loving ourselves and I do love myself. I do want to look my best well into old age.  I want to nurture and nourish this body so I can enjoy the bliss from it. It is also manifestly nigh on impossible to meditate when you are seriously ill.. Dragging my arse to my meditation room whilst almost dead from Salmonella and then collapsing into unconsciousness isn't a good look. I've been there and tried that. It doesn't work.

So all this investment in diet and exercise and doing the smart things. Is ALL about me.

Tantric Trainings

Virtue

This is not the “have no fun” section of this Tantra. I would think of it more as a combination of mission statement and training wheels. We need virtue, we need it to be decent, honest, and gentle people if we are to get anywhere either in life or as Dhamma practitioners.
Virtue  provides a road map for us as Dharma farers. In pursuing Virtue we are able to locate ourselves in regards to exactly where we are in the practice. If we are becoming kinder, gentler, easier going and less stressed it is most likely because we are supporting our practice with Virtue. In pursuing Virtue we live lives with a significantly reduced potential for regret that we have done things that are simply ill advised, if not criminal in nature. Rather than being a job or a hassle Virtue protects us as practitioners.
Remember one of our meditations is remembering our Virtue. Remember that the keeping of Virtue can and should be a cause for joy. No one should pretend that Virtue is easy, the Buddha never did. Keeping Virtue is hard and there are plenty of times where we want to give in to our cravings or impulses....and your own hindsight will tell you that a good percentage of those occasions and events are the ones you ended up regretting later. So when you keep Virtue, remember to season it with some joy.
The Trainings come in two almost distinct compartments. There are the Five Tantric Trainings which we use in our daily lives and then there are the Eight Tantric Trainings which we can use for periods of intensive meditation and worship. The Five Tantric Trainings are the basis to our ethics and morality in this Tantra. No observance of the Five Tantric Trainings...no Tantra.

First Tantric Training

Pānāti-pāta veramani sikkā padam samādiyami.

I take the training to not kill living beings.

Do not take life. Respect the wish to live and to be happy that is present in all beings. This does not mean that we must become vegetarians or vegans. It means that we don’t need to use fly spray in our houses or step on spiders simply because we don’t like them. It means that we give life our respect and to treat every living being we come into contact with with Metta. We treat every being that we meet in life exactly as we want to be treated. There is the truism that if you treat life with gentleness that it will for the vast majority of the time treat you the same way. We minimise as much as possible the negative impact we have on the lives of others.

We don’t engage in killing or cruelty for that matter. There is no keeping of animals in bad conditions or doing what a brother of mine did as a child. We lived in rural Queensland and there was a rooster in a cage and every day on the way to school we would walk past this rooster...my brother had plucked the back end of the rooster before it was moved. The rooster couldn’t escape and my brother simply inflicted pain because he could.

There is a very simple reason why this Tantra does not insist that vegetarianism is essential to observing this Training: there is a strong tendency for  fanaticism to develop in vegetarianism. Veganism in particular seems to attract the evangelists and fanatics. Fanaticism in any shape or form has no place in either this Tantra or Buddhism. Fantaticism is Wrong View, you are becoming incredibly attached to something. Given the vehemence of the evangelism that some Vegans engage in, there has to be a deep attachment to the idea that they are right and anyone not engaging in Veganism is wrong.

The Vegan movement as present in social media is, with thoughtful examination, evangelising something that has a clearly unhealthy aspect to it. Often their facts for sources of protein are dodgy or outright wrong. So are their claims about animal products. To be vegetarian should be a choice, it should never be a matter of doctrine. If you want to give being vegetarian a try, then please do, there are any number of very good books and websites that will help you with it. Consult your family medical practitioner.

Meat is a fuel for the body. The consumption of meat has its place in our diet. It should in no way become a fetish. What I personally practice is a discerning consumption of meat. I am careful in the meats I consume and the frequency with which I consume them. As I have said before, I eat almost exclusively game meats. In my case that is kangaroo. Contrary to what is often claimed by our Vegan and food fetish friends, the kangaroo in Australia is only sourced from the wild. The animal is killed with a head shot...so not a lot of crumbed kangaroo brain on the menu (think about it). The animals aren’t farmed and thus pumped full of chemicals. Nor are they stressed due to being near other animals about to die. They are in the spotlight long enough for the shooter to take aim and then their lights go out...literally.

When I do eat chicken or pork or goat, I buy them from Farmers Markets and thus I buy my meat from the people who raise the animals and can tell me about the species of goat or pig or chicken. I prefer to be both an informed and discriminating consumer. There is a growing movement to preserve rare breeds of meat animals. There is a truism that no species ever farmed by man has ever gone extinct. A meal of meat from the rare breed the Wessex Saddleback pig needed no condiments, the meat was delicious and delicious food doesn’t need to be seasoned to death. The more people consume rare breeds, the more they will be bred. So preserve biodiversity...eat a rare breed today.

I also engage in the same discrimination with my vegetables. There are other reasons for my preference for game and rare breeds in my meat and for rare varieties of common fruits and vegetables, perhaps the first is: they taste better. Often the food miles are lower and not unimportanly I’m not giving my money to some multi-national like Woolworths, I’m giving it to a farmer...directly.

Some of us have metabolisms that make vegetarian diets unworkable. Diet is part of health. A balanced diet is part of being a balanced person. If you are happy and healthy being exclusively vegetarian, then please continue. Please don’t take up a crusade to convert the world from its delusions.

 

Second Tantric Training

Adinnā – dānā veramani sikkā padam samādiyāmi.

I take the training not to take what isn’t mine.

Do not steal, fudge the books, milk the till, have a little something on the side or whatever else you want to call it. It is as simple as that.

Though this Training is somewhat more encompassing than simply pinching things that don’t belong to you. In being honest and ethical we encourage trust and trust is the core of this Training and life. We can steal trust by engaging in untrustworthy activities like cheating on our spouses or those we have joined in exclusive sexual agreements with. We can steal trust by being sleazy because no one will trust us near their sexual partners. We can steal trust by lying when there is absolutely no need to. Once trust is gone in any relationship whether it’s between parents and children, an employer and employee, friends, fuck buddies, husband and wife, you can bet your firm toned arse that the relationship is either on the rocks or as good as dead.

Without trust nothing works. Our entire civilisation is underpinned by trust. That money in your pocket is an act of trust. There is no way that the 30 grams of plastic with Amex or Visa printed on it is worth anything like what we trust we can buy using it. We trust the banks and we trust that somewhere there is something of value to back up the trusted value of the currency in our pockets. The Gold Standard and currency made up of precious metals was abandoned. We need trust to do pretty well anything.

The moment you abandon trust as what you are about your life is deeply in the shit. No one will accept what you say, no one will employ you, and you will end up deeply lonely. It is for this reason that very, very few of us ever announce that we are untrustworthy pieces of shit and that people would have to be brain dead to trust anything we say or do. We all like to be trusted.

 

Third Tantric Training

Kamesu micchara veramani sikkā padam samādiyāmi.

I take the training to behave responsibly in sexual matters.

This is where this Tantra clearly separates itself from Theravada Buddhist culture. In the Pali this Training says “Do not engage in sexual misconduct” and leaves it at that. The sutta’s refine things a bit more, they explicitly tell us not to engage in sexual relations with people under their parents care and the wives of other men. Until very recent times the intellectually impaired were cared for by their families and given that you are almost certainly not someone with an intellectual impairment it means that it is not o.k. to coerce someone with an intellectual impairment into a relationship or activity that they lack the ability to make an informed decision in regards to.

To be candid, I’m more than a little at a loss as to when the boring came into this Training. It certainly doesn’t fit into any translation of  Kamesu miccachara that I’ve ever come across and when asked, a lot of the Sangha will quite happily admit that the “wiggle room” that I see in this Training is there. Nowhere in this Training is there an indication that sex and sexual expression has to be only monogamous and heterosexual. In fact the one place that Buddhism doesn’t go is into your bedroom, well Tantra does, but we’re here to have fun, be utterly  awesome & frighten the terminally boring. Theravada stays away from the boudoir. So being Gay, Lesbian, Bi or just plain confused along with wanking, dogging, anal, oral, threesums, orgies, BDSM,and being a Furry (which is a fetish where people dress up as furry animals and fuck each other)  and Cross Dressing,  aren’t going to get you a one way trip to Hell.

I will offer another definition. Sexual Misconduct is what happens when you either break agreements between yourself and someone else, cause someone who is in a sexual agreement whether you are already in one or not, to break their agreement or to engage in what society regards as sexual predation....i.e. paedophilia or other sex crimes. So sex with the intellectually impaired is not on. Nor is cheating with someone already married or when you are already married...no matter how unhappily.

Polyamory, swinging, one night stands, open marriages, friends with benefits, voyeurism, fuck buddies, agreements where one partner can have a particular need or fetish met and where both people involved are over the age of consent and fully informed and happy with what is happening are not Sexual Misconduct. What they are is sexual agreements between consenting adults.

Given just how easy it is to find sex in our culture there is absolutely no need for you to not observe this Training. Tantra makes this Training rather easy to keep. The only things frowned on in this Training is cheating and criminal behaviour.

This Training also forms part of the larger Eight Tantric Trainings. Traditionally when the Five Trainings become part of the Eight Trainings it is changed from sexual misconduct to celibacy. There really isn’t any need for this. You can pursue the Eight Trainings and be sexually active. I won’t come around to your place with a baseball bat and beat the shit out of you if you want to engage in an orgy whilst pursuing the Eight Trainings.

 

Fourth Tantric Training

Musāvādā veramani sikkā padam samādiyāmi.

I take the training to control what comes out of my mouth.

Harsh speech. Also known as “being a backstabbing bitch – arsehole- turd- cunt.” I mean if you like being the topic in gossip, then knock yourself out and shoot your mouth off. On the other hand if you don’t much like being the favourite subject of the office bitch then the simple way of not being it is don’t engage in gossip yourself. There will always be bitches & dickheads whose main source of joy in life is backstabbing, but as a Tantric you would be wise not to engage in it yourself.

I am the father of an almost three year old. My mouth has undergone a major cleaning up in the last three years. The other night we were having dinner and my boy started chanting “Fucker” and because of my Aspergers I’m the one who has most likely dropped that word near him....go straight to the shit list, do not pass Go and do not collect $200.

Something else that we must consider is the effect of our words on others. It is my experience that if you want to be treated like you are brain dead, then by all means liberally season your sentences with obscenities. It is true that I do use profanities in this book, there is one reason that it makes it more accessible to you if what you are reading is “in the vernacular”. In no way am I pretending that this Tantra is an academic work. The other is the Aspergers.

Beauty and its cultivation should extend to our speech. Speak beautifully, make your voice an act of love. We all know wankers and harpies who have voices about as beautiful as a car alarm. As Tantrics it is our duty not to join them. Beautiful speech is speech that isn’t littered with obscenities and bad grammar. It is speech that conveys our thoughts and intentions in a natural and skilfull way.

Speak intelligently and thoughtfully and to your own level. One of the saddest things I have ever seen, and no doubt this sad tale is related elsewhere in this Tantra, is of a guy I knew who decided that the best way to impress someone was to appear intellectual...and the last thing this guy is is intellectual. So he’s trying to impress an absolutely gorgeous Singaporean medical student and is liberally quoting from Mark Twain. There’s about a month of intellectual daylight between them. Her eyes quite literally glazed over. Last I heard he was still single. He failed and continues to fail because he is trying to be something that he isn’t. His speech is in contradiction to what he is. He desperately wants to appear as “wind swept & interesting” as Billy Connolly puts it. Instead he comes across instead as a pretentious wanker. Had he engaged the woman as the gardener he is then he may well have gotten what he wanted. There is no tertiary degree to back up what he was trying to project an image of himself as.

Often it is our passion that will engage someone. Knowing your subject is half the fight.  If we have a serious intellect and the  qualifications to go with it then this is  immense help. As someone who has gotten his Tertiary education relatively late in life, I have noticed a clear difference in my ability to engage people and to speak beautifully. I know my subject. I am able to offer informed and considered opinions. Increasingly I do so without obscenities.

Fifth Tantric Training

Surā meraya majja pamā datthānā veramani sikkā padam samādiyāmi.

I take the training to avoid negative intoxication.

“Leave the booze alone son, leave the booze at home son, don’t take your booze to town son”. So it’s an awful paraphrasing of a bad song. Still this Training is very much about controlling our use of intoxicants. There is no need to completely abstain from intoxicants, which is what traditional Theravada culture practices, there is a need to control our use of them.

A question that needs to be addressed is: What exactly is an intoxicant?

Traditionally in Theravada it is very unambiguous....alcohol, cannabis and opioids are intoxicants. And this very much fits in with what the training requires. The key word in the training is majja it means maddens. We are to avoid that which maddens us, that which makes us mad...mentally unstable. Even in English there is the idea that some things are simply bad for you...look at the word properly : intoxicant. In the middle of the word is toxic.

Intoxicants are things that make us feel good.

Intoxicants are not equal, some are bad for you and others will kill you very quickly if you overdose on them. Others are a mix of bad and good. And finally some intoxicants are simply good for you.

 And this makes the training very personal. I have known people who simply could not handle their alcohol, two beers and they were just absolute idiots, completely intoxicated and out of control. Alcohol maddens them. Conversely I have known people who can spend all evening drinking and remain perfectly wonderful. I enjoy a nice glass of wine or a beer on occasion, never lose control, so for me alcohol isn’t a problem. I have been intoxicated on coffee, so utterly wound and hyped up on caffeine that I’ve hallucinated. Islam treats coffee as an intoxicant. Christianity doesn’t. In Hinduism there is the use by renunciants of Bhang, and Bhang is simply hashish (cannabis resin). Try using Bhang in the West and you face jail time if you are caught. The judicial system in the West treats Bhang as an intoxicant, Hinduism doesn’t.

Though to be entirely clinical, the moment you begin to leave substances such as caffeine, nicoteine and alcohol and even these in moderate amounts, you are beginning to venture into biologically bad places. All the narcotics are bad for you and the negative mental and physical effects of long term use of cannabis and opioids do outweigh the short term positives as perceived by the user. Though you will rarely, if ever hear this from a user.

Then there is the presence of the media in our lives. In recent years electronic media in the form of the Internet and online games have been the subject of much discussion, angst and hand wringing due to their involvement in the lives of young American males who have commited atrocities. The argument was that these young men had become so desensitised by the violence in the media they were addictively accessing that there was no connection in them of the difference between being a first person shooter in an online game and using an AR -15 on a class of six years olds at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut. They had become maddened by the media they were addicted to.

In the past the same argument has been made when it comes to splatter movies. My argument is that clearly for 99.999....% of us these things aren’t maddening, yet, unfortunately for these young males they were.

So to follow the logic, intoxicants aren’t just the usual culprits of booze and drugs. Intoxicants can be electronic media. I used the example of violent games in the paragraph above. Let me explore another idea. If you are using anything to avoid a problem, something that dulls the pain and makes you feel good, whether it is a soap opera, comfort eating, online chess or going for a run, it is an intoxicant. It makes you feel good. No matter what the eventual outcome is.

So far we’ve explored negative intoxicants. Let’s get more positive. There are positive intoxicants. Exercise...to a point, is a positive intoxicant. We have all heard about the people who became addicted to endorphins to the point where they exercised themselves to death. Let’s face it, they are a mercifully small percentage of us. We often lack the motivation, if not the time to exercise as much as we should, let alone to the point where it becomes bad for us.

That post yoga glow is a positive intoxicant. So is the one when you rejoice in just how good you are feeling and looking when the effort you are putting into being healthy shows results. That marshmallow type feeling after genuinely great sex is a positive intoxicant.

Positive intoxicants are those intoxicants which have a positive effect on our lives. The ones we can use in our Caganussati. It is rare for them to result in cancer or psychosis. It is common for them to result in toned, happy, content people.

The point of this training is to abstain as best you can from negative intoxicants and to engage in the positive intoxicants.

A year on

It is now well over a year since I began to practice Tantra and Yoga. The journey has been interesting in all sorts of unexpected ways.

The practice of Yoga has had a surprisingly magnetic effect in that it has drawn other things to it. My diet is different these days due to both the Yoga and the Salmonella poisoning I had in May of last year. My diet has remained Flexitarian with what seems at times an awful lot of fruit and veggies...most of them raw.

 The alcohol consumption is still way down from what it was before I met Selina and even  from just before I began to practice Yoga.

My exercise is way up. I'm exercising most days now. Feels odd if I don't, I suspect I have an addiction.

My practice of Metta has deepened. I'm not sure if this is entirely due to the Yoga, but I do know from past experience that fitness and Metta are a natural pairing. Yoga helps the entry into meditation. I suspect there is the connection between fitness and meditation happening. Because my body is healthier the mind has less problems with becoming calm and enjoying the meditation...there is less background noise from the body to distract it.

The quality of my life is better. In large part I think to a change in attitude. Yoga helps chill things out. That and the proximity of death in May certainly produced a change in approach to all manner of matters I used to consider worthy of getting all het up about and the vast majority of them aren't worthy of much at all.

I have reached a point where Yoga is a much a part of me as my meditation is. I like what it has and continues to do to my body. I also like self identifying as a Yogi very much. In the coming year I will read the Yoga Sutra's and explore other Yogic and Tantric texts.

Wonderful time to be alive.

A Reconciliation...of sorts

About 15 months ago I broke from Theravada Buddhism and engaged Tantra. At that time you may remember me giving a lot of "frank and honest opinions" and engaging in a lot of bridge burning. The anger has ebbed, the opinions have not.

I have been writing a book on Tantra using Metta as a centrepiece of the practice. Perhaps because it is what I am most familiar with, I have decided to use Theravadin teachings and meditations in this Tantra. Actually it's more of a porridge of traditions and teachings with Avalokiteshvara - Kwan Yin,  Sacred Sex and Yoga as well as what could be called The Cult of the Physical being very much central to the Tantra.

Whatever labels we may want to use, I have re-examined what I was so angry with. The teachings are valid. The ego's and politics of Theravada culture are not. My basic gripe with the teachings remain....they don't go far enough. There is an entire aspect of the practitioner that is wilfully ignored in traditional Theravada. There is a refusal to accept that a heart attack or Type 2 diabetes is going to put a serious kink in your ability to practice.

Perhaps  because in Australia the teaching is dominated by celibate monastics family life is devalued as an avenue of Dhamma. Not unlike my little boy deciding he doesn't like asparagas when he's never tried it. Those most dismissive of family life as Dharma are those with the least experience of it.

Once I re-read the teachings on meditation in Theravada with a years break from the bullshit I saw much that is valid. I believe that all the elements in the Tantra Dharma I practice and teach are compatible with and workable within a Theravadin context.

What I will NEVER return to is the real world groups with their penchant for politics. What I will be doing is pursuing and developing Theravada Tantra.

Proof Reading....input invited

Introduction

Tantra is about cultivating the beautiful, it is about cultivating balance in our lives. In practising Tantra we become and surround ourselves with the beautiful. We cultivate beautiful bodies, hearts, minds and surroundings. That is the essence of this book.

The Tantra within this book is, as Tantra always has been, unapologetically syncretistic. Specifically  there are Theravadin Buddhist elements, for although Theravada in the West is stiflingly conservative, there are meditations and  teachings in it that are very deep, powerful and beautiful and it is these that I use.

The  Five and Eight Trainings of Theravada Buddhism are, I feel useful in a Tantric context.  Periods of celibacy do have a place in Tantra. If you want to experience the full force of sexual energy then engage in celibacy. About a week in and you will be well and truly aware that there is a lot of heat and energy in the vicinity of your crotch. And when the time for celibacy ends the discharge of energy will lead to some awesome moments.  I think that unless you are asexual, that withdrawing from all sexual activity for years at a stretch is not particularly healthy. The exception to this I will concede is in the pursuit of a very specific goal. Enlightenment qualifies as just such a goal. Even then the monastic’s end up with all sorts of health issues that in all likelihood are derived in part from pent up sexual energy.

There are  Hindu elements in my practice in the form of yoga, and worship of Ganesh. There is also a significant modern Western element, particularly when it comes to illustrating the teachings. The Tantra in this book is also unapologetically positive and gentle, my practice for the last 25 years has been based on what are called the Divine Abidings, these are Metta (Loving-kindness), Karuna (Compassion), Mudita (Sympathetic Joy) and Upekkha (Equanimity)  and if something has worked for this long, I’m not about to change.

If anything, I more than likely leaning towards an ascetic interpretation of Tantra in that hedonism doesn’t really work for me. The overindulgence in food and alcohol messes with my metabolism and at any rate, runs counter to the Core Teaching of cultivating the beautiful.

There is no clergy here, there is no one separating you from The Divine or insisting that their interpretation of it is the only valid interpretation. The only valid interpretation is the one that has meaning for you.

I like my rules (I have high functioning Aspergers Syndrome) so the No Rules approach of NeoTantra doesn’t work for me, and I believe anyone else. The reason why religions have rules is to provide a framework so that the practitioner doesn’t get lost in their own preferences, and orgiastic behaviour in the form of excessive consumption of alcohol, meat and drugs  doesn’t appeal to me. Consumption of high quality alcohol in moderation is something I do like. Getting intoxicated to the point where I’m no longer in control or able to function sexually on the other hand is simply not me.

Group sex is something I do enjoy. Certainly there is room for Swinging and Polyamory in Tantra. Because Tantra is sexual in nature, and it is the role of sex in worship that defines Tantra as a path there is no guilt in regards to sexual expression, so long as it doesn’t fall into what is accepted by all as being criminal in nature.

Sex is such a powerful and fundamental energy that I think that to refuse to use it in our spiritual lives seems simply stupid.

You will find that what is presented in this book is coherent and mutually supportive. There is nothing left out on a limb. Meditation is supported by exercise and diet, exercise and diet are supported by the Five Trainings, the Five Trainings are supported by the Core Teachings, which in turn support the meditation. There is  an interconnectedness similar to a spiders web, everything here supports and is connected to everything else.

Perhaps what sets this book apart is the use of the Sufi Rumi and his teachings as part of the Core Teachings. Rumi, in my opinion at least, was a Metta adept. If I was ever to embrace a Guru, Rumi would be him. Rumi is all about Love and at times it is hard to distinguish whether he is talking about a Love of The Divine or a person. Because Rumi was Muslim, The Divine for him is masculine, however there are enough verses where Rumi addresses or talks about the Beloved, for The Divine to possess an androgynous nature. Rumi may have self identified as Muslim, however his true religion was Love, and this is why I use him in my practice. It is also the first time to my knowledge that Theravadin scriptures and teachings will be used in a Tantric context.

My background in practice is, Theravadin Buddhist. I was deeply involved in almost every aspect of Theravada and spent a fair bit of time in and around hermitages and monasteries for a quarter of a century before essentially running out of room within which to practice. To quote S. Dhammika “Theravada is hostile to all forms of beauty” and as I grew older and my first marriage began to die, I developed a deep interest in beauty. Because of Theravada’s lack of interest in beauty, it is relatively easy to spot both practitioners of Theravada and Tantra in a Buddhist crowd....the Theravadins often dress and look like shit, Tantrics are often stylishly dressed and possessed of gorgeous physiques. Theravadins are often quite threadbare and dour in expression, Tantrics will often glow. This is, in its own way, a shame, for there is a lot of room in Theravada for beauty.

 I am a Metta (Loving-kindness) meditator and it is through a desire to deepen my Metta that I came to Tantra. Metta is a powerful meditation and the way that I was wanting to incorporate it into my life simply isn’t supported in Theravada. I wanted to use Metta in pursuing weight loss, diet, parenting and sex, and it is the last activity in particular that Theravada at first balks at, and then gives an emphatic no to. It  isn’t particularly comfortable with the  use of the first three, but it is the use of sex in our meditation that Theravada emphatically denies. Tantra offered me the path to deepen my Metta practice and use sex as a tool to do so. A way without judgement and without obvious hypocrisy. Too many opinions were being offered by those with too little knowledge of what they were talking about. Once I realised this, the path I had to walk was obvious.

 In regards to parenting, it is obvious that  celibates have little or no relevant knowledge when it comes to raising a child and in the last year or so of my involvement with Theravada I had met my wife and parenting became very much something I wanted to do. I have found that being a parent has deepened my practice and changed me in ways I could hardly even imagined, let alone having done. The idea of listening to those with limited, if any actual experience of something as profoundly life changing as becoming a parent just seemed absurd. Once again, the monks and nuns who are serious about their practice will actually not offer opinions on parenting and if they see that parenting is actually deepening your practice will be openly happy for you.

And having been very much part of the Theravadin monastic scene, these people are the absolute last people who you should ever consider turning to for relationship advice. And a good monk or nun will tell you this.  There are enough sexual hang-ups, and outright dysfunctions in the Theravadin Sangha in the West to keep an Agony Aunt or Psychiatrist gainfully employed to the Big Crunch at the end of the Universe and beyond. Theravada is very much in the head to the point where the body is actively denied, there are no teachings on how a healthy body can empower your Metta practice, let alone use sex to deepen your Metta. In fact one teacher in particular, does so little exercise he has developed Type 2 diabetes. The Golden Age of Western Theravadin Asceticism is stillborn. It isn’t happening and instead the Sangha often lives in more comfort than you do and eats better.

I don’t naturally “do” quiet.  I do look at the world from a very different perspective and the very last thing I am is conventional  and when I’m happy, I’m loudly, openly happy and when I’m sad....  The Theravada group I belonged to throughout my first marriage simply couldn’t deal with such an unconventional, non-conservative personality. Theravada also likes to be monochromatic, especially in the personalities it wants to attract in the West. The ideal Theravadin is someone who is quiet, dresses and thinks conservatively and is in my opinion a new idea free zone. Theravada responds incredibly badly to experimentation, perhaps because the average age of a person in the West attending a Theravadin group that is not ethnically dominated is in their late 30’s or older. Also the Theravadin Sangha is the better part of 2600 years old, most of us grow more conservative as we age, and the Theravadin Sangha, I fear, is no exception.

Where the Theravadin Sangha is incredibly and valuable is in the very specific area of meditation. In some ways they are the meditative equivalent of free climbers and the very few who literally put everything on the line in their quest for Enlightenment are deeply valuable. There are a few who will talk about their struggles with sexuality and lust, Amma Thanasanti is one. If you are interested in taking your meditation into the bliss states, then these people are the ones to go to.

 My ultimate act of trashing Theravadin conservatism was leaving my wife of 20 years for a woman who was respectively 31 years younger than her and 19 years old at the time, my wife wasn’t even half my age, let alone my ex-wife’s. I must hold the distinction of being the only person to have been actively excommunicated from a mainstream Buddhist tradition.

The Buddhist Society of Victoria must have breathed a hearty sigh of relief when I finally took the hint and left. The loud, noisy one and his emotions and weirdness was finally gone...and they could return to their rightful silence and solitude. In the years since I left the Buddhist Society of Victoria it has been repeatedly put to me that I had the misfortune to be involved with a bad crowd. Certainly Theravada in its Asian homelands, with the exception of Sri Lanka, is remarkably open and tolerant. Theravada in Australia, however is prone to intolerance, cliques and more than a little Guru worship. Theravada and the Forest Tradition in particular in the West can be incredibly and irritatingly  arrogant and misogynistic. To be different is to invite exclusion. One day when I have the time I would like to research the involvement of people with Aspergers in Theravada.

I departed Theravada and embraced a whole new Dharma, one far more suited to my personality. Tantra gives me to room to be as loud and passionate as I want. The very last thing Tantra has ever been is conservative, and as a result it suits me perfectly.

Balance

When I was growing up there was a cartoon strip called Hagar the Horrible about a particularly inept Viking.. In one particular strip Hagar is absolutely gorging himself and one of his followers asks him out it. Hagar's reply is utterly brilliant:

"Everything in moderation....including moderation".

We must balance our lives. The intense hike is balanced by a deep sleep. The weights workout is balanced by yoga. The diet is balanced by the occasional bout of utter indulgence. The sex is balanced by periods of abstinence (however brief).

The exercise of balance is important. We may occasionally swing like a metronome, but eventually we slow down and spend more and more time in the middle....in a state of balance.

When everything is balanced nice things begin to happen. Blissful things. For all the apparent extremes of Tantra, balance is its ultimate goal.

Suppressing one entire and important aspect of ourselves is one reason why celibacy works for such an incredibly minute percentage of us. We need the release of sexual energy in order to bring things into balance.