Parvati Magazine February 2014 - Sobriety1 | Page 10

MEDITATION

THE DILEMMA
Of Ecstasy and Sobriety

I

n spiritual development, it is difficult to talk about ‘sobriety’ without talking about its opposite. Ecstatic states have long been a part of religious and spiritual literature and traditions.
The poetry of Rumi is full of images of ecstatic states that speak eloquently of his love for the
Divine. The Whirling Dervish dances that he created are celebrations of an ecstatic joining
of human with the divine. Even attending a performance by the Whirling Dervish Sufis can
give you a taste of this mystical union. The Tantric literature of Hinduism speaks to the joy
possible in the physical consummation of love. In the early 1960s, I remember an Anglican
Church minister speaking in near mystical terms of the union between man and woman being a reflection of the union between man and God. In Buddhist yoga, Tantric meditation
largely centres on the inner study of the veins, channels and drops which, once mastered,
bring about a state of blissful union, exemplified in the yab-yum figures. Thus, within the Buddhist tradition, Tantra is usually practiced at the mental level, less frequently at a physical
level.
Westerners may rebel against images of spikes piercing a living body seemingly without
pain or be repulsed by pictures of people carrying a cross wearing a crown of thorns or being crucified on purpose. Some experiences are scientifically plausible, like lying on a bed
of nails or walking over hot coals, but others are not.
By contrast, we have periods in religious history of ‘anti-ecstasy’ such as the period ushered
in by the Reformation and continued by the Puritan fathers of North America, the Calvinists
and others. Within some Theravadan and Mahayana Buddhist communities there is a complete embargo on alcoholic drink of any kind. But, within contemporary Western Buddhist
traditions, we have every permutation from complete sobriety to drunkenness tolerated
and even enabled by communities.