Tantra is about desire, right?

Tantra is widely known as a path where one can embrace desires, expand pleasure, and follow ecstasy. This likely contributes to why, in some circles, Tantra has become synonymous with sex, orgies, and genital massage.

It is true that, unlike many other traditions, Tantric philosophy does not view desire as an obstacle. Instead, it sees desire as an opportunity—a means for liberation. While it is liberating to stop suppressing desires and release the conditioning that sex is shameful, this is not the kind of liberation that Tantric scriptures point toward.

So how, then, do desires become a means for liberation? The key is to become curious about the root of your desires. When you crave food, money, power, or sex, what is it that you truly desire? Often, we seek to bring something from the outside in, trying to fill an internal void—a void that exists because we are experiencing our essence in a contracted form. All desire ultimately boils down to this: what we truly crave is to experience the fullness of our own being.

Once we have realised the fullness of our own being, our initial desires - born from the delusion that we are incomplete—begin to give way to a different kind of desire: the desire to express that fullness into the world. Tantra holds this desire in high regard; it’s called iccha-shakti, one of the five powers of the divine. It is the desire of God to manifest through you, as you, in a way that is unique to you. Tantra invites you not only to transcend but also to embody that transcendence in the mundane, adding your unique thread to the universe's expansion.