The Nyingma protectors
The Nyingma school is the oldest form of Buddhism in Tibet and calls on many protectors rarely or never invoked by other schools (though the Drukpa Kagyu also invoke the Nyingma protectors). Many are believed to have been converted to the Dharma by Padmasambhava, who in his travels subdued the demons and spirits he encountered in the mountains and other wild places. He subjugated entities hostile to the Dharma by the power he had gained through Tantric practice, forcing them to tell him their seed syllable, their true name, and then binding them by oath to be servants and warriors of the Dharma. In this way, many of the indigenous gods and demons, the Pans and Draculas of Tibet, were converted to the Dharma.
Because they are native to Tibet, these figures can take on very different shapes to that of the Mahakala type of figure. Padmasambhava must have been totally fearless, for these Nyingma protectors appear in some of the most horrific forms imaginable. They are such stuff as nightmares and psychotic hallucinations are made on. They are your worst fears, the creatures you knew were lurking in the darkness when as a child you hid under the bedclothes but could not sleep.
They make the rats in Orwell's Room 101 seem like angels. Nonetheless, while commanding a healthy respect from their devotees, these strange figures call forth reverence and devotion in the Tantric practitioner, in the same way as do the benignlysmiling Buddhas. They take many forms, too many to list, and too much to encounter. It will be enough to meet just three of them, who form a group known in Tibetan as ma za dam sum.
First comes Rahula, known to Tibetans simply as Za. He is half serpent, half what we shall have to call humanoid (though any woman giving birth to such a horror would not survive the experience sane). He coils his lower body over the corpse of ego. His upper body is huge, black, and covered with a thousand eyes, all of which glare balefully. In the pit of his stomach is a cavernous mouth which, with the eyes on his upper body, give the feeling that his whole torso is a massive glaring face. He has nine heads, arranged in three tiers of three, each with three bulging eyes. A great breath of sickness issues from their fanged mouths. From the crown of the topmost head sprouts the black, cawing head of a raven.
A human skin is draped over his back. He is wreathed in snakes and adorned with scorpions. In his right hand writhes a sea-serpent, in his left is a bow and arrows, which he fires unerringly at those who break their religious vows. There is no concealment from him as his thousand eyes see your every thought.
In ancient Indian legend, Rahu was a titan who disguised himself and tried to steal nectar from the gods. He was exposed by the sun and moon, and Vishnu cut off his head. However, he lived on in the sky, where he became the dragon's head.50 Rahu avenged himself on his betrayers by periodically swallowing them - he is the lord of the eclipse. Consequently he is sometimes depicted as a reddish-blue deity holding the sun and moon in his hands.
Rahula is the destroyer of Rahu. Just as Yamantaka took over the attributes of Yama, Lord of Death, so Rahula assumes those of Rahu to protect the Dharma by threatening its enemies with eclipse. His dark body with its myriad eyes is reminiscent of the starry night sky. The gaping mouth in his belly represents the swallowing of sun and moon. For Tantric yogins, the eclipse of sun and moon can have an esoteric significance. One of the principal aims of Tantric yoga is to eclipse all craving and hatred by bringing the energies which usually flow in two psychic channels (associated with the sun and moon) into the central psychic channel (Sanskrit avadhuti).
In the lives of the eighty-four great mahasiddhas, we find the story of an old man called Rahula, who complains that the full moon of his youth has been swallowed by the Rahu of old age. He gains advanced Tantric realizations following the instructions of a yogin, who sings to him: When the dragon of non-dual realization Eclipses the subject/object circle of constructs, ... then the qualities of the Buddhas arise. Ehma! Immortality is so wonderful!
Za is also known as the lord of lightning. As a Dharma protector, he strikes the enemies of the teaching with epileptic fits and madness. (Popular Tibetan tradition holds that the shadow of Rahula's raven's head falling upon you causes apoplexy.) Then he devours them, cramming their carcasses into the gaping maw in his belly. This is just one of his forms....
If Za was rather overpowering, and you thought a female guardian might be less formidable, I am afraid you are going to be disappointed. The next of the group of three is Ekajata (or Ekajati) (goddess with 'a single plait of hair', Tibetan Tsechikma or Ralchikma). In fact, singularity, or the uncompromising vision of things from the highest viewpoint, seems to be the message of this figure. She too is dark and menacing, flame-enhaloed, nearly naked. Her skull-crowned hair writhes upwards. Her face contorts with fury.
Her brows are knitted and she has but one eye, in the middle of her forehead. From her ugly mouth protrudes a single fang. She is often depicted with only one breast. She is wreathed in severed heads. With her right hand she waves a stake on which is impaled a live human figure. In her left hand she displays the heart of a foe of the Dharma, which she has ripped out. She is the supreme protectress of the Dzogchen teachings, the highest and most precious of all Nyingma practices. She also functions as a guardian of mantras - preventing them being disclosed to those unworthy to use them, and ensuring that those who have been empowered to use them do so for appropriate purposes.
She may perhaps guard them in a more general sense as well, preventing them losing their power and efficacy, or from being lost altogether. As with all the dharmapalas we have met, Ekajata can assume a number of forms and colours. Characteristically she is dark brown, though she can also be red or blue. Her different forms hold various implements or weapons. One scholar describes forms holding a trident, a heart, and a snare; a trident and skull cup; or the heart of an enemy and a 'clever falcon'. She can also, on occasion, dispatch numerous female wolves as messengers.
Ekajata also appears, in a slightly less terrifying form, as an attendant on Green Tara, along with red Marici, the goddess of the dawn. In this context she has two eyes and so forth, and holds a vajra-chopper and a skull cup, and is described as 'sky-blue, wrathful but loving and bright'. 69 By an extension of this role, she came to be seen as a kind of blue form of Tara, known as Ugra Tara, or Tara the Ferocious.
The third member of this fearsome triad is Vajrasadhu ('oath-bound diamond', Tibetan Dorje Lekpa, sometimes shortened to Dorlek). He is considered by those brave souls who have encountered all three of these protectors to be the most approachable. His aid is sometimes enlisted in relatively mundane matters, whereas Rahula and Ekajata are uncompromisingly concerned with threats to the Dharma on the highest level. Vajrasadhu is a pre-Buddhist Tibetan deity, defeated by Padmasambhava, who bound him and his 360 companions by oath to protect the Dharma. He is most easily recognized by his round, wide-brimmed helmet. He is usually depicted riding on an animal. One common form is red, mounted on a lion, fully clothed, with a skull cup in his left hand. In his right hand he holds aloft a vajra, which he wields with a penetrating gesture.
The environment in which Vajrasadhu is represented as appearing is in keeping with his appearance. In one text it is described as follows: Surrounded by the wild sea of blood lies a castle built of bat-bone, from which a five-coloured rainbow emanates. Up in the sky, poisonous clouds gather and a terrific storm, accompanied by fiercely rolling thunder and by the flashing of meteors and lightning, rages there.
Vajrasadhu has a rather sinister emanation known in Tibetan as Garpa Nakpo. This figure is blue-black, seated astride a 'snarling goat'. In his right hand he brandishes a flaming bronze hammer, in his left he holds a blacksmith's bellows. The horns of the goat twist around each another, suggesting the way in which the dualities of relative truth are transcended when one sees things from the viewpoint of absolute truth.
The four gatekeepers and the four Great Kings
One of the major functions of dharmapalas is to act as guardians of the mandala. Generally the mandala palace has four doorways, and in many mandalas these are guarded by four gatekeepers (Sanskrit dvarapala). They stand in the entrances to the mandala, preventing any hindering force from entering. They also have the effect of blocking your retreat if you should lose heart once you have entered the mandala.
We shall take as an example the mandala of the five Buddhas as described in A Guide to the Buddhas, the first book in this series. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, along with other peaceful deities who form the Buddhas' retinue, four wrathful deities appear as guardians of the gates. They are the white Vijaya ('victorious'), the yellow Yamantaka ('slayer of death'), the red Hayagriva ('horse-necked one'), and the green Amrtakundalin ('swirling nectar').
Of these, Yamantaka and Hayagriva are important both as dharmapalas and as personal deities (yidams). We have already met Yamantaka in Chapter Five, so we shall concentrate here on Hayagriva. As the guardian of the western gate, Hayagriva (Tibetan Tamdin) is the particular protector of the Lotus family of Amitabha. Hayagriva is an Indian deity whose Tantric practice was brought to Tibet by Padmasambhava. His recognition symbol is a green horse's head (occasionally there are three of them) protruding from his flaming yellow hair.
The horse is neighing wildly in a voice that shakes the three worlds. The horse's head commemorates Hayagriva's part in the subjugation of Rudra, ego run rampant, which is described in the life-story of Padmasambhava. Hayagriva transformed himself into a horse, and entering the vast body of Rudra by the anus forced him to surrender. This incident demonstrates the extremely humiliating and deflating shock that awaits the overblown ego when it encounters Reality. It is not eternal; it cannot control the world. It has to learn humility and a sense of perspective.
The deities we have looked at so far are all of the transcendental order, symbolized by their standing on lotuses. There are other forms of protector, known as lokapalas, who are not expressions of Enlightened consciousness but are invoked as powerful mundane forces, sympathetic to the Dharma and caring for its practitioners. Perhaps the most important of these are the Four Great Kings.
In art, these kings are commonly shown in full armour. They are sometimes standing, sometimes seated in 'royal ease'. Their leader, the King of the North, is Vaisravana (Tibetan Namthore), yellow in colour, holding a cylindrical banner in his right hand, and a jewel-spitting mongoose in his left. In the east, the white Dhrtarastra (Tibetan Yulkhorsung) plays a lute. To the south the green Virudhaka (Tibetan Phak Kye po) holds a sword. In the west, the red Virupaksa (Tibetan Mikmizang) holds a stupa, or reliquary, in his right hand, and a snake, or naga, in his left. They each head a great retinue of living beings, such as gandharvas (celestial musicians) or yaksas (powerful mountain spirits).
The energy of these lokapalas is less overpowering than that of the dharmapalas. They are the beneficent forces at the summit of the mundane who, while not themselves Enlightened, are receptive to the influence of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. They encourage the good in the world, helping to perpetuate the Dharma, and encouraging its influence to spread. For instance, in chapter 6 of the Sutra of Golden Light they come forward and promise to protect those who propagate the sutra, and in chapter 14 of the Vimalakirti Nirdesa they undertake to protect whoever reads, recites, and explains it.
In this chapter we have encountered a class of figures who can be quite overpowering in their ferocity, and terrifying because of the atmosphere of nightmare darkness that surrounds them. Nonetheless, they are all protectors of the Dharma, and are emanations of Emptiness in the same way as the peaceful forms of Buddhas. Because they are apparently so threatening, it can be tempting to explain them away as merely symbolic. Before doing so, we might pause to consider the testimony of Namkhai Norbu Rimpoche concerning depictions of dharmapalas:
Though the iconographic forms have been shaped by the perceptions and culture of those who saw the original manifestation and by the development of tradition, actual beings are represented. A Sakyamuni Refuge Tree (from a sadhana written by Sangharakshita)
