WIE: There's another point in your book where you describe the transformation of sensual pleasure into spiritual ecstasy.

MS: This is exactly how it happens. The ordinary pleasure is turned into transcendent pleasure by the application of insight into emptiness.

WIE: Okay. So there's this intense experience of erotic pleasure and you're completely concentrated in that.

MS: Yes, and then you're applying your insight into emptiness. You're deconstructing it. You're seeing it as empty. As you move through that process, you're actually removing any possible elements of attachment within it, so you're taking yourself out of the bliss as the experiencer. You're taking the object out of the bliss as its cause. You're taking even that interpretation of the experience as bliss, even the word "bliss," out of it also. As you deconstruct the different aspects of the bliss, it is transformed from ordinary bliss or pleasure into the transcendent bliss that is devoid of characteristics, and which cannot be described.

WIE: So does the bliss actually change or do you just peel away everything that you've imposed on it in order to illuminate what it was already?

MS: In the tantric analysis, you're removing the obstacles to experiencing it in its fullness. According to tantra, that transcendent bliss is fully present in every moment of experience, but it's covered over by what we have projected onto our experience, which are the demands of our ego upon that event.

WIE: One of the main topics of your book is male/female gender relationships and gender roles. You make it quite clear that in the practice of tantric sexual yoga, men are to worship women. Throughout the text, men are variously referred to as "devotees," "servants" and even "slaves" of the women, and in particular, men are advised that they should "take refuge in the vulva of an esteemed woman" and should even "be willing to touch and ingest every substance discharged by a woman's body."

MS: And lick any part of her body, if requested to do so!

WIE: That's an extreme degree of willingness to worship and to accept a decidedly subordinate relationship to the woman. It's literally treating the woman as a goddess.

MS: As a goddess, yes. The goal of tantric practice is to transform into deity. The woman's path involves realizing that she is, in essence, a goddess or a female Buddha. The man's treatment of her supports her in her emerging realization of her enlightened essence. If he were treating her merely as an equal or as a subordinate, she would have to struggle against his vision and his treatment of her in order to realize her innate divinity. Tantric women do not want to do that.

WIE: If embodiment of deity is one of the main goals of tantra, is it also a goal for the man?

MS: Oh, absolutely.

WIE: Does she then treat him like a god?

MS: He's also realizing his innate divinity and his Buddhahood, only he believes that the proper expression of his Buddhahood is to honor her divinity. In this worldview, it is the role of the female to channel enlightened energies, the energy of transformation, into the world in a powerful way. It is the role of the male to be the recipient of those energies and to honor them and their source. Some men may disagree, but that is the tantric view.

WIE: In your book you mention that in bringing the woman to arousal, "a man must be careful to incite arousal without detracting from her mindfulness." How does he do that?

MS: It's a question of virtuosity, of precision, of delicacy. He can't approach it in a sloppy or
WIE: A gross-minded kind of way?

MS: Yes. I guess delicacy is the best word for it. Not imposing himself and his advances upon her but eliciting her pleasure. It's a different orientation. It involves a great deal of attentiveness to her state of mind and her stages of arousal. It precludes the kind of aggressiveness in the sexual act where the man has a set of preconceived stages in his mind that he's going to get through before he reaches his goal, and the quicker the better.

WIE: That would distract her from her meditation?

MS: Undoubtedly.

WIE: You mentioned earlier that tantric union or sexual yoga is considered to be one of the highest, most advanced practices, requiring tremendous preparation, including intensive meditation practice, the cultivation of a sense of universal responsibility, compassionate motivation, and even the abandonment of the illusion of a separate, isolated self—all this simply to prepare to do the practice.

MS: That's right. And it requires solitude. It's something that you would do in most cases in a retreat type of situation.

WIE: What kind of retreat?

MS: The couple might go to the woods, to a cave or a meditation hut—someplace where they have silence and solitude. Because of the rarefied states of awareness that one would be cultivating, one really wouldn't want interruption at that time. One would need to concentrate and go into the experience very deeply.

WIE: So this wasn't a practice that couples were doing in the evenings after work and dinner?

MS: Once the practice was stabilized and mastered, they could do that, but at the beginning, while they were developing it, it wouldn't be like that. You hear about people going on retreats, for example, for six months or a year, where they would perform sexual yoga practice intensively before they would try to integrate it into their lives on a more natural, ongoing basis.

WIE: It's interesting to hear that this is how it has historically and traditionally been viewed because our reference point for tantra these days is something much different. Looking through the spiritual magazines, we see countless tantra workshops being taught by couples, which other couples attend together or to which singles come and pair up for a one- or two- week "intensive." Compared to the spiritual context you've described, from what I've seen these workshops seem to be based on more of a Western therapeutic approach.

MS: The main distinction, I think, between some of the modern, more secularized or Westernized versions—but also some Indian versions—is that in these contemporary approaches, the relationship itself is the focus, and they're importing elements and practices from tantra in order to enhance their relationship. Whereas in authentic tantra, you're using the contents of your relationship in order to pursue and attain enlightenment. So the focus, the goal, is completely different.

WIE: How much of what's currently going on around us in the West in the name of tantra do you feel actually lives up to the seriousness of what you have been describing?

MS: It seems that in general Westerners do not have the foundation that Eastern practitioners would have. For example, the practice of tantra in India, Nepal and Tibet presumes five years, on average, of study of the philosophy of emptiness. People who are considering doing tantric practice ask one another: "What philosophies of emptiness have you studied?" "What texts?" They'll question one another on technical points of emptiness. What Westerner has done that? The fruition of tantric practice is the union of bliss and emptiness. If you do not understand emptiness, you cannot deconstruct your emotions, and that is essential to tantric practice. What do you do with fear when it arises, or anger or intense desire or lust? How do you deconstruct that if you don't understand emptiness? As you said, it's not psychotherapy.

WIE: I understand that it's also a tantric practice to imagine you're performing sexual yoga without actually having a physical partner.

MS: This is for monks, because they don't want to give up their vows of celibacy. They consider it preparation for that time when they can practice with a consort in future lives.

WIE: When they're doing that visualization practice, is it actually something that they're engaged in on every level, so to speak? Do they provoke arousal in themselves?

MS: They're supposed to.

WIE: They're supposed to get sexually aroused and do this visualization? Even in the monastery they're doing that?

MS: Some of them. That's the impression one gets. They learn to channel that energy on their own. They're not taking it to a point of release, but arousing it and controlling it.

WIE: In addition to your study of the tantric texts, you also did two and a half years of field research in Asia. You mentioned that you met a number of yogis and yoginis. How many did you meet whom you felt were true tantric masters?

MS: More than a dozen. They weren't all teachers of it, but they were all serious practitioners and adept masters. I met some inauthentic ones, too.

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