About the tantric temples of Khajuraho, the Yogini temples, & conflating Khajuraho with the Kama Sutra April 1, 2018 – Posted in: LaboratoryofVisionaryPlay – Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

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How did a place like Khajuraho, way ahead of its time come into being?

Traveling to sacred sites and energetic vortexes around the world , the tantric temples of Khajuraho have deeply touched me.  Every facade – wall, window, pillar, and ceiling – of Khajuraho are painstakingly carved with beautiful, sensuous, and erotic art. YES, really erotic.

The mysteries of sexuality, alongside other mysteries of the human experience are painstakingly scultped on the walls of the temples. The insides of the temples are rich in mystery of sound vibration and non-duality.  Tantric adepts from all over the sub-continent came to Khajuraho when the temples were alive with ritual and ceremony; priestesses, dakinis, and yoginis communing alongside priests, adepts, and seekers.

Khajuraho is surrounded by jungles, and traditional, cute little Indian villages, right in the center of the country. So how did a place like Khajuraho, way ahead of its time come into being?

For a site of Khajuraho’s importance, there is very little written, accessible history about the place.  The city was called Khajur – aho because of the khajur (date) trees in the city. The temples were built 1000 years ago, approx  between 950 & 1050  AD by the Chandela kings. This two hundred year period was also the climax of a thriving civilization that celebrated beauty and art. The city fell into disrepair after being invaded in the 11th century by Mughal rulers from the north.

Part of the temples were first rediscovered in the early 18th century by British explorers. On account of being remote, and surrounded by jungles, it took approx 100 years before other parts of the temple complex could be re-dis  covered and taken over by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

There are still many sites –  local temples and ruins from the same period of glory in the city that are little known. Here, threads between HIS-story and HER-story, including oral tales passed down from guide to seeker merge.

 

Gorakhnath, Osho, & Swami Ganga

Piecing parts of this beautiful puzzle together, I’m grateful to have met Swami Ganga, a treasure trove of local history, and also of tantric mystery in India. He’s also one of Khajuraho’s oldest & most respected guides. Sw. Ganga also spent time with Osho in Khajuraho.  Osho’s grandmother was from the village of Khajuraho, so growing up, Osho spent significant time immersing himself in the vibration of the temples of Khajuraho.  Sw. Ganga first met Osho in the early 60s, the youngest of 9 audience members in the courtyard of a small, local Jain Temple. He later spent time at Osho’s ashram in the 70s in Pune,  taking sanyas with Osho at a time when sanyasins were mostly viewed with suspicion in collective consciousness in India.

As with a lot of mystery in India, Osho’s revealed wisdom is important to feeling the whole-ness of the mystery again. In the words of Osho

“..if you meditate there, you will know what the Tantra masters were doing. They were creating in stone something that is felt in the ultimate orgasmic joy. It was the most difficult thing to do, to bring ecstasy into the stone. And if the stone can show the ecstasy, then everybody can move into that ecstasy easily. Khajuraho sculpture is not just to see, it is for meditation.
Sit silently and meditate for hours. If one goes to Khajuraho, one should live at least for three months there, so he can
meditate on each possible inner posture of orgasmic joy. And then, slowly slowly, the at-onement, slowly slowly, the harmony; then suddenly you are transported into another world — the world of those mystics who created this temple. This is objective art…….”

 

Osho verbally cited Gorakhnath, a little known mystic even in India as the reason why the Chandela kings built the temples of Khajuraho. Osho in his commentary on Gorakhnath called “Die, oh yogi die” called Gorakh one of the four foundation stones of Indian mysticism.

Bija temple

 The Bija, or seed temple, presently in ruins was one of the foundation stones for a thriving community of tantriks, founded by Gorakh living by the bank of the river. Threads of Tibetan Buddhist Tantra & Hindu Tantra meet in Gorakh – he’s considered one of the 84 Maha Siddhas of Tibetan Buddhism, and also one of the 9 siddhas of Nath tantra.

There are many other clues hidden in Khajuraho pointing to a time when spirituality did not exclude sexuality. I’ll do a future post on some of them.

Temple of the 64 Yoginis/Dakinis  & Tantra

The open air temple dedicated to the 64 Yoginis/Dakinis/Priestesses is one of my favorite temples in Khajuraho. It is one of the oldest temples. It used to be place where rituals & ceremony were performed by priestesses and holds rich symbology.  The central nave of the main altar, dedicated to the Goddess Kali temple faces the most prominent temple of the main complex dedicated to Shiva. Sunrise and sunset at the yogini temple is spectaular opportunity to feel trasnscendence & union masculine and Feminine polarity within and without. 

 

The Kama Sutra

In Khajuraho, I often saw street vendors selling little pocket books of poor-quality translations of the Kama Sutra to tourists.  I’ve been asked if there are connections between Khajuraho & the Kama Sutra, and have often heard  both words being used interchangeably.

Kama translated from Sanskrit broadly means Desire. Sutra means aphorism. The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian text which, is considered the primary Sanskrit work on human sexuality. It was written by Mallanaga Vatsyayana in the 2nd century CE. The Kama Sutra is a part of a greater treatises on Dharma, Artha, & Kama (Virtue, Wealth & Desire respectively) as constituent elements of a path to achieve Moksha (liberation). It treats the subject of a Courtesean with some depth.  The Kama Sutra is ahead of its time in the way it approaches, contextualizes, and describes how to best achieve ecstatic expression of life’s beauty. From CHAPTER II, OF THE WAYS OF EXCITING DESIRE, AND MISCELLANEOUS EXPERIMENTS, AND RECIPES of the Kama Sutra, translated by Richard Burton

‘Thus have I written in a few words the “Science of love”, after reading the texts of ancient authors, and following the ways of enjoyment mentioned in them.’

‘He who is acquainted with the true principles of this science pays regard to Dharma, Artha, Kama, and to his own experiences, as well as to the teachings of others, and does not act simply on the dictates of his own desire. As for the errors in the science of love which I have mentioned in this work, on my own authority as an author, I have, immediately after mentioning them, carefully censured and prohibited them.’

From my explorations (and I’m open to signs pointing otherwise), the Kama Sutra and Khajuraho are not obviously connected besides both subjects not excluding sexuality. However,  I am intrigued by the connection between the temple of 64 Yoginis/Dakinis,  Chapter III – On the  study of the 64 arts in the Kama Sutra, and connections with the Temple Arts. Explorations to be continued in a future post.

– Binoy