Panch Mahavrat or The Perennial Path The Art of Living

Author(s): Osho Rajnish
Publisher: Osho Rajnish

Page 74

CHAPTER 7. TANTRIC PATH TO SUPER ENERGY
Tantra says, the first principle is to look at sex from a detached point of view. Do not consider sex as a friend or a foe; consider it as a thing to be enjoyed and not as a thing to be renounced or to be given up. Consider sex as a pure energy. Friendship and enmity are two points of view, they are not facts. The only fact is that it is energy which goes on flowing and spreading outwards, which demands another person, which demands an opposite. No sooner do you look at it as energy than your whole view-point is changed; because then you are neither anxious to enjoy it nor to renounce it. One who is anxious to give it up is a defeated exhausted and a harassed pleasure seeker. He is certainly a pleasure lover who now talks of renunciation. But it is not certain how long a person nauseated with pleasure can maintain his renunciation. One who is fed up with pleasure will also be fed up with renunciation. How can you save yourself from renunciation if you are fed up with pleasure? Renunciation is the other side of that same pleasure, it is like the other side of the coin. If you are fed up with one side, you will certainly be fed up with the other. It is essential to understand this point clearly because it is absolutely necessary to understand the transformation of sex energy.
The sex activity has two sides, as every other activity has two sides. For example, if you are hungry, you are anxious to eat, you may risk your life to get food. When you have taken your food, you completely forget about it. And if you have eaten more than necessary, you have to vomit the food cut for which you had become mad. A kind of disgust and a loathsome feeling is created in you for that very food for which you were prepared to risk everything. Every feeling of the mind has two sides - hunger and thirst - the condition of thirst and the condition to satisfy the thirst. Similarly when sex desire demands satisfaction, man becomes confused and runs after it like a mad person. Then sex takes the person to a climax, where energy is simply consumed, and the person returns and sinks into a deep pit of dejection. And now in that pit of dejection he is thinking or the disadvantages of sexual pleasure.
It is difficult to meet a sex-lover who does not think of renouncing sexual pleasures after enjoying them. The idea to give it up is due to the repentance resulting from sexual enjoyment. Renouncing is misery due to the waste of energy. All sex seekers, after satisfying the urge, experience feelings of renunciation, dejection, disregard and hatred. When the husband turns his back towards his wife and goes to sleep, that act of turning the back is very significant. The wife understands the implication of this. She always weeps behind the back because she thinks this man was mad a moment before and now the same person has turned his back. This person is now so dejected, exhausted and harassed that, it seems, he is not going to indulge in it again. In about twenty-four hours or forty-eight hours according to his strength and age, the person is again seized by that sex desire, again his mind will be ready for sexual pleasure and he will totally forget the past repentance.
Renunciation and pleasure are two sides of one coin. Every person is moving to and fro in the pendulum of renunciation and pleasure during the twenty-four hours. Some people stick to pleasure only and pass their time in seeking it. And some others hold to the other side of the coin, namely, repentance and take shelter in ashramas. So a person who has run away to an ashrama or a monastery will experience everyday the rising of sex currents in his mind. The demand will continue to come from the other side which is supposed to be given up but which is, in fact, only suppressed. It is possible to link both the sides of the coin, as it is never possible to give up one side entirely. At the most we can lower one side and raise the other. Both sides of the coin remain in the hand.
The person who renounces always experiences the attraction of pleasures and so always speaks against or criticizes it. He is not trying to convince you, but is trying to console himself. The hermits
The Perennial Path: The Art of Living
74
Osho