21st Century Tantra
“Tantra means weaving, and it’s about the weaving of energies in our life. The human organism and all of the cosmos is operating on these waves, flows, particles of energy— it’s learning to be able to sense that, perceive that, visualize that, and work with that consciously.”
—Catherine Pawasarat Sensei
Are your divine feminine and divine masculine on good speaking terms? This four-week course is for people who want to understand the role of Tantra in Vajrayana, the role of sexuality in spiritual practice, and the spiritual aspects of sexuality in daily life. We invite you to dive in with Catherine Pawasarat Sensei, a lineage teacher who has been practicing Tantra nearly three decades, for this one-of-a-kind exploration of Tantra in 2025.
November 23 – December 14, 2025
Sunday morning online classes 9:30-11:00am MT
focus area
Vajrayana
Buddhism
practice
Course & Optional
Home Retreat
Duration
Four
Weeks
Day/Time
Sundays from 9:30-11am MT
format
In-Person or
Online
21st Century Tantra
Our modern moment calls for integration and balance in ourselves, our relationships, our communities, and our planet. For the benefit of all beings, our 21st-century labor is a labor of love, a labor for the reintegrated health of this entire Earth and cosmos. That’s what 21st-century Tantra is all about.
Tantra is many things. Similar to Daoism, it’s an interweaving of our inner feminine and inner masculine natures. This work can be done alone, with a tantric partner, or with tantric partners, and that choice is yours. The key is to actively explore the energies without being distracted by attachment, aversion, or confusion. In this four-week course, we’ll explore the roots of Tantra in what is now modern day Pakistan, Tantra’s adoption and evolution in Tibetan Buddhism, some of the challenges of translating Tantra to our contemporary cultures, and how we can approach the practice today.
Our cultural conditioning can make understanding and integrating Tantra practice challenging. This course is also for those who would like to understand and their Vajrayana practice with the conditioning around sexuality and relationship they received from the tradition they were raised in.
What You'll Learn
Spiritual awakening is a series of questions, and in this course, we’ll explore a myriad of tantric questions together.
Twenty-first century living and practice: How does Tantra relate to my daily life in the contemporary world? What does Tantra mean for contemporary Vajrayana practitioners? How do we incorporate Tantra into our practice, and what different kinds of ways are there to do so?
Sexuality and Tantra: Do we get to have sex? Do we have to have sex? How does Tantra integrate with healthy sexuality? What does “healthy sexuality” mean?
Masculinity and Femininity: Are your divine feminine and divine masculine speaking to one another? What if you’re non-binary?
And, what does it take to be qualified to do this practice?
This Course if for you if:
- You would like to get greater clarity about the nature of Tantra in historical and contemporary practice.
- You would like to get clarity about the role of sexuality in spiritual practice.
- You would like to integrate your sexuality more.
- You would like to cultivate healthier relationships.
- You would like to better understand the causes of sex scandals in Buddhism, and how we can empower ourselves and our Sanghas to better equip ourselves.
- You would like to explore integration of the shadow around the first three chakras. – Checkout Money Sex Power free chapter/webpage
- You’d like to grow stronger contact with the divine feminine and divine masculine.
- You’d like to feel more comfortable with your non-binary sexuality in Buddhism’s heteronormative tradition.
Course Schedule
Sundays, November 23rd-December 14, 2025
Class Times (Mountain Time)
- Sunday, November 23 – 9:30-11am
- Sunday, November 30 – 9:30-11am
- Sunday, December 7 – 9:30-11am
- Saturday & Sunday, December 13-14 – 9:30am and 2:30pm
(approx 60-90 minutes)
The formal and participatory teachings for this course will occur on Sundays with a Saturday-Sunday flash retreat on the fourth weekend. Class times are estimates and may change slightly.
We encourage you to connect with sangha outside of class times to discuss and deepen your learning of the material.
Flash Retreat Weekend: December 13-14
To deepen and integrate your experience, the final (fourth) weekend during the course will also be an optional at home Flash Retreat (December 13-14). This can be done at home, or with us at Clear Sky Meditation Centre, in Eastern British Columbia. We highly recommend clearing your schedule over the weekend to focus on the retreat. Formal group sessions will be held at these approximate times.
- Flash Retreat morning session: 9:30am MT
- Flash Retreat afternoon session: 2:30pm MT
- Sessions will be 60-90 mins in length.
Meet the Teacher
Catherine Pawasarat Sensei
Catherine Pawasarat Sensei is a contemporary Dharma teacher, attendant, consort, co-teacher via Planet Dharma and co-founder of Clear Sky Retreat Center. In addition to Buddhist philosophy and its applications to daily life, Catherine also draws on generative living and universal spiritual tools including transpersonal astrology and Japanese arts.
She has trained daily with Acariya Doug Duncan since 1998 in an intensive spiritual apprenticeship that is rare in the modern West. She received lay ordination from Namgyal Rinpoche in 2003.
FAQs
Dana:
You may have come across this elsewhere in the form of “pay from the heart.” Dāna is a Sanskrit term meaning “generosity.” With dāna, we give as a mutual exchange of generosity. It’s our joy to offer this course, and we trust you’ll match our time, energy, and passion by giving an amount of money that feels good and healthy to both you and us.
The dharma has been built on generosity. No one is excluded for lack of funds. However, it is also extremely beneficial to give as much as you are able.
Typically people give in a range of $120-$500 USD for a course.
As we’re committed to ensuring everyone has access to the Dharma, please feel comfortable to give less if you are not financially secure. Another form of giving dāna is to offer service, and if you are interested in providing support in a non-financial way, we invite you to contact us.
If you are financially secure, we invite you to generate merit by providing more financial support to the Triple Gem. Contributions like these make the difference in supporting our teachers, teachings, and center.
Learn more about the practice of dāna here.
In a traditional model of in-person teachings, a retreat center or urban meditation center invites teachers to visit. In these cases the centers have infrastructure and organization costs to cover, which might be covered by an admin fee. For the teaching itself, dāna to the teachers is offered in a bowl. This honors both the sustainability of the teachers, and of the supporting center.
We’ve tried to recreate this approach online. The teachers’ time and the teaching themselves are offered on the basis of dāna, separate to the admin fee. With our dāna offering we are making a direct gift of generosity to the teachers to support their teachings and livelihood.
The admin fee* goes to support the infrastructure and organization necessary to support them to teach. As anyone with an online business will know, the costs of setting up good infrastructure to support effective teaching and connection online can be surprising.
Our admin fee changes based on the date of registration.
Register four + weeks prior: $80
Register two to four weeks prior: $100
Register less than two weeks prior: $120
*We also do not wish to exclude anyone from the Teachings, so if you are not currently in a financial position to afford the admin fee, please contact the course Registrar via registrar@planetdharma.com so we can support you to attend.
—
Below are a few of the work and benefits that your admin fee payment is supporting:
- High speed internet (to allow interviews and classes on-line)
- Online class systems (Zoom)
- Registration / admin systems (Eventbrite, Basecamp)
- Communication systems to keep everyone informed, share connection details, teachings and other resources (Mailchimp)
- Online storage (for example, Dropbox, to allow us to let students watch recordings, and to store and share selected teachings in other forms such as podcasts and video later, and Amazon cloud)
- Quality sound, video and editing equipment (both for live teachings and to provide good enough quality for later sharing as podcasts and video). We are regularly updating our equipment to improve your user experience.
- Online calendar booking system to allow students to book interviews
- Website hosting and maintenance for sharing upcoming courses, teachings, blogs and other resources.
We welcome any questions. May all our efforts be sustainable, abundant and for the benefit of all beings!
