Yeshe Tsogyal
| Yeshe Tsogyal | |||||||||||
| Tibetan name | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tibetan | ཡེ་ཤེས་མཚོ་རྒྱལ | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 益西措杰 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 益西措杰 | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||
Yeshe Tsogyel, also known in the Nyingma tradition as the Great Bliss Queen, is a semi-mythical female deity or figure of enlightenment (dakini) in Tibetan Buddhism. She lived from 757 to 817, and is most identified as the mystic spiritual Yab-Yum consort of the great Indian tantric teacher Padmasambhava ("the Lotus-Born One"), who was invited to Tibet by the Emperor Trisong Detsen.
Though a consort of Padmasambhava, Yeshe Tsogyel became a master in her own right. [1]
More detail
- From the mouth of a lotus was born
- The swift goddess, heroic liberator
- Who went forth in human form
- Amid the snowy mountains of Tibet.[2]
Among lay Tibetans she is seen as a Buddha who takes the form of an ordinary woman so as to be accessible to the average person, "who, for the time being, do not see her Vajravarahi form as a fully perfected deity."[3] In fact,
- She displays whatever emanation form will tame
- Any given [person], just as, for example, the full moon in the sky
- Emerges as [various] reflections in different water vessels.[4]
According to legend she was born in the same manner as the Buddha, a Sanskrit mantra sounding as her mother gave birth painlessly, and she is considered a reincarnation of the Buddha's own mother. Her name ("Primordial (ye) Wisdom (shes) Queen (rgyal mo) of the Lake (tso)") derives from her birth causing a nearby lake to double in size.[3]
As a young girl, she is said to have prayed for the happiness of all sentient beings. At the age of sixteen, she was initiated into Buddhism by Guru Padmasambhava. Although she was originally one of the Queen consorts of Trisong Detsen, she was given to Padmasambhava and became his main spiritual consort. After many years of diligent study she achieved a level of enlightenment equal to his. Yeshe Tsogyal was the main compiler of Padmasambhava's teachings, and it was she who concealed most of the termas.[citation needed]
Tsogyel, though fairly obviously a transformation of an older Bön figure, Bönmo Tso (female Bön practitioner of the lake), whom she debates in her "autobiography", also preserves the Great Completeness traditions shared by Bön with Tibet's earliest Buddhist tradition. As the wife of Tri-song-day-tsen and the consort of Padmasambhava, given to him at her request by the king, she also stands historically at the beginning of Buddhism's eclipse of Bön in Tibet. She is also considered a manifestation of Sarasvati and sometimes identified with the Bodhisattva Tara.[3]
Zhitro
Gyatso (2006) relates the background to how the Zhitro (alternate orthographies: Shitro, Xitro) was received by the wang of a Vidyadhara through the Bardo of trance:
After succeeding in a variety of feats, including beheading a tiger, she gains access to an elaborate palace where she receives esoteric initiations from several vidyādharas and buddhas. She returns to Chingpu and after a year is robbed by seven bandits whom she then converts to Buddhist practice. She proceeds with the bandits on a magic carpet to the place Oḍḍiyāna where they all receive peaceful and wrathful deity practice (zhitro) initiations from a vidyādhara, who gives her the secret name Kharchen Za and cavorts in bliss with her.[5]
Citing Padmasambhava
Padmasambhava is supposed to have said to her: "The basis for realizing enlightenment is a human body. Male or female, there is no great difference. But if she develops the mind bent on enlightenment the woman’s body is better" (quoted by Stevens, 1990, p. 71).
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Gyatso, Janet (2006). A Partial Genealogy of the Lifestory of Yeshé Tsogyel. Harvard University. JIATS, no. 2 (August 2006), THDL #T2719, 27 pp. Source: [1] (accessed: November 16, 2007)
- ^ (Jigme Lingpa quoted by Dro-drup-chen III in Gantok (1975), cited in Klein)
- ^ a b c (Klein 1995, p.15-17)
- ^ (Ngawang Denzin Dorje (1972), cited in Klein)
- ^ Gyatso, Janet (2006). A Partial Genealogy of the Lifestory of Yeshé Tsogyel. Harvard University. JIATS, no. 2 (August 2006), THDL #T2719, 27 pp. Source: [2] (accessed: November 16, 2007)
- ^ [http://arobuddhism.org/encyclopaedia/shared/text/03/aro_tc_05_mother_essence_01_eng.php Aro Lineage Aro history - the Mother Essence Lineage]
References
- Klein, Anne Carolyn (1995). Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self. Beacon Press: Boston. ISBN 0-8070-7306-7.
- Gyatso, Janet (2006). A Partial Genealogy of the Lifestory of Yeshé Tsogyel. Harvard University. JIATS, no. 2 (August 2006), THDL #T2719, 27 pp. Source: [3] (accessed: November 16, 2007)
Further reading
- Dowman, Keith. (1984). Sky Dancer: The Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel. Routledge & Kegan Paul, Boston, Mass. ISBN 0-7100-9576-7.
- Gyalwa Changchub, and Namkhai Nyingpo. (1999) Lady of the Lotus-born: The Life and Enlightenment of Yeshe Tsogyal. Translated by the Padmakara Translation Group. Shambhala, Boston & London. ISBN 1-57062-384-8.