Life | tantra

What is life?

According to Tantra, life is a continuous process bound by space, time and consciousness.

Ask a hundred people 'what is life'? Everybody will answer differently, but everybody knows how to distinguish life form from non-life form. Even if we list out many names from insect, animal and tree kingdoms, still we cannot say that is it. There are some forms like virus, which qualify to be called living beings at some point of time and non-life forms at some other point of time. After consuming knowledge that has been accumulated for millions of years, even great scholars cannot exactly define life? Many of us feel we know about life. We understand and explain about life by its attributes like a system that reproduces, grows, exists between two points of time, etc. Some say life is a process that is capable of consuming organics and release gases and runs a metabolic process. Then another question props up, who metabolises and for what purpose? What about some processes that do not fit into this?

For some scientists, the core life is a genetic code. For some spiritual masters that core is soul or atma. For atheists the core come into existence automatically when tissues build up into superstructure and disintegrates with that. For the people of some religious faith, life is the creation of god.

For Tantra, it does not matter whether you believe in god or not. That is why Tantra does not bother about our source code. It does not recommend us to waste our time in finding answers to that. People who are obsessed with who are you and how are you are interested in such pursuits. Tantra, simply, is concerned with how are you? If you feel and experience it in some way at this moment, Tantra suggests ways and means to improve your feel and experience. That's all.

According to Tantra, life is a continuous process bound by space, time and consciousness. Our life is the present segment of a continuum. When you say a date as your birth day, that is only according to the conventional convenience. The journey of your present life starts in the womb of your mother as a tiny form. That is the form thrown into this world by the force of your previous karmas. From that point, the initial force of previous karmas and the new karmas we do in present life escort us through pains and pleasures for some time. Till our death the present form is bound by present consciousness, time and space. We exist even after our present life, but not in the present form and consciousness.

So, if you want to learn Tantra, it is to improve your how aspect, not to waste your time in what aspect.