Are you relishing beautiful sense-objects?

Following on from my previous posts where I wrote about transformative pleasure and un-transformative indulgence, a reading of The Recognition Sutra by Christopher Wallis, shows that he reflects this in chapter 18 where he quotes the Vijnana-Bhairava “Wherever the mind delights, let your attention linger there. In any such experience, the true nature of supreme bliss may shine forth.”

This letting your attention linger is called relishing a beautiful sense-object, or feeding the goddesses of the senses, as a form of aesthetic awareness, rather than as consumption.

But what is meant by aesthetic awareness? With a background in Art, for me, in aesthetics there are usually seen to be aspects around valuing, reflection on, and appreciation for the experience. The three aspects most commonly referred to in the art world are the literal quality, the design quality, and the expressive quality (ie, realistic representation, compositional factors, and emotional arousal).

But how do these relate to tantra practices? Kerry Martin Skora, in his article on Aesthetic Tantrika, says we need to take account of the body and the senses as integral to aesthetic acts, “sensuous acts that blissfully awaken one’s consciousness, that allow one’s awareness to be penetrated by bliss.” Nevertheless, Gerald James Larson in The Aesthetic and Religious in Abhinavagupta’s Kashmir Saivism says, while religious (ie, spiritual) and aesthetic experiences are similar, a spiritual experience cannot be reduced to an aesthetic one.

So, how might we tell if we are having an aesthetic experience, that might be able to act as a vehicle towards a spiritual experience, rather than an indulgent one? To me, there are three key aspects;

First, how realistically we are able to explore our obsessions and desires, turning our attachments to these into opportunities for liberation through play, especially in line with the Trika Saiva model (taken from Abhinavagupta’s world-view) of the interrelationship between the aesthetic and the erotic in tantra. 

Second, reflecting on how well we utilise formal practices to gain control of the senses, embracing ritualised experiences as performance. 

And third, meditating on how far we are able to lose our ‘self’ in the practice. 

When it comes to my own personal practice and the Naked Meditations and Practices and Edging sessions I facilitate online and my face-to-face Tantra Workshops, run via the Scottish Tantra Group for Men Who Love Men the above three points will be useful markers to gauge which aspects of my practice have the potential to be transformative and which are sensuous and pleasurable, but ultimately indulgent. This is important (at least to me) as I have often struggled with how much of my sessions should be sexual in content and how much this connects to something that is more than just self-pleasure (which though lovely in its own right doesn’t, in itself, connect us to the divine).

For me then, my sessions need to start with a clarity of intention that plays with our desires and obsessions, while being wrapped around recognised and formal practices and rituals, that enable us to lose our self in the practice. This really offers me a clarity and focus and, hopefully, offers others clarity on what they can expect from my sessions.

So, let’s relish beautiful sense-objects, letting our attention linger, but as aesthetic and spiritual experiences of liberation, and not merely as a form of consumption.

Love to you all, Pink

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Email me direct if you are interested in mindful, trauma-informed, intimacy or spiritual coaching, or if you would like to join my new Pink Tantra Towards Awakening group for chat rooms, video channels and in-person workshops around tantra and intimacy practices robert.pinktantra@gmail.com

See my personal development / personality profiling book DISCover the Power of You published through John Hunt Publishing Ltd, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-78535-591-2

And for a bit of light reading, see my first historical fictional novel Fermented Spirits published through Austin Macauley Publishers, 2022. ISBN-13: ‎978-1398437159