”THE SECOND SUTRA DISCUSSED YESTERDAY SAYS, ‘THE PURITY OF OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US. IN REALITY, KNOW NOTHING AS PURE OR IMPURE.’ IF NOTHING IS IMPURE, THEN HOW CAN THE TEACHINGS OF OTHERS BE IMPURE?”
Really, nothing is impure, but the teaching that something is pure and something is impure has to be discarded. Only in that sense does the sutra mean, ”The purity of other teachings is an impurity to us.” Nothing is pure and nothing is impure, but if someone teaches that something is pure and something is impure, tantra says that this has to be discarded. Only in this sense does the sutra say that ”The purity of other teachings is an impurity to us.” This is just a discarding. It is just saying don’t make any distinctions, remain innocent. But look at the complexity of life. If I say remain innocent, and if you then try innocence, that innocence will not be innocent. How can it be? If you have ”tried” it, it has become a calculated thing. Then it cannot be innocent. If you try it, it cannot be! So what is to be done? Just discard those things which create cunningness. Don’t try to create any innocence; you cannot. Just discard those things which create cunningness in your mind. This is negative. When you have discarded the root causes of cunningness, innocence will have happened to you. Nothing is pure or impure. But what is to be done then? Your mind is filled with distinctions: ”This is pure and That is impure.”
So tantra says, ”For us this is the only impurity. This mind filled with concepts of purity and impurity is the only impurity. If you can discard it, you have become pure.”
This sutra is meaningful in another sense also. There are teachings with very fixed rules. For example, Catholic Christian teachings or Jaina teachings in India are against sex.; they say that sex is impure, ugly, sin. Tantra says that nothing is ugly, nothing is impure, nothing is sin. Even sex can become a path; even sex can become a path toward salvation. It depends on you. It is not sex, it is you who determines the quality of it. Even prayer can become a sin – and sex can become a virtue. It depends on you. The value is not in the object, the value is brought to it by you. Look at it – at this phenomenon – in a different way. Tantra says that even sex can become salvation, but then come to sex without any notions of purity and impurity, good or bad, morality and immorality. Come to sex as pure energy, just energy. Move in that energy as if you are moving into the unknown. Don’t fall asleep: be alert! When sex brings you to the very root of your being, be alert. Don’t fall asleep, on the path. Be alert and experience everything, whatsoever is happening – the relaxation that comes, the tension that happens, the peak that comes, and the valley in which you are thrown back. Your ego dissolves for a moment; you become one with your beloved or with your partner. For a moment, the two are not there. The bodies are two, but deep down there is a communion and they have become one. Be alert! Don’t miss this moment in sleep. Be alert; see what is happening. This oneness is what was hidden in the sex act. The sex was just the outer core. Now this is the meaning – the central point. This is what you were longing for, this is what the hankering was for. This was for what there was the search – this unity, this dissolving of the ego, this feeling of oneness, this ecstasy of non-tension, this ecstasy of relaxation. This was the meaning, the goal, and this is what
you were searching for through this woman and that, through this man and that. You were searching and searching, but no woman can fulfill it, no man can give it. Only through a deep tantric awareness does the sex act completely disappear, and a deep ecstasy is revealed. So tantra says it is you: if you can bring meditation to your love, to your sex, the sex is transformed. So tantra doesn’t say that this is pure or that is impure – and if you want to use the old terminology of purity and impurity, then I will say that for tantra sleep is impure, alertness is pure, and all else is just meaningless.
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