After I was eleven, I ran residence on the final day of college and tore off my costume, actually popping the buttons off, feeling concurrently responsible and liberated. I placed on an outdated, torn pair of cutoff jean shorts, a white T-shirt, and blue Keds sneakers, and ran with my sister into the woods behind our grey colonial New Hampshire home. We went to play within the brook burbling down the steep hill over the mossy rocks, by way of the evergreens and deciduous timber, the water coloured wealthy red-brown by the tannins within the leaves of the maple timber. We might play and catch foot-long white suckerfish with our arms, after which put them again as a result of we didn’t need to kill them.
Typically we swam bare at night time with associates within the spring-fed lake close by, surrounded by pine, birch, spruce, and maple timber. I beloved the sensation of the water caressing my pores and skin like velvet, with the moon reflecting within the mirror-like lake. My sister and my good friend Joanie and I’d get on our ponies bareback and urge them into the lake till they had been surging up and down with water speeding over our thighs and down the backs of the horses; they had been swimming with us as we laughed, clinging onto their backs.
Wildness was a lot part of me; I may by no means think about not dwelling a life that didn’t enable for it.
When violent summer time thunderstorms blew by way of, as a substitute of staying within the outdated wood home, I’d run and dance outdoors within the rain and thunder, scaring my mom. I appreciated to eat with my fingers, gnawing on the pork chop bone and gulping down huge glasses of milk, in a rush to get again outdoors. I beloved gnawing on bones. My mom would shake her head, saying in desperation, “Oh, darling, please, please eat together with your fork! Heavens alive, I’m elevating a barbarian!”
Barbarian, I believed, that sounds nice! I imagined girls with lengthy hair streaming out behind them, racing their horses over vast plains. I noticed streaked sunrises on crisp mornings with no faculty, waking up outdoors, and night time fires with charred meat and many bones to gnaw on. This wildness was a lot part of me; I may by no means think about not dwelling a life that didn’t enable for it.
On the time after I first realized about dakinis, I began doing a meditation observe from the Tibetan instructor Sapchu Rinpoche that concerned Vajrayogini and the 4 retinue dakinis, representing the 4 instructions of the mandala.
Since I had solely heard concerning the dakinis a couple of instances in a cursory manner, I requested Sapchu Rinpoche, “What’s a dakini?”
He replied, “There are various sorts of dakinis, each worldly and knowledge dakinis. The knowledge dakinis are the identical degree as buddhas; the worldly dakinis can have enlightened facets but additionally worldly facets. Typically the dakinis function as messengers, typically as guides, typically as protectors. Within the dakini observe we develop a approach to entry the distinctive and highly effective vitality of the knowledge dakinis.”
I requested, “What sort of messenger is the dakini?”
Sapchu Rinpoche paused for a second, after which replied, “The dakini is a messenger of vacancy and likewise seems in desires to information the meditator, and he or she may seem in actual life as a lady with sure knowledge qualities. The dakini is a drive of reality: wherever we cling, she cuts; no matter we expect we are able to cover, she reveals.”
As I started to observe the dakini mandala, I started to sense an influence inside myself that I had not ever allowed myself to really feel. The thought of an enlightened, sacred female vitality that was additionally bare, dancing, and fierce was one thing I had by no means skilled, and it touched me deeply. I couldn’t put into phrases the impact it had on me, however it was one thing important and new.
The fierce dancing dakinis embody and activate the highly effective and transformative vitality of the female. When you concentrate on it, we actually don’t have that type of picture of non secular enlightenment in our world. We have now a determine just like the Holy Virgin Mom, who’s peaceable and nonthreatening, however we don’t have many reflections of feminine divinity which can be lively, dancing, fierce, free, and wild.
By activating the dakini energy inside us, we could have an internal useful resource that ought to by no means be underestimated. What we’re actually doing is taking part of the psyche that’s been relegated to the unconscious—the fierce, highly effective female who has turn into repressed—and we’re bringing that vitality ahead and exploring that vitality’s potential for enlightenment.
The dakinis are likely to push us by way of blockages. They seem throughout difficult, essential moments after we may be stymied in our lives; maybe we don’t know what to do subsequent and we’re in transition. Possibly an impediment has arisen and we are able to’t determine how you can get round or get by way of—then the dakinis will information us. If ultimately we’re caught, the dakinis will seem and open the best way, push us by way of; typically the vitality must be forceful, and that’s when the wrathful manifestation of a dakini seems.
Dakinis break open the shell of these standard constructions into an embrace of life wherein all expertise is seen as sacred.
Usually the desires of the dakinis will come at daybreak, or they are going to seem in cemeteries at sundown or daybreak—cemeteries being crucial symbols of the liminal house between worlds, the twilight hour, which is in truth why the language of the dakinis is a symbolic one referred to as the twilight language. As I wrote in my e-book Ladies of Knowledge: “Twilight is the time between waking and sleeping, the aware and the unconscious. It’s a time when the switchover takes place, so there could possibly be a spot, a crack within the wall of the ever-protective ego construction the place important communication from one thing past may happen. At daybreak we’re nonetheless past the limiting forces of the aware thoughts, but the heavy veil of deep sleep has lifted. We regularly discover the dakini at these transitional factors, after we are open to the ‘twilight’ language.”
One other vital side of the dakini’s female vitality is how they minimize by way of notions of pure and impure, clear and unclean, what you need to do and shouldn’t do. They break open the shell of these standard constructions into an embrace of life wherein all expertise is seen as sacred.
If we have a look at the early tales of tantric Buddhism, there are all types of examples of conditions the place persons are introduced with one thing they understand to be impure, after which a dakini seems and cuts by way of that and says, “Should you’re seeing this as pure or impure, you’re clearly not understanding the purpose.”
There’s a narrative of the monk Abhayakaragupta, an achieved Hindu scholar. He has not but turn into a Buddhist when a low-caste lady seems at his door, asking him to have intercourse. Horrified, he tells her he can’t contact her, by no means thoughts having intercourse, or he will probably be defiled. He chases her away, afraid somebody will see him speaking to her and he will probably be criticized for having contact with a low-caste lady. Earlier than she leaves, she tells him to go to a sure place to obtain tantric Buddhist initiation, however he doesn’t comply with her suggestion.
Then after he turns into a Buddhist monk, a younger lady involves him and presents him uncooked meat. He’s disgusted by this provide and refuses. Someday later, when he’s already in his tantric apprenticeship, he has a 3rd encounter. His guru’s feminine attendant, who normally brings him his water, involves his room and presents to do a tantric feast with him. When he turns her down, she orders him to take action, giving him one other probability. However he’s oblivious of who she actually is and refuses once more.
Then she chastises him and tells him that since he has failed to acknowledge Vajrayogini thrice, he has missed his probability to realize enlightenment throughout his lifetime. The knowledge dakini Vajrayogini despatched her emanations to him thrice, however, caught in concepts of pure and impure, he failed to acknowledge her. Her exams challenged his preconceptions and prejudices to acknowledge the dakini, however he failed. He was worshipping the divine female in his meditations, however didn’t acknowledge and honor her human manifestation.
You’ll be able to see right here how, though this occurred many, a few years in the past in India, it’s not that completely different in our lives now. We’re at all times encountering conditions wherein we’re liking or disliking issues. We like or dislike meals. We like or dislike locations. We like or dislike individuals. We predict one thing is pure or one thing is impure; one thing is soiled or one thing is clear. These beliefs of duality are all issues that the dakinis break by way of, even these golden guidelines of celibacy and vegetarianism practiced by the monks. They open and embrace all phenomena, recognizing all phenomena as “one style,” as equal.
Practising Tibetan Buddhism extra deeply, I got here to comprehend that the dakinis are the undomesticated feminine energies—non secular and erotic, ecstatic and clever, playful and profound, fierce and peaceable—which can be past the grasp of the conceptional thoughts. There’s a place for our entire female being, in all its guises, to be current.
Tailored from Knowledge Rising: A Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Female, by Lama Tsultrim Allione. Reprinted with permission from Enliven Books.
