Tantrika: Traveling the Road of Divine Love - Hardcover

Nomani, Asra

3.02

49 ratings by Goodreads

9780062517135: Tantrika: Traveling the Road of Divine Love

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062517139 ISBN 13: 9780062517135

Publisher: HarperOne, 2003

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When I began this trip, I had jetted to the Best Western in Santa Cruz, California, to learn the secrets of sexual ecstasy. For a little over four years, I confronted dualities, and they confronted me. Hinduism versus Islam. East versus West. Male energy versus female. True spirituality versus false opportunism. I had to choose the values with which I wanted to live.

Tantrika tells the compelling story of a woman whose world travels and spiritual journey bring her face-to-face with the most fundamental dichotomy of her identity. Born in India and raised in the foothills of West Virginia, Nomani moves away from her Muslim upbringing to pursue the Hindu and Buddhist path of divine love.

What began as a professional assignment for the Wall Street Journal to write about America’s hottest new fad, Tantra, became a very personal odyssey. While Tantra is popularly conceived as an ancient form of yoga or as "sacred sex," the author's Muslim parents warn her it is a cult of black magic. In her search for the full story, Nomani travels from Santa Cruz to the feet of the Dalai Lama in Northern India, from meditation caves in Thailand to the homes of orthodox Muslims in Pakistan. Nomani's journey through the geography of her own spiritual conflict is a journey of self-discovery, of reconciling her Hindu ancestry and Muslim upbringing. She confronts darkness in ways she could never have imagined, but ultimately finds the path of the divine within herself and all women -- all "tantrikas."

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About the Author:

Asra Q. Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal correspondent, has also written for the Washington Post, New York Times, and Time magazine on Islam, and has covered the war in Afghanistan for Salon.com. She has spoken about women’s rights in Islam on CNN, PBS, NPR, and the BBC. A Muslim born in India, Nomani was raised in the foothills of West Virginia, and currently lives in Morgantown with her son, Shibli.

From Publishers Weekly:

It was supposed to be a light, human interest assignment for Wall Street Journal reporter Nomani: Write about the fad of "Tantra sex." Initially, Nomani's memoir about researching the Tantra tradition reads like a hilarious expose. Instead of meeting enlightened swamis, Nomani encountered a slew of smarmies-exploitative male teachers offering private sexual healing lessons and advanced tutorials in finding her G-Spot. Beneath this expos‚ on the Tantra sex racket in California and India, Nomani tells the deeper story of confronting her own ethnic and spiritual roots. The Indian-born Muslim Nomani was scolded by her now-American parents for researching the dark art of Tantra, an ancient and mystical tradition based in sexuality that's been woven into factions of Buddhism and Hinduism. Nonetheless, she persevered with the research, traveling to caves of Thailand, the doorstep of the Dalai Lama and Tantra boot camps of India. Along the way she discovered her own hidden Hindu ancestry as well as a deep fascination with the true spiritual teachings of Tantra. In the memoir, Nomani learns to live compassionately and fearlessly in the face of severe challenges, including the kidnapping and slaying of her close friend and Wall Street Journal colleague Daniel Pearl by Pakistani extremists. While Nomani is a talented writer and has strong material to work with, her memoir frequently loses focus. It staggers between a search for identity and a search for Tantra teachings and ultimately doesn't satisfy either theme.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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