Reflections on Tantra: An Exhaustive Collection of Articles on Tantra

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Prabuddha Bharata is in spreading the spiritual nectar of the Ramakrishna movement, the invigorating ideas of Vedanta, and the insights of India values and culture. Prabuddha Bharata also brings you inspirational reading material on a wide variety of topics of global interest.

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Desire Creates Distress. But many consider it to be bleak and distressing to have no desires. This convoluted world view leads to complications that keep one confounded in the world. How to transcend desire or at least its clutches has been the conundrum haunting humanity for ages. Some have found solace in altogether demonizing desire and by labeling all things desired as profane. This has led to a dichotomy of divinity and a pursuit solace in negation. Thousands of years ago, the problem of desire was tackled in a novel approach, the approach of creating a ‘dialectics of desire’. Nothing was demonise but everything was divinised. There was no God and Demon but only God and god alone. This retelling of the paradigm of the desired developed into a holistic spiritual path called the tantra. Much like its etymological origins, tantra created the warp and woof of one’s including within its fold, both the mundane and the divine.

When we are being chased by ephemeral dreams of desire in this burgeoning age of consumerism, we need tools and rereading of the old ones, to counteract the flood of unbridled temptations to the senses. Instead of being victims to the fancies of the foes that are the senses, it would only be wise to act maturely and bring sense to the senses by channelizing them and their aims to the achieving of the divine at every moment of our lives. We being the year of 2016, the 12ist years of Prabuddha bharata with Reflections on Tantra by erudite monks and scholars from different regions and faith traditions across the world.

With this issue we increase the emphasis on ancient scriptures translating them into English in an accessible idiom. We also start a new column, Traditional Tales, retellings of ancient Sanskrit stories. Every month, you will be treated to newer vistas of ancient wisdom through the pages of this journal.

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