Book Excerpts
1 The Mahasiddha Luipa
The Fish-Gut Eater
A wild dog with honey rubbed
on its nose
Madly devours whatever it sees;
Give the Lama's secret to a worldly fool
And his mind and the lineage burn out.
For a responsive man with knowledge of unborn reality
A mere glimpse of the Lama's vision of pure light-form,
Destroys mental fiction like an elephant berserk
Rampaging through hostile ranks with a sword lashed to
its trunk.
Long ago, in the island kingdom
of Sri Lanka, a young prince ascended the throne of his
fabulously wealthy father, The court astrologers had
calculated that the kingdom must be given to the deceased
king's second son if it was to remain strong and its
people content. In his palace, where the walls were
plated with gold and silver and studded with pearls and
precious stones, the young king ruled his two brothers
and all the people of Sri Lanka. However, possessing
nothing but contempt for wealth and power, his only
desire was to escape his situation. When he first
attempted to escape, his brothers and courtiers caught
him and bound him in golden chains, but finally he
succeeded in bribing his guards with gold and silver, and
at night, disguised in rags, he escaped with a single
attendant. He rewarded his faithful accomplice generously
before leaving his island kingdom for Ramesvaram, where
King Rama reigned, and there he exchanged his golden
throne for a simple deer-skin and his couch of silks and
satin for a bed of ashes. Thus he became a yogin.
The king-
turned-yogin was handsome and charming, and he had no
difficulty in begging his daily needs. Wandering the
length of India, eventually he arrived in Vajrasana,
where the Buddha Sakyamuni had achieved enlightenment,
and there he attached himself to hospitable Dakinis, who
transmitted to him their feminine insight. From Vajrasana
he travelled to Pataliputra, the king's capital on the
River Ganges, where he subsisted on the alms he begged
and slept in a cremation ground. Begging in the bazaar
one market day, he paused at a house of pleasure, and his
karma effected this fateful encounter with a courtesan,
who was an incarnate, worldly Dakini. Gazing through him
at the nature of his mind, the Dakini said, "Your
four psychic centers and their energies are quite pure,
but there is a pea-sized obscuration of royal pride in
your heart." And with that she poured some putrid
food into his clay bowl and told him to be on his way. He
threw the inedible slop into the gutter, whereupon the
Dakinis, who had been watching him go, shouted after him
angrily, "How can you attain nirvana if you're still
concerned about the purity of your food?"
The yogin
was mortified. He realized that his critical and
judgmental mind was still subtly active; he still
perceived some things as intrinsically more desirable
than others. He also understood that this propensity was
the chief obstacle in his progress to Buddhahood. With
this realization he went down to the River Ganges and
began a twelve year sadhana to destroy his discursive
thought-patterns and his prejudices and preconceptions.
His practice was to eat the entrails of the fish that the
fishermen disemboweled, to transform the fish-guts into
the nectar of pure awareness by insight into the nature
of things as emptiness.
The
fisherwomen gave him his name, Luipa, which means Eater
of Fish-guts. The practice which gave him his name also
brought him power and realization. Luipa became a
renowned Guru, and in the legends of Darikapa and Dengipa
there is further mention of him.
Sadhana
It is appropriate that the
first of the eighty-four legends should repeat the
elements of the story of the first Buddha, Sakyamuni, in
a tantric guise. Luipa is a king who renounces his throne
for the sake of enlightenment. Like Sakyamuni he escaped
in the night with a single attendant to become a yogin,
and Sakyamuni, too, probably employed a deer-skin (krsnasara)
as a mat, a throne, and a shawl. Deer-skins indicate
renunciate status; the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara wears
one around his torso. But Luipa was born into the
kaliyuga when it was no longer possible to practice the
fierce discipline and simple practices that Sakyamuni
taught. In order to eradicate the subtle defilement that
the Dakini indicated and to resolve the dualistic mental
constructs that are the root cause of samsara, to attain
freedom from samsara in this lifetime a radical short-cut
method was required, and in Luipa's case, as with many of
the siddhas, a Dakini was at hand to provide it.
Luipa was a
master of the mother-tantra, and his Gurus were Dakini
Gurus, mundane Dakinis, embodiments of the female
principle of awareness.' The Dakinis who indicated his
sadhana was a publican and whore-mistress, for liquor
shops doubled as brothels. The "royal pride"
she discerned in his heart can be rendered more precisely
as "racial, caste and social discrimination,"
and with her putrid food she pointed at a method which
can best be described as the path of dung eating.
Cultivate what is most foul and abhorrent, and
consciousness is thereby stimulated to the point of
transcendence; familiarize yourself with what is most
disgusting and eventually it tastes no different from
bread and butter. The result of this method is attainment
of the awareness of sameness SS3 that is at the heart of
all pride, all discrimination and prejudice, and
transmutes these moral qualities, that are the mental
equivalent of fish-guts, into emptiness. To elaborate the
Dakini's parting sally: so long as you fail to perceive
the inherent reality of emptiness in every sensual
stimulus, every state of mind, and every thought, you
will remain in dualistic samsara, judging, criticizing
and discriminating. To attain the non-duality of nirvana
find the awareness of sameness in what is most revolting,
and realize the one taste of all which is pure pleasure.
More light
is shed on Luipa's practice by considering what fish
meant in his society. First, fish is the flesh of a
sentient being and therefore anathema to the orthodox
brahmin; but left-over fish-guts is fit only for dogs,
the lowest life-form on the totem pole. Such a practice,
if indeed Luipa performed a literal interpretation, would
have made him unclean in the eyes of his former peers,
untouchable and unapproachable. Self-abasement and
humiliation is the corollary of "dung eating;"
destroy every vestige of those associations with former
birth, privilege and wealth, and in an existential pit
discover what there is in human being that can inspire
real pride, divine pride, that is inherent in all
sentient beings. Second, fish is a symbol of spirituality
and sense control, and Luipa's Samvara sadhana, which is
not described here, involves transformation of his
universe into that of a god in his paradise, and
attainment of control of his energies (prana) and
thus of his senses.
Historiography
Our legend is the only source
to assert that Luipa was born in Sri Lanka, to which the
text's Singhaladvipa must refer. But there were several
kingdoms in the sub-continent called Singhaladvipa, one
contiguous to Oddiyana which other sources give as
Luipa's birth place. In Bu ston's account, Luipa was son
of King Lalitacandra of 0ddiyana. When the prince
encountered Savaripa, Saraha's disciple, he was immensely
impressed by this siddha and begged him for instruction.
He received initiation into the Samvara-tantra. The
initial part of his sadhana was completed when he joined
a circle of twenty-four Dakas and Dakinis in a rite of
offering in a cremation ground which climaxed in
consumption of the corpse of a sage. With a final
blessing from his Guru he left Oddiyana and began a
mendicant sadhu existence. That period ended when,
feeling the need for sustained one-pointed meditation
practice, he sat down to meditate beside a pile of
fish-guts by the banks of the River Ganges in Bengal
(Bangala), where he remained until he had attained mahamudra-siddhi.
His subsequent encounter with the king and minister
who became Darikapa and Dengipa portray Luipa as an
outrageously honest and fearless exploiter of personal
power, and also an adept wielder of the apt phrase
bearing tantric truth. Consistent with this facility with
words, the Sakya school's account of Luipa's life asserts
that he was a scribe (kayastha) at the court of
the Maharaja of Bharendra, Dharmapala. Begging alms at
Dharmapala's palace Savaripa recognized the scribe Luipa
as a suitable recipient of his Samvara lineage; his
extraordinary talent was evident in the versified letters
he wrote to the king's correspondents, a task requiring
acute, one-pointed concentration. Taranatha's account
differs significantly from Bu ston's in that Luipa was a
scribe to the King of Oddiyana, and was initiated into
Vajra Varahi's mandala.
The most
significant piece of information in these legends is that
Luipa worked at the court of the Maharaja of Bharendra,
Dharmapala. The only king who had the right to call
himself Maharaja of this kingdom was the great Pala
Emperor Dharmapala, who gained it by right of conquest.
Since the Sakya legends have been given the greatest
historiographical credence of all the siddhas' legends,
it is tempting to accept this crucial identification and
place Luipa as a younger contemporary of Dharmapala (AD
770-810). If Luipa was initiated in his youth at the end
of the eighth century or the beginning of the ninth, his
Guru Savaripa's lifetime can be calculated, together with
the dates of Darikapa and Dengipa, and also Dombi Heruka
(4) who Luipa taught.' Kilapa (73) may also have been his
disciple. 9 But if Luipa was born in the eighth century
he cannot be identified with Minapa/Macchendranath, an
identification that has been attempted due to several
coincidences: the stem of both their names means
"fish;" they are both associated with Sri Lanka
and Bengal; they both conceived yogini-tantra lineages
(Luipa - Samvara; Minapa -Yogini-kaula), and they are
both known as adi-guru, Whereas Minapa was the
originator of nath saiva lineages, from which he
gained his adi-guru status, Luipa has no Hindu
associations, although his sadhana has a sakta ethos.
Luipa's
first place in the eighty-four legends could reflect the
belief of the narrator, or the translator, that Luipa was
First Guru (adi-guru) of the Mahamudra-siddhas in
either time or status. The other claimant to this title
is Saraha. Regarding time, Luipa was born after Saraha,
but although Luipa's Guru was Saraha's disciple, their
lifetimes probably overlapped. Regarding status and
personal power, whereas Saraha's reputation lies to a
large extent in his literary genius, Luipa's name evokes
a sense of the siddha's tremendous integrity and
commitment, the samaya that creates the personal
power demonstrated in his legends. Both Saraha and Luipa
were originators of Samvara-tantra lineages, but
it was Luipa who received the title of Guhyapati, Master
of Secrets, to add to his status of adi-guru in
the lineage that practiced the Samvara-tantra according
to the method of Luipa; he received direct transmission
from the Dakini Vajra Varahi. If Luipa obtained his
original Samvara revelation in Oddiyana, the home of
several of the mother-tantras, he would have been one of
the siddhas responsible for propagating this tantra in
Eastern India. But whatever the tantra's provenance,
Luipa became the great exemplar of what Saraha preached,
as confirmed in his own few doha songs, and his
sadhana became the inspiration and example for some of
the greatest names amongst the mahasiddhas: Kambala,
Ghantapa, Indrabhuti, Jalandhara, Krsnacarya, Tilopa and
Naropa were all initiates into the Samvara-tantra according
to the method of Luipa. Marpa Dopa transmitted the tantra
to Tibet, where it has remained the principal yidam
practice of the Kahgyu school until today.
Although the
Tibetan translator rendered "Luipa" as The
Fishgut Eater (Nya Ito zhabs), the root of the word is
probably Old Bengali lohita, a type of fish, and
Luipa is thus synonymous with Minapa and
Macchendra/Matsyendra. Luhipa, Lohipa, Luyipa, Loyipa,
are variants of the name.
4 The Mahasiddha Dombipa
The Tiger-Rider
The philosopher's stone
Turns iron into gold;
The innate power of the Great Jewel
Converts passion into pure awareness.
Dombipa was a king of Magadha.
He was initiated by the Guru Virupa into the mandala of
the Buddha-deity Hevajra. Through practice of the
meditation rites of Hevajra he experienced the deity's
reality and attained his realization and magical power.
The
enlightened king regarded his subjects as a father treats
his only son, but his people had no idea that their king
was an initiate of the mysteries. However, they all
agreed that he was an honest man with an innate
propensity to treat his subjects kindly.
The king
conceived a scheme to drive fear and want from his
kingdom. He summoned his minister, charging him in this
way: "Our country is plagued by thieves and bandits,
and due to past neglect our karma has burdened us with
much poverty. To protect it from fear and want, cast a
great bronze bell and hang it from the branch of a strong
tree. Whenever you see danger or poverty, strike the
bell." The minister fulfilled the king's command,
and while the king reigned. Magadha was free of crime,
famine, plague and poverty.
Some time
later a wandering band of minstrels arrived in the city
to sing and dance for the king. One of the minstrels had
a twelve year-old daughter, an innocent virgin untainted
by the sordid world about her. She was utterly charming,
with a fair complexion and classical features, and to
glance at her was to fall in love. She had all the
qualities of a padmini, a lotus child, the rarest
and most desirable of all girls. The king decided to take
this girl for his spiritual consort, and in secret he
commanded the gypsy to give her to him.
"You
are the great king of Magadha," the man replied.
"You rule eight hundred thousand households in such
luxury and style that you are left completely ignorant of
the other side of life. We are low caste wretches,
reviled and shunned by all. How could you even think of
such a thing?"
The king
insisted. He gave the minstrel the girl's weight in gold
and took her to serve as his mystic consort. For many
years he kept her hidden, but in the twelfth year her
existence became known. "The king is consorting with
an outcast woman," was the rumor that spread like
wild-fire across the kingdom, and despite his previous
benevolence the king's conduct was not tolerated by the
establishment. He was forced to abdicate. Entrusting his
kingdom to his son and ministers he departed for the
jungle with his low-caste mistress, and in an idyllic
hermitage in solitude they continued practicing their
tantric yoga for a further twelve years.
Meanwhile
the kingdom was misgoverned. The quality of life
diminished as virtue ebbed to a low level. A council
agreed to request the old king to return to govern, and a
delegation was sent into the jungle to find him. When
they eventually found the hermitage, from a distance they
saw the king sitting under a tree while his consort
walked upon lotus leaves to the middle of a pond, where
she drew cool nectar from a depth of fifteen fathoms
before returning to offer it to her lord. The watchers
were amazed, and returned immediately to the city to
report what they had seen. Then another delegation was
sent with the people's invitation. and the king accepted
it, agreeing to return.
The king, in
union with his consort, came riding out of the jungle on
the back of a pregnant tigress, brandishing a deadly
snake as a whip. After the people had overcome their fear
and astonishment they begged him to take up the reigns of
government again.
"I have
lost my own caste status by consorting with an outcast
woman," the king told them. "It is not proper
for me to resume my original position. However, since
death ends all distinctions, burn us. In our rebirth we
will have been absolved."
A great pyre
of cow-head sandalwood was constructed, and after the
king and his consort had mounted it, it was fired. The
huge pyre burned for seven days, and when it was cool
enough to approach, the people caught sight of the two of
them shimmering, as if covered in dew drops, in the
spontaneously arisen illusory form of the Buddha-deity
Hevajra in union with his consort, in the heart of a
fully-blown lotus. At this point the last vestiges of
doubt were removed from the minds of the men of Magadha,
and they began to call their king the master Dombipa,
which means Lord of the Dombi.
Stepping out
of the fire the king addressed the ministers and all of
his people of the four castes. "If you emulate me, I
shall stay to govern you. If you will not help
yourselves, I shall not remain to govern you."
The people
were shocked, and remonstrated, saying, "How is that
possible?" "How can we give up our homes and
families?" "We are not yogins!"
Then the
king addressed them again. "Political power is of
little benefit and the retribution is great. Those who
wield authority can do little good, and more often than
not the damage that flows from their actions leads to
misery for all in the long run. My kingdom is the kingdom
of truth!"
He spoke,
and in that instant of immortality he arrived in the
Dakini's Paradise, where he remains for the sake of
perfect awareness and pure delight.
Sadhana
In India it
is universally believed that the sound of a bell has the
power to exorcise demons and to purify the mind; a bell
is always sounded before entering a temple. The bell that
Dombipa had erected was multifunctional: it called
prudent attention to thieves and approaching natural
disasters, for example; it exorcised the area of any
demons responsible for plague and famine; and by
purifying the minds of the populace it improved their
karma; the all pervasive sound of the bell is also an
auditory symbol of female wisdom and emptiness. After
this initial anecdote illustrating the king's
benevolence, the bulk of Dombipa's legend concerns his
sexual sadhana and caste problems.
Inter-caste
miscegenation was forbidden for the twice-born castes,
and the penalty for breaking this taboo was loss of
caste, which meant social ostracism. But the evident
anti-caste bias of Buddhism in general, and Tantra in
particular, does not manifest as social rebellion and
zeal to reform society - unless ordination and initiation
into an outcast sect is viewed as an anti-caste act - as
everybody recognized caste as an immutable, divine
dispensation. Rather, for the tantrika, the mind-set,
preconceptions and prejudices of caste- consciousness,
comprise a paradigm of the social conditioning that must
be eradicated if Buddhahood is to be achieved. just as we
can lose our racial prejudice by marrying a partner
belonging to another race, the siddhas took consorts from
outcast communities to cultivate the awareness of
nondiscrimination. Further, in the same way that pride is
destroyed by entering into the essence of humiliation,
passion dissolves by cultivating sexual desire in the
framework of a fulfillment yoga and penetrating its
essence. It should be said that the popularity of Dombi,
Sabara and Candala consorts depended to some extent upon
availability. No matter what the original caste status of
a bone-garlanded yogin, few women of high caste would be
associated with him. The Dombis were wandering minstrels
and musicians. The age of Dombipa's consort, twelve,
signifies maturity, or perfection; sixteen is the actual
age when a girl is ripe according to the Kamasutra, which
places padmini at the top of a fourfold
classification of the ideal girl's physical attributes. Mudra
is the term used to describe Dombipa's "mystic
consort." On the sensual plane she is the
"other body", the karma-mudra, employed
in sexual yoga. On the non-dual, ultimate level she is
the jnana-mudra, the "seal of awareness"
stamped upon every experience of body, speech and mind.
Dombipa's
consort was Vajra Varahi to his own Hevajra (although
another source calls her Cinta, the sahaja-yogini of Hevajra's
retinue). The precise nature of their jungle meditation
is omitted, but probably it was the yoga of uniting
pleasure and emptiness. Practicing a form of coitus
interruptus and retention of semen, the energy
generated is sublimated, vitalizing the psycho-organism's
focal points of energy, raising the level of sensual
pleasure to the point where dualistic functions of mind
are overwhelmed and the non-dual pure awareness of the
Buddha shines through. The kundalini rises from
the sexual cakra, through the four levels of joy
and the four higher cakras, to consummate
Buddhahood in the fontanelle center (see p. 217).
The vignette
of Dombipa's purification by fire is a common enough
motif in tantric legend (e.g. Padmasambhava's burning
with Mandarava); fire may indicate the fierce passion
that is transmuted into pure awareness by meditation upon
its essential nature as mind pure in itself;
imperviousness to fire indicates a yogin's control of the
elements and may signify that his body has become
immaterial, in his own vision, like a rainbow body; the
halo that surrounds the wrathful deities in Tibetan
iconography is the fire of wisdom that burns away the
veils of thought and emotion. The "cow-head"
sandalwood of the pyre upon which they were burnt is a
highly scented, sacred wood usually employed for carving
images and anointing saints.
It is
interesting to consider the implications of Dombipa's
final judgement upon political involvement. In his early
years as an enlightened king like Lilapa, he used his
situation to fulfill the Bodhisattva Vow of selfless
service, and, like the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, he
took upon himself the misfortunes of beings and the
negative karma of wielding authority and power. Finally,
however, when his people plead incapacity to emulate the
master he refuses to rule them and dissolves into the
Dakini's Paradise. We may infer from this that the
renunciate yogin s path is ultimately superior to living
in the world - if the choice is possible. In the same
key, Dombipa could have claimed that he never indulged in
sexual pleasure, his practice with his consort being a
highly ascetic practice in which transcendence of
sexual involvement was the path to mahamudra-siddhi.
Historiography
Taranatha's extensive account
of Dombipa's life begins in Tripura, in Assam, where
Virupa was born (see p. 50). Dombi was the king (or a
lord) of Tripura. His account is substantially the same
as our legend until Dombi returns to his kingdom at the
insistence of his people. After teaching his own people
he wandered afar with his consort, demonstrating his
magical power for the benefit of others. In Radha he flew
across the city mounted on his tiger, threatening the
king and citizens with venomous snakes, forcing them to
take refuge in the Buddha (thus the descriptive epithet
Tiger-Rider). In Karnataka, in South India, he taught
five hundred yogins and yoginis in a cremation ground,
and all except one, who violated the samaya, gained
siddhi. Also in the South, he coerced a people who
built sacrificial mounds of animals' hearts as offering
to renounce animal sacrifice.
Taranatha
lists Dombipa's ten disciples: amongst them are
Alalavajra, Garbaripa, Jayasri, and Rahulavajra.
G(h)arbaripa has been identified with Dharmapa (48).
Vilasyavajra and Krsnacarya are also given as Dombipa's
disciples, but evidence of the Guru's relationships with
all these disciples is sparse. Virupa was undoubtedly
Dombi's Guru, but it appears that Luipa also taught him.
Far less probable are the references in all but one of
the texts of the legends that make Krsnacarya his Guru,
although Dombi would have been alive to meet Krsnacarya.
There is room for some confusion in identifying Dombipa's
lineage as there was a second Dombipa of less importance,
who was a disciple of Naropa and Vyadhalipa (see p. 285)
and taught Virupa the Younger and Kusalibhadra the
Younger Atisa and 'Brog mi.
Dombipa is
better known as Dombi Heruka. "Dombipa" means
Lord of the Dombi, Dombi being his outcast consort's
caste name. Heruka is both the name of a form of Samvara
and Hevajra, and also an epithet of a siddha who embodies
those deities' qualities; since Dombi is Hevajra,
according to our legend, the name is most fitting. Dombi
Heruka wrote few works, but some of significance. His Sri-sahaja-siddhi
is an oft-quoted short form of the Hevajratantra; he
revealed the Kurukulla-kalpa and Aralli-tantra.
He also wrote an Ekavira-sadhana. Most of his
writing concerned the mother-tantra, and he is to be
considered an important exemplar of woman worship (str-puja).
He must have been born in the second part of the
eighth century and lived a long life through the first
half of the ninth.
7 The Siddha Kankaripa
The Lovelorn Widower
My Dakini-woman, my queen,
my lady!
The visible form of my pure awareness,
Form not separate from me, nor yet a part of me,
The phenomenal appearance of empty space:
She is beyond compare and beyond words.
In Magadha there once lived a
householder of low caste. He married a girl of his own
social status and settled down. He was not an immoral
man, but caring not a whit for the virtuous life that
leads to spiritual freedom, after tasting the delights of
connubial bliss he became obsessed with sensual pleasure.
He experienced peaks of undreamed ecstasy. However, while
he was still more than content with his lot, believing
that this world alone could fulfill all his desires, his
beloved wife came to her appointed time and died. He
carried her corpse to the cremation ground, and there he
broke down and lost himself in sorrow. His mind and will
paralyzed, he was unable to tear himself away from his
beloved's corpse. It was in this state of despair that an
enlightened yogin found him and asked him what was wrong.
"Can't
you see the state I'm in, yogin?" he cried.
"The loss of my wife is the end of this glorious
life for me. It's as if I've just had my eyes torn out.
No one on earth can suffer more than this."
"All
life ends in death; every meeting ends in parting; all
compounded things eventually disintegrate. Everyone in
this samsaric world suffers; suffering is the nature of
this wheel of existence. So why grieve? Why guard this
corpse that's no different from a lump of stony clay? Why
don't you practice Dharma and eliminate pain?"
"If
there is a way out of the confusion of this existence,
please show me, yogin," the bereaved man begged.
"The
Guru's instruction is the way out," the yogin told
him.
"Then
please give it to me."
The yogin
initiated him and empowered him in the precepts relating
to the insubstantial seed-essence that has neither center
nor circumference. Then teaching him how to meditate, the
heartbroken lover was instructed to avoid thinking about
his dead wife, but to visualize her as a Dakinis, as
indivisible pleasure and emptiness, without substance and
without self. Thus he entered into meditation, and after
six years had passed all thought of his dead wife as a
woman of flesh and blood had become a state of pleasure
and emptiness. The clouds in his mind dissolved, and the
experience of the clear light of pure pleasure arose
within him. just like the poison dhatura leaving
the mind and taking with it all hallucination and
delusion, the poison of bewilderment and unknowing left
his being, and he saw the reality of unalterable truth,
The sudra
householder of Magadha gained mahamudra-siddhi and
became known to the world as Kankaripa. He taught the
Buddha's Word to many beings in Magadha before rising
into the Dakinis's Paradise.
Sadhana
This straightforward story well
illustrates how ordinary men are transformed into yogins
out of which mahasiddhas are made, by spontaneously
taking advantage of the opportunity that arises in the
"bardo" experienced in the aftermath of
disaster. The disaster of the premature death of a
partner around whom one's world is built is an excellent
paradigm, but many kinds of mini-disaster plunge one into
the same intermediate state of high receptivity, devoid
of preconceptions, ready for anything, a state
metaphorically described as "a cremation
ground," where metanoia is possible - an
earth-bound hedonist enters and a sky-bound divine madman
exits. The radical distinction between the pleasure of
sexual consummation and the pure pleasure of union with
the Dakini is made clear here.
Kankaripa
was instructed to meditate upon the anthropomorphic
representation of the ultimate reality he describes in
his rare song of realization. Remove the attachment to
one's mundane consort, the attachment that is reinforced
by expendable thought and memory, and what remains is a
relationship directly analogous to the ultimate
two-in-one union of empty space and pure awareness; the
Dakini is thus both a woman and "the visible form of
pure awareness," and the Dakini's dance is both the
play in male-female rapport and the continuous
metamorphosis of phenomenal appearances. The Awareness
Dakinis is so called because her form is inseparable from
the pure awareness of the naths out of which she
manifests. "The insubstantial seed-essence that has
neither center nor circumference," the name of the
initiatory precepts Kankiripa received, is a description
of the ultimate Dakini visualized as a zeropoint, the
cosmic egg containing the potential, and also the
everchanging actuality, of the universe; another lineage
calls it "the indestructible sole seed:" this
point-instant of pure awareness has, in common with a
single point of light in a hologram, the capacity to
contain within it the entire interdependent creation.
This Dakini is a union of pure pleasure and emptiness;
she is not only present in, but actually is every
moment of sensual perception.
Dhatura is
a powerful hallucinogen otherwise known as Jimson Weed or
Thorn Apple. The active parts of the thorny fruit variety
create amazingly credible hallucinations in which the
subject can lose himself. It is used by devotees of Siva
in their sadhanas, and as an offering; but to my
knowledge it is not employed in Tibetan Tantra.
Historiography
The Tibetan form of this
siddha's name, Keng rus zhabs, indicates that Kankalapada
(rather than Kankaripa, Kankalipa or Konkalipa) is the
correct form. Kankala (and Keng rus) means
"skeleton," a synonym of Kapalika and Kapala,
according to the Skandha Purana, where the Kankala
sect is given as one of the five saiva sects that
lead to liberation. Thus Kankala would appear to be a saiva
name.
The variant
forms of Kankaripa's birthplace, Grahura and Maghahura,
suggest that either Magadha, ancient S. Bihar, or Gauda,
could be the correct form (see 7 and 11).
17 The Mahasiddha Kanhapa
(Krsnacarya), The Dark Siddha
Zealously practice
generosity and moral conduct,
But you cannot attain siddhi supreme
without a Guru
No more than drive a chariot without wheels.
The wide-winged vulture, innately skilled,
Glides high in the sky, ranging far away,
And the Guru's potent precepts absorbed
The karmically-destined yogin is content.
Born in the town of Somapuri
Kanhapa, also known as Krsnacarya, was the son of a
scribe. He took ordination in the great monastic academy
of Somapuri, built by King Dharmapala. He was initiated
into the mandala of the Deity Hevajra by his Guru
Jalandhara.
Kanhapa
practiced his sadhana for twelve years and was rewarded
by a vision of Hevajra with his retinue while the earth
trembled beneath him. This experience inflated his pride,
but a Dakini appeared and warned him against any idea
that this vision was anything but a preliminary sign on
the path, assuring him that he had not yet realized
ultimate truth. Kanhapa continued his solitary practice,
but one day, wishing to test himself, he placed his foot
upon a rock and left his footprint in it. The Dakini
appeared again, entreating him to return to his
meditation seat. Again, sometime later, he awoke from his
samadhi and found himself floating in space one cubit
from the ground, and again the Dakini appeared, warning
him of pride of achievement and pointing to his
meditation seat. Finally it happened that he rose up with
seven canopies floating above his head and seven damaru
skull-drums spontaneously sounding in the sky around
him.
"I have
reached my goal," he told his disciples. "We
will go to the barbarian island of Lankapuri to convert
the inhabitants."
He set out
for the city of Lankapuri on the island of Sri Lanka with
a retinue of three thousand disciples. At the shore of
the sea dividing the island from the mainland, wishing to
impress his disciples and also the people of Sri Lanka,
he left his attendants and began the crossing walking on
the water.
"Even
my Guru lacks this gift!" he thought to himself -
and he sank into the sea. The current washed him ashore,
and he found himself looking up at his Guru, Jalandhara,
who was floating in the sky above him.
"Where
are you going, Kanhapa?" asked his Guru.
"What's the matter?"
"I was
going to the barbarian island of Sri Lanka to save the
people from the pitfalls of samsara, " Kanhapa
replied meekly. "But on the way it occurred to me
that my power was superior to yours, and the result was
that I lost the power I had, and I sank into the
sea."
"You do
no one any good like that," Jalandhara commented.
"You should go to my country
of Pataliputra, where the beneficent King Dharmapala
reigns, and there look for a pupil of mine who is a
weaver. Obey him implicitly, and you will attain the
ultimate truth, which you have not yet understood."
Kanhapa set
out and, obeying his Guru, he found that his powers were
restored. The canopies and damarus re-appeared in
the sky, and he could walk upon water and leave
footprints in rock. When he arrived at Pataliputra he
left his three thousand disciples outside the city and
went in search of the weaver. Walking down the main
street of the town where the weavers had their shops, one
by one he broke the threads of their looms with his gaze.
As each began to retie his threads manually he knew he
had to look further for his teacher. At the end of the
street, on the outskirts of town, however, he found a
weaver whose thread spontaneously re-wound itself, and he
knew that he need look no further. Prostrating before
this man, and circumambulating him, Kanhapa then besought
him to teach the ultimate truth.
"Do you
promise to obey me in all things?" inquired the
weaver.
"I
do," Kanhapa responded.
Then they
walked together to the cremation ground, where they found
a fresh corpse. "Can you cat the flesh of the
corpse?" the weaver asked.
Kanhapa
knelt down, took out his knife, and began to sever a
piece of flesh.
"Not
like that!" said the weaver with contempt,
"Like this!" And he transformed himself into a
wolf, leapt upon the corpse, and began to tear at it
ravenously. Once more a human being he said, "You
can only eat human flesh when you can transform yourself
in that way."
Then
continuing his instruction, he defecated and offered one
oi the three pieces of his feces to his pupil. "Eat
it!" he ordered.
"People
will ridicule me if I do it," Kanhapa protested.
"I shan't do it!"
Then the
weaver ate one piece, the celestial gods ate another, and
the third was carried off by the naga serpents to
the nether world
After they
had arrived back in the city the weaver bought five penny
worth of food and alcohol. "Now call your disciples
and we'll celebrate a communal ganacakra feast,"
he ordered.
Kanhapa did
as he was told thinking, "There's not enough food
there for even one man. How is he going to feed us
all?"
When the
communicants were assembled the weaver blessed the
offerings and filled the bowls with rice, sweetmeats and
every kind of delicacy. The feast lasted for seven days,
and still the offerings had not all been consumed.
"There is no end to this," Kanhapa eventually
thought in disgust. "I am going," and he threw
away his left overs as an offering to the hungry ghosts,
called to his disciples, and walked off.
The weaver
shouted after them:
Ah, you miserable children!
You are destroying yourselves!
You are the kind of yogins
Who separate the emptiness of perfect insight
From the active compassion of life!
What will you gain by running away?
Canopies and damarus are small achievements
Meditate and realize the nature of reality!
Kanhapa did not want to
listen. He walked on, and travelled to the land of
Bhadhokora, which was four hundred and fifty miles east
of Somapuri. He stopped, finally, on the outskirts of the
city, where he saw a young girl sitting beneath a lichee
tree laden with fruit.
"Give
me some fruit," he said to the girl.
"I will
not," she replied.
The yogin
was not to be denied, and he plucked the fruit from the
tree with his powerful gaze. The girl sent each fruit
back to the tree with an equally powerful look. Kanhapa
was suddenly angry, and he cursed the girl with a
maledictory mantra so that she fell writhing on the
ground, bleeding from her limbs.
An indignant
crowd gathered, "Buddhists are supposed to be
kind," they muttered, "but this yogin is a
killer!"
Kanhapa
recollected himself when he heard these words, and
feeling compassion for the girl he removed the curse. But
he was now vulnerable to the curse that she called down
upon him, and he fell down vomiting and excreting blood
in an acute state of mortal anguish. He called the Dakini
Bhande to him, and asked her to go to Sri Parvata
Mountain in the south to bring the herbs that could cure
him.
The Dakini
departed, covering the six months’ journey to Sri
Parvata in seven days. She soon found the herbs required
and turned back to Bengal. On the last day of the return
journey she passed an old crone weeping by the wayside,
and failing to recognize the seductress who had cursed
her master, she stopped to ask the cause of her distress.
"Isn't
the death of the Lord Kanhapa sufficient cause to
weep?" moaned the crone.
In despair
Bhande threw the vital medicine away, only to find
Kanhapa still critically ill, awaiting his cure. When he
asked for the herbs she could only stammer her tale of
deception.
Kanhapa had
seven days to teach his disciples before finally leaving
his karmically-matured body for the Dakini's Paradise. He
taught them the sadhana called The Severed-headed Vajra
Varahi.
After her
master's death the Dakini Bhande sought the girl whose
malediction had caused it. She searched the heavens
above, the netherworld below, and the human world in
between. Eventually she found her hiding in a sambhila
tree. She dragged her out of it and cursed her with a
spell from which she never recovered.
Sadhana
Kanhapa's story is the only
legend that can be described as a cautionary tale. The
other siddhas who failed to attain the ultimate mahamudra-siddhi
- Goraksa, Caurangi, Khadgapa, among others - were
treated very kindly by the narrator, but Mahapa, who
performed a Hevajra sadhana and was recognized by the
people as a Buddhist yogin, was heavily censured. He
refused to listen to his Dakini advisor; he committed the
cardinal sin of disobeying his Guru, the weaver; he was
conceited and hasty; he was governed by anger and pride:
he came to a nasty end. The weaver attributed his
failings to his incomplete meditation; he had not united
insight and skillful means. In practical terms, although
he may have attained prolonged periods of insight into
emptiness in the controlled situation of trance, during
his application of skillful means in an uncontrolled
situation, when impediments such as inflated discursive
thought and strong emotion arose, he lacked the
perception of emptiness that would dissolve these
obstacles. Thus, when he was provoked by the Dakini under
the lichee tree, instead of donning a wrathful mask while
maintaining the inner equilibrium and detachment that
accompanies an understanding of all phenomena as empty
colored space, he was overcome by anger, and his belated
contrition, which he could have reserved for a meditation
of atonement, led to his death. Insight and skillful
means are said to be like the wings of a bird; with only
one wing, a bird cannot fly. As to emotion, so to
thought; if his arrogant thoughts dissolved immediately
they arose due to his perception of their emptiness, he
would not have fallen. If he had been able to experience
the sensual feast of the ganacakra as emptiness, his
appetite would have been limitless. If he had really
eradicated his conditioned prejudice and preconceptions
and gained the awareness of sameness, he could have eaten
his Guru's excrement. If he had been free of a sense of
ego, he could have transformed himself into a wolf and
eaten human flesh. Kanhapa exemplifies the common
phenomenon of the meditator who experiences the highest
heavens in his meditative trance, who may have realized
the emptiness of all things, and can even arise from his
meditation seat and remain in samddhi; but when called
upon to act, the realization achieved in meditation
vanishes. Likewise, when conditions are favorable he can
demonstrate siddhi and fulfill his vow to assist
all sentient beings, but when the ultimate insight is
necessary to dissolve obstacles, due to vestiges of
belief in "self' it is not available. Only siddhas
have constant realization of the ultimate reality and
live their daily lives with insight and skillful means
united.
Three
Dakinis feature in this legend; every Dakinis has the
potential to function as a guide or assistant to
liberation. The first Dakinis, who Kanhapa chose
eventually to ignore, may have been a human embodiment or
a sambhogakaya emanation. The Dakini under the
fruit tree was a mundane Dakinis whose positive potential
Kanhapa never discovered because she touched his ego,
provoking him to compete and, fatally attached, he
stirred in her a wrath that soon killed him. Clearly it
is very difficult to penetrate to the emptiness of a
mundane Dakini when she shows the heavy and black side of
her ambiguous nature; but if that is achieved she becomes
a most loyal ally, guide and savioress. The third
Dakinis, Bhande (or Bandhe), is his trustworthy friend
who performed superhuman feats out of her devotion ~o
him. Her name could mean "Buddhist Nun" (bandhd)
or "Skull" (Mandha), which would
associate her with the kapalikas. Kanhapa had a
male disciple called Bhandepada (32), but it was a
Bhadrapda (24) who sought the murderous Bahuri, found her
in a tree in Devikotta and slew her, according to
Taranatha.
Only in this
legend are the practices of flesh-eating, dung-eating and
(by implication) a literally performed ganacakra-puja mentioned.
In these so-called left-handed (vamacara) practices
there is an element of William Blake's "The road of
excess leads to the palace of wisdom," but more than
that, it is in the basest impurity, in depravity and the
lowest forms of life, and in tamasic food and drink, in
the outcaste whore, the kapalika ascetic,
excrement, corpses, alcohol, drugs, fish and meat, that
the ultimate truth becomes accessible. Finding purity in
impurity through the experience of the one taste of all
things, the ultimate sameness of all phenomena, which is
emptiness, is realized. At the heart of depravity and
corruption is the seed of innocence, unconditioned mind,
which turns the wheel full circle and unites polarities.
The seed grows into the flower of liberated bodhisattvic
activities like a lotus growing out of the slime of a
lake bottom: no slime, no lotus. The image of the lotus
is basic and ubiquitous in tantric sadhana.
The
stereotype of the flesh-eating, copulating, dung-eating
tantrika is the kapalika ascetic, who consciously
seeks the bottom of the pit of samsara to find his way to
nirvana. The great poet and singer Kanhapa sings of the
perfected kapalika in some of his many caryapada
songs, and even identifies himself as a kapalika.
His Guru Jalandhara was acknowledged as one of their
great Gurus, but it is unlikely that Kanhapa himself
actually took the Great Vow (mahavrata) and
performed gross kapalika rites. Although he sings,
"0 Dombi, I shall keep company with thee, and it is
for this purpose that I have become a Kapali without
aversion.... I am the Kapali and thou art the Dombi. For
thee I have put on a garland of bones . . ." he also
sings the subtle metaphysical equations of the sahajiyas,
and one is tempted to think that the Kapali (or kapalika)
is for him a state of mind, and that he never
practiced the literal interpretation. He sings of an
uncompromising non-dual reality in which there is only
empty space, and, simply by recognizing that, mahamudra-siddhi
is attained. He rejects the intellectual approach, mantra
and visualization, brahmin ritual, the kapalika’s
attachment to tantric appearances and conventions,
and he sings of the real kapalika as the ideal sahaja-siddha
who has shaken off all prejudices and partiality, all
preconceptions and doctrine, and realized "the
ultimate principle of emptiness that arises spontaneously
with every movement of the mind."
Historiography
Kanhapa is also a founder of nath
lineages. Compared to others of the Five Naths he is
not of primary importance, but the nath tradition
is rich in anecdote concerning him. His status is defined
by a story of Gorakhnath and Minanath giving a feast at
which each selects his own dish. Kanhapa chose cooked
snakes and scorpions and was hooted from the feast. It is
said that he was the son of the fisherman Kinwar, who
caught Minapa's leviathan. The Kanipa, one of the
twelve main panths, recognize him as adi-guru, as
also the Augars, who perform twelve years of sadhana before
initiation and lastly the Sepala, lesser,
snake-charming yogins. It is as if he was patron-saint of
the second-class naths. But he maintained a close
relationship with Ja1andhara, his Guru, whom he rescued
from inhumation.
"The
Black One," "The Dark One," are names
referring to skin color, not to moral quality. They are
epithets given to dark-skinned aboriginals (adivasis),
or nick-names given to a yogin of any caste. origin
with a dark complexion. Different languages and dialects
produced different forms of the name: Krsna, Kanhapa,
Kahnapa, Kahnupa, Kanupa, Kanapa, Kanipa, etc., all
translated into Tibetan as Nag po pa. Compounded with acarya
(pandita or adept), Krsnacarya, Krsnacarin,
Krsnacari, may become just Caryapa; in Tibetan the Nag po
spyod pa pa becomes simply sPyod pa pa. Since Tantra was
a path that appealed to the outcaste tribals there must
have been many Krsnas down the centuries. But apart from
the nath siddha mentioned above, we are concerned
principally with the two Kamacaryas of the tenth century
who were probably Guru and disciple, and who are
confounded in our legend. Jalandhara was the Guru of the
Father, Son and nath Kanhapas. The Father-Guru was
an acarya, and it is likely that this Krsnacarya
was responsible for most of the hundred and fifty works
under this name, or variants, found in the Tenjur. It is
uncertain whether the Father or the Son composed and sung
the caryapada songs. The Son, who may have been
the nath, could have sung "I am a Kapali free
from aversion." But certainly the Son is associated
with dance and small ritual drums known as damarus. Taranatha
tells the story of the Son practicing the Samvara-tantra
at Nalanda being induced by a goddess to go to
Kamarupa in Assam to gain the power of wealth (vasu-siddhi).
In Kamarupa he found a chest containing an ornamented
damaru, and the moment he picked it up his feet
left the ground in dance. Whenever he played loudly five
hundred siddha yogins and yoginis appeared and danced
with him. This Kanhapa was an adept in the mother-tantra,
and chronologically he was a contemporary of the nath founders.
But was there another mahasiddha Kanha of this period? In
Nepal a Lord Krsna taught Dza-Ham, and a brahmin Krsna
taught Marpa Dopa. A later Krsna, also called Balin
(Balinacarya), a disciple of Naropa, taught the Tibetans
the Guhyasamaja-tantra.
As Father
and Son Kanhapa are confounded in the Tibetan lineages it
is almost impossible to relate the many disciples to
their respective Gurus. Mekhala and Kanakhala (66 and
67), Kantali (69), Bhadrapa (24), and Kapalapa (72)
received Hevajra initiation from a Kanhapa. Kugalibhadra
and Vijayapada with their contemporary Guhyapada
(Bhadrapa, who also received Kalacakra from a Krsna) were
links in Kanhapa's Samvara lineage. Bhandepa (32)
received the Guhyasamaja. Mahipa and Dharmapa (36 and 37)
were also Kanhapa's disciples; and Tilopa (22) received
Luipa's Samvara method from a Mahapa. Carpati (64) and
Kapalapa (72) were affiliated with the naths, but
the most renowned disciples of the nath Kanhapa
were Gopicand and Bhatrnath, who even Taranatha
acknowledges.
18 The Mahasiddha Aryadeva
(Karnaripa), The One-Eyed
All Buddhas Past, present
and future, have one essence;
Intuiting this essence you know your own mind's nature;
Let go, and relax into unstructured reality,
And with constant relaxation you are a yogin.
Aryadeva was miraculously born
on the pollen-bed of a lotus flower. As soon as he was of
age he was ordained in the academy of Sri Nalanda, and
eventually he became the abbot there. He was then the
preceptor of one thousand monks and the instructor of
numerous scholars, but he had not realized his own
perfect potential. In order to gain ultimate knowledge he
resolved to find the Great Guru Nagarjuna, whose
extraordinary powers and virtue had inspired his profound
respect.
He left
Nalanda and set off for the South. On the way, on the
banks of a broad lake, he met the Bodhisattva Manjusri in
the guise of a fisherman, and after bowing down to him
and presenting offerings he asked him where Nagarjuna
could be found. The fisherman told him that the master
was living in a nearby jungle, preparing an alchemical
potion that vouchsafed immortality. Aryadeva followed his
directions and discovered Nagarjuna collecting the
ingredients for his elixir. He prostrated before the
master and begged for instruction. Nagarjuna gave him
initiation into the mandala of Guhyasamaja, precepts to
practice and permission to stay with him and practice his
sadhana.
It became
these two masters' habit to go to the town near their
jungle hermitage to beg for food. Now while Nagarjuna
found great difficulty in begging anything at all,
Aryadeva would return to the hermitage laden with all
kinds of good things.
"You
are being provided for by lustful women," Nagarjuna
told his disciple. "Your food is therefore
unwholesome. In the future you will eat only what you can
lift on the end of a pin. Enough of these feasts on
banana-leaf dishes!"
Aryadeva
obeyed his Guru, eating only the single grains of rice
that he could lift with a pin. But the women of the town
prepared barley-cakes covered with sweetmeat for him, so
that he could eat well without breaking the prohibition.
He took the cakes to his Guru, who ate them hungrily.
When he reported how he had obtained them, he was ordered
to remain in the hut in the jungle. Aryadeva obeyed, but
this time a tree-nymph brought him delicacies, and she
even neglected to cover up her resplendent naked form
while she sat and talked. The food she gave him he took
to his Guru, along with descriptions of the tree-nymph.
Nagarjuna went to the tree in which the nymph lived and
called to her; the nymph appeared, showing her head, but
modestly refusing to expose herself fully.
"Why do
you show yourself to my disciple but not to me?" he
asked her with chagrin.
"Your
disciple is utterly free from passion," replied the
nymph, "but in you there is still a trace of lust to
be eradicated."
It was at
this time that Nagarjuna gave Aryadeva his name, Sublime
God.
When
Nagarjuna's elixir of eternal youth was prepared, he
anointed his tongue with a few drops and gaveAryadeva the
bowl to do the same. Aryadeva threw the entire bowl
against a tree, which immediately broke into leaf.
"If you
waste my elixir like that," Nagirjuna protested,
"then you must replace it."
Aryadeva
took a bucket of water, urinated into it, stirred it with
a twig and gave it to his Guru.
"This
is too much," said Nagarjuna. His disciple splashed
half the bucket's contents over another tree, which also
came into bloom. Nagarjuna then said, "Now you know
that your realization is mature, do not stay in
samsara!"
At these
words Aryadeva floated up into the sky in exaltation. But
at that moment Aryadeva was approached by a woman who had
been following him from place to place for some time. She
prostrated before him, giving him honor and worship.
"What
do you want, woman?" Aryadeva asked her. "Why
have you been following me?"
"I need
one of your eyes," the woman replied. "I have
been following you because I must have one of your
eyes."
Aryadeva
plucked out his right eye and gave it to her. Thereafter
he was known as Aryadeva the One-Eyed (Karnaripa).
Aryadeva had
followed the instructions of his Guru implicitly and the
obscurations of his mind had been eradicated, so that
merely by hearing his Guru say that he was liberated he
was so, and he levitated to the height of seven palm
trees. Thereafter, floating in the sky, he taught the
Buddha's message to all beings, bringing their minds to
maturity. Finally, turning himself upside down, showing
the soles of his feet to the sky, he placed his palms
together in adoration and prostrated to his Guru. As he
reversed himself the gods showered flowers down upon him,
and he vanished.
Sadhana
The thread running through this
legend is a sense of Aryadeva's humility and modesty.
"Lotus-born" Bodhisattvas are born enlightened
and they need only go through the motions of learning,
both mundane and spiritual, before they recognize their
status as Buddhas. There seems to be no other point to
the rather obscure anecdote concerning the distribution
of Nagarjuna's elixir than to demonstrate Aryadeva's
enlightenment and his ignorance of this fact. The
unawareness of his spiritual status, which Aryadeva
showed even in Nalanda, is evidence of maturity on the
path. "He who calls himself a Buddha is certainly an
imperfect student," says Virupa in one of his dohas.
Aryadeva's stream of non-dual perception seems to
have been free even of the occasional hiccough that
allows an objective thought about oneself to slip in and
undermine one's power. Insofar as evolution on the path
implies a progressive loss of the ego identity that poses
questions such as "Who am I?" and "Am I
enlightened yet?" the initial diligent striving and
fervent aspiration necessary to enter the path gradually
dissolves and with it the notion that there is any such
attainable state as "liberation,"
"enlightenment" and "Buddhahood."
Thus Aryadeva needed a Guru to tell him that he had
achieved all that there was to achieve, which is to say,
the recognition of his original condition as nirvana. The
metaphysics of sadhana can be conceived as a sacred dream
that derives its validity from the power to take the
initiate out of his samsaric condition only to return him
to his starting point free of all mental obscurations and
emotional defilements.
Aryadeva's
state of innocence and purity was an irresistible
attraction to women. This must have arisen from his
inability to conceive of women as external objects,
particularly as sexual objects. Nagarjuna, still not
entirely free of lust, had spent twelve years
propitiating female elementals; Aryadeva attracted female
spirits to serve him without any effort whatsoever. His
disinterest in the tree nymph induced her to display
herself to him unsolicited. The woman who followed him
may also have intuited Aryadeva's condition, but she
wanted to exploit it. In another Tibetan account of this
episode the woman was a saiva tantrika who needed
the eye for a reason similar to the brahmin's need for
Nagarjuna's head; she required the eye of a learned monk
to complete the prerequisites for attainment of siddhi.
She may have been a kapalika.
Nagarjuna's
alchemical sadhana is called "the alchemy of
mercury." Nagarjuna was one of the foremost rasayana
siddhas (see p. 120), and greatness in this yoga can
be defined as the initiate's ability to apply the
alchemical process at every level of his being. Thus in
the alchemy of mercury, on the physical plane a material
substance, a herbal or mineral panacea, is produced that
will bestow immortality (or transmute base metal to gold,
according to the alchemist's precepts). On the level of
the subtle body, by a hathayoga technique
analogous to the process of creating the actual
alchemical substance, that is to say, through control of
the psychic energies that correspond to the
"mica" (abhra) in the "seed"
of the divine woman, and control of the creative seed (bodhicitta)
of the divine man, an immortal, subtle body is
created that is capable of the sensual pleasure and
mental abilities of the gross physical body. Finally, on
the absolute level, "a body of light" identical
to the naths is realized, and this is immortal in
the sense that it is beyond creation and destruction and
beyond birth and death. To attain this final level is to
attain mahamudra-siddhi. To attain the immortal
subtle body, as do the naths of the legends, is to
attain mundane siddhi or magical powers. By such a
crude delineation of the metaphysics of rasayana it
can be seen how the alchemy of mercury is compatible with
other siddha-yogas, such as the techniques of the
creative and fulfillment processes of meditation.
Historiography
The two great Nagarjunas each
had a disciple called Aryadeva, but the Aryadevas are
confounded inextricably just like the Nagarjunas. These
Gurus and disciples are referred to as Fathers and Sons.
Both Aryadevas were their Gurus' principal lineage holder
(although Nagabodhi is a rival to the later Aryadeva);
both were prolific writers, both elucidating the works of
their masters. The early Aryadeva gained immortal fame by
elaborating Nagarjuna's metaphysics and applying its
ramifications to the practice of the Bodhisattva; his
best known treatise, the Catuhsataka, explained
for the first time how the Bodhisattva should act in the
light of madhyamika insight. As to the
eighth-ninth century Aryadeva, it is notable that he
wrote nothing on rasayana; it was the tenth
century Nagarjuna who was the rasayana-siddha; the
Catuspitha-tantra appears to have been his sphere
of practice and commentary.
Taranatha's
following story of Aryadeva concerns the second century
mahayana philosopher, but has added, tantric elements,
Aryadeva was born from a lotus in the pleasure garden of
the King of Sri Lanka. He abdicated after reaching the
throne and took ordination. He completed study of the Tripitaka,
and on pilgrimage to India he met Nagarjuna and sat
at his feet on Sri Parvata Mountain (at Srisailam),
receiving mahayana teaching besides rasayana instruction,
and he attained magical powers. After Nagarjuna's death
Aryadeva built many monasteries in the South. He remained
there until he was called by a message attached to the
neck of a crow that had emanated from the heart of a
self-manifest image of Mahakala at Nalanda, begging him
to go North and defeat a brahmin tantrika called
"The Evil One Difficult to Subdue". (According
to Bu ston this brahmin was the great poet Matrceta - ca.
AD 160 - who composed many beautiful Buddhist verses
after his conversion.) On the journey he was waylaid by a
woman who required his eye for use in her sadhana. Then
"with the help of a shameless layman, a cat, and a
jar of black oil, he subdued a sister pandita, a parrot,
and chalk of the brahmins. He encircled the place of
contest with the brahmin with mantra, and tattered rags,
etc., so that Mahadeva could not enter into the heart of
his opponent." Aryadeva defeated this brahmin,
arrested him and imprisoned him in a temple where in a sutra
he read a prediction of his own conversion and
accordingly converted to Buddhism. Aryadeva then sang the
oft-quoted stanza: "Siva has three eyes but cannot
see the truth; Indra has a thousand eyes but is
spiritually blind; but Aryadeva, with only one eye, can
see the true nature of the entire three realms of
existence." Aryadeva's one eye is, of course, the
third eye of non-dual awareness.
Aryadeva has
one Guru, Nagarjuna. His principal disciple, and his
regent and lineage-holder, was a Rahula whom he taught at
Nalanda and in the South (see p. 255). Udhili, who he
taught to fly by an alchemical method (see 71),
was also his disciple. Aryadeva, who lived in the late
tenth century, is also known as Vairaginath or Kanheri,
which may be synonymous with Karnari; Vairagi is also the
name of a nath siddha disciple of Gorakhnath.
39 The Siddha Babhaha
The Free Lover
Pleasure! pleasure!
unconditional pleasure!
Unconditional desireless pleasure!
Every thought-form perceived as pleasure!
0 what unattainable secret pleasure!
Babhaha, Prince of
Dhanjur, was intoxicated by the thrills of sensual
pleasure. One day he spoke with a wise yogin who had come
begging at the palace. The yogin inspired faith in him,
and he asked for precepts to assist him in his sexual
practice.
"Consummation, the samaya, is the fountain of
all mystical experience; the Guru is the source of all
success," were the precepts the yogin gave him. He
then bestowed the initiation that transfers grace upon
the prince, and instructed him in the fulfillment yoga
technique of psychic channels, vital energies and seed
essence:
In the lotus mandala
of your partner,
A superior consort,
Mingle your white seed
With her ocean of red seed.
Then absorb, raise and diffuse the elixir
And your ecstacy will never end.
Then to raise the pleasure beyond pleasure
Visualize it inseparable from emptiness.
After
twelve years of profound experience in this technique,
the prince found that the obscurations of his vision had
vanished, and he gained siddhi. He sang:
As the king of geese
Separates water from milk
The Guru's precepts
Draw up the ambrosial elixir
He
served his disciples well before eventually attaining
bodily the Dakini's Paradise.
Sadhana
Babhaha is taught the
fulfillment process technique called Eternal Delight in
the Six Yogas of Naropa. The same result can be
achieved with or without a partner, using someone else's
body or using one's own body.109 The practice for the
celibate yogin is described in Nalinapa's legend (40),
and such use of sexual energy is considered more
desirable in the Tibetan tradition. But the well known
axiom "No mahamudra without karma-mudra,"
where the female consort is the karma-mudra, and
the central place that this yoga holds amongst the
fulfillment stage topics, indicates its significance. The
tradition defines "the superior consort" in
physical terms, employing the criteria of the Indian
science of erotics, as explained in texts such as the Kamasutra:
the padmini is the best partner. Regarding the
yoga itself, psychic channels carry the vital energies
that consist of seed-essence; and the essence of the yoga
is the skill in controlling the subtle energies. First,
energy is sent downward to the sexual center; second,
with perfect control, male and female energy is
intermingled under the power of retention; third, the
elixir of pleasure and emptiness united is raised, like a
goose drawing water out of milk, up the central channel;
and fourth, it is diffused throughout the psycho-organism
by the constantly bifurcating "capillary"
channels. With the withdrawal of "pleasure and
emptiness indivisible" up the central channel, the
four levels of joy are experienced at the four main cakras,
and by saturation of the body-mind, eternal
delight is achieved, and ultimately rainbow body is
possible. The technical description of the technique
should not obscure the sine qua non of a
"spiritual relationship" between the yogin and
his consort. Although the female body is being used as a
source of "nectar," without a totally open,
empathetic and responsive relationship, the yoga will
fail. Further, desirelessness is the key to success, and
insofar as such a state cannot be attained by striving,
the pleasure that results from consummation is
"unattainable." Finally, as Babhaha's Guru
implies at the beginning, this practice is physically and
mentally dangerous and requires a skillful guide. The samaya
he mentions can be interpreted in several ways, all
of them equally vital: it may be maintaining the relative
vows and commitments of the vajrayana, or of this
specific practice; it may be the samaya, the body,
speech and mind union, of Guru and Dakini where
Vajrayogini is the Dakini; or it may be the fully
empathetic responsiveness of yogin and yogini in their
sexual encounter.
Historiography
The meaning of Babhaha
can only be inferred from the Tibetan translation
"He who draws water from milk" (T. Chu las 'o
ma len), referring to the yogin's ability to suck up the
essential female bodhicitta from the intermingling
of nectars in the bhaga mandala into the central
channel. There is an eastern belief that geese have the
facility of sucking out water from milk, thus keeping the
milkman honest. Babhaha, which could be onomatopoeic, is
also spelled Bhalaha, Bhamva, Babhahi, Baha and
Bapabhati. His home town of Dhanjur is unidentified, as
is his Guru.
