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THE SNOW LION BUDDHIST NEWS & CATALOG
308 pp., MEGRB2
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Meeting the Dakini: Meeting the Great Bliss Queen Book Excerpt
by Anne Carolyn Klein
The Great Bliss Queen, an important Buddhist figure of enlightenment, can help us to be both at one with ourselves and open to engagement with others. The following article is an excerpt taken from Meeting the Great Bliss Queen, by Anne Carolyn Klein.
Dakinis are depicted as moving through the open space of wisdom. They are known in Tibetan as "space-journeying ladies," or "females who travel through the sky" (mkha' 'gro ma). This term, here translated as "Sky Woman" to preserve the poetic brevity of the Tibetan, is also used in colloquial Tibetan (minus the feminine ma ending) to signify those other skyborne creatures, birds, whose two wings symbolize the method and wisdom that form a complete path to Buddhahood.
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The specific wisdom that defines dakinis is the nondualistic and vibrant knowing of a reality that Geluks call emptiness and that is described in a phrase unique to Nyingma as "beginningless purity" (kadag) or "primordial freedom" (ye 'grol). The dakini moves in space because she fully understands and is active in this great sphere of primordial purity and freedom. Like emptiness, primordial purity and primordial freedom are always present. Their spacious expanse is neither created through meditation nor placed in samsara by any form of divine intervention. It is simply in the nature of things. The Great Bliss Queen did not create this reality; she discovered it, as the practitioner of her ritual is also meant to do. |
Dakini Yeshe Tsogyal (Robert Beer)
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Jetsunma and Anne Carolyn Klein
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Sanskrit dictionaries, even of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, merely define dakini as a "female ogre" or a "female imp feeding on human flesh." In Tibetan, the phrase "sky- [or space-] journeying lady" is an abbreviation of a more elaborate term, "a lady who journeys pervasively in the element of the sky" (mkha'i khams su khyab par 'groma). The Tibetan term that can mean either "space" or "sky" figures significantly in the discussion of Tsogyel's symbolism, where it also means "womb," by implication a spacelike womb. Her spatial expanse is thus empty and occupied, simultaneously vacant and fruitful. She has discovered her skylike nature and on this basis continually extends her own capacity for enlightenment and helps others to discover theirs. The spacious realm she inhabits unites compassion and wisdom, conventional and ultimate, subject and object, conditioned things and the unconditioned emptiness. |
The great expanse that is both Tsogyel's womb and wisdom is, in the Great Completeness traditions, synonymous with the womblike sphere in which a Sky Woman is said to move. Her womb and other female organs are emblematic of enlightened wisdom and the state of Buddhahood itself, and are among the most important symbols associated with the Great Bliss Queen. We see here the valorization, not just of female imagery in general, but of female body imagery—a religious use of the very body that in some Indian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions epitomizes defilements to be abandoned. |
Rigzin Drolma (Anne Carolyn Klein) at the mark made by Khandro Yeshe Tsogyal's head on rock, near the cave of Jigme Lingpa at Samye Chimphug
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In Nyingma Great Completeness traditions, the womb imagery associated with Yeshey Tsogyel suggests a Buddha nature that is "not merely empty, but has the nature of clear light," a more positive image than the pure absence that is the emptiness stressed by Geluk. Here, the ultimate empty nature itself is filled with positive potential. "Clear light" here refers to a very subtle mind that can manifest, or be discovered, only when the coarser minds and the inner currents or winds (prana, riung) associated with them have settled or ceased. This is a settling process that begins with mindfulness and goes on to include mental calming and concentration. Commenting on this, the Nyingma lama Khetsun Sangpo observed that unless one has understood the non-contradictory relationship of emptiness and conventional phenomena, it is impossible to acknowledge this description of Buddha nature and the experience of primordial purity.
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More about the book . . .
"A groundbreaking and important book."—Jan Nattier, Indiana University
"There is an element of personal reflection in Klein's work that makes the book immediately approachable..."—José Ignacio Cabeózon, UC Santa Barbara
"Thanks to Anne Klein for taking on crucial issues and making superb sense of them."—Sandy Boucher, author of Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism
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More about the author . . .
Anne Carolyn Klein is professor and chair of Religious Studies at Rice University. She lives in Houston, Texas.
Books by Anne Carolyn Klein
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