Granted you want to go beyond ideas and beyond thought, but that takes years of practice. If you must think, think good thoughts, happy thoughts, and constructive thoughts.

In meditation what you are trying to do is simply get rid of your own junk. You are trying to move all the confusion out of your mind, all the heaviness, all the emotional upsets, all the impressions that you have picked up since your last meditation.

Be neither attracted nor repulsed is the message of Tantric Buddhism. Don't be drawn to something, don't run away from it. Just naturally accept whatever comes into life.

The purpose of all of this is not to walk around with new vocabulary words, but to cause you to speculate on the marvel of your own being.

Tantra is not sexual yoga. When the word tantra is used in the West, very often people immediately associate it with some kind of sexual yoga in which you use sex as a vehicle for enlightenment.

You'll notice all around the Hindu temples couples, statues and drawings, in various erotic forms of love-making. This used to give the British a lot of trouble because they were kind of white and uptight. It didn't quite fit. How could a temple of God be covered with pictures of people, in their term, fornicating?

I had a mother who was very developed psychically and spiritually. She was, in a way, an opposite of my father, a complete liberal, interested in woman's liberation before it was the fashion.