Scouting the Dakinis

Tilden Regional Park. Berkeley, CA

Fog and gentle rain greeted me as I set out on my hike this early August morning. I was thinking about the question: How do I/we transform anger, envy, ungrounded speediness, pride, inadequacy, craving, and non-awareness to more grounded and compassionate qualities that support my/our social-emotional intelligence and growth?

Throughout the summer I have been reading Lama Tsultrim Allione's book Wisdom Rising. The book explicates five Buddha families and their corresponding wisdom dakinis. Dakinis are the embodiment of fierce feminine energy--applicable to both men and women. This is fierce as in a mother with her cubs--standing up for what is right, visceral. Think of the #metoo movement, the Women's March, Aretha singing R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Embodied power. The essential idea in learning about the families and dakinis is they provide a framework for understanding the self and several processes that support our development and self-healing. The invitation is to acknowledge and move through encumbered emotions/obstructed patterns and subsequently practice their corresponding 'wisdom counterparts'. With practice, we embody these wise counterparts more and more naturally. We are able to identify with greater alacrity when we are caught in an encumbered emotion and shift it. 

While hiking I played with embodying the 'wisdom' qualities as I hiked in each direction (loop trail!) and capturing how their color essences showed up along the path. 

Each of the dakinis is associated not only with an obstructed pattern and its wisdom counterpart, but also a particular color, element, seed syllable, season, body type, sense perception, shape, time, landscape, and cardinal direction (with the center also holding a Buddha family and dakini position).

Here's a sample of a few aspects:

Vajra Dakini: East, blue, water. Anger-->clarity with compassion, mirror-like wisdom, non-reactivity, no judgment

Ratna Dakini: South, yellow, earth. Pride, inadequacy-->Equanimity, enoughness

Padma Dakini: West, red, fire. Craving, lust, desire-->discernment, compassion

Karma Dakini: North, green, air. Envy, jealousy, ungrounded speediness and ambition-->all accomplishing wisdom, skillful action, synchronicity

Buddha Dakini: Center, white, space. Non-awareness, spaced out, depression, withdrawal--> spaciousness, all-encompassing wisdom

What did this practice of look like? As I hiked west I practiced the transfiguration of craving to discernment. When I turned north I practiced shifting envy and ungrounded ambition to skillful action and synchronicity. As my body travelled east I focused on clarity and non-reactivity replacing anger. South brought forth equanimity instead of pride and inadequacy. And finally, the Center, the Buddha family--an abiding sense of spaciousness rather than non-awareness and 'spaced-outness'. And as I moved and breathed I stayed open to what Mystery wanted to share, what non-human beings were communicating, the color palette that showed itself and the multiplicity of meanings within the structure of a plant or road or rock, and the fullness of the metaphor of metamorphosis. All of this in a moving, thinking/feeling/spiritually connected Me. The moving, living mandala-- skillful action, trusting in synchronicity, clarity with compassion, discernment, spaciousness. Delicious.