Cross-posted to Green Media News.
Let's face it - Climate Change talk is boring. Most people just don't get excited talking about things like "MRV" (the monitoring, reporting, verifying and reducing of greenhouse gas emissions across geo-political borders) and those who aren't on the front lines of the climate change action movement generally don't have the attention span to focus on serious talk like this... well at least, not when "Dancing with the Stars" is on.
The other day, I was at my day job, which admittedly has nothing to do with climate change action (although it does have something to do with the economy... I'm just happy to have a job), and while everybody claims to care about the planet, nobody I've been talking to here in Los Angeles seems to really care that COP16 is happening right now. I mean they may care... they just don't seem to have any interest in talking about it, or hearing about it. As opposed to the guy who was talking about his hoop-shooting adventures the night before... everyone was hanging on his every word.
I was bummed out for a minute thinking, "Wow, the planet is in peril, and nobody gives a shit." But these aren't bad people or even selfish ones. They're just living their lives, focused on other stuff. And it got me thinking: it's not their fault that they're not interested. We're just not talking about it right.
So let's talk about sex.
Even better... let's talk Tantra.
Why? I mean, besides that climate talk is boring to most people?
Because Tantra holds the key to understanding the secret behind progress and conservatism.
Tantra is part philosophy, part science, and part expressive art.
The root teaching of Tantra is that everything is energy.
Tantra has been controversial since it first hit the scene about 5,000 years ago.
Before Tantra, the ancient Yogis practiced a different kind of yoga where the point was "transcendence" -- the philosophy there is that the world is impure, imperfect, and only the spiritual realm is perfect, and we come from spirit -- so in order to connect with the divine, it is necessary (pre-Tantra) to transcend the physical realm through austerity and meditation practices.
Along came the Tantrics, who said, "Wait a minute... everything is energy here. And if God created the physical universe as well as the spiritual, then who are we to say God's creation is impure or imperfect. In fact, the physical universe IS the perfect manifestation of the spiritual realm." Therefore, according to Tantra, we are all divine, so in order to connect deeper with the divine spirit, we don't need to transcend the physical, we need to fully immerse ourselves in the physical.
And thus, all physical Yoga was born... including Hatha Yoga ("Ha-Tha" means "Sun-Moon" in Sanskrit) which emphasizes opposite action to master the life force ("planting the feet firmly into the ground, reach up and touch the sky").
Also born from Tantra were all those fun and dirty sexual practices, where the whole point of the Yoga is to reach the ultimate mind-dissolving orgasm which never ends.
One of the key teachings in Tantric sex is to hold back your orgasm. Why?
Well, think about it: Once it's over, it's over.
If you can prolong the pleasure and take it "just to the point" but hold back... the heat keeps rising and rising and rising.
One of the most common Tantric exercises is called "Yab-Yum" (or something like that) and it goes like this: You and your partner sit legs intertwined and your pelvises in close contact. You begin to breathe together, making eye contact, and kind of grinding on each other like grade school kids, but instead of ripping your clothes off and getting down to business, you just keep looking into each other's eyes... you just keep breathing together... keep grinding together... Yab-Yum.
Eventually you can take this to actual sex, and once you can master your life energies with your partner and not, um, "complete" the act uncontrollably, you can create an endless feedback loop of pleasure waves with each other until your consciousnesses merge into each other and beyond, to the archetypal energies of gender, and beyond that, to life itself, and ultimately to the very source of creation.
To know God... thru mind-dissolving, Tantric sex.
Quick Q: You're still reading, right?
Good. This is more fun than climate change talk isn't it?
OK so there's some information, and here's where we bring it home with commentary, in simple terms for people who care:
The COP talks are kind of like Tantric sex. Everyone's holding back for the Big O.
The developed countries are holding back on commitments to reduce their GHG emissions, because they like having sex just the way they do it now: hard and fast.
Developed countries have a lot of testosterone, and shooting out those greenhouse gasses feels great, because GHG emissions come from big powerful machines like power plants... A huge phallic symbol shooting out GHG orgasms day in and day out.
Developed countries can use some Yab-Yum practice and learn to slow down, and go a little deeper.
In a Tantra workshop, a developed nation would be paired with a developing one, and they would practice Yab-Yum together. The developed nation would look the developing nation in the eyes, and the two of them would breathe together, and maybe even grind a little bit. When the developed nation wanted to "complete" the act, it would hold back, and look deeper into the eyes of its developing nation-partner, and would connect with the divine beauty found there.
In learning to back off and go slower, the developed nation would ultimately be able to go deeper and farther... and accomplish even more than ever before possible.
The developing nations, on the other hand, are holding back from full-scale revolt.
Developing nations are kind of like foster kids: they're often left out of the action but when they complain they get punished even harder. So in an effort not to play the victim, they mobilize to do inspiring and truly moving things like thousands of people dressed in white saying prayers for the planet, or building huge pyramids of hope and presenting them to the negotiating body... but they hold back from what they probably really want to do and say: throw stones at us and scream, "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE THAT YOU JUST LET US FUCKING DIE LIKE THIS!"
With 20 million people impacted by climate change in Pakistan last year, for instance, and all the talk about how parts of Pakistan are host to anti-American terrorist training camps, we really have to start preparing for the inevitability of climate-related terror: terrorist regimes using climate inaction as a rallying cry for the recruitment and training of a new generation of anti-American (anti-Canadian, anti-Japanese, anti-GHG-polluter) terrorists.
Developing nations can benefit from some Yab-Yum practice as well.
In a Tantric workshop, the developing nation would be paired with a developed one, and would grow stronger in the process of joining together. The developed nation would grow more sensitive in the same process.
It would be awkward at first and maybe for a while, but in time, both partners would benefit.
Plain English conclusion:
The UNFCCC climate talks are focused on big brain activities, thinking with "the big head"... talking, moving commas around, defining words... maybe they should let the "little head" take over for a while...
If the parties to the COP could just take a break for some Yab-Yum? We'd probably have a deal a lot faster.