Niguma: Lady of Illusion by Sarah Harding

Author:Sarah Harding
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Social Science, Women's Studies, General, Religion, Buddhism, Rituals & Practice, Tibetan
ISBN: 9781559393614
Publisher: Snow Lion Publications
Published: 2011-01-16T02:08:38+00:00

The Ḍākinī’s Personal Instructions: Five Short Texts on Yogic Techniques 8

INTRODUCTION

THESE FIVE BRIEF personal or oral instructions (zhal gdams) that are attributed to Niguma in the Peking Tengyur may be the source of the yogic techniques that are used in conjunction with Niguma’s Six Dharmas, and particularly that of inner heat (gtum mo). In most traditions of the path of methods, while the actual seated practice involves visualization and breath-control techniques, there is also a regimen of physical training (lus sbyong, lujong) that enhances the efficacy of the main practice. These individual exercises are known as “trulkor” (’khrul ’khor), a word that in other contexts means “machine” or “device” but is here translated simply as “yogic technique.” The practice of these techniques involves special clothing and housing and was traditionally kept quite secret, hidden from all viewers. The tantalizing accounts in Alexandra David-Neel’s travel books of her surreptitious witnessing of strange goings-on were most likely in regard to such techniques.1 Any number of texts, commentaries, and descriptions, however, will never successfully convey the actual practice, which must be learned directly from a master who is accomplished in both the physical training and the meditation technique. These descriptions are thus “self-secret,” perhaps more than any other textual accounts. They offer only some tips for those already initiated into their practice.

Niguma’s instructions here are particularly cryptic, and practitioners in this tradition have long relied on other sources for clarification, which in any case are mostly used to jog one’s memory of the instructor’s direct demonstration. Lineage holders of the past culled from the original sources a system of eighteen or twenty-five specific techniques (though, as noted, there are some issues with enumeration). Perhaps the most central such text is, again, by the great Tāranātha: Nigu’s Yogic Exercises, Root and Commentary. “Root” in this case refers to a section quoted by Tāranātha that appears to be the jumbled remains of what was once Niguma’s outline of these practices. The commentary is Tāranātha’s own attempt to make sense of them. He explains:

Most of these yogic exercises each have vital points of visualization that should be learned from the source text. These are the personal instructions of Niguma, Ḍākinī of Timeless Awareness. They are esoteric instructions for dissolving the energy-mind in the central channel and for releasing the knots in the channels, primarily using one’s own body as the method. They are the esoteric instructions for the supreme accomplishment of the path of liberation that are known as “The Eighteen Physical Trainings” (lus sbyong bco brgyad pa). As for the source text of this, the oral directions are somewhat arcane and have been scattered among a great many words, and there have been many that do not know how to collect them. Although it is possible that there are select collections assembled by uneducated persons, the practical application does not actually emerge clearly. Since I saw that the practice was close to disappearing, in order to save it and spread it, I, Tāranātha, having attained

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