He Ancient Secrets of the Kama Sutra the Classic Art of Lovemaking
This book is a guide to having great sex in the xx-first century. It seeks to transform what has largely been reduced to instant gratification into a rather more than sensuous experience.
My motivation in writing this book is best summed upward by this response by Dr Alex Comfort (translator of the Ananga Ranga) to a reader in the New Statesman: 'Mr. Simon Raven finds sex an "overrated awareness which lasts a bare ten seconds" — so wonders why anyone should carp to translate the erotic textbooks of medieval India. 1 skilful reason for doing and then is that there are still people in our culture who observe sex activity an overrated sensation lasting a bare ten seconds...'
'Mr. Simon Raven' wasn't solitary in his manner of thinking. Someone recently said to me, 'All this seduction stuff is crap. Sex is hot and fast. When a king of beasts has sex the female knows it…' Except, we are not animals. Yes, information technology is possible to throw yourself on top of your partner and hammer your way to an ejaculation in a thing of seconds but, as journalist and writer Yasmin Alibhai Dark-brown says, 'there is a difference betwixt a fu*k and [an] experience'.
In order to elevate our fauna instincts to a more refined class of pleasure, I turned to the Kama Sutra, which remains a groundbreaking work thousands of years later it was written. The Kama Sutra, compiled by Vatsayayan some fourth dimension in the third century, is the oldest and most notable of a group of texts on erotic love from ancient India known generically as the Kama Shastras. The Kama Sutra goes deep into the art of making love, and shows how it can be sophisticated and hugely enjoyable. It offers every permutation of every act of foreplay and lovemaking. Afterward all, we as humans are the just species on earth capable of consciously creating and enjoying common pleasure. And it wasn't just momentary physical pleasure — ancient Eastern cultures believed that a stable society depended on a stable marriage and the hugger-mugger to a stable spousal relationship was extremely good sex. Matrimony was the path to heaven and sex was the vehicle to get you in that location, and therefore the Kama Sutra — and its young man manuals — were considered works of divine instruction.*
What makes the Kama Sutra stand up out from other similar texts is that in compiling the volume, Vatsyayan did what no one had e'er done before — he broke the ultimate gender myth. For centuries religious belief had held that a adult female did not have an independent source of pleasure, that her pleasance depended on that of the human — in other words, a woman's orgasm was the result of a man's orgasm. The Kama Sutra stated that not only do women have an independent source of pleasure simply that a human being is not fifty-fifty necessary to the process. This belief was so controversial at the fourth dimension that information technology created a huge stir; more importantly, it put the book on the map for all time.
However, every bit the centuries passed, the Kama Sutra got lost in the fog of prevailing attitudes and the mire of mistranslations. In the twentieth century, Freud reiterated the stick-in-the-mud idea that a woman can only attain orgasm through regular sexual practice with a man (an idea that the Kama Sutra had discarded almost 2,000 years agone) — any other kind of orgasm was of no real significance; in his words it was 'young'. So a woman'due south sexuality — that spans an incredible spectrum of pleasance, fulfilment and potential — was reduced to an undifferentiated entity that revolved around the instant gratification of the male. Everything else was dysfunctional. The result was a whole century of sexual angst. And fifty-fifty though we at present know improve, attitudes are hard to shift.
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Perchance the real deciding factor, if I had to pick 1, as to why I would like to introduce the Kama Sutra to people in the twenty-kickoff century is its linguistic communication. Far from the crudely misogynistic and downright abusive vocabulary that has come to exist associated with sexual practices, the language of the Kama Sutra (also every bit all the literature it inspired over the following 1,500 years) is characterized by a caste of refinement, dazzler and nuanced pleasure, which fifty-fifty extendsto the words used to describe women's genitalia — the clitoris is referred to equally the 'madan-chhatri' or the 'love umbrella', the vulva is the 'chandan-mahal' or the 'fragrant palace'. If the words that nosotros utilize define our actions, and then this is certainly a book that is very deliberately leading us away from the gratuitous violence of imagined passions or the ennui of stale sexual activity towards a world of pleasure where arousal happens i little nervus ending at a time. Every bit feminist Naomi Wolf has said, 'Just imagine how differently a young girl today might feel about her developing womanhood if every routine slang clarification she heard of female ballocks used metaphors of preciousness and dazzler, and every account of sexual practice was centred on her pleasure — pleasure on which the general harmony depended.' *
Alongside India, aboriginal China also had a prominent culture of erotic treatises. A few thousand years ago, borders were not quite equally abrupt equally they are now and there was a surprising exchange of information and ideologies betwixt the two cultures. Both viewed sexual activity and sensuality as essential to the homo condition. Both promoted the feel of sexual ecstasy as the vehicle to heaven. Both disseminated it equally a medical scientific discipline, teaching the healing and therapeutic effects of sex.
Of the differences, however, the well-nigh important ane according to me was that while the Chinese manuals concentrate on the sexual human activity (detailing the number of thrusts, levels of actual fluids, the length of fourth dimension for penetration, etc.) the Indian treatises focus on foreplay and seduction — how to develop the perfect mood before and after sex. Seduction was considered an art and, when practiced carefully, it benefited the mind, the trunk and the soul considering it gradually stirred up all the senses and activated the latent energy inside united states. Refinement was paramount — information technology elevated the human heed and prepared usa for better things.
So why did the Indian treatises value the arts of seduction so much more over the bodily act of sexual practice?
Let me posit a couple of theories.
Non but did the finer arts of seduction drag us from the level of the beasts, equally I've said, they were very constructive in harmonizing the sexual free energy of lovers so that the sexual deed became a mutually enjoyable experience. The ancients understood that men and women were completely different as lovers and if left to discover their own arousal there was almost no betoken at which their sexual energies would coincide.
Men'due south desires are like fire, starting at the genitals and moving up to the brain. They are easy to ignite and every bit quick to extinguish. They need very little encouragement to get in at total arousal and are content with instant gratification. Women's desires are like water, starting at the head and flowing downwardly; and similar water they take far longer to come to the boil and equally long to cool down.
The arts of seduction equally prescribed by the Kama Sutra — with all its hundreds of rules and rituals — were meant to bridge the gap betwixt the two sexes. They were meant to slow the man down and encourage him to accept his time over his arousal and at the same time give the woman enough fourth dimension and motivation to heighten her sexual energies and desires.
The goal of seduction was more than just a meeting of two bodies — information technology involved every single sense, beginning with the most erogenous zone of all — the mind. That, according to the Kama Sutra, is the commencement and end of the route to sexual fulfilment. And to stress this indicate — although the Kama Sutra invokes the blessings of Kamadeva (the god of dearest and desire) — the patron deity of the piece of work is Saraswati, the goddess of music, literature, learning; because, as everyone knows, a man who is culturally well informed, the i who can stimulate your mind is the most attractive human of all.
My other theory is that the Indian arts of erotic love and seduction were created by a woman. Very early on on in Hindu mythology, Kamadeva is killed off, incinerated by the neat god Shiva in a moment of rage. You lot may non have consciously considered this, but we are the just culture in which Cupid (or Eros) doesn't have a physical torso — he is ananga.
Afterwards Kamadeva's decease the gods convince his wife, Rati, to assume his duties. When she hears of her married man'south expiry, a heartbroken Rati tries to impale herself merely is dissuaded by the gods — the world cannot exist without love and desire. She agrees to carry on his very important piece of work for the time existence.
In the Indian context, playing Cupid is non as unproblematic every bit running around shooting honey arrows, it is a far more onerous job and involves teaching the refinements of the arts of love to interested parties then that they can exist practised properly.
As you will discover, there is null utilitarian about the Kama Sutra. It is not a book about sex, but rather a vade mecum on the arts of seduction; this is a book nigh finesse and sophistication, about passion and skill, almost the nuances of pleasure and depths of satisfaction — where arousal is a combination of physical intimacy and mental fantasy and everything is driven past an exquisite refinement.
Read more: Book review: A re-telling of Kamasutra past Wendy Doniger
In The Arts of Seduction I have fabricated a careful option of the best techniques of love and sex called from the wealth of variations and ideas for seduction that the Kama Sutra has to offer — whether information technology is the innovative codes for beloved messages, the effects of applying perfume to different parts of the trunk, describing the many different types of kissing, where and how to massage your lover's feet or what kind of jewellery to wearable during lovemaking—in that location's something for everyone here.
My main aim in writing this book is to make the idea of seduction function of everyday life. As Vatsyayan says, seduction is not an 'event' — it is not about 'doing' it for your partner, nor is information technology the exclusive property of people in relationships — seduction is for yourself, it should be a state of heed. Something that puts a spring in your step, a lilt in your voice and the fun into sex.
The Kama Sutra, although a treasure trove of the arts of seduction, is not an like shooting fish in a barrel book to read, with its obscure references, obsolete materials and impossibly archaic language. I have shaped the information I wanted to disseminate into short, self-contained chapters so that readers tin can dip in and out depending on what interests them at different times. I want the reader to treat this as a handy guidebook for new and exciting experiences. Each chapter ends with a section titled 'My Advice' wherein I advise ways in which to use some of the ideas discussed—to excite the mind, to share a express joy or to spice upward your sex life. Whether you determine to begin a flirtation using paan or stimulate your own senses with perfume, my hope is that this volume will irrevocably enrich your sexual practice life.
Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/the-vehicle-to-heaven/story-765kM3lFGH88dXwuG8HUcL.html