Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

tice of brahmacharya (celibacy; the complete control of one’s senses). In
this way, shakti is directly linked to sexual activity, and the physiology of
masculine sexuality in particular. Essentially, shakti becomes manifest
when a person is able to renounce sexual desire and embody the energy
manifest in semen. As Swami Sivananda of the Divine Life Society, one of
the most highly regarded spiritual leaders of the twentieth century, puts it:
“The more a person conserves his semen, the greater will be his stature and
vitality. His energy, ardor, intellect, competence, capacity for work, wisdom,
success and godliness will begin to manifest themselves, and he will
be able to profit from long life. . . . To tell the truth, semen is elixir” (1984,
10–11). Semen itself is thought of as the distilled, condensed essence of the
body, as the body, nourished by food, goes through a series of biochemical
metabolic transformations whereby waste products are purged and each
successive metamorphosis is a more pure, refined form of the previous one.
In fact, semen is thought of as the purest and most powerful of body fluids,
derived from the juice of food, blood, flesh, fat, bone, and marrow; it
imparts an aura of ojas (bright, radiant energy) to the body, and ojas is, in
essence, the elemental, particulate form of cosmic shakti.
Although the physiology of this transformation is what matters in the
context of martial arts training and self-development, the embodied
process of metamorphosis is congruent with cosmological mythology and
astrology. The underlying model within this cosmology is the flow of liquids
and the dynamic interplay of dry solar heat and cool, moist, lunar fluids.
The waxing and waning of the moon are conceived of as the drying
up and death of the lunar king, but then his subsequent cyclical rejuvenation.
Rejuvenation is regarded as a process by which cool, moist, lunar
“semen” is replenished. Significantly, this cosmology defines the potential
energy of contained semen, and the embodiment of semen, in terms of the
negative consequences of its outward flow. In an important way the high
value placed on semen/shakti in the Indian martial arts is defined in terms
of the danger associated with indiscriminate sensual arousal, and one can
note, in the anxious rhetoric of contemporary religious teachers, the underlying
mythic symbolism of heat, waning energy, and the violent destructiveness
of sex.
Sivananda characterizes this condition in the following way: “Because
the youth of today are destroying their semen, they are courting the worst
disaster and are daily being condemned to hell. . . . How many of these unfortunate
people lie shaking on their cots like the grievously ill? Some are
suffering from heat. . . . There is no trust of God in their hearts, only
lust. . . . [W]hat future do such people have? They only glow with the light
of fireflies, and neither humility nor glory are found in their flickering
hypocrisy” (1984, 41).
Religion and Spiritual Development: India 465