Before reading this entry, ideally one has cultivated the perception of visualizing tantric deities and other ‘purities’ while diligently meditating upon the yidam and retinue in the two processes, generation and completion, of a Highest Yoga Tantra sadhana. Through these transic absorptions, one’s subtle levels of consciousness are employed, and eventually the experience of three empty conditions arise: no causation, no elaboration, and no conceptual significance. With this experience of the true emptiness, one’s body becomes a clear light liquefaction of bodhicitta and the objects of one’s surroundings individually transform into ‘luminous and empty’ icons of the resultant stage. If this happens collectively, or all at once, there’s a ‘dawning’ within and without one and this is Mahamudra—a simultaneous arising of the highest gesture, mudra or icon—lasting as long as one’s accumulation of merit and wisdom assures its presence over a counter volition. This union of clarity and emptiness arises molten bliss and other unspeakable ecstasies. Far from a world of suffering, Samsara and Nirvana co-emerge, and the tantric adept enters a continuum similar to a blissful transgressive state same as if one were consuming the ‘five ambrosia’ or nectars after ritual purification has transformed their impure, taboo sources. Vajrayana practice is staying in the zone of the samayas, one’s pledges to regularly meditate the sadhana, observe and develop post meditation experiences, not to part from union with the deity (be friendly!), eating or consuming the substances of one’s realty through the senses as blissful empty illusions, and supremely importantly, guarding one’s behavior by keeping the three sets of vows, particularly the fourteen root and nine branch Vajrayana vows.
I. Ground Zero Tantra
One of the most influential Sanskritists for the West, David Lorenzen, in his seminal work on the tantric Kapalikas, clarifies my title: “The meditation on the ‘Self as seated in the vulva’ is reminiscent of the Buddhist tantric maxim: ‘Buddhahood resides in the woman’s vulva.’ The term bhaga (vulva) also has a variety of meanings, especially in the Buddhist Tantras. Many of these texts begin with the words: “‘Once upon a time the Lord of all Tathagatas was dwelling in the vulvae of the vajra-women.’ This is an example of what Bharati calls afferent sandha-terminology—the use of object words, frequently erotic ones, to ‘intend’ metaphysical or mystical concepts. Here the commentators explain bhaga as the ‘void-element’ (kha-dhatu) or the ‘void’ (Śūnyatā), and also as Prajna, the female personification of enlightenment.”1. The base for efficiently becoming enlightened may well be in a place the strait-laced ritualist never dreamed of. Traditionally, Shakyamuni Buddha sat under that particular Bodhi tree because deep below it is a crossed-vajra (Vishavajra) akin to a world navel stone. It was the only suitable spot, one strong enough to sustain the ‘weight’ of a six year endeavor that would reveal the unique realization that is the Buddha’s Dharma. In tantra, Shaivist or Buddhist, different ‘bases’ are available from which one is able to achieve liberation. (For example, one such base is the Ālaya-vijñāna, the storehouse or all-base-cause consciousness, inclusive of everyone’s subliminal mental processes through countless lifetimes, used in the Hevajra Tantra.) As suggested above, however, the supreme base here is the very place the truth of suffering, especially the last, conditioned existence of endless rebirths, is born and dies.
Ground zero tantra, it might be said, is located in the mother’s ‘bhaga,’ womb, ‘secret organ,’ or the vulva, the empty space where human life begins. I worship the Mother as God, a local guide espoused near the Ellora Caves. Our very life always depends upon her. She’s our protector and guide who, if we love her, will return us to the bliss of our primordial beginnings. That connection, a Vajrayanaist might say, lies in the womb’s nature of absolute emptiness, out of which comes everything else. This is the wisdom of the goddess Prajnaparamita, whose truth dispels the sufferings of all beings by eliminating the naive belief in a substantive existence. Instead, our bodily form is seen as an expression of its emptiness, no different from its appearance in a mirror. By harnessing this truth through the highest tantric methods, cleansing and transforming the consciousness of our five senses, the nature of the five primordial Buddhas is recovered.
Here, to put our discussion of those advanced tantric methods into a proper framework, is the following commentarial ‘anatomy’ of it from a founding father of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism: “Unsurpassed Yoga Tantra is especially superior to the Yoga Tantra tradition because of entrance of the gnosis deity and similitude of liberation made into the path. Just as in order to clean a stained cotton cloth, it is necessary to wash it in its own [dyed] water, so in addition to the basis held [in the three lower classes of Tantra] to be cyclic existence propelled by the tainted perceptual aggregates that have flung out actions [with consequences] and defilements, [in Unsurpassed Yoga Tantra], all the habitual tendencies of the three [bardos]: birth, death, and the intermediate state [between death and rebirth] are massed together as one and made into the basis for purification [in the development process]; so it is singularly necessary to take the similitude of cyclic existence into the path with deity yoga as the means of purification. Since Guhyamantra (secret mantra) was revealed for sentient beings of the Desire Realm, and since they have four degrees of passion, there are definitively four classes of Tantra in order to teach the bodhi[-citta] path that makes use of [four degrees of passion] and does not renounce them. 2.
This suggests to me that practitioners with a lot of sexual drive, experience, and incumbent renunciation of compulsive behaviors, are rightly made for the Unsurpassed Yoga Tantra which speeds through ritual, conduct, and yoga tantras of glancing, smiling, embracing to ‘union of the two parts,’ for the sake of all living beings, to kill conventional lust with great bliss.
Seen from the Indian caste perspective, defining these four levels and processes, pronounced by Sakya Pandita, is a replete breakdown found again in the above source: “[Unsurpassed Yoga Tantra Revealed for] the Shudra (Laboring) Caste Unsurpassed Yoga Tantra was proclaimed using intentional terminology with instructions for what are otherwise disparaged actions, for the shudra (laboring) caste who eat everything without [consideration for] purity, and commit all [manner of] bad actions. Those who have few conceptions eat everything such as the five meats and five nectars without any discriminating thoughts, as revealed in the Guhyasamaja (Compilation of Secrets) Tantra: ‘In eating feces and urine as food,/ They become vessels for accomplishment./ Elephant flesh and horse flesh/ Are eaten as if food.’Also, as revealed in the Sarva Buddha Samayoga (Equality of All Buddhas) Tantra II, ‘By this Samayoga/ All things are to be performed,/ Which invariably includes such offenses/ As bad eating habits and bad behavior.’” 3. It’s written in the above commentary—ostensibly on the soteriological efficacy of Vajrayana compared to the two other Buddhist vehicles, Śrāvaka and Mahayana—that the more comely a sex partner, generally their color and shape, the quicker the smaller ecstasy of an ordinary orgasm is achieved (as is stated in the Abhidharma.) This same sexual activity, when placed on the Vajrayana path, is pledged to benefit all living beings by practicing loving kindness, the exchange of one’s non-suffering self for other’s suffering one, and culminates in a further objectless meditation on an ‘action-less,’ pure merit field, resulting in the ability to love all sentient beings. This attainment of Great Compassion yields the nondual emptiness and clarity which is the ecstasy of resultant Bodhicitta, actualizing one’s aspirant Bodhisattva vows. An accomplished Bodhisattva, keep in mind, continuously serves the greatest purpose simply by the purity of his or her example of the six perfections as witnessed by suffering sentient beings.
The above Abhidharma observation, within a discussion of the four levels of tantra—gazing, holding hands, embracing, and coitus—favors the ritual tantra recommended for Brahmins. It isn’t acceptable for the straight-laced caste to partake of bodily effluvia like urine, feces, uterine blood, semen and the like, openly. But amongst the lowest of India’s caste system, the Shudras, many of the Kapalikas ritual transgressions, like eating human flesh, even sex on corpses, and so forth, still goes on—granted, as I’ve heard it reported—in a very discreet ‘secret’ fashion. One reason it persists today, may be that participants know well the ecstatic, priapic and yonic benefits of consuming such transgressive substances. In this kind of ritual frame, prolonging ecstasy, big or small, allows time for the Great Mother to appear and bestow the highest blessings. These took place at Khajaraho, where next to the nagara-style temples built from 950 to 1050 (famously known for displaying graphic sex taken from the Kama Sutra) resides the earlier, only square ‘circle feast’ temple, which may be the first of the 64 (chatuhushashtihi or chaunsath) ‘yogini temples’ to be assembled. Shaivist in religious affiliation, this temple is presided over by Chamunda, whom my local guide called the ‘mother of tantra.’ It was at Khajaraho, I first knowingly gazed upon Chamunda’s serene form, dignified among the cavorting hoi-polloi in the sculptural friezes. In those friezes were sexual scenarios far beyond what’s instructed in the Kama Sutra and would be considered sexually transgressive by standards then and now.
There’s two depictions of such transgressive behaviors that particularly stand out. The first, is of an elephant, giant head and front quarters forward, with a large smile on his face. He lovingly holds up a woman’s naked legs in his trunk while her torso rests on the ground, face up. The elephant’s right leg is poised above her face, possibly ready to crush it. But the damsel’s expression is not worried. The elephant is looking to the left at a couple engaged in standing coitus, hence his grin. There are more common forms of beastiality, like a small horse being penetrated from the rear while a peeking voyeur looks on with one eye covered. But this is quite different, and much more a conventional scenario than from the grinning elephant who may be performing a transgressive sexual act. This would impute that animals are capable of voyeurism and sexual fantasy. This depiction of transgressive behavior on part of a sentient being from the lower animal realm strikes me as extraordinarily perceptive and compassionate. The second, also a beautifully carved scenario is of a seated figure mixing in a large mortar bowl, with a pestle, what my guide called ‘medicine.’ But then a male figure is clearly ejaculating into the ingredients, while other figures looking on possibly wait to contribute something as well. While he seemed not to know exactly what this was about, a good guess is that the figure mixing and receiving semen into the bowl is a tantric officiate who will later first consume the ingredients and then distribute the rest to others. This would relate then to earlier ritual transformations of sexual acts and bodily effluvia that had taken place at the nearby Chaunsath Yogini Temple for decades, or longer, before the Khajaraho temples of the ‘Western Group’ were constructed over a hundred year period. At Kajuraho, unlike Mysore, where the Chamundasvara Temple is swarmed by the faithful in mad rushes to make offerings, “ninety-nine percent of the temples have been violated,” their religious images disfigured or broken. In Indian tradition, this condemns these Kajuraho temples to an ‘inactive’ status, and pujas are seldom if ever held there.
Sakya Jetsun, Sonam Tsemo, indirectly comments on these types of pujas and the character of the faithful participants from the analysis of the first two levels of tantric practitioners: “Individuals with weak intellect and lesser faculties delight in external purification rituals; for their benefit Ritual Tantra was revealed to teach external rituals. For the next highest level of individuals [who prefer] activities that include both outer body and speech and inner samadhi, Conduct Tantra was revealed for their benefit.” 4.
Indeed, this is quite true today, as I witnessed the kinetic fervor at the Shaivist Chamundasvara Temple in Mysore, and two of the 12 Jyotirlingas in India at Omkareshwar and the Grishneshwar Jyotirlinga, located in Aurangabad (near Ellora caves) which houses a rare red and black colored lingam. Here, shirtless men, segregated from the women, crowded together to rub ashes on the reddish-black lingam, everyone involved in a pitched excitation. During these pilgrimages, I had the most exotic, ‘other worldly’ experiences at the Jagannath Chamdar Temples at Puri and Konart, both in Odisha, where millions of Vishnu, Shiva and Krishna devotees throng each year. In ancient times, at any of the sixty-four Yogini Temples, specific tantric rites of conduct and “activities that include both outer body and speech and inner samadhi,” were also observed, according to tantras both Shaivist and Buddhist. Its certain transgressive behavior as depicted at Khajaraho occurred. Our Sakya Jetsun further clarifies according to four levels of practice: “In Ritual Tantra, visualization is on an external representation of a deity while strong effort is made to follow instructions on purification, etc. In the application [or Conduct] of Ritual, visualization is [still] on the external other than oneself. In Yoga, visualization is on oneself and a chakravartin (world monarch) gnosis [being] as having a single flavor. In Superior Yoga, the practice is the great secret of supreme pleasure that derives from sexual intercourse with one’s own knowledge woman. In Unsurpassed Yoga, visualization is on supreme ecstasy that is generated from the union of the vajra and lotus of oneself as the deity [in union].”5.
As the same methods of union and transgressive behavior is mostly ‘visualized’ in today’s advanced tantric practices, one could speculate that the realization of profound pacification, out of which the naturally arising conate wisdom occurs, was attained by the fortunate, both Shaivist and Buddhist. It’s reasonable that after the orgiastic conduct, appearance, and feast with a beautiful but ferocious tutelary deity—visualized or apparitional—some adherents would’ve purified their sleep and dream stupor, through vivid ‘subtle mind’ experiences, like the three ‘empties’ of different colored lights. Or, the most subtle mind experience, of a ‘clear light’ dawning. It’s appropriate to speak of tantric feasts, both Shaivist and Buddhist, happening together as the intermingling, borrowings, and syncretisms of these two tantric religions have now been historically attested.
In reference to the roots of contemporary western tantric disseminations and involvement, there’s the following comment by a previously quoted master within the lineage I practice: “[However,] for superior individuals whose activities primarily [involve] just samadhi, Yoga Tantra was revealed for their benefit. For those individuals who are even more superior and practice nothing other than specialized samadhi, Unsurpassed Yoga Tantra was revealed for their benefit. This is the position of the Masters Virupa and Dombhi-Heruka who acquired spiritual powers by following the Vajra Panjara Tantra, where it says: In order to train four kinds of individuals, the definitive four [classes] are for dissimilar modes of entrance…” 6.
If by ‘bad’ behavior, borderless sexual activity in orgy-like situations is indicated, then this would apply to some of us who participated fully in the sex, drugs, and rock’n roll revolution, starting mid-last century in the West, which the Chinese labeled “spiritually polluted.” And, if at that same time, one pursued genuine spiritual paths in India, or elsewhere, then there indeed was a need for ‘specialized samadhi.’ One might even go as far to compare the jaded seeker, broke and half-starved, to the low caste Shudra mandala entrant. The disparaging label ‘dirty-hippy’ comes to mind; unclean wanders bent on mind expansion, or seeing more (vipassana)—however misguided.
Long time tantric practitioners, East and West, might well observe the purpose is strictly to promote liberation through experiences of subtle mind states. It’s important to note that the clear light experience of the subtlest mind naturally occurs in instances of orgasm, falling asleep, and death. Jeffery Hopkins, a longtime translator of Gelugpa teachings, writes extensively on this, in ‘Death, Sleep, and Orgasm: Gateways to the Mind of Clear Light.’ Here, I quote him fully: “When [the] three groups of conceptual minds, [eighty concepts constituting a gross level of consciousness] weaken and cease, subtler levels of mind manifest during uncontrolled processes as in fainting, going to sleep, ending a dream, experiencing orgasm, sneezing, and dying. In these states, the currents of energy that drive the various levels of gross consciousness withdraw and temporarily cease, resulting in a series of eight altered levels of mind. First there are four preliminary levels of the withdrawal of the energies that drive usual consciousness and then four dramatic levels of deeper mind. First, one has a visual experience of seeing an appearance like a mirage. Then, as the withdrawal continues, one sees an appearance like billowing smoke or like thin smoke spread throughout a room. Then one sees an appearance like fireflies or like sparks within smoke. Then one sees an appearance like a sputtering candle, when little wax is left which culminates in an appearance of a steady candle flame. The culmination of this series of four visions sets the stage for the withdrawal and temporary cessation of all eighty conceptual consciousnesses, whereupon a more dramatic phase of four profound states begins.” This is when the dawning of white light, red or orange light of increase, and black light of near attainment occurs. These are “subtle levels of mind that are at the core of all experience now manifest….The fundamental innate mind of clear light is the basis of all minds and all appearances…. According to the psychology of Highest Yoga Tantra, orgasm involves the ceasing of the grosser levels of consciousness and manifestation of the more subtle levels, as do going to sleep, ending a dream, sneezing, fainting, and dying. In intense orgasm, the mind withdraws from the diverse objects of the other senses and is focused, eventually exclusively, on sexual bliss. Ordinary, distracted mind, paying attention to a multitude of objects, vanishes.” Hopkin’s salient point is that the cultivation of “a blissful, orgasmic mind [is] to manifest the most subtle level of consciousness, the mind of clear light, and use its greater power and hence effectiveness to realize the true nature of mind, stripped of its distractions and peripheral manifestations.”7.
Meditating one’s self-awareness in the thrall of orgasm—or in the ‘vulva of Chamunda’—or in the bhaga of a Vajra woman, makes welcoming bedfellows of supreme awareness and so-called transgressive behaviors. This is shared by both Shiva and Vajrapani, as progenitors of tantracism, utilizing ecstasy in the transformation of passion into purities, elevating spiritual aspirants who seek enlightenment now, soon, or in this lifetime.
II. Tales of Ecstasy (For recipients of Highest Yogatantra Empowerments only.)
Perhaps, as part of the path’s purification, I’ve recently had vivid dreams of sporting with dakinis who’ve taken on the appearance of women with whom I’ve been casually associated. In these dreams, however, wish fulfillment, an important function of dreaming, is fully granted. More than just a psychological boon, in these expansive dreams old friends have been transmuting into dakinis and dakas, communicating the Buddha nature found in the subtlest level of consciousness in all beings. Gone are the impeding ‘hangups’ of the gross mind, such as fear, attachment, hunger, thirst, shame, acquisitiveness, and jealousy. In one dream, a former workmate and I became intimate while she instructed me on computation. More significant than the lesson of her instructions, which had to do with aggregating images as opposed to editing them, was the transformative experience of our ‘working together’ while we were both in a subtle mind orientation. Gazing, touching, and much kissing, ensued. It was beyond any conventional lovemaking I can remember. Even without sexual union, our amorousness was intensely elevated, and its fulfillment went way beyond sexually conventional coitus and orgasm, with its often attendant emotional denouement. Instead, it produced yogic heat, cessation of conceptualization, and then a flaming intensity, producing seed syllables and elemental drippings, manifesting a great quantity of bodhicitta liquefaction. The climax of this was the dawning of clear light. While this was only on the first and second levels of tantric sexual engagement, that of gazing and kissing, the ecstasy produced initiated a deluge of liquid, clear bodhicitta consecrations, poured from containers of luminous empty forms, both ordinary, such as a bedside drinking class; and extraordinary, such as vases held high and poured down upon the adept by consecration deities of different mandala retinues. It comes as well gushing from the vulva of yidam and dakini intimates. Or from the Heruka’s secret vajra. The sadhana practice of pure perception, the attempts at visualizing pure Buddha realms and their attendant figures, is hastened by harnessing the limitless passion of sexual desire, and through rapt and diligent repetitions, will one day merge with ordinary perception as a constant subitism. Either as an enlightening shunyata, a nondual ‘shivanata’ experience, or the fully enlightened attainment of a thirteenth stage Bodhisattva, according to one’s religious path and tantric methods practiced.
Participating in a highly charged syncretism of Buddhist practices: Theravada chanting of the Vinya, chanting Mahayana aspirational prayers of two Tibetan school’s Monlams; and then finally receiving, after decades of waiting, the precious Sakya Vajramala Empowerments, I experienced great confidence in Bodhicitta. The Ven. Khunu Lama, who taught Sanskrit to H.H. Dilgo Khentze and H.E. Deshung Rinpoche—all three of them considered saints—wrote diary verses strictly about Bodhicitta every day for a year; the same year, 1959, China invaded Tibet. Ven. Khunu Lama’s ‘Vast as the Heavens, Deep as the Sea’ characterizes perfectly, in a linguistically heuristic verse, the ability of Bodhicitta to perfect in one each virtue of the Buddha’s Six Perfections of Wisdom. The 2024, high-season ecumenical Buddhist program in Bodhgaya, resulted in a ‘certainty of Bodhi’ for me, and I can only imagine for much worthier others. Exiting what’s referred to as the ‘holy land,’ I had unusually blissful experiences, as if the ancient dakinis, like Chandika and Chamunda, their incisor fangs sharpened and dripping with transforming juices, consumed me whole so as to let me enter their secret sphere. The ecstasy, intimate and unspeakable—dangerously self-reifying and prideful, even to just whisper—should, contrarily, be shouted out for the sake of all living beings. This, in honor of Master Vasubhandu’s sacred wish—his relics the first to be enshrined on top of Swayambhu Hill in Kathmandu—for the fervent to openly speak out, even in the market place, about their meditation experiences.
Experiencing such ecstasies, like being cannibalized by ancient dakinis, take place out of time, and yet seem, paradoxically, permanent. Guruji—His Holiness Dalai Lama—as respectfully referred to in India, speaks to just such a ‘permanence’: “Nyingma [school] posits a mind-vajra which has no beginning or end and proceeds without interruption through the effect stage of Buddhahood. It is considered ‘permanent’ in the sense of abiding forever and thus is presented as a permanent mind. It is permanent not in the sense of not disintegrating moment by moment, but in the sense that its continuum is not interrupted--this being analogous to the statement in Maitreya's Ornament for Clear Realization (Abhisamayalamkara) that a Buddha's exalted activities are considered permanent in that they are inexhaustible.” 8.
This ceaseless continuum is unmistakable from the provisional, ‘path bliss,’ nondual emptiness and clarity. It comes (but not really, as it’s beyond coming and going) after the twelfth and-a-half bhumi arrives at the tip of the secret vajra, where Dagmema ‘kisses’ and then enters. This occurred as we touched down at Chennai Airport, filling my bodily form with ecstasy. Dagmema, embodying both parent’s elements, red and white, started pounding them together, purifying the five sense consciousnesses, which then released the subtler mind states. The sense fields, still within the gross level of mind, comprise the conceptual, mental consciousness, referred to above. Above that are the two higher consciousnesses of personal collective visions and the ‘all-base cause consciousness,’ kunshi, a cosmic collective for universal imagery. It’s there my dakini consort ascended, above my eight heads—for she is Hevajra’s consort—inducing the fifth empowerment. A facsimile twelfth and-a-half bhumi, minus the eleventh, universal lamp-lit mind, manifested full force, and I had to ‘watch’ myself among the many passengers as we taxied to the gate and began to disembark. A path or example ‘thirteenth’ bhumi level was also imaged within a unified mind, cleansed of all subjective experience and psychological inflation. Dagmema’s altering vision spread through the commercial airliner cabin, dramatically transforming all entities into bliss emblems of a ‘great mudra.’
Again, I say all this, seemingly risking much to motivate aspirants of ‘A Complete Path.’ However, Vajrayana teachers have spoken, for some time, to the point of the open—self-sealed—secret nature of tantric Buddhism. For instance, like with the ‘Chakrasamvara Tantra’ coming out of the extant ‘appendix’ text, Laghusaṃvara, where much is ‘coded.’ Certainly as far as the mantras go, and in great need of authoritative explication. More to the point: while there will always be charlatans pedaling ‘Dharma,’ how many corrupters, if not first initiated and sincerely put on the path by a spiritual friend or qualified vajra master, won’t in time be corrected, especially given all the authoritative commentaries now accessible? Indeed, the main problem is a lack of upaya (method) that can be given by qualified, long time experienced practitioners, who’ve completed the necessary retreats and recitation numbers. H.H. the Dalai Lama speaks to this when he indicates that the great misunderstandings to which tantra is often subject to are more harmful than the partial lifting of such secrecy, so there is a necessity for books, or writings, to be made available which contain authentic explanations.
After a leisurely layover in the Chennai airport, we boarded another craft for an hour’s flight to Mysore. Upon the takeoff, we—consort and devotee, Heruka and dakinis—were all, once again, at home in our primary element of ‘sky.’ Wrapt in a profound state with Dagmema, called mind-as-it-is-in-itself—a state manifesting ecstasy as its ground—a nondual clarity and bliss trance, with a searching blending and binding of phenomena, the experiencer was in need of nothing. I praise with unending gratitude the Buddha dakini consort, Dagmema, and my root Gurus for such approximate ecstasy of a full-fledged Sugata. May I always be at their comand, especially, Dagmema’s service, cavorting in our delightful transgressions for the sake of all beings, that they too come to have gnosis through appearance, appearance through gnosis, and mahamudra through the bliss emblems of all entities’ in their profound emptiness as anonymous vacuity.
I returned to my appointed seat just before landing, having moved when an overweight, affable Indian boy needed to use the toilet. Once seated, I looked out the window and all I could see was a thick bank of clouds. During this descent, a somewhat typical inflight fear, that of our plane crashing into another one, suddenly arose. But this fear lacked substance—and as I was still blending and binding arising phenomena in a ‘nothing to be added or subtracted’ state of mind—I meditated upon the real possibility of dying with all the other ‘vacuous entities,’ or my fellow passengers, surrounding me. But it could not arouse the usual concern, like, “we’re all gonna die!” My blissful wellbeing at that time oddly matched that of the boy next to me, who’d been audibly narrating most of his experience to a friend on his iPhone. He could care less about prohibitions of not using the phone during landings, and once we were at the gate and people were standing, he was anxious for me to get up as well. But I gestured I would wait. He was OK with that and seemed elated about everything, like he lived in a perpetually excited now. Maybe this was his first flight, I thought. And though I believed him to be deluded and trapped in a naive realism, my ‘certainty of Bodhi’ had transformed my experience into something that matched his. So I could also relate to certain aspects of his, in a sympathetic kindness. But I also sensed we were worlds apart, as that flight confirmed I was now an ecstatic yogin, wandering in another kind of self-projected phantasm.
After taking an auto at the Mandakalli Airport, and getting squared away at the Banyan Tree Comforts by early afternoon, I was intent on visiting the Shri Chamundeshwari Temple in Mysore. I ate at the large corner restaurant across from the traffic circle off Lakshmi Villas Rd., where my hotel resides at number 128. I arrived and ordered food just minutes ahead of dozens of people swarming inside to eat the restaurants food I had yet to taste. Then, after experiencing what I felt was really my first sup on authentic South Indian Cuisine, I made a quick deal with the ‘auto’ cartel across the street for transit up Chamundi Hill to pay homage to Shri Chamundeshwari, the fearsome goddess who slayed a demon king: “Chamundeshwari is called by the people of Karnataka as Nada Devi, which means State Goddess. It is situated at the elevation of around 3300 ft from the mean sea level. It is believed that Goddess Durga slayed the demon king Mahishasura on the top of this hill which was ruled by him.” The active temple, alive with shirtless priests and pressing crowds, fervently worships Chamundi, a fierce mother goddess, an emanation of Goddess Durga, and is thought to have been built ‘in the 12th century by the Rulers of the Hoysala Dynasty.’” They were also the builders of the exquisite Somanatheshwara temple I would also visit on my way to Kushalnagar, Bylakupe, and Mercara. “The original shrine to Chamundi is the oldest temple on the hills. There is also ‘a huge granite Nandi on the 700th step on the hill in front of a small Shiva temple a short distance away. Believed to be sculpted in the 2nd century CE, this Nandi is over 15 feet high and 24 feet long with exquisite bells around its neck.’”9.
After removing my shoes close to the ‘covered parking’ and walking through the typical covered Prasad bazaar that introduces one to many Hindu temples, I was swept up into a throng of enthusiastic pilgrims excited to see the all-powerful goddess. Once in line, we progressively became pressed together, and then were siphoned into the narrow gateway to the inner sanctum. There, three or four shirtless priests were busily attending to the ever burning fire offerings, receiving money from the faithful, and then also quickly ushering, if not pushing their donors away from the heavily flowered decorated shrine, to the side and an outside door. Here, the blissed and dazed would sit around the covered portion of the temple’s exterior, after fervently self-applying sindura tikala dots to their foreheads. I sat as well for a good length of time, repeating one version of the goddess’s mantra, though not the Nepali Newar one I would later come to memorize. Then a guard came and pushed us all outside the temple’s fence. It’s then I realized how blessed my timings had been as I’d been amongst the last crowd to barely beat the clock and the temple was now closed for many hours. I then drifted back to the covered parking garage for my return ride, but the driver had not waited for me. So I went to one of the numerous restaurants and mini ‘hotels,’ which are also simply restaurants, to sit in the shade. There I drank three delicious chi’s and learned the Nepali Newar Chandi mantra: om aim hrim klim câmundayai vicce, which I repeat to this day.
III. Iconic Pith Teachings
After Mysore, which I later found out was a hotspot for the tantric Shiva worshipping sect known as Kapalikas, I traveled to Kushalnagar, seeing on the way the exquisite Somanatheshwara temple, a world Heritage site and prime example of twelfth century Hoysala architecture. Since it was Tibetan New Years, I spent plenty of time in Bylakupe, the second largest settlement of Tibetans in India, after Dharmsala in the North. I also visited the ‘active’ jyotirlinga temple of Shree Omkareshwara, in Madikeri, also known during the British Raj as Mercara. The source of the word Jyotirlinga, a Sanskrit compound of jyotis ('radiance') and linga ('sign'), is a powerful yogic myth: “According to the Shiv Mahapuran, once Brahma(the Hindu God of creation) and Vishnu (the Hindu God of Protection and Care) had an argument in terms of supremacy of creation. To test them, Shiva pierced the three worlds as a huge endless pillar of light, the jyotirlinga. Vishnu and Brahma split their ways to downwards and upwards respectively to find the end of the light in either directions. Brahma lied that he found out the end, while Vishnu conceded his defeat. Shiva appeared as the second pillar of light and cursed Brahma that he would have no place in ceremonies while Vishnu would be worshipped until the end of eternity. The jyotirlinga is the supreme part-less reality, out of which Shiva partly appears. The jyotirlinga shrines, thus are places where Shiva appeared as a fiery column of light. Originally there were believed to be 64 jyotirlingas while 12 of them are considered to be very auspicious and holy. Each of the twelve jyotirlinga sites take the name of the presiding deity – each considered a different manifestation of Shiva. At all of these sites, the primary image is lingam representing the beginningless and endless Stambha pillar, symbolizing the infinite nature of Shiva.” 10.
While I’m a long time Vajrayana practitioner familiar in Buddhist tantra with the ‘Twenty-Four Holy Sites,’ I’ve only recently heard the story that is its locus. One of the many stories goes, after Sita’s father King Janaka, also of Ramayana fame, rejects her betrothal choice, Shiva, and so throws herself into the wedding party sacrificial bonfire. After retrieving a little too late her body from the flames, Vishnu’s discus follows a grief stricken Shiva, lopping off parts of Sati’s charred body as he carries the unseemly corpse throughout ‘the world’ upsetting all. Evidently, wherever parts of her decayed body dropped, these became Peetha sites [piths] like where the Chamunda temple is in Bhubaneswar.
Here’s the location of those twenty-four Peetha sites, as they are important to both Shaivist and Buddhist Tantric practice: “According to the Hevajra Tantra (see Snellgrove 1959, 1:70) these are: Jalandhara, Oddiyana, Paurnagiri, Kamarupa, Malaya, Sindhu, Nagara, Munmuni, Karunyapataka, Kulata, Arbuta, Godavari, Himadri, Harikela, Lampaka, Kani, Saurasta, Kalinga, Kokana, Caritra, Kosala, and Vindhyakaumarapaurika.”11.
K.C. Panigrahi argues that the well-known Vaital temple in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, “was originally a Kapalika shrine. This temple, built in about the eighth century, has Chamunda as its presiding deity. In all likelihood it was originally named after this goddess. The Svarnnadri-mahodaya states that ‘the venerable goddess Chamunda garlanded with skulls exists at a spot on the west not far from the tank ...,’ and that ‘she is of terrific form and is known as Kapalini.’ This must refer to the Vaital temple. Although this solitary reference to Chamunda as Kapalini cannot be taken as conclusive evidence of Kapalika worship, other features of the temple—such as the fierce deities sculptured around the inner shrine and a panel of erotic couples between the walls and roof—at least indicate tantric influence.” 12.
I came upon the Vaital Temple ‘accidentally,’ after visiting the Ekamravan medical garden while wandering around the ancient section of the city where my guest house, the Pravuprasad on New Forest Road, is smartly located. The historical, architectural, and locational facts are this: “Baitāḷa deuḷa or Vaitāḷa deuḷa is an 8th-century Hindu temple of the typical Khakara style of the Kalinga architecture dedicated to Goddess Chamunda located in Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha, India. It is also locally known as Tinimundia deula due to the three spires on top of it, a very distinct and unusual feature. The three spires are believed to represent the three powers of the goddess Chamunda-Mahasaraswati, Mahalakshmi and Mahakali.” 13. Further, the blue with white lettering, cracked and rusting plaque there informs: “The Vaital Deul, dedicated to tantric worship is a leading example of the Karnataka order of temple and consists on plan a rectangular deul preceded by a rectangular flat-roofed jagamohana [front portion vestibule to literally ‘attract the world.’] The temple (11.5 m. high) is distinguished the shape of its semi-cylindrical (khakara) roof crowned by three kalasas [pinnacle of a temple], popularly known as tinmundiya. The temple is dedicated to the goddess Chamunda who is accompanied by other mantrikas along with Ganesa and Virabhadra and a terrific [ithyphallic] pair of Bhairavas. The exterior of the temple is lavishly carved with figures of Ardhanarishwara, Parvati, Mahisamardini [Durga emanation], Lakulisa, Hari-Hara, Surya [sun god], Nataraja, Nayikas etc. Stylistically, the temple is assignable to circa 8th century A.D.” 14.
But this is a two-for-one site as the plaque also says: “Situated within the same compound of the Vaital Deul, the east facing temple, dedicated to Siva, consists of a curvilinear reka duel [a single slightly curved tower with a square plan] (now devoid of the upper part of the gandi) and a rectangular flat-roofed jagamohana. The temple is triratha on plan.” If there is only one facet, this is a temple with three rathas (triratha): meaning,“the wall and the facet on the left and on the right. If there are a main facet and a secondary one, the temple has five rathas (pancharatha). There are also temples with seven rathas (saptaratha) and nine rathas (navaratha).” 15. Viewed from the top, this looks like the linear design, side view, of a staircase and landing. The more rathas, again viewed from the top, the more circular the square foundation plan is harmonized. “The temple is rich in exterior decorations carved with images of Ganesa, Kartikeya and Mahasamardini in the central projection of the duel, and the figures of Nataraja, Ajaekapada, Ardanarisvara, Hara-Parvati, Lakulisa and the narrative scenes depicting Kiratarjumyan etc. Stylistically, the temple is datable to circa 8th century A.D.” (Temple plaque info taken from my pictures.)
Enthusiastic about the sculptural details of these temples, later that evening I commented to my spiritual friend in Bodhgaya that above Chamunda on the Vaital Temple is “Rahula about to eat a protective Vishnu-Bhairava with a club, symbolizing darkness or an eclipse. This would also make that figure a sun god. (The sun opens up the lotus! Can you get the tantric drift?) It goes like that, trying to interpret what one sees at these amazing sites.” I mentioned this to her as she imports images and statues of Vajrayogini and Guru Rinpoche who both hold khatvanga staffs, which represent, among other things, that they are still in union with their consort, even though they appear in a solitary heroic form. I’ve read a khatvanga staff also referred to as a ‘club.’ In a sense, the club Bhairava holds, depicted on the temple wall here, is a khatvanga staff signifying post-coitus with his consort Dorje Rolangma, a zombie—that is, if we jump to the future and land in Tibet. As a sahaja hero figure, his antecedent is Vishnu with his club, who became Bhairava in Trika (Khasmiri) Shivaism, then morphed into his finished form as Vajrabhairava, single hero form, in the sadhana of the Rwa Lotsawa tradition in Tibet. This all suggests that the violent protectors, like (preserver) Vishnu-Bhairava, or perhaps (destroyer) Shiva-Bhairava, reflected the evolution of yogic adepts whose practice began leaning more toward an inner, subjugating union, and away from an outer violent destruction—whether real or imaged. Recalling, of course, that a Shaivist’s trident could well be used in ritual as in battles, when rivaling with other schools or religions.
The importance of a tantric pilgrim to this site is that one can ‘read’ these Peetha temples literally as ‘piths’ which is how one of the information plaques at the temple site alternatively spelled Peetha: “Baitala is a unique temple in Ekama Kshetra. A Tantric Pith, the main deity of the temple is Chamunda, a form of Goddess Durga, locally known as Kapalini.” I came away after visiting the Vaital temple in a heightened state similar to that of exiting a tantric empowerment or having received an essential secret teaching from a whispered lineage given by a Tantric Master. Another example of this ‘Tantric Iconography as Pith Teaching’ relates to the wholesale transformation of Hindu gods into icons of tantric Buddhism. For example, the Vajra Bhairava figure for the Sakya protector, Yamantaka, often performed in an hours long puja, has an erection same as the Vishnu-Bhairava figure, described above, seated on the sun disc-shaped tongue of Rahula. It suggests to me he is about to be swallowed. Or is it the icon is being prophetically ‘eclipsed’ by the tantric evolution of Indic gods in their dissemination to Tibet? The evolution of tantracism there as a Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist tradition, further transformed the Indic gods Mahasiddhas, yogic masters at Nalanda, Udiyana, and elsewhere, used in the tantric revelation of the Buddha’s most advance teachings. Within several centuries, from the time of the first ‘old school’ translations to the latter ‘new school’ ones, these gods evolved into finished tantric forms, becoming a potent part of the liturgical practices in countless Tibetan monasteries. These are the powerful, Nirmanakaya icons, salvic emanations of Buddha’s body we see today. This eclipse, or transformation, also occurred concurrently, or a little before, in the tantric rites evolving out of the Vedic traditions. A virile example of this is carved on the Vaital Temple in the form of a ten-armed Shiva (or Krishna), fully erect, holding among some other items, a scepter in one of the right hands while dispensing from the palm of a left hand nectar (possibly seminal fluid) to his naked consort. The ‘trika’ in Trika Shaivism (or ‘Kashmiri’ nondual tantra) means, or can also mean, the Trimurti of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver/protector, and Shiva the oft-called destroyer, become one in what is known as the unified mind experienced in Mahamudra meditation, one of Vajrayana’s primary soteriological goals. The Trika Shaivist believed just taking a tantric initiation made one a Brahmana, while the Vajrayana Buddhists still teach Enlightenment in a single lifetime. The two aspects of Bodhicitta, wishing and engaging, in the maturation of becoming a Bodhisattva are one in the realization of an objectless, ‘Great Compassion.’ This is the Sarva Yoga, the jointing of all through loving kindness and the compassionate ‘good heart,’ notably promoted by the H.H. Dalai Lama. Do Shivaist believe in such a thing? “To all devotees it gives guidance in the qualities of character which are so necessary in spiritual life—patience, compassion for others, broadmindedness, humility, self-confidence, industriousness and devotion. Śaivism centers around the home and the temple. Family life is very strong, and precious.”16. This too connects the two tantras, Trika Shaivist and the Vajrayana in a non-dual tantracism, (though strictly speaking, there is no preliminary ‘Bodhisattva Path,’ aspirational and resultant, in Shaivism.)
It should be noted that within what is called Hinduism today, all the Indic gods are considered ‘the one and the many’ at the same time. There are, for example, endless emanations of Vasudhārā, a significant Buddhist goddess of wealth, fertility, and well-being, extending north into Nepal and east at least as far as Cambodia, where she is the goddess Phra Mae Thorani (‘Dharani’) or Preah Neang. “Vasundara and Dharani is a chthonic goddess from Buddhist mythology of Theravada in Southeast Asia. Similar earth deities include Pṛthivī, Kṣiti, and Dharaṇī, Vasudhara bodhisattva in Vajrayana and Bhoomi devi and Prithvi in hinduism.”16. Durga, championed here as Chamunda, is one of the most established emanations in mainland India. While it may ring hollow or cliche to say ‘all the gods are one,’ if arrived at systematically, getting to know many of them through one, or all four tantric means—ritual, conduct, yogic union, and unsurpassable yogic union—then the common and uncommon siddhis obtain. Indeed, the purpose to all ‘magical’ practices is basically fourfold: the attainment of power, increase (multiplying), protection, and subjgating, and these are the same as accomplished in tantracism. The four above are called common siddhis, or gifts, while another ‘supreme’ siddhi can be achieved through diligent Vajrayana practice: Omniscient Wisdom. Perhaps this is the equivalent to an ultimate non-Buddhist experience called, ‘Shivanata.’ But since I haven’t to achieve either one, I can’t comment.
Afterword
Today’s better informed tantric perspective, stands on shoulders of the giant that is the thousands year old Vedic Tradition. I’ve waited many decades for certain tantric commentaries to be translated. Logical commentary is at times just personal testimony thinly disguised as scholarship, and that’s no doubt the case here. Supported by quoting what others have already established, this longish blog, as well other entries on this site, are often an attempt at expressing unfiltered the empty nature of arising phenomena. In other words, it’s post-meditation composition, the subject of which is always the Dharma and its rightful purview. If some argue that within this piece there are some blessings of Mara as well as the Dharma, then I beg Vajrasattva to please forgive and purify my stubborn ignorance. But it’s past time some disciples’ hearings, ‘ancient’ and new, finally get heard. Also, my appreciation for what others have said and I have used, at times so extensively, to lend more credibility and clarity to my fledgling attempts at Right Speech, is undying.
NOTES:
1. The Kapalikas And Kalamukhas Two Lost Shaivite Sects David N. Lorenzen, pgs 3, 4.
2. Sonam Tsemo, Yogini’s Eye, trans. Wayne Verrill, 165.
3. Yogini’s Eye (YE),173.
4. YE, 177.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Death, Sleep, and Orgasm: Gateways to the Mind of Clear Light, by Jeffrey Hopkins, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 1998, V. 25, 245-261.
8. JH, 253.
9. wiki.com
10. en.m.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyotirlinga
11. rywiki.tdsadra.org
12. Wikipedia.org/wiki/Baitala Deula
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. wiki.com
16. shiva.tezambala.com
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