[yathish]

DHARMA
Dharma means social and moral order, law, duty, right, virtue etc. It means righteousness or good ethical practices according to the prescriptions passed down from one generation to the next. Dharma designates the traditional established order, which includes all duties; individual, social and religious. Dharma is threatened and endangered by three great moral pitfalls: lust, covetousness and anger (Kama, Lobha and Krodha). Besides the general prescriptions contained in Dharma, every man has his own (self) Dharma (svadharma), which is determined by his place in the social structure. The correct working out of one's own Dharma above all other obligations is one of the primary themes of the Bhagavada Gita.


TANTRA
Tantra is a form of yogic practice leading to divine ecstasy through certain rites that emphasize the erotic and the forbidden. Tantra is centred upon ‘shakti’, the divine female power worshipped by the sadhakas (male practitioners) through the ‘shaktis’ named after the goddesses who are her earthly incarnation in the tantric ceremony. While traditional Hindu spirituality emphasizes abstinence from physical, emotional and tactile pleasures, as well as the negation of the mundane world, tantra cultivates and makes use of them.
In place of liberation through renunciation, tantra teaches liberation through bhoga (enjoyment). The core of Tantra is the feminine, generative, reproductive principle ‘shakti’, without which the world would not function.

TANTRA AND EROTIC SCULPTURE
To varying degrees Tantra touched virtually all of Indian culture, especially art, architecture, and literature. Tantra found an expression in the sensual sculpture of the Indian temples, which envisions the coupling of the male and the female as union with the divine and the total release of the soul in the godhead. The erotic is but a means to the eternal Brahman.
Another theory for erotic sculpture around the temple walls is that it is also a test for the devotee to see whether he has purged his mind of all sensual and worldly thoughts before he enters the temple.

[AjayKumar.Kataram]

nice info....