The Tao of Sex

A Steamy New Series Explores Chinese Zen Sexuality

Imagine you're a white woman, stolen and sold into prostitution to give not sex, but your yin energy. The John milks you by inducing orgasm. Strange? Not so bizarre given the reality of an ancient Chinese off-shoot of Buddhism.

My newest novel, White Tigress, launches a series of books set in China (1898) that delve into a small sect of Buddhism the Sect of the White Tigresses. These intrepid women came from all walks of life, searching for youth, vitality, and immortality. They used the power of sexuality to illuminate their minds and bring health to their bodies. At the very pinnacle of practice, they would be able to walk among the angels. This was not death, but a visit to the Immortal Realm, before returning back to Earth.

And, oh by the way, these women still exist today. They tend to practice in secret, but Tigresses and their male counterparts -- Dragons -- live and love in modern day Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Traditional Buddhists teach that one should merge ones consciousness with the eternal, like a drop of water merging with the sea. The Buddhist loses all identity of self and becomes simply an indistinguishable part of the eternal everything. Most monastic Buddhists live quiet lives of meditation and total celibacy, striving for a mental merging with the cosmos.

Not so the Tigresses or Dragons. They view sex as a powerful force in the search for Immortality. They even pity their Buddhist friends for abandoning such an incredible tool on the path to the Eternal.

But how does one use sex to attain Heaven? The Tigresses teach that immortality is reached by mixing a womans yin with a mans yang. Yin and yang can combine with such power that the mind is taken to Heaven and one can walk and talk with the angels. The man or woman who has done such a thing is called an Immortal.

For a woman, that means creating as much yin as possible. Since she keeps her fluids in her body, the Tigress orgasms for as long as possible: many hours or days, if possible. Orgasm creates more yin which will combine with whatever yang has been accumulated. Hopefully, the mixture is potent enough to carry the Tigress to Heaven. (As if a day-long orgasm wasnt heavenly enough!)

The men have it much tougher. Ejaculation means a huge loss of yang, taking as much as a year off the life of the unfortunate gentleman. Thus, a man must bring his yang to the bursting point, then stop just before releasing his fluids. The yang power is then mentally rolled back into the body where it combines with whatever yin he has accumulated. Legend claims the master Dragons have pulled themselves back from the brink as many as a 1000 times in one night. Eventually, enough yin and yang will be accumulated to create an ecstatic event. (Or perhaps their heads explode from the frustration.)

As in Tantric practice, a Jade Dragon performs daily exercises to maintain his stamina. Indeed, the best-trained dragons can orgasm without ejaculating. Such a man is believed to have become very female in his orgasmhaving the contractions without actual loss of power.

So what about this heavenly experience? Once the practitioner has gained enough yin and yang energy, s/he must mentally stir them together into the great yang circle and lesser yin circle. This was done by sexual stimulation and mental focus. Have you ever tried to meditate? To keep your mind quiet and trained on a single thing without distractions? Its enormously difficult. But the Tigress or Dragon had to achieve that state of mental focus while being sexually stimulated. Imagine trying to mediate while your partner licks your yin pearl! Yes, that was a normal part of a Tigresss practice.

Once the yin and yang circles were established, the practitioner would mentally enter the Immortal Realm. There were many chambers to this heavenly location. One of the first was the Chamber of a Thousand Swinging Lanterns. There, one would feel the expansiveness that is Immortality and watch in awe as lights danced before your spiritual eyes. Higher up were a myriad of different chambers were great beings walked, trailing celestial glory in their wake. An aside note: if youve ever seen pictures of Chinese angels or celestial beings, they will have ribbons flying about their bodies. Those ribbons actually represent the heavenly glory that follows in their wake. The Chinese equivalent of a halo.

In White Tigress, my hero is a jade dragon and his "partner" is the abducted Lydia Smith. Unusual circumstances force Chang Ru Shan (the Chinese always put the last name first) to buy Lydia from the brothel where shes been dumped. He believes he needs her white yin. And so they begin forced practice first with purification rituals, and then with the harvesting of Lydia's yin—done by sucking on her nipples or her pearl while she orgasms. Ru Shan soon feels the beneficial effects of her yin. Or was it more because of their conversations and the way she constantly challenged him to think differently than proscribed by the Imperial court? Remember, in Imperial China, the Emperor encouraged the Chinese to believe that whites were no better than large monkeys, living in colonies. Using a white woman in this fashion would be just like buying an expensive milk cow or perhaps a pet monkey.

Despite the difficulties, the two share their sexual energies, reach the antechamber of Heaven, and then…Lydia escapes. How Ru Shan comes to understand her value and overcome his cultural biases is the surprise of this book. That together they learn to love each other and attain Heaven is the message of my book.

The series continues with Hungry Tigress in June 2005 and Laughing Tigress in December 2005. In Hungry Tigress, my heroine is an American who has lived in Shanghai for a few years. Not nearly as na? as Lydia, she chooses to explore the Tigress practice with her Shaolin monk hero, Zou Tun. What I learned about the Shaolin is the subject of an entirely different article. Believe me, he has some difficulty overcoming his celibate inclinations. Well, maybe not a lot

But the book that is really becoming an amazing exploration is the final episode in the trilogy. The heroine of Laughing Tigress is Shi Po, the head Shanghai Tigress and a recurring character from the first two books. She is a leader who has lost faith in her own religion, until the heroes and heroines of the first two books attain Heaven before her. Lost and angry, her husband is forced to step in to save her from self-destruction. Together they begin the practice again from the very beginning. Searching through the bitter disappointments that face all married couples, they find a way to move beyond the awkwardness of their arranged marriage, to discover love in one another's arms. I wont tell you if or how they become Immortals, but I promise it will be a surprise.

As you read my series, I hope you discover what I did. That what initially began as an intriguing use for sex became a great philosophy. In a society where sexuality wasnt discussed at all, where womens entire lives were dominated by men, these amazing ladies developed a religion around sexuality and a means to attain the highest personal achievement. They became Immortals and they used the pulse-pounding, head-exploding, body-throbbing power of sexuality to do it! I dont know if I was able to fully communicate the awe I felt as my characters walked with the angels in this trilogy. But the message I wanted to convey was just this: We can all attain immortality. It is our birthright. And the shortest path to that place is through love.

Feel it, express it, enjoy it.