Flesh-Eating Dakini, may I practice as you did.

Flesh-Eating Dakini, you show the way beyond the conventional views of women and tantrikas.

Flesh-Eating Dakini, I offer gratitude and homage.

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My relationship to the Flesh-Eating Dakini began with a remarkable story from the life of terton Jigme Lingpa (1729 – 1798 C.E.) where he gives advice to a non-monastic female practitioner who was an adept in the sexual yogas. This story is found in the book  Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary by Janet Gyatso [the entire relevant section begins on pp. 257; the footnotes in the original are numbered differently than in this blog]. The Flesh-Eating Dakini lives outside the traditional social role of wife and is a role model for all of asking what is it to wake up in the female form.

Before we meet this Flesh-Eating Dakini, I want to go further back (as if time actually existed) to another mention of a famous Flesh-Eating Dakini. While not explicitly mentioned in Gyatso’s analysis of Jigme Lingpa’s autobiography, the epithet Flesh-Eating Dakini could be a veiled reference to the historical yogini Niguma , who is said to have called herself Flesh-Eating Dakini in a fierce encounter with Kungpo Naljor (990 – 1139 C.E.) of the Shangpa tradition. My favorite version of the encounter is found here, and I repost it to begin our encounters with the Flesh-Eating Dakini and what she might offer.

Khyungpo Naljor Meets the Dakini Niguma
An extract from the life story of Khyungpo Naljor in the Golden Rosary, Lives of the Shangpa Kagyu Masters (Shangs pa gser ‘phreng) translated from the Tibetan by Nicole Riggs, to be published soon.

With five hundred ounces of gold on him, Khyungpo Naljor traveled throughout the four corners of India, meeting lamas and asking who had actually seen the Buddha. All panditas and siddhas said the same thing:  Naropa’s sister [some say, consort] Niguma, who dwelt in the three pure states, had received the Dharma directly from Vajradhara.

They all also said that no matter where one is, if one has sacred outlook, one will be able to see her face. But if one’s outlook is impure, she won’t be found no matter how hard one looks. Niguma truly dwelt in a pure state and possessed the rainbow body.  Khyungpo was told that she could be seen frequently in the great charnel ground of Kosaling with her entourage.  Just hearing the name of the dakini made Khyungpo weep and his hair stand on end.  He felt overwhelmed with devotion and immediately left for the charnel ground of Kosaling repeating the mantra Namo Buddha on the way.

Suddenly, the dakini appeared in the sky in front of him, at the height of about seven palm-trees, her body red-brown in color. She was wearing bone ornaments. In her hands, she held a skull-cup and hooked knife. She was dancing and displaying one and many forms.

As soon as he saw her, Khyungpo thought, ‘This is the dakini Niguma.’ He prostrated and made several circumambulations. Then he knelt down and asked for the pure oral instructions.

But Niguma shouted: ‘Hey, you, watch out! I am the cannibalistic flesh-eating dakini. HA! Flee now! As soon as my retinue comes, we will devour you!’

In response, Khyungpo simply made more prostrations and circumambulations and once again knelt down, requesting the secret oral instructions.

Niguma now said: ‘So you really want the mahayana oral instructions?! Well, you’ll need some gold for that. Have you got any?’

At this, Khyungpo presented his five hundred ounces of gold. But the dakini grabbed the gold and hurled it in the air, scattering it all over the forest. Seeing this, Khyungpo thought, ‘Oh, she really must be a cannibal flesh-eating dakini. She doesn’t even care for my gold!’

The dakini’s eyes darted about left and right, and her immeasurable retinue of dakas and dakinis appeared from the sky. Some in a flash created three-tiered heavenly mansions, some built up mandalas of colored sand, and others gathered the implements for a feast offering.

On the evening of the full moon, the dakini Niguma bestowed upon Khyungpo the empowerments of dream yoga and illusory body.

Next, she said, ‘Hey, little monk from Tibet, come on up here!’ By means of the dakini’s magical ability, Khyungpo rose in the sky to a height of about three yojanas. He found himself sitting on a golden mountain. Above his head, the dakini’s retinue was performing the mystical dance of the tantric feast, and from the four sides of the mountain flowed four rivers of gold.

Khyungpo looked down at the streams of gold and asked, Does such a golden mountain really exist in India, or did the dakini make it appear?’

The dakini sang:

Whirling in the ocean of samsara
Are the myriad thoughts of love and hate.
Once you know they have no nature,
Then everywhere is the land of gold, my child.

If upon all things, like an illusion
One meditates, like an illusion,
True Buddhahood, like an illusion,
Will come to pass, due to devotion.

Now, a dream will come to you through my blessings.

Indeed, Khyungpo had the following lucid dream:  He had gone to the realm of gods and demi-gods. He was being eaten alive by some large demi-gods when the dakini appeared in the sky saying, ‘O son, do not wake up.’

At that very instant, he received the instructions on the six yogas.

After he woke up, the dakini appeared and said: ‘No one else in India has ever received the complete yogas in one session.’

© Nicole Riggs 1999.  Reproduction welcome if not for profit and with full acknowledgement.

In my own understanding, it is this kind of encounter with a fierce female practitioner that acts as a catalyst for the male practitioner. There is much more to say about this and that will have to wait for another time. For now, I want to return to the Flesh-Eating Dakini and Jigme Lingpa.

Beyond offering the story of an accomplished female practitioner, the section from Jigme Lingpa’s autobiography about his meeting with the Flesh-Eating Dakini also provides historical evidence for the potential of gender stereotypes to transform and thus opens space for a broader range of female practitioners to find their way. In this alchemical move, Jigme Lingpa first brings forth and elucidates what could be considered a traditional view of women that has them without much agency or autonomy, and valued for their youth and beauty; the Flesh-Eating Dakini, and thus all tantrikas, is cast through the male gaze. Yet, as the autobiography progresses, Jigme Lingpa espouses advice to the Flesh-Eating Dakini that offers a vastly different view of women, their subjectivity, their accomplishments, and their potential for enlightenment in the female form.

Oh, Flesh-Eating Dakini . . . . . .

“Jigme Lingpa’s secret autobiographies offer another rare passage in Tibetan literature that alludes to (although again does not describe precisely) female mastery of sexual yoga, and especially a mastery that is attained in terms of female anatomy. In one of the lengthiest episodes of Dancing Moon, Jigme Lingpa speaks with intimacy and poetic tenderness to an unnamed dakini who comes to him for instruction in fulfillment meditation. His words of advice for her are clearly directed at human women, not at mythological dakinis, and it is likely that the passage represents an encounter he had with a real human consort, whom he dubs “flesh-eating dakini” as a kind of affectionate epithet.

“Actually, Jigme Lingpa’s teachings to the dakini begin in an anthropocentric vein, imagining her as the ideal female of male fantasy. Enclosed in a beautiful house, she is delicate and beautiful, wearing ornaments, relaxed and spontaneous. It appears that Jigme Lingpa is addressing his readers—male readers. Who will have her? he asks. She is the lover of all adepts, their “medicine.” Jigme Lingpa seems to be bragging when he informs us that he too joins with her in expansive union, liberating himself thereby from conceptual thinking and the five poisons.

“But as the allegory proceeds, it becomes less likely that men in particular are its intended audience. The male agenda evinced in the opening lines notwithstanding, Jigme Lingpa’s picture of the relaxed female seems to be meant as a role model for her. In the succeeding sections of the passage, all residue of male interest drops out, and it becomes clear that Jigme Lingpa is describing a practice for this person to do herself, to her own advantage. His account of the entrapment of the winds in the central channel and the melting of nectars is based on his own experience—he uses the first person—but it is for her (and his readers, male and female alike) to emulate. But most remarkable are the lines in which Jigme Lingpa addresses her directly and couches his description of sexual yoga and the accompanying lifestyle in specifically feminine terms.

“’Woman seeker,’ he calls her, recognizing her as an aspirant in quest of her own enlightenment. He exhorts her to abide in ‘the field of Samantabhadri’s spatial depths.’ These are explicitly feminine depths: Samantabhadri is the female counterpart of the male primordial buddha Samantabhadra. She connotes at least two kinds of places. One is the field of reality, the dharmadhatu, the basic state of the ground associated with the realization of enlightenment. Since the principal symbolic association of the feminine in tantra is emptiness, or space, Samantabhadri is an even more appropriate metaphor for the field of reality than is her male partner, Samantabhadra, although he often signifies this basic ground as well.[i] The other connotation of the ‘depths of Samantabhadri’ would be the bhaga, the place where she would ‘join with the hero of inexpressible awareness’ in a state of bliss-emptiness, as Jigme Lingpa puts it, and one of the principle sites in the body where she would be directing her attention during the practice of sexual yoga. Both senses of ‘the depths of Samantabhadri’ where she is to abide—and this is the key point—are the locus of her experience and realization of bliss-emptiness. Jigme Lingpa’s instructions in no uncertain terms case the female as the subject of sexual yoga.

“To abide in Samantabhadri’s depths with the hero of awareness, Jigme Lingpa tells the dakini, is far preferable alternative to having a ‘worldly sweetheart’ and engaging in ordinary sex. This could mean either that she should stick with yogic adepts such as himself, or, just as likely, that she doesn’t need a man at all. Rather, the hero of awareness is within her, and whether by that he means her own male elements and aspects, or, more generally, the awareness at the ground of everything, the implication is that she can have perfect satisfaction and liberation through the practice of fulfillment yoga, even on her own.[ii]

“This leads him to the social dimension of the woman’s predicament. Calling into question the institution of marriage, Jigme Lingpa maintains that to be without a husband and material trappings does not mean that she is unfortunate, or that she missed out on the key points of a woman’s education. She does not have to have a man to be happy, and it is a trap to think that marriage and possessions are the primary desiderata in life. These sentiments recall the early Buddhist emphasis on monasticism, which women recognized to be an effective and socially acceptable way to escape an unsatisfactory marriage.[iii] However, Jigme Lingpa is not advising celibacy or the nunnery for his dakini friend. Rather, he encourages her to employ tantric techniques and to practice diligently and with fidelity to her teachers. His closing allegory of the master archer drives home his message that she should aspire to be the epitome of Great Perfection behavior: she should live a life of autonomy and freedom, taking chances, wandering around, searching everywhere for those with whom she has a karmic link.”

This passage demonstrates that not only did women practice the sexual yogas, but that they were deep accomplished practitioners with lives focused on meditation and sadhana. In my imagination, the Flesh-Eating Dakini wore white skirts and had dreaded hair. Whether true or not, I know she had a fierce smile and brave heart. She was at home in her self. She was a consort of Jigme Lingpa. Or perhaps, it could be said, that Jigme Lingpa was her consort

Like the earlier story of the Niguma and Khyungpo, there are also hints of the deep relationality that is possible between female and male practitioners as they meet, relate, and share the dharma in various forms. This mutuality offers us further models for exploring the fullest potential of this path and for waking up in these embodied forms.

Now I’m smiling fiercely.

I am grateful to Janet Gyatso for her translation, her analysis, and dissemination of this story.

[to be continued]

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Notes

[ii] Klein 1985.

[iii] “Hero” (dpa’-bo) would denote a male, but 143.SM, p. 196, argues that awareness is neuter (ma-ning).

[iv] Often expressed in Therigatha; e.g. Rhys Davids and Norman 1989, p. 167.

When [a woman] meditates on my form,

If supreme pride in her innate divinity arises,

She will not be stained by sin,

Even if she kills a hundred Hindu priests . . . .

Even if she is pitiless, fickle, and irascilbe

And considers taking life for profit,

That yogini will remain stainless.”

~ from Miranda Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment, p. 41

Once there was a woman named Yeshe Dawa, “Wisdom Moon.” She lived a long time ago when people believed that in order to be enlightened one had to have a man’s body.

Wisdom Moon was so developed in her understanding, her compassion, her wisdom, her patience, her concentration, and her generosity—in all ways—that people came from all over the kingdom to seek her counsel.

Crowds sat at her gate. Finally all the monks and holy men in the kingdom gathered around her and told her, “Wisdom Moon, you are so close to being enlightened that if you had the male form, you would be fully and completely enlightened. You must pray to be magically transformed into a man. Please, for the sake of everyone, pray either to be transformed in this lifetime or to be born again in a man’s body, for the moment you have the male form, you will be a buddha!”

Wisdom Moon was quiet for a moment. She knew that monks and holy men meant well but that their vision was limited. Finally she addressed them. “Thank you very much, but I have thought about this matter for a long time. Worldly beings are always deluded on this account.

“Nowhere can I find what is male, nowhere can I find what is female. These are simply forms, no more separate from one another than a wave is from water. But since most buddhas have chosen to come as a man, perhaps it would be more helpful if I became enlightened in a woman’s body.

“Therefore,” she said slowly, looking at them each lovingly, directly, “I vow for all time, until all suffering is ended, in all worlds, for all beings, in all universes, I will become enlightened only in a woman’s body.”

Wisdom Moon did not achieve her enlightenment overnight. Some people are enlightened instantly, spontaneously; for others it is a long and arduous process. For Wisdom Moon it was a process that occurred over a period of time beyond calculation. Once she had vowed to become fully and completely enlightened, nothing could stop her or diminish her desire to be of benefit to beings. . . .

Then one day she was fully and completely enlightened. She was no longer Wisdom Moon or Yeshe Dawa, she was Tara. She had burst fully into bloom, imperceptibly, like a flower.

When I came back to the U.S.A., and continued my scholarly research on the feminine in the Tantric traditions, I was disheartened to find so few records of female practitioners, so little support of female practitioners, and so few sadhanas that were oriented towards the feminine point of view. What emerged in my practice was the discovery that my feminine principle has not always found enough mirroring in the sacred texts and practices to provide the energetic and concrete role modeling for an awakened feminine that I crave. These models, when offered freely and liberally, support the subtle energetic transformative processes that are at the basis of all Tantric sadhana.

My feminist critique could just be another form of ego clinging—actually, I know that on some levels it is a kind of shoring up of a gynocentric worldview—yet, I have also discovered that sometimes this feeling that I often live with is actually a sign of a kind of real imbalance, or perhaps even injustice. While I’m perfectly happy to let the sadhanas work on my ego, I’m not yet wiling to let my surrender to the practice fall into the space where “gender neutral,” or “the feminine is implied,” or “it’s all there [in that masculine figure],” stand in for true gender balance, a representative of balanced Tantric relationships. I need the gender-balanced imagery. I need the gender-balanced language. I need to feel and experience these positive female energies in my spiritual practice in order to work with my own feminine shadow and engage the enlightened aspects of my own feminine energies.

Given that the divine feminine and the embodied human feminine are so central to the Tantric path, the relative diminishment of these elements in the sadhanas is also quite detrimental to other women, especially at the crux moments when she might first encounter the Tantric traditions and are considering coming onto the path. This modeling is also a major support women to continue on the path.

Women are not the only ones who’s spiritual life is enhanced by the balanced inclusion of the feminine in Tantric practices: men too are drawn to this. In my own sangha, I have talked to men about this and some of them have expressed how healing it is for them to practice in a lineage that is radically inclusive of the feminine. It heals their mother wounds, some say. It balances out the injured parts of their own psyches and psychology. It allows them to come into balanced relationship with all aspects of the feminine, from the sublimely peaceful to the most wrathful. It allows the masculine in them to find the feminine, and then unite those energies in their practice. This is the goal of much of the Tantric sadhanas: embodied union of the Masculine and Feminine for the purpose of spiritual transformation. When the feminine is lacking, this transformation is more challenging than it needs to be.

If we are to aspire to what Rita Gross has described as an “essential claim of Vajrayana Buddhism regarding masculine and feminine principles–that the teachings and the practices involve and promote a balance of masculine and feminine principles in the phenomenal world,” (1984:180; emphasis in original) then we must also consider whether this claim (found in both texts and oral traditions) is indeed true and whether it can be found in our experiences of these sadhanas.

For me to still be asking these questions (two decades after Gross articulated some of them) implies that the questions have not been fully, systematically, or satisfactorily answered for those of us who are practitioners in the west (I cannot begin to speak for practitioners in other parts of the world in terms of how they might come to terms with these very questions).

So here is my offering, perhaps more for myself than anything else. If this is of benefit to you, if your practice opens or deepens as a result, then I am grateful. All errors are my own, of course.

May all beings benefit.

(to be continued . . . )

What is it to wake up, become enlightened, in a female body? Why does it matter? Why not just practice like a wild woman, and pray to wake up in a male body in our next life with a better chance of enlightenment, as many of the Tantric traditions claim?