Recommended Reading: Tantra – Daniel Odier
Recommended Reading: A Spiritual Reading List
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Tantra – Daniel Odier
Daniel Odier, who has taught Eastern spiritual traditions at a number of American universities, founded the Tantra/Chan (Zen) Center in Paris. In addition to his books on Tantra, he has also published a number of mystery novels, one of which was made into an award-winning film, Devi the Goddess. His novels are published under the pseudonym of Delacorta. Of all the Tantra books Al has read over the past 20 years, Odier’s Desire and Tantric Quest are his top two choices.
Desire: The Tantric Path to Awakening. ISBN: 0892818581
According to almost all the great world religions including Buddhism, desire is an enemy blocking the path to enlightenment. Contrary to this, Daniel Odier maintains that desire is the only true path to liberation. According to Odier, the primary requirement for a spiritual seeker to fully awaken is simple, direct, personal experience. He refers to his disciplined approach as “micropractices” involving the conscious withdrawal from habitual activities for just a few seconds several times a day. There is no goal in this practice, no seeking to get somewhere or accomplish something, but rather the purpose is simply to be fully aware, fully awake, and fully present to your own divinity in the now moment.
Odier describes his Tantric path as “nothing spectacular…lack[ing] in the exotic, the magickal, the extraordinary….there was no ritual other than to breathe, walk, bathe… to look at the earth, the lichens, the trees, the leaves, common objects; to enter deeply into contact with life, reality.” He suggests that the “luminosity of existence” pervades everything including you. Odier received direct personal Tantric initiation from a Kashmiri Shaivite yogini, Lalita Devi, in the Tantric lineage of the Tibetan master Kalu Rinpoche which dates back several thousand years.
Yoga Spandakarika: The Sacred Texts at the Origins of Tantra. ISBN: 1594770514
This book presents translations of early Tantras (sacred Tantric texts).
Tantric Quest: An Encounter With Absolute Love. ISBN: 0892816201
In this story of his personal spiritual quest to find a Tantric master, Odier wanders through India where an unusual, sometimes disastrous, sequence of events leads him deep in the forest to yogini Lalita Devi. Over a period of months, Odier undergoes a series of trials, tests, and rituals of purification that culminate in a sacred sex initiation in which he experiences the awakening of the kundalini, and the joining of the divine forces of Shiva and Shakti.
Nirvana Tao: The Secret Meditation Techniques of the Taoist and Buddhist Masters. ISBN: 0892810459 Odier’s teaching emphasizes direct personal experience to reach enlightenment using visualization and meditation. Here he reveals secret spiritual practices of masters with whom he studied with at Buddhist and Taoist monasteries throughout India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Japan.
4 Freedoms Relationship Tantra
Al Link and Pala Copeland
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