I am initiated into the secret tantric practice of the wrathful dakini Simhamukha…
Part of a series recounting the backstory to the dream of the parsonage, first written down in spring 2023. https://katharina-kaintz.com/en/the-parsonage-story/the-pond/
The lama’s booming voice echoes through the cramped room where we’ve gathered this evening.
We: four practitioners — and two lamas.
One Nepalese, one American.
A supervision ratio worthy of an elite English university.
During the day, the ratio was even better — one to one!
The American lama Vajranatha’s lecture reminds me of graduate seminars long past.
He’s an ethnologist and anthropologist, speaks fluent Tibetan, and explains the basic principles of Tibetan tantra to a single student — me.
The others listen out of politeness; they already know all this.
Tantra — the path of transformation — is reserved for chosen students only. Instruction in these esoteric practices is secret.
Even today, access to Tibetan tantra is granted only to those initiated by a lama.
Thanks to Uriel’s generous invitation to his private retreat house at the Mill at the End of the World, I get to take part in just such a secret initiation practice this very evening!
The small lama with the shaven head sings in his full, booming voice.
I throw the blossom I’ve been holding throughout the ceremony onto the sheet of paper he holds out to me. On it: Simhamukha, the lion-headed dakini, in her mandala.
The flower lands somewhere near the right edge. The lama nods and announces: “Green!”
The others laugh.
Once again I understand nothing and stumble back to my seat.
Two hours in, the initiation ceremony is almost over.
At the start of the ceremony, we had to blindfold our eyes with a red band. Symbolically “blind,” we are meant to learn, through the practice of the wrathful dakini Simhamukha, to “see” in a new way.
We were allowed to take part in a magical act: the lineage holders of the practice were invoked, offerings made to spirits and deities, and — in symbolic gestures — the wrathful dakini Simhamukha’s weapons handed over to the practitioners.
We repeated the Tibetan words the lama gave us and recited mantras.
Now the cramped room glows with energy.
Uriel’s small white dog bounces nervously up and down. He’s a gentle, lovable soul by nature. The vibrating power of the wrathful goddess Simhamukha, which has seized us all, unsettles him.
I listen to the lama’s magical Tibetan chanting, stare at the glowing red of the blindfold, and become aware of a leaden exhaustion behind my eyeballs.
I’ve probably always had it, I suspect — or at least for a very long time.
Only now does it become conscious.
It feels as though something is lodged between my eyes and the wall of my skull, endlessly drawing energy and forcing me to see the world in an artificial way.
Every attempt to relax my gaze, to ease this exhaustion, to release whatever is sitting there, fails.
I have no idea what “it” is — I’m not able to “see into” my own skull.
There are surely practitioners who can do this — there’s nothing that doesn’t exist, I’ve learned — but I certainly can’t, and I have no idea how I’d even go about it.
Just imagining rolling my pupils so far back that they wander into the interior of my skull makes nausea rise in me.
When we’re asked, at the end of the ceremony, to remove our blindfolds, I feel as though the weight of several lifetimes were pressing on my optic nerves.
Over dinner afterward, I ask the Nepalese lama what the color green — the one my blossom landed on — actually means.
It’s a prophecy, he explains. Green is the color of Simhamukha’s karma family.
Once again I understand nothing, and ask whether the fact that my blossom landed, of all places, in the green section of the mandala will have any consequences for my practice.
“For sure,” comes the reply.
Which would be?
“Green” stands for “wrathful,” he answers.
I should brace myself for a particularly wrathful practice.
Read the next part of the series: How Tantra Gave Me a Parsonage – Part Four: Spray
Read the previous part of the series: How Tantra Gave Me a Parsonage – Part Two: Hypnotized
Read the introduction Part of the series: How Tantra Gave me a Parsonage – Introduction
Curious about working with dreams and inner guidance? Learn more about my approach: https://katharina-kaintz.com/en/how-i-work/
