The Six Dharma of Niguma, Dakini of Timeless Awareness

Niguma, the Dakini of Timeless Awareness

The dakini Niguma’s place of birth was the Kashmiri city called “Incomparable.” Her father was the brahmin Santivarman (Tib.: Zhi ba’i go cha). Her mother was Shrīmati (dPal gyi blo gros ma). Her real name was Srījñāna (dPal gyi ye shes). She had previously gathered the accumulations of merit and wisdom for three incalculable eons. Thus, in this life, based on the teachings of the instructions by the adept Lavāpa and some others, she manifested the signs of progress in the secret mantra Vajrayāna, and attained the body of union. So her body became a rainbow-like form. She had the ability to really hear teachings from the great Vajradhara. Having become a great bodhisattva, her emanations pervaded everywhere and accomplished the welfare of beings.

Khyungpo Naljor’s Niguma:

(This section is a summary based on the Brief Life Story of Lama Khyungpo Naljor found in the Golden Rosary of Shangpa Biographies, vol. I, 59-143)

After studying with many gurus in Nepal and India, the Tibetan yogi Khyungpo Naljor resolved to find someone who had met the Buddha face-to-face. It was when, he was directed to Niguma, who was reported to have received teachings from the great Vajradhara.

Inquiring as to where she was at present, he was told that if one had pure perception, one could see her face anywhere, but those with impure perception might search up and down without ever finding her. That was because she dwelt on the pure grounds and had transformed to a rainbow body. “Pure grounds” are certainly a matter of perception, rather than location. Nevertheless, they told him that she occasionally shows up in the forest of a great charnel ground, Sosadvīpa, to preside over the feast circles of Dakinis.

Khyungpo travels there immediately, while paying homage to the Buddha. He sees a dark dakini hovering in the sky, bedecked in bones and holding a trident and skull-cup, dancing about and displaying various forms, appearing sometimes as one and sometimes many. Convinced it was her, the Niguma, he requests for the teachings, but the dakini is uncooperative and says:

“I am a flesh-eating ḍākinī,” she says. “When my retinue arrives, you’ll be devoured. Get out now.”

Flesh-eating dakinis may have been the original dakinis of Indian lore, those scary females that populated the charnel grounds and other places where god-fearing people dared not tread. They constellate some of our greatest fears and are never far behind the more beneficent figures that entice and instruct the Tibetan adepts. Here, the gimmick of terrorizing the aspirant as a test of determination is of course a common element in hero stories. At the same time, it is not entirely a ruse. The chimerical dakini, or the energy she represents, could turn dangerous at any time and devour rather than nurture the practitioner. Khyungpo, undeterred, again requests instruction in secret mantra.

“To request secret mantra mahāyāna requires gold. If there’s gold, I’ll do it,” the Dakini replied.

Khyungpo offers her the nearly impossible amount of five hundred gold srang, but she just throws it about the forest. At this point Khyungpo starts to wonder if she really is a flesh-eating dakini since she does not want the gold. It is difficult not to speculate about the implication here: that a genuine dakini would be greedy for gold, but apparently a flesh-eating dakini is satisfied with—well, flesh.

The dakini then glares into space to invoke her vast dakini entourage, who begin constructing, in space, all the requisites for an empowerment, such as palace, sand mandala, and feast provisions. She then bestows the empowerments for the practices of illusory body and dream, tells Khyungpo to get up, and then transports him miraculously about twenty-five miles.

There, in the sky above a golden mountain like the great Mount Avṛha, the dakinis perform the feast ceremony and dance about. The golden mountain has four rivers of gold pouring from the four sides, and Khyungpo asks if it can really be somewhere in India or if it is the dakini’s magical projection. To this she replies with perhaps the most famous verse associated with Niguma, reiterated in various ways in the Path of Illusion:

This variety of desirous and hateful thoughts

that strands us in the ocean of cyclic existence

once realized to be without intrinsic nature,

makes everything a golden land, child.

If you meditate on the illusion-like nature

of illusion-like phenomena,

actual illusion-like buddhahood

will occur through the power of devotion.

Niguma then commands Khyungpo to recognize his dreams by means of her blessing, which he does. He continues to have the very dreamy experience of traveling to the land of gods and demigods, being swallowed whole by a gigantic demigod, and receiving the entire instruction on the Six Dharmas from Niguma.

She even mentions, in his dream, that no one but he has ever received the complete teaching in one nap in all of India. What is never clarified is the starting point of the dream experience: whether it was from the time of being transported to the Golden Mountain or from his first encounter with the dakini. He recognizes the dream only after she blesses him to so do. In any case, he now wakes up and “really” receives the guidance on the Six Dharmas again three times, along with a number of other instructions.

In short, Khyungpo received boundless tantras, sadhanas, and instructions from this ḍakini of timeless awareness. Ever insatiable, Khyungpo Naljor continues on his quest, offering pounds of gold to many more teachers. Again, asking for one who has seen the Buddha, he is directed to the other principal ḍakini in the lineage, Sukhasiddhi. That is another story, but with many similar elements.

Of the twenty-eight or so Indian and Nepali gurus that are mentioned by name in Khyungpo Naljor’s biography, seven of them are female. This fact is not emphasized in any way, and one might feel it to be quite normal and unremarkable. Female gurus in India, though certainly a minority, continue to be commonly accepted up to the present. Possibly it was in Tibet that it became such an exception.

 Source: Niguma, Lady of Illusion by Sarah Harding