Kawa Karpo, part IV: Revelation
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2005
1
50
354
Trip End
Ongoing
Felai Si,
China
Thursday, October 13, 2005
What was capturing my attention, forcing me to lose control of my feet?
Answer: the predawn light shining upon the earthly manifestation of the most important meditational deity in Tibet, one that can send a Buddhist practitioner to enlightenment within this lifetime, was the culprit.
Its hard to assign blame to the meditational deity, or yidam, Khorlo Demchok
01 Kawa Karpo: Abode of Khorlo Demchok
. Khorlo Demchok is a manifestation of Buddha Shakyamuni, the Buddha who lived 2,500 years ago and achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. The three most sacred mountains in Tibet--Mt. Kailesh, Mt. Tsari, and Mt. Kawa Karpo--are home to Khorlo Demchok and represent the body, speech, and mind, of this deity, respectively.Khorlo Demchok, however, is not what you might perceive a manifestation of Buddha to be. Instead of a peaceful man meditating in the lotus position, Khorlo Demchok is dark blue, has twelve arms, four heads each with three eyes. In his hands are a drum, a spear, an axe, an elephant hide, a bell, and a skull bowl filled with blood. Khorlo Demchok has a wrathful or heruka aspect to him--he is a teacher of lessons, the hard way. Perhaps, after all, he was to blame for my aching shins.
Yet inside this semi-wrathful deity is the heart of Buddha, the Wheel of Highest Joy which radiates transpersonal joy. Such joy is considered the true nature of space.
Such apparent dualities between wrath, violence, peace, and enlightenment are, however, unified in this deity. The spear in his third left hand, for example, represents the Blissful Thought of Enlightenment and the skull bowl filled with blood represents that he has sliced away the discrimination between existence and nonexistence.
A male Tibetan deity, however, is not complete without feminine power--a female consort with which he is locked in union and embrace (female Tibetan deities, by the way, are fine on their own)
02 The Goddess Mountain
. Khorlo Demchok finds completeness and emptiness in his consort Vajravarahi, who represents the Five Wisdoms.Together they represent one enlightened mind in a state of nonduality in the most powerful representation known to Tibetan Buddhism. Their union unites wisdom and compassion and obliterates dualities such as order versus chaos, masculine versus feminine, you versus me. These are also the dualities of the American Transcendentalists of the 19th century.
As I tripped, I was looking at this scene, manifest as the mountains of Kawa Karpo and Maiocomo, rising over three vertical miles above the Mekong River. Within those three vertical miles were desert shrublands, virgin fir forests, holy springs, Tibetan villages, holy waterfalls, immense glaciers, and jutting rock and ice.
After my previous nine-day visit, where the clouds of the wet monsoon covered the peaks like a teasing veil, the mountains were now fully unveiled in their grandeur. I watched as the sun rose on the mountains, prayer flags waving around the stupas that overlooked the mountains.
We came for the day to film and photograph these mountains and the Mekong River, but that was overshadowed by the intense meaning and sheer magnitude of the scene before us. We celebrated by burning incense, hanging prayer flags, circumambulating the stupas in a sea of prayer flags, and eating the best noodle soup in the small nearby town of Deqin.
I'll have to visit this place again, if only to have another bowl of soup.
OM SHRI VAJRA HE HE RU RU KAM HUM HUM P'HAT DAKINI DZALA SHAMBARAM SOHA
Comments
quite the view
sounds really amazing and looks it too, but i understand the pics cannot really show it all. you are funny about the female deities--damn straight!
lovyah