THE KĀMA-SŪTRA has Nothing to do with Tantra. The Kāma-sūtra is part of a branch of literature called Kāma-śāstra, or the science of pleasure. Its overall goal is the maximization of sensual pleasure as a valid end in itself. By definition, it is not Tantrik, because in the Tantra, the goal of pleasure, when present, is always subordinated to the goal of final spiritual liberation, which does not figure into the Kāma-sūtra. Simply reading the original texts will immediately reveal that they belong to a completely different class of literature. Nor do any of the public erotic temple carvings seen in India (such as in Khajurāho) relate to Tantrik practice.
>BUT TANTRA IS ABOUT DIVINE SEXUALITY, RIGHT?
Only if you are interpreting that phrase very broadly indeed. If we survey the Śaiva Tantrik
literature as a whole, we will see that sex per se is virtually absent as a topic. There is one lineage
group, however, the Kaula, that teaches sensual practices and has what we might call a “sexualized”
view of the world, seeing the whole of reality as the harmonious and joyous pulsating union of
various sets of complementary opposites.
In the original Tantrik sources, we do find some techniques for working with sexual energy and
using it to activate kuṇḍalinī, but we find absolutely no physical techniques aimed at prolonging
orgasm and so on. While there is such a thing as a Tantrik sexual ritual in the Śaiva tradition, it was
taught in only one text out of many hundreds, and it is there called a secret and esoteric doctrine meant
for a very few. (It is taught much more prominently in Buddhist Tantra, however.) The Tantrik sexual
ritual was primarily a meditative exercise, not a pleasure-maximizing exercise. For more on the
difference between original Tantra and the American new-age “Tantric sex” workshops, see the
conclusion. Those workshops are about spiritualized sexuality (not necessarily a bad thing per se),
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