The Demoness of Tibet, by Dr. Martin A. Mills

The impulse to believe the absurd when presented with the unknowable is called religion. Whether this is wise or unwise is the domain of doctrine. Once you understand someone's doctrine, you understand their rationale for believing the absurd. At that point, it may no longer seem absurd. You can get to both sides of this conondrum from here.

The Demoness of Tibet, by Dr. Martin A. Mills

Postby admin » Thu Dec 16, 2021 5:59 am

The Demoness of Tibet
by Dr. Martin A. Mills
The Rubin Museum
October 28, 2016

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One short inscription on the pillar is associated with the Tomara king Anangpal [1051 – c.1081 CE]...

Buddha Rashmi Mani (1997) read it as follows:

Anangpal tightened the nail [iron pillar] in Samvat 1109..

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-- Iron pillar of Delhi, by Wikipedia


In seven days journey, I arrived at Delhi, eighty-one coss from Agra. On the left hand is seen the ruins of old Delhi,5 [There are said to be four Delhis within five coss [9 miles]. The oldest was built by Rase; who, by advice of his magicians, tried the ground by driving an iron stake, which came up bloody, having wounded a snake. This the ponde or magician said was a fortunate sign.

-- A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, By Sea and Land, From the Earliest Ages to the Present Time, by Robert Kerr, F.R.S. & F.A.S. Edin., Vol. VIII, 1824


Delhi is situated in a fine plain; and about 2 coss from thence are the ruins of a hunting seat, or mole, built by Sultan Bemsa (Firuz),[???] a great Indian sovereign. It still contains much curious stone-work; and above all the rest is seen a stone pillar, which, after passing through three several stories, rises twenty-four feet above them all, having on the top a globe, surmounted by a crescent. It is said that this stone stands as much below in the earth as it rises above, and is placed below in the water, being all one stone. Some say Naserdengady, a Patan king, wanted to take it up, but was prevented by a multitude of scorpions. It has inscriptions. In divers parts of India the like are to be seen.

-- A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, By Sea and Land, From the Earliest Ages to the Present Time, by Robert Kerr, F.R.S. & F.A.S. Edin., Vol. VIII, 1824


In the "Devadatta" chapter of the Lotus Sutra, the daughter of the dragon king, an eight year old longnü (nāgakanyā), after listening to Mañjuśrī preach the Lotus Sutra, transforms into a male Bodhisattva and immediately reaches full enlightenment. Some say this tale appears to reinforce the viewpoint prevalent in Mahayana scriptures that a male body is required for Buddhahood, even if a being is so advanced in realization that they can magically transform their body at will and demonstrate the emptiness of the physical form itself....

Stories of Nāgas have existed for thousands of years in the Khmer society since the Funan era. According to reports by two Chinese envoys, Kang Tai and Zhu Ying, the state of Funan was established in the 1st century CE by an Indian prince named Kaundinya I, who married a Nāga princess named Soma (saôma; Chinese: Liuye; "Willow Leaf"). They are symbolized in the story of Preah Thong and Neang Neak. Kaundinya was given instruction in a dream to take a magic bow from a temple and defeat a Nāga princess named Soma, the daughter of the Nāga king. They fell in love during the battle and later married, their lineage becoming the royal dynasty of Funan. Kaundinya later built a capital, Vyadhapura, and the kingdom came to be known as Kambujadeśa or Cambodia (Kampuchea). The love story is the source of many standard practices in modern-day Khmer culture, including wedding ceremonies and other rituals. The Khmer people believe they are the descendants of the Nāgas. Many Khmer people still believe they exist, and will one day reappear, coming back home bringing prosperity for their people....

Several Bollywood films have been made about female nāgas, including Nagin (1954), Nagin (1976), Nagina (1986), Nigahen (1989), Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani (2002), Hisss (2010).

-- Nāga, by Wikipedia


Take a look at the painting below, now on view in the exhibition Monumental Lhasa: Fortress, Palace, Temple. It depicts the demoness said to be lying across the whole of Tibet. If you look closely you’ll see that prominent structures pin her to the ground and both natural and man-made landscapes form her anatomy.

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The Demoness of Tibet; Tibet; late 19th–early 20th century; Pigments on cloth; Rubin Museum of Art; C2006.1.1 (HAR 65719)

What is this painting about? How did the demoness get to be pinned to the earth? What are the buildings on her body?

Tibetan scholar Martin A. Mills recounts the rich story behind the painting, including the discovery of the demoness and how Chinese and Himalayan traditions converged in the founding of one of Tibet’s best-known structures.

Tibetan Geomancy: Converging Cultures

The “supine demoness,” a late-nineteenth-century symbolic depiction of the land of Tibet, draws on the great post-dynastic histories of the Jokhang Temple at Lhasa. The image is iconic of Tibet’s rich tradition of geomancy—the art and ritual of landscape. An indispensable facet of religious life across the Plateau, Tibetan geomancy (or jungtsi, “counting the elements”) united the long-established indigenous worship of mountain gods with Chinese concepts of feng shui and Indian tantra to create a rich religious science of moral well-being, community prosperity, and auspicious rule.

The Troubled Beginnings of the Jokhang

The image of the supine demoness comes from the history of the Jokhang Temple—regularly recounted from the eleventh century onwards in texts such as the Pillar Testament and the Compendium of Manis. Emperor Songtsen Gampo sought to found a tutelary temple to his patron Buddhist deity Chenresik to mark his marriage to his Nepalese bride Tritsun. The project did not go unhindered, however: every day his workers built the foundation walls of the temple, but found them destroyed the next morning.

Inauspicious Influences

In consternation, the emperor turned to his Chinese wife, Wengchen Kongjo, recently arrived from the courts of Tang dynasty China. Skilled in feng shui, Kongjo consulted the Portang divination charts, and declared that the Lhasa Valley was filled with inauspicious signs that hindered the building of such a kingly temple: that the land of Tibet itself was like a she-demon (sinmo) lying on her back; that the Ö-Thang Lake upon which the temple was built was her heart blood; that the three great hills of Lhasa were her breasts and sternum; that Central Tibet itself was her body; and that her limbs stretched far into the hinterlands of the Plateau, from Amdo in the North and the Himalayas in the South to Kashmir in the West.

In its present state, Kongjo declared, the land of Tibet remained wild and untamed, an absolute obstacle to the building of the royal temple and the future of the king’s religion.
Nonetheless, the Valley of Lhasa also contained auspicious features, shaped as parts of the body of the Buddha: a mountain shaped like twin fish, a sign representing the Buddha’s eyes; another like a vase, for his neck; a victory banner for his body, and an endless knot symbolizing his mind. These auspicious signs, the princess declared, were suppressed aspects of the land, waiting to be revealed.

Image
DETAIL: Lhasa with the Jokhang Temple, and Samye Monastery to the south of Lhasa

To reverse the negative influences, reveal the auspicious ones, and thereby allow the completion of the Jokhang, the emperor followed Kongjo’s advice to first build twelve temples to “nail down” the limbs and body of the demoness. These can be seen on the painting, marking the “fire veins” (mé-tsa) of her body: four central district temples to nail down her shoulders and hips, four border temples for her elbows and knees; and four “further taming” temples to subdue her feet and hands amongst the surrounding border tribes. In addition to these, the painting depicts the central temple at Lhasa, and to the south, the walled enclosure of Samyé, Tibet’s first royal monastery.

Debates about the Demoness: The Suppressed Feminine?

The image of the supine demoness has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate, the most common of which is to see it as a female divine stereotype, symbolically suppressed by a male-dominated Buddhist monastic elite. As tempting as it may be, this is a somewhat anachronistic [belonging or appropriate to an earlier period, especially so as to seem conspicuously old-fashioned.] reading, not least because the image itself emerges from a princess rather than a monk, within a tale of royal marriage largely devoid of any references to monasticism.[???!!!]

Tsultrim Allione is another Tantric female western teacher honored as one of twelve dakinis in the lama propaganda book, Dakini Power. But, few know she used to be a fervent whistle blower about the Tibetan lamas' sexual abuses, within the Tibetan Buddhist communities; having seen so much of it firsthand.

Over the years, Allione had attracted many female followers who appreciated her outspoken feminist voice and stance. She even kicked out males at Tara Mandala, her Tibetan Tantric center in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, who were hitting on all the women as their main practice; a common problem in these Tibetan Buddhist sanghas. "Dakini," besides being the euphemistic name for sexual consort, is also defined as a "sky walker," or mythological female with special powers, including walking across the sky. Most sexual consorts believe in the myth that the Vajrayana is "not male oriented." Tsultrim Allione was not one of them; she knew this wasn't true.

Allione had been one of the very first Western female students of Tibetan Buddhism in the sixties. She studied with high lamas in India and Nepal, and those who came to the West, like Trungpa and then other lamas like Namkai Norbu, Tsoknyi Rinpoche and Gangten Rinpoche, one of the highest lamas from Bhutan. As a teacher in her own right, creating her own "woman of wisdom" persona out of ethereal cloth, she was long interested in the position of women in Tibetan Buddhism. She authored one of the first Western books on this topic, Women of Wisdom.

Hard-pressed to find any real women in positions of leadership, or as teachers in androcentric Old Tibet, Allione focused instead on the mythological women, the sexual consorts of the lamas of the past...

Her work was more aspirational than anything else, as she enfolded the real history of misogynistic, androcentric Tibetan culture into a more palatable ideology of feminist possibilities, through her mythological goddesses and hagiographical oral history of the sexual consorts of the lamas.

Allione is embodying this mythology now, as a silenced and more "spiritualized feminist" 'recognized' by the Tibetan androcentric lama hierarchy as an emanation of one of the consort goddesses of Padmasambhava she was always writing about; reduced to a mythic being, instead of being an active, female force and inspiration for women's rights, inside her Tibetan Tantric groups.

After surviving two Tibetan lama pilloryings -- firstly, for boldly taking a stance against lama sexual abuses inside her sanghas throughout her long career as a teacher of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism and secondly, for being actively vocal about her concerns by alerting the Tantric communities about the sexual abuses of certain high lamas, calling them out, the Tibetan Lamaist hierarchy became angry, and finally brought the hammer down, silencing forever her female voice, the only female voice that was openly protesting the lamas' exploitations of young females in their sanghas.

Namkai Norbu, one of her first Tibetan teachers, gave her the first public rebuke, in his writings for his Tantric sangha, calling her out for being a "feminist", something 'incompatible' he said, with his Dzogchen teachings. At least he was honest, unlike the Dalai Lama and his Chinese Communist replacement, head of the Karma Kagyu sect, the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley, and all the other celebrity lamas, all pretending and saying they are 'feminists' these days....

Allione had been raising women's issues in the Tibetan sanghas quietly, before. But when she started complaining, openly, about a certain visiting tulku from Bhutan and his sexual gropings of young, Bhutanese women in a travelling dance group, after they came to her objecting, this Bhutanese high lama let her know that she had gone too far and she had better shape up, or be literally banished from the Tibetan Lamaist scene. She would no longer have the Tibetan lama 'seal of approval,' as a respected female Tibetan Buddhist teacher; helping the lamas spread Tantra in the West, if she kept on complaining about their sexual abuses....

To underscore the point, Allione was not allowed to sit in her usual seat of honor, in the front row and up close, during one of this high lama's talks. Instead she was publicly shamed and escorted out of his teachings....

These lamas and their occult practices are not about an equal partnership between the genders, or a reciprocal sexual act, as Allione well knows after her years of studying the Vajrayana Tantras. Nevertheless, apparently glad to be back in the lamas' good graces, after tumbling towards one of the eighteen hot and cold hell realms, Allione agreed to enable this lie of the lamas: that their sexual practices with women are about "empowering them." Allione, agreeing to this outrageous falsehood, was recognized by the lamas as one of their lineage's famous sexual consorts, Machig Labdron, one of the 'emanations' of Padmasambhava's sexual consort, Yeshe Tsogyal. Now she is part of the usual confusing, convoluted, hagiographic, Tibetan Lamaist lore, that substitutes for real history; a fairy-tale history that is constantly spoon-fed to Western Tibetan Buddhist devotees and now the western public, particularly the women, to prevent them and the world from reading the real history of Tibetan women; women always at the bottom of their caste-system Lamaist heap, used as their sexual objects for their 'higher practices' and praying daily to be reborn as men.

Glad to be back in the vajra love hug, after her temporary humiliation and potential ex-communication, Allione is now featured, prominently, along with the other lama-approved dakinis in the Dakini Power book, as another Tibetan lama ideal of a "woman of wisdom," quiet and compliant. She is not only keeping their secrets, but promoting the view that the very 'height of feminism' is to be the sexual consort of some old misogynistic lama. She is now one of the featured, twelve dakinis on the Dakini Power website, and gives retreats, rolling out her own Trojan horse -- "enlightened feminism" -- meaning feminism defined by her androcentric Tantric priests who have silenced her voice, her identity nailed down where she belongs and under their thumbs.

At least, they did not cut out her tongue, as they would have done in old Tibet, then wrapped her in a sack and thrown her in the river to drown. She instead, got a special lama hat, and a throne of her own....


-- The Dakinis and Their "Spiritualized Feminism," [EXCERPT from Enthralled: The Guru Cult of Tibetan Buddhism], by Christine A. Chandler, M.A., C.A.G.S.


More likely, the image is drawn from the standard repertoire of Tang dynasty royal feng shui, with which the full story shares many features, including the ability to combine surrounding landscape forms into a united ‘body’. The extent of the demoness’ limbs corresponds broadly with the limits of the emperor’s rule and military conquests, which became in subsequent centuries associated with the boundaries of Greater Tibet (böd chenmo), the province of Tibet’s celestial protector, the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Chenresik).



The precise historical provenance of Songtsen Gampo’s “nailing down” temples remains unclear, although it is certain that all have existed at some point, and some of the remaining examples show clear signs of the kind of Newar architecture and styles contemporaneous to the Lhasa Jokhang itself. Many were renovated by subsequent kings and rulers as a sign of their mastery over Songtsen Gampo’s city, not least the Fifth Dalai Lama in the seventeenth century. To this day, the auspicious signs of the Buddha divined by Kongjo in the Valley landscape remain popular pilgrimage and picnic spots for Tibetans.

About the Author:

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Dr. Martin A. Mills is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland and co-founder of the Scottish Centre for Himalayan Research. Author of Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism: The Foundations of Authority in Gelukpa Monasticism (Routledge, 2003), his principal research is the anthropological study of Tibetan communities, in particular its religious and governmental institutions. Over the last twenty years, he has carried out fieldwork in Tibet, Ladakh, China, Northern India, and Scotland.
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