Bastante desired women but he had figured out that he resented women who made him orgasm. Women who made him orgasm weren't listening to his body, it seemed like. Every woman he'd ever been with had made him orgasm, so he resented women. He deeply desired the company of a woman who would fuck him without making him cum. It was frustrating. This was tantra, at the beginner level.
Uphekkshanam means equanimity. It was a word used by the Buddha a lot to describe the ideal state of mind. A mind full of equanimity has no desire for things to be other than they are - there is no craving, and no aversion. Pure contentment, pure acceptance. No judgment.
Uphekkshanam is a state of mind that meditators aspire to, and largely fail to achieve. Meditators are good at concentrating, but they have not cultivated a nervous system that can handle deep equanimity. Overcoming the desire to move when your back hurts is nothing compared to overcoming the desire to pursue orgasm when your lover wiggles their hips a certain way... in the greatest of ironies, the sexiest, most sensitive people are the ones most easily pulled away from sacred sexuality into conventional, profane sex.
You see, real equanimity is a neurological state of physiological relaxation and peace that is cultivated by experiencing tremendous pleasure without reacting to it with craving, or orgasm. Tattoos and piercing can be said to be addictive because they also tap into deep states of relaxation and peace by experiencing tremendous pain without reacting to it with aversion. This tantric cultivation of nonreactivity touches us deep in our subconscious, where our sexual and survival urges reside. Meditation leads to conscious non reactivity, and it also cultivates a real sense of unconscious nonreactivity but this unconscious (somatic) nonreactivity depends upon a pristine content, or environment, to stay nonreactive. In other words, equanimity trained for exclusively in the monastery, or the tattoo parlor, fails us on the battlefield. Renouncing the world to be at peace is a far different beast than being at peace within the world.
Both pleasure and pain lead us into reactivity, and cultivating a path of nonreactivity that avoids both pleasure and pain can be said to be an aversion to the world of the senses, craving nibbana and rejecting samsara. In the fractal cosmos, where out-there recapitulates in-here, we crave the emptying completion of orgasm just as we crave the emptying completion of nibbana, and we do everything to avoid the ravenous hunger of unsatiated desire just as we avoid the ravenous hunger of insatiable samsara. Real equanimity requires a balanced attitude towards the world of the senses, adoring it without attaching to it, respect for it, devotion to it, and liberation from it as well. It involves controlling our instinctive reactions during pleasure and pain, and can be trained for through tantra(!) which might include sex. In fact, it must be trained for in this way, because the sexual urge overwhelms us on so many different occasions, and our collective failure to master the sexual urge - not through repression but through mastery - has led to an overpopulated planet full of insecurity, violence, and pain. Cultivating neurological equanimity through sexual mastery is the fast path to enlightenment - far superior to conventional sex, which cannot sustain people or planet.
There are three kinds of sex:
Procreational sex (creation of babies)
recreational sex (creation of desires)
transformational sex (creation of power)
My understanding is that forces of black tantra are blanketing the globe with satanic sex rituals in an attempt to cultivate more power. As this power is fear-based, it really has no strength against love. When transformational sex is used without compassion, fear runs things. When transformational sex is practiced with compassion, love runs things. We have to learn about tantra, and we have to practice proper tantra, because the dark forces are using it as much as possible, taking maximum advantage of our ignorance. We must overcome the powerful creations of fear with the far more powerful creations of love. In many ways, the orgasm compulsion has enslaved our species, and our sexual energy is being siphoned by parasites who have learned how to exploit and essentially harvest our sexual energy. We are literally breeding a slave race. Tantra is our birthright.
The sex drive is actually an orgasm drive, which can be overridden by bringing the sexual energy into the heart through the practice of compassion. Using willpower, which is manipura chakra (the stomach - think belly button), we restrain ourselves from the orgasm function within the context of sexual union. Another way of saying it is that while having sex, we simply rest. Fucking is actually a fight or flight response - its the ultimate survival mechanism, right? Think about what sex looks like when the fight-or-flight response is removed, and the psoas is allowed to release. Learning this tantra allows us to release the psoas while highly aroused, which leads to a very intelligent and sustainable tonus in the pelvic floor. This flows naturally into uddhiyana bandha, which softens the belly and allows energy to flow freely upwards. This act of will alters the pelvic floor in such a way as to allow the sexual energy to move upwards along the respiratory wave through the open belly all the way up into the heart. The sex drive may thus evolve into a love drive, with training.
The sexual urge is actually an orgasm urge, and yet this urge yearns to climb the nervous system's ladder to higher levels of intelligence, yearning to love and be loved, by bringing the sexual energy into the heart through the practice of compassion. In meditation, we learn to observe sensations without reacting to them - this is equanimity, and it actually rewires our nervous system. In tantric lovemaking, we learn to observe sensations without reacting to them - this is orgasmic equanimity, and it totally rewires the human nervous system at its most primitive level. What does sex look like when the orgasm drive is removed? It actually looks a bit goalless, like mere relationship for relationship's sake. This is the healing dance between the primordial opposites of yin and yang, this is the Tao, the Way - the interpenetration of opposites. Tantra. Contemporary talking heads call it karezza - tantric sex, sex without desire, sex without animalistic compulsion.
Once we recognize that we want out of the 'feed and breed' domesticated life of our lower nature, we tend to yearn for spiritual life, and so we attempt to renounce craving and aversion at the somatic level. But as westerners we are trained to yearn for sex, which is the ultimate craving. We cannot overcome desire without overcoming the desire to orgasm - and so we repress our sexuality. This is one very common way to begin spiritual life. At least for men.
But repressing our sexuality is really just a form of aversion. We are averse to sexuality, because it ruins our equanimity. But this is the key - sexuality doesn't ruin our equanimity, orgasm does! Potent and sustainable sexuality is ruined by orgasm, not sex. We can actually move away from orgasm by moving deeper into sexuality, but this requires real partnership and real discipline. Sexual discipline? Gimme a break!
Historically, people were always warned about the dangers of practicing tantra. You could go crazy, they said. What they really meant was then moving out of celibacy (or some kind of forced abstinence) and into sexual relationship could make you go crazy, because sex is so powerful and we are so pathetic. Think about it. How much crazy have you gone through due to the need to have a sex life? Enough to lose your cool, probably.
There is a better way. But it requires... friendship. Who would have thought?
