Encountering the Dakini
When the great yogin Padmasambhava, called by Tibetans Guru Rinpoche, "the precious teacher," embarks on his spiritual journey, he
travels from place to place requesting teachings from yogins and yoginis. Guided by visions and dreams, his journey takes him to desolate
forests populated with ferocious wild animals, to poison lakes with fortified islands, and to cremation grounds. Wherever he goes he
performs miracles, receives empowerments, and ripens his own abilities to benefit others.
When he hears of the supreme queen of all dakinis, the greatly accomplished yogini called Secret Wisdom, he travels to the Sandal Grove
cremation ground to the gates of her abode, the Palace of Skulls. He attempts to send a request to the queen with her maidservant Kumari.
But the girl ignores him and continues to carry huge brass jugs of water suspended from a heavy yoke across her shoulders. When he
presses his request, Kumari continues her labors, remaining silent. The great yogin becomes impatient and, through his yogic powers,
magically nails the heavy jugs to the floor. No matter how hard Kumari struggles, she cannot lift then.
She draws a sparkling crystal knife from the girdle at her waist and slices open her heart center, revealing the vivid and vast interior space
of her body.
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Removing the yoke and ropes from her shoulders, she steps before Padmasambhava, exclaiming, "You have developed great yogic
powers. What of my powers, great one?" And so saying, she draws a sparkling crystal knife from the girdle at her waist and slices open her
heart center, revealing the vivid and vast interior space of her body. Inside she displays to Guru Rinpoche the mandala of deities from the
inner tantras: forty-two peaceful deities manifested in her upper torso and head and fifty-eight wrathful deities resting in her lower torso.
Abashed that he did not realize with whom he was dealing, Guru Rinpoche bows before her and humbly renews his request for teachings.
In response, she offers him her respect as well, adding, "I am only a maidservant," and ushers him to meet the queen of Secret Wisdom.
This simple maidservant is a messenger of her genre, the dakini in Tibetan Buddhism. As can be seen from her name, Kumari, "beautiful
young girl, the crown princess," she may be humble in demeanor, but she is regal and commanding in her understanding of the nature of
reality. Like many dakinis, she teaches directly not through words but through actions. Specifically, she teaches with her body, cutting open
her very heart to reveal her wisdom. She holds nothing back, sharing her nature with Guru Rinpoche himself. Kumari demonstrates that her
body is not as it appears. While she may be young, graceful, and comely, the object of desire, she shows her body to be empty and as vast
as limitless space; in her heart is revealed the ultimate nature of reality. And within its vastness are all phenomena, all sense perceptions,
emotions, thoughts, and cognitions as a mandala of deities arrayed in the vivid splendor of their raiment, ornaments, and jewelry, with
demeanor both peaceful and wrathful. Looking into her heart center, the practitioner is looking into a mirror, seeing the mind and the entire
world in dramatically different perspective. One cannot see such a sight without being transformed.
Her mind is the expression of the essence of pristine wisdom, the fundamental wakefulness inherent but undiscovered in all beings.
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Kumari represents the most significant class of enlightened female figures in Tibetan Buddhism, the wisdom dakini, In yogic literature and
lore, she and her sisters appear to practitioners, men and women alike, during rituals and during retreat to give teaching, direction, and
challenge in meditation practice. According to the Tibetan tradition, as a female she has a unique power to transform the practitioner and to
confer power. Her power comes from her lineage of realization, representing the enlightened nature of mind of both yogins and yoginis. Her
mind is the expression of the essence of pristine wisdom, the fundamental wakefulness inherent but undiscovered in all beings. Her female
body is vibrant with vitality, uniquely bearing and birthing that pristine wisdom.
Yet at first the great Guru Rinpoche, considered the second Buddha and known for unfailing omniscience and sophisticated skillful means,
does not recognize her. What does this mean? The biography of the great master is known in Tibetan as a liberation story (namthar)
that portrays the inner spiritual journey to enlightenment. The events in the biography are not historical fact in the Western sense. They trace
in mythic, symbolic, and visionary fashion the transformation of conventional mind into awakened awareness. This biography and others like
it in the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition are beloved blueprints for the spiritual journey of every practitioner.
Why does Guru Rinpoche not recognize Kumari as a realized dakini-woman? This event in Vajrayana lore is paradigmatic. In many sacred
biographies, even the most realized teachers do not immediately recognize the dakini, whose ambiguous, semiotic quality accounts for the
richness and variety of her lore. She may appear in humble or ordinary form as shopkeeper, a wife or sister, or a decrepit or diseased hag.
She may appear in transitional moments in visions, her message undecipherable. If she reveals herself, if she is recognized, she has
tremendous ability to point out obstacles, reveal new dimensions, or awaken spiritual potential. It is essential that the Vajrayana practitioner
not miss the precious opportunity of receiving her blessing. But when the time is not yet ripe, or when inauspicious circumstances are
present, the dakini cannot be seen, contacted, or recognized. When this occurs, the potency of the moment is lost and realization is missed.
Missed Opportunities, Skewed Interpretations
Nevertheless, the lack of agreement concerning her meaning and the attempts to interpret her according to various biases are
reminiscent of Guru Rinpoche's mistake.
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The dakini lore has sparked enormous interest in recent decades, as Western scholars and interpreters have endeavored to comprehend
her meaning. Speculation about the dakini has been an implicit part of scholarship on Varayana Buddhism from its inception as a Western
academic discipline. Nevertheless, the lack of agreement concerning her meaning and the attempts to interpret her according to various
biases are reminiscent of Guru Rinpoche's mistake. In an important essay surveying Western interpretations of the dakini, Janice Willis
concluded that there is a little consensus concerning her meaning, and "little precision in the various attempts to further delineate and
characterize [her] nature and function"; finally, she "remains elusive to academic or intellectual analysis." She has, for the most part, not
been recognized.
Certainly there have been fine preliminary studies of the dakini, beginning with the scholarship of David Snellgrove, who traced the
development of the dakini from her "gruesome and obscene" origins to her "more gentle aspects" in Tibetan depictions as symbols of
transcendent wisdom. Herbert Guenther shed light on her meaning in symbolic context, associating her directly with teachings on
emptiness and the spiritual goals of tantric Buddhism. Recent scholars such as Martin Kalff, Adelheid Herrmann-Pfandt, Anne Klein, and
Janet Gyatso have continued to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the dakini. Yet certain biases have inhibited further
development of an interpretation of dakini lore.
Two pervasive paradigms have prevailed, sometimes facilitating understanding, but finally inhibiting an appropriate explanation of the dakini
in the Tibetan Varayana tradition. The first, prevailing model is that of the anima in Jungian psychology, an archetype of the feminine closely
associated with the unconscious, embedded in the psyche of the male. The second, more recent model derives from feminist sources,
which treat the dakini as a female goddess figure who may be, on the one hand, a creation of a patriarchal fantasy or, on the other, a remnant
of some prepatriarchal past who champions women in androcentric settings. Each of these paradigms has obscured an accurate
understanding of the dakini in the Tibetan sense. The adequacy of the models is examined and assessed in more detail chapter 1.
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