AMBIGUOUS SEXUALITYtones, but is unschooled in philosophical dogmas. He is far more interested in
criticizing social and religious convention while celebrating his own idiosyn-
cratic life-style than in propounding a system of thought - or even, perhaps, a
system ofyoga.^21 Therefore, Kiir:tha's references to his sexual relationship with a
()ombl must be taken as accurate reports of the kind of life that he lived: sponta-
neous, unconventional, uninhibited. He may have been interested in spiritual lib-
eration, but felt that, in the words of Blake, '[t]he road of excess leads to the
palace of wisdom'. Thus, sex was not only a legitimate pursuit for a mystic, but
might serve as a vehicle for his or her enlightenment.^22
The problem with interpreting Kiir:tha solely on a literal level, however, is that
a straightforward reading of the songs yields too many ideas and images that
seem to point beyond themselves. Not only are there overt references to such
Buddhist concepts as Dharma, saqtsara, nirvar:ta, and the tantric coupling of
mind and prii!Ja, but any number of images in the songs, including the sixty-four
petalled lotus, the boat, and the moon, had acquired, by Kar:tha's time, well-
established symbolic connotations.^23 Read straightforwardly, these images do
not cohere much with the narrative of the songs, so if they are not taken symbol-
ically, we end up seeing Kar:tha as an lith century surrealist-an anachronistic
projection, certainly. If some of the songs' images are symbolic, it does not
require a great logical leap to conclude that everything in the songs is symbolic:
they are allegories for some kind of inner experience. In this view, Kar:tha is not
reporting on his life-style at all; rather, he is presenting a highly encoded
account of inner yogic practices that are followed by initiates into the Vajrayana,
of whom he is one. This certainly is the way he is read by his commentator,
Munidatta?^4 Reginald Ray, in criticizing Siegel's analysis of 'Bengal Blackie',
maintains that we must not read Kiir:tha 'in a purely naive or literal fashion, as if
the Vajrayana were saying that by indiscriminately indulging in sexual passion
and breaking social or religious conventions, liberation might somehow be
attained'.^25 Rather, Ray insists, we must understand that sexual imagery in the
tantras is a way of (a) expressing the bipolarity of the enlightenment experience,
where gnosis and great bliss are conjoined and (b) pointing out that all aspects of
the world, including the basest passions, are inherently pure, and not to be
regarded as different from enlightenment.^26 Thus, Kar:tha's references to his
sexual relationship with the .Oombl cannot be taken literally. The .Oombl, like
the Car:t<;lall, the yogin!, the <;lakir:tl - or, for that matter, any female mentioned
in Buddhist tantric literature - is simply a symbol for wisdom, which has been
considered 'female' since well-before the tantric period; witness the personifica-
tion as a goddess of the perfection of wisdom, Prajfiaparamita. So, when Kiir:tha
sings of making love to the .Oombl he is simply speaking in an evocative manner
of his 'embrace' of wisdom, his understanding of the voidness that is the nature
of all things, the 'empty' womb that is the source of all dharmas (dharmo-
daya).21 If the female symbolizes wisdom and its object, voidness, the male is a
symbol for the compassionate methods that must be conjoined with wisdom on
any Mahayana path. Kar:tha himself confirms this in the first verse of song