The Dark Armies of the Dharma
Avalokitesvara, the Lord of Compassion, gazes out across the world, his white radiance soothing the sufferings of living beings. With one pair of hands he clasps to his heart the wish-fulfilling gem of his vow to eradicate the world's pain. In his upper left hand he holds the lotus of spiritual receptivity, the desire to leave the mud of samsara and reach up towards the sun of true happiness. Above his head we sense the oceanic love of Amitabha, his spiritual father. In Avalokitesvara's heart the mantra om manipadme hum rotates ceaselessly, pouring its light into the six realms of
suffering.
In his upper right hand we see his crystal mala turning. With each bead another being's sufferings are extinguished. We watch the dancing reflections in the crystal beads, follow their steady rhythm as aeons pass.
Still the beads flow through the milk-white fingers. The pace is steady, smooth, ceaseless. And yet... there is still so much agony, pain, and frustration mirrored in those patient eyes. Hearts which hear the call of the mantra and long to respond are chained by dark forces, restrained by fear, bewildered by confusion, so that they do not know whence the sound comes or how to follow it.
The sapphire eyes cloud with a gathering storm of spiritual impatience. They steal a glance at the steady, but too slow, circling of the crystal beads to their right. They look once more, hard, at the plague forces of ignorance, the jailers of hatred, the ransomers of craving who hold so many beings in their clutches.
The crystal beads begin to change shape. They lose their sparkling reflections for a sun-bleached white. They become a death's head garland, a rosary of skulls. The delicate white hand grows darker, its light changing from white to deep blue, like an eclipse of the sun. The powerful hand's first and last fingers stab the air in a menacing gesture. Around it roars a corona of flames.
With a world-shaking cry the figure, now blue-black, starts to its feet. The wish-fulfilling jewel transforms into a vajra-chopper and a skull cup dripping with red nectar. The soft lotus transforms into a trident with a death's head. From the huge, overpowering blue-black body another arm thrusts out, rattling a skull drum. To the left a further fist uncoils a noose.
The giant figure pounds forward, wild hair streaming upward, tied round with snakes. The massive body, nearly naked, girt only with a tiger-skin, wears skulls - pretty, staring skulls - as jewels. Snake enwreathed, fang-mouthed, three eyes glaring bloodshot from an awesome face, he marches onward bellowing challenge. Answering his call, legions of similar figures pour from the empty sky, forming fiery ranks behind him. Thigh-bone bugles summon ever more misshapen Dharma champions out of the ten directions. To the left of the leader, a devil's cavalry of furies appear. Female figures, unkempt and dangerous, riding on horses, riding on goats. Their leader sits side-saddle on a mule, brandishing weapons, wreathed in fire, her fanged face contorted in fury. As she rides, her feet drum on the flayed human corpse that hangs from her saddle.
The dark army hurtles forward and enters the kingdom of Mara, the custodian of samsara. Mara's sentinels see them coming, their warning cries freezing with horror in their throats. No alarm is needed though, for the clashing of the weapons, the pounding of the hooves of that terrible horde, and the battle-cry of their leader causes earthquakes in all six realms, and shakes the foundations of Mara's palace.
Mara's imperial guard, sent out to do or die, hesitates in its first charge, flinging down weapons that would only serve to slow its headlong retreat. Mara's daughters, sent to parley, are dumped unceremoniously over the backs of the advancing cavalry, their alluring dresses dragging in the mud. Regiments of hatred are routed. The artillery of fear is overrun. Poison clouds of envy and doubt just cause the attackers to grow larger and stronger. In his last stronghold, Mara holds all sentient beings hostage, threatening to take everything down with him. It does him no good. The deepest dungeons of the hells, their walls thick as ignorance, are taken by storm.
The bone mala in the huge right fist whirls so fast now that no skulls can be seen. It is just a perfect circle of white light. As the hostages are led out, free at last, the eyes of the giant black general look down at them with fathomless compassion.
Mahakala ('great black one', Tibetan Gonpo Nakpo Chenpo) is the wrathful manifestation of Avalokitesvara. He is a dharmapala (Tibetan Chokyong) a 'protector of the Dharma'. We have already met Yamantaka, the wrathful manifestation of Manjusri, as well as the wrathful form of the serene young Bodhisattva Vajrapani. In Tantra, the most benign and peaceful figures can also assume the most horrifying and powerful forms. The greater your love for sentient beings, the more total will be your movement against whatever harms or threatens them. With total selflessness you have an unhesitating, fearless response to their needs.
Dharmapalas are often visualized along with the three esoteric Refuges. They do not form a fourth Refuge, rather they are the vajra-wall of protection that guards the three Refuges, both exoteric and esoteric. They are the bodyguards of the Tantra. They defend its teachings and its practitioners from inner or outer enemies. As is typical of Tantra, their protective power is understood and used on many different levels.
Dharmapalas are invoked for magical protection from external harm by some Tantric practitioners. Namkhai Norbu Rimpoche tells how he used a sadhana of the dharmapalas to give warning of attacks by bandits when making a dangerous journey across Tibet. Tibetan monasteries had a special shrine-room for the performance of dharmapala rituals. The monks assigned to the practice sat in the darkened room, their texts illumined only by the butter lamps on the shrine. In the gloom they could discern the images of the Protectors. The room would be strewn with old weapons donated to the monastery. Carcasses of wild beasts adorned the ceiling. In this awe-inspiring and forbidding place the monks would chant the rituals that protected the area from misfortune, from sickness, and from storm. Their rites, it was believed, cast a circle of protection over the region.
On a deeper level, dharmapalas throw back into the shadows the forces of nightmare and madness which always threaten to tear loose and subjugate the human psyche. On the group level, these forces unleash hatred, war, holocaust, and the destruction of art, culture, and religion. Breaking free in the individual they are psychosis and megalomania. They are the forces of rape and pillage, slaughter and sadism, chaos and dissolution. Finally, they are the forces through which men and women destroy themselves, by which humanity breaks its toys and plunges itself into darkness or oblivion.
These dark and unregenerate forces, the shadow beasts of the psyche, are firmly debarred from entering the mandala, so the dharmapalas also appear as gatekeepers in mandala rituals. On the principle of 'set a thief to catch a thief they appear in menacing forms, more terrifying than the dark horrors they guard against. They stand four-square in the jewelled gateways of the mandala, preventing any negative emotion from disturbing its harmony.
Dharmapalas guard the secrets of the Tantra from idle disclosure to the uninitiated. They protect Tantric practitioners from breaking their vows and pledges. They can be summoned up by the yogin or yogini when intractable forces in their personality threaten to pull them off the path. They also warn against the ugly states into which advanced practitioners who leave the path can fall. Not for nothing are Tantric practitioners sometimes cautioned that with initiation they are bound either for Enlightenment or the worst hell.
The dharmapalas do not simply stand sentry. They move outwards, extending the boundaries of the mandala. They go on the offensive, subduing and transforming the foes of the Dharma. Their weapons and emblems are taken from the dark hordes they have pacified and disarmed. In particular, they have defeated the Maras and Rudra. For Buddhism, Rudra is the personification of the furthest excesses of selfishness. He is the ego gone supernova, ignorance run rampant. (Chogyam Trungpa called him the ultimate spiritual ape.) He is represented as a vast, grotesque figure, brandishing weapons. Pig-ignorant, plug-ugly, he uses the sheer force of his greed and self-centredness to bludgeon his way to power. He is a child's tantrum universalized. In the Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava he is humbled and subdued by the wrathful Vajrapani and the dharmapala Hayagriva.
This symbolism is interesting. The ego, in its attempts to make the world secure for itself, finally bumps into Reality. For the ego, Reality is a threat against which it constantly tries to erect defences, only to have them flattened, sooner or later, like card houses. As a rigid defensive structure, the ego can only see Reality in its own terms, as a more powerful force, a demon that will destroy it. If you 'go with' the Dharma, allow the gentle influence of the Bodhisattvas to soften you, then your open heart experiences the Three Jewels as beautiful and peaceful. If you struggle and resist, then they are dangerous. This is why, in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, after the dead person fails to recognize the peaceful deities and escapes from them, wrathful deities appear. It is as though the bardo-being is all the time experiencing the Clear Light of his own consciousness, but in an increasingly alienated way.
First there is the Clear Light itself. From a slight distance of separation, the beginnings of the fall back into duality, the Clear Light of Reality is perceived as the peaceful forms of the Buddhas and their retinues. At a greater distance Reality seems to take on menacing, terrifying forms. It is as though, having tried gently to coax you to it and failed, your Buddha-nature communicates a warning. It tries to head you off from more suffering. If you recognize the true nature of the wrathful deities, you are instantly Enlightened. If you keep on running, you find yourself back on the treadmill of the six realms.
In Tantra, the dharmapalas embody a still further set of meanings. We have seen that Tantra sees the world and its inhabitants in terms of energy. Because of this vision, it finds nothing to reject. Nothing is too horrible, too evil. Every emotion, even the most negative, represents a unit of energy to be harnessed for Dharma practice. It is just a question of finding the appropriate skilful means to turn poison into wisdom. The dharmapalas represent the energies of anger, even hatred and violence, put at the service of the Dharma. Tantra turns anger into vajra-anger. Now powered not by egotism but by inner compassion and serenity, the aggressive impulses of the psyche are channelled into destroying ignorance and suffering.
Tantra is Buddhism in the Underworld. It teaches the Dharma to our shadow sides, to the gnomes and hobgoblins of our unconscious, adopting forms and apparel familiar to the denizens of those inner territories. Just as we saw that, with mudra, Tantra takes Buddhism to our fingertips, through the dharmapalas it takes the golden message of the Enlightened Ones into the darkest underground troll-chambers of the mind.
The dharmapalas are a source of courage for Tantric practitioners, standing by them in their spiritual struggles and sounding warning notes if they stray from the path. More than that, by visualizing dharmapalas in meditation, Tantric practitioners can connect with the fearlessness of the Enlightened Mind and rally the energy required to break through to new levels of awareness.
However, when meditating on these wrathful guardians, Tantric practitioners must beware of falling into mere mundane anger. They have always to bear in mind that, though of outwardly terrifying aspect, the dharmapalas are inwardly serene and gentle. They are manifestations of the most beneficent forces imaginable. Their fierce power is subordinate to the great love and compassion of the Bodhisattva.
Within the spiritual community, with their vajra brothers and sisters, Tantric practitioners can manifest as dakinis, totally open and loving, joining in the dance within the mandala. Venturing out into the dark alleys of unbelief, striding the corridors of power, they don the spiritual armour of awareness, patience, and energy. Then the dakini may transform into a dharmapala. Spiritually-minded people are sometimes expected to be meek and mildmannered. Buddhism values true gentleness, but it also thinks highly of heroism and clear thinking. You may approach a Buddhist teacher with some clever intellectual question only to have your words crumpled up and thrown back at you. You may find your vague generalizations and woolly rationalizations hacked to pieces before your eyes. To the ego, the teacher may appear at times like a larger ego, shooting you down in flames, so completely self-assured that you may feel he or she is not open to your viewpoint. However, the teacher may just be defending the Truth, quite selflessly, from your attempts to sabotage it.
The certainty of a true spiritual teacher comes not from fixed views but from their own insight into Reality. They are unshakeable. They may even get angry, which can be terrifying. They can mobilize more aggressive energy than ordinary people because they are much more concentrated. At times you may feel seared by the burst of fire directed at you. You may realize only later that the vajra hurled in your direction left you unscathed. It simply shattered some of the chains which bound you, leaving you freer than before.
The dharmapalas are also a reminder to the practitioner that the dark side of life is an expression of Reality, just as much as the light and beautiful. Recognizing the wrathful forms as aspects of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas makes it easier to see difficult or frightening situations as expressions of Sunyata. The dharmapalas represent the way the Tantric practitioner accepts the challenge of painful life events, and by becoming one with them transforms their nature. We have come across the suggestion that work is a Tantric guru. For the alert disciple, all situations, whether seemingly good or bad, can be their guru. They can all be used as opportunities to deepen insight and strengthen compassion.
Dharmapalas are of two kinds. First, there are emanations of the dharmakaya, such as Mahakala, whom we saw hurtle into action at the beginning of this chapter. Then there are mundane entities, known as lords of the soil, who have been converted to the Dharma. The combined total of these two classes of dharmapalas within the Tibetan tradition is several hundred, if not more. The Dalai Lama has discouraged Westerners from involving themselves with meditations on mundane protectors. He feels they are inappropriate to the Western situation. 63 Most of us are still at the stage of learning to relate to the most central figures of Buddhism: the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, gurus and yidams. It would not be helpful to become caught up with sadhanas of figures which, while they can exercise a fascination for some people, are of comparatively minor importance for spiritual development. In the rest of this chapter we shall look at a few of the most important Tantric protectors individually.
Mahakala is the most commonly invoked of all Dharma protectors, and is important to all schools of Tibetan Buddhism. In Tibetan he is often known simply as 'the Lord'.
He has over seventy different forms, and each particular school has those it particularly favours. For the Nyingmapas it is the Four-Faced Lord; for the Karma Kagyu the squat, misshapen Black-Cloaked Lord. For the Sakyapas it is the Lord of the Tent, whose special emblem is a magic staff resting across his outstretched arms. For the Gelukpas the most important form is the six-armed, whom we have already seen in action, holding the skull rosary in his upper right hand. He is also invoked in major gatherings of the Geluk monastic assemblies in a four-armed form. This 'hastening six-armed' form is usually shown trampling on the prostrate form of Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god. Chogyam Trungpa suggests that Ganesha symbolizes subconscious thoughts.
When we lapse into distraction and mental chatter, Mahakala stamps out our subvocal gossip, and calls us back to attentiveness. Though there are Mahakalas of different colours, they are typically huge, blue-black, and tremendously wrathful. They are often surrounded by a retinue of similar figures, or by other demons and demonesses. A good example of such a visualization is given in a sadhana of the Four-Faced Lord.
This form of Mahakala is blue-black, with faces to the right and left of the central one, and one above. The front one is black, and munches a corpse. The others are each of a different colour and expression: wrathfully smiling, roaring with laughter, and frowning. All have three glowering eyes, which see into the past, present, and future. He has four arms. Each performs one of the four karmas, or actions, which is the main task of this Mahakala.
These are
(1) to subdue sickness, hindrances, and troubles;
(2) to increase life, good qualities, and wisdom;
(3) to attract whatever Dharma practitioners need and bring people to the Dharma; and
(4) to destroy confusion, doubt, and ignorance.
His inner left hand, close to his body, holds the skull cup of nectar. Here, this represents Emptiness and pacification. In his inner right hand he carries a hooked knife, representing skilful means and the power of increasing. His upper right hand wields a sword, which performs the function of attracting. His upper left hand waves a trident spear, for destroying craving, hatred, and ignorance at one thrust.
Wreathed in crackling flames, his body encircled with writhing snakes, and skull-crowned, his right foot stamps down hard on a prostrate figure, representing egotism. From his inner left forearm dangles a mala of skulls, and in the crook of that arm is a pot of wine. His fanged faces glare out, their beards and eyebrows blazing like the fire which will consume the universe at the end of the aeon.
Around him is his retinue. First come the four Mothers: black Dombini, green Candall, red Raksasi, and yellow Simhali, on his four sides. All are naked, with vajra-choppers and skulls of blood. Their bodies emit fire, and they visit plagues on enemies of the Dharma and those who break their Tantric vows. Beyond them march measureless hosts of protectors and the eight classes of demons, as well as twenty-one knife-wielding butchers, each with a retinue of a hundred thousand similar figures. The Dharma army fills the earth and sky.
O Mahakala and the seventy lords in your retinue,
Yours is the power to overcome all Maras
And to carry on high the victory banner of Dharma.
Yours is the power to bring joy to the world.
The female companion of Mahakala, whom we saw riding into battle alongside him and who equals him in power, is Sridevi ('glorious goddess', Tibetan Paldan Lhamo). Just as Mahakala is the 'dangerous' form of the benign Avalokitesvara, so Sridevi has both peaceful and wrathful forms. Her peaceful manifestation is known as Ekamatri Sridevi (Tibetan Machik Paldan Lhamo). Dressed in celestial clothing, she sits on a lotus in the posture of royal ease, her left foot slightly extended. She wears a Bodhisattva crown of jewels, and smiles compassionately. In her left hand she holds a bowl filled with jewels. In her right hand is a standard with pennants in all the colours of the rainbow. Her body is enhaloed with brilliant light.
In her wrathful guise she is somewhat different. She is dark blue, ferocious, with three bloodshot eyes. Her flaming red hair stands on end, and above her head is a fan of peacock feathers. She has sharp fangs, and laughs with a sound like thunder. She rides on a mule, which is galloping furiously over a sea of blood. It is said that she is riding towards Siberia, after an unsuccessful attempt to convert the king of (Sri) Lanka to the Dharma. Her mule has been hit by the vengeful king's arrow. The wound in its flank has been transformed into a wisdom eye.
She is largely naked, her body wreathed with snakes and adorned with bone ornaments and a necklace of skulls. In her left hand she bears a brimming skull cup. In her right she holds aloft a black skull-topped command staff. Flames roar and black storm-clouds swirl around her as she gallops along. From her saddle hangs a pouch with dice. (Her initiation is held to be a gateway to divinatory powers, and she can be invoked by practitioners of mo, the Tibetan system of divination, which involves the use of dice. There is also a lake called Lhamo Latso, to the south-east of Lhasa, whose reflections are said to reveal the future.) She sits sidesaddle on the flayed skin of her own son.
According to a tradition quoted by Alice Getty, Sridevi was given various gifts by other deities. She received the dice from Hevajra in order to determine the life of men. She received the fan of peacock feathers from Brahma (one of the most important Hindu gods, who was incorporated into Tantric Buddhism as a minor protector). Vajrapani gave her a hammer, and various other deities gave her a lion and a serpent, which she wears as earrings, and her mule, which has deadly snakes for reins. Sridevi brandishes her staff to threaten all obstacles to the success of the Dharma. Her terrible form serves as a warning of the fearsome states into which Tantric practitioners may fall if they fail to keep the pledges taken at the time of initiation. Tantric practitioners also acknowledge that the meditations they practise enable them to accumulate a great deal of psychic power. A person who engages in advanced Tantric practice but no longer feels bound to use the power he or she has gained for ethical purposes is thus a great danger both to themselves and to others. Someone who uses the power derived from a Tantric sadhana to gratify their own ego rather than laying it at the service of all sentient beings is basically engaging in black magic. Figures like Sridevi have the power to subdue those who abuse their power and render them harmless.
Not only can she control dark external forces; Sridevi is capable of pacifying all those hindering inner forces that bind us to the 'wheel of fire' of mundane existence. Hence she is also known in Tibetan as Paldan Makzor Gyalmo ('one who overpowers and crushes the hosts of the passions'). The tradition that she is seated on the skin of her own son suggests perhaps her complete overcoming of all attachment, for of all emotional connections that between mother and child is probably the strongest.
There are many forms of Sridevi, and different schools of Tibetan Buddhism may regard one or another of them as their special protector. Her meditation was introduced into Tibet by Sangwa Sherap, and to begin with she played an important part in the practice of the Sakya school. In the fifteenth century she was 'appointed' Dharma protectress of Ganden, one of the great Geluk monasteries, by the first Dalai Lama. Ever since then she has been a special protectress of the Dalai Lamas. The fifth Dalai Lama wrote instructions for meditating upon her, and a thangka of Sridevi travels with the Dalai Lamas wherever they go. For centuries this thangka was kept unseen in its red case, but in 1940 the present Dalai Lama, then aged about seven and on his way to be enthroned, was met close to Lhasa by a great crowd of officials and notables, including his three main servants, one of whom had brought the thangka, hidden as usual in its case. On seeing it near the entrance to his tent, he promptly grabbed it, took it inside, and opened it. The thangka which had not been unveiled for so long was revealed. The Dalai Lama surveyed it and then replaced it in its case. Everyone present was amazed by what he had done. Like Mahakala, Sridevi has a retinue, one so large that Blanche Christine Olschak says that a description of this alone would fill a whole iconographic book. It includes the four Queens of the Seasons, the five Goddesses of Long Life, and twelve goddesses known as tanrungmas. These are indigenous Tibetan deities who have been converted to the Dharma, and now guard and protect the practitioners of various meditation lineages.
Sridevi also has in her retinue a type of female protectress known as mahakatt. They are generally mounted on horses or mules, with goatskin bags of poison hanging from their saddles. They have bows and arrows, and lassoes made of snakes. They each wear a mirror, in which all one's karma is reflected. They are swift-acting and ferocious against enemies of the Dharma.
