If you spend any time delving into Tantra and its origins you’ll soon come across an apparent obsession with death. Many of Tantra’s favourite deities are associated with death, as is their iconography – with decapitated heads, cups made from skulls, garments made from severed limbs, ornaments and instruments made from skin and bones, as well as the consumption of blood, all regular features of Tantric imagery. As if that’s not enough, early Tantric practitioners were associated with various graveyard rituals, including corpse sitting – literally spending the night sitting on a corpse.
This macabre obsession with death caused many of those outside of Tantra to associate it with dark magic and the dark arts. A more sympathetic explanation was that Tantra taught its adherents to confront death and, through death, their own fears. Once they had overcome a fear of death, practitioners could rid themselves of other debilitating fears, and thereby live a more liberated life. But even this interpretation is a little too simplistic.
The true purpose served by graveyard rituals and death iconography was to bring awareness to the cycle of time. The cyclical nature of time is so central to Tantra that one of the Tantras is named after it: The Kalachakra Tantra – The Wheel of Time. Tantra recognises four phases to the passage of time: i) Creation; ii) Stasis; iii) Re-absorption; iv) Revelation. Within this cycle are the key components that cause the entire universe to come into effect – energy (Shakti) and consciousness (Shiva). The first three phases are all about energy. Tantra recognised early on that all matter is energy, and so energy is required to create and maintain everything that is tangible in the universe. The third phase is the reabsorption of energy. From this perspective, death is not an ending, it simply represents a recycling of energy. The fourth phase (revelation) is where consciousness comes into effect. This phase allows for either an expansion of consciousness, into non-dual awareness, or a contraction of consciousness, into individualism and egotism. It is this consciousness that helps to direct the re-creation of the manifest universe, and so the cycle starts again.
As well as learning to conceive of the entire universe as the manifestation of the eternal dynamic between energy and consciousness, Tantric yogis also came to recognise their own active participation on the wheel of time. Because the cycle occurs at multiple levels simultaneously, it can be experienced – in the rhythm of breath, the observation of an object, or even a train of thought. All things evolve through the same cyclical phases. And as non-dualists, Tantric practitioners realised that the process of breathing, observing, or contemplating, creates the universe through their own experience of it.
Now, obviously, if modern day practitioners of Tantra want to develop their awareness of the cyclical nature of time by contemplating death, death related imagery and iconography, then that is perfectly fine. But Eco-Tantra involves the conscious attempt of adapting ancient practices and using them to develop a more harmonious relationship with nature and natural environments. Rather than immersing themselves in death then, the Eco-Tantric practitioner can immerse themselves in nature in order to develop their own awareness of the different phases of time.
For me, this meant a multi-day wild camp. Three days without interruption or distraction, surrounded by nature, timeless and yet always in motion, constantly re-creating itself – death feeding life. There were times as I trudged across lonely rain-battered moors that my only thought was my next step – absorbing energy from the land to create my own movement. And there were times when I just wanted to be still, to observe and meditate, to be completely present in the moment.
Night time temperatures dropped to zero, and the second day gifted me six hours of none stop rain, so, in consideration of the old folk wisdom that it’s easier to stay warm than to get warm, I spent less time naked outdoors than I would have liked. But there’s something about the minimalism of wild camping and simply focusing on the little things that need doing – making a shelter, starting a fire, having a hot drink – that forces you to be present in the moment. It’s as though simply existing in nature is a form of meditative motion in itself. Although I needed to conserve the battery on my phone, I still managed to take some pictures and I’ve added some of them to the gallery. Hopefully you too can be inspired to try some Eco-Tantric wild camping, using the experience of nature to develop your own awareness of the wheel of time, considering your own role in keeping the wheel moving and finding ways to expand your consciousness into non-dualistic awareness – a sense of interconnectivity between your own energy and that of the world around you. And if you are inspired to give it a go, why not share your experiences on this site.
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