Simhamukha, the Lion-Faced Dakini
Simhamukha, the Lion-Faced Dakini is appropriate for clearing obstacles of the most pervasive and malignant kind, and cutting through the “three poisons” of mind. This ancient practice has been important in Tibetan Buddhism since the time of Padmasambhava.
She is particularly focused on pacifying the destructive influence of the Mamos, the forces of disturbed “yin” or feminine demonic energies. The wanton destruction of the environment and degradation of human culture greatly stirs up and enrages these elemental forces.
They retaliate with disease, epidemics, weather disturbances and calamaties on a major scale.
This practice is one of the great antidotes for this critical time of the “five degenerations.” As a wrathful dakini, the Lion-Faced Dakini is also one of the Phramenma, a group of female deities from the Bardo Thodol, or ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’.
At the time of Buddha Amitabha, many aeons even before Shakyamuni Buddha, there was a demon called Garab Wangchuk whose daughter was a lion-faced demoness called Tramen Sengdongma. She delighted in taking the lives of countless beings, and by harming practitioners she increased the negative forces in the world and undermined the Amitabha Buddha’s doctrine.
All the buddhas gathered together and concluded that to tame her they would need to manifest an identical-looking being.
The enlightened beings’ collective wisdom arose in the form of a wisdom being – the Lion-faced Dakini, empowered by all the Buddhas of the ten directions with their power and compassion to tame the demoness. The Dakini became far more powerful than the demoness, who then began to lose her strength.
While the Dakini was in a deep samadhi of taming the maras, countless dakinis emanated from her and subdued all the demons. Tramen Sengdongma, now pacified, took an oath to serve the dharma and became a protector. The Lion-faced Dakini of Timeless Awareness represents the wisdom that enables one to clear away the negativity of one’s own mind, and through her practice one is imbued with spiritual power to gain mastery over samsara and nirvana.
In the time of the 100-year lifespans, Buddha Shakyamuni appeared in the world and turned the wheel of dharma in many places such as Varanasi, Bodhgaya, Vulture’s Peak, and the charnel ground of Lanka, teaching on many levels including Vajrayana.
He said that at that time it was as if the sun was in the center of the sky, and there was no darkness anywhere, but when the sun went down then the darkness of ignorance would arise.
But Lord Buddha continued that there would be a method to dispel this ignorance, and so Vajrapani requested that Lord Buddha teach this method. Shakyamuni Buddha rested in the samadhi of taming the maras, and then taught the whole cycle of the Lion-faced Dakini. He taught in many different ways, and these transmissions were concealed by Vajrapani as treasures after he received them.
750 years after Buddha’s Parinirvana, around Bodhgaya there was a king called Suraya Singha who invited 500 panditas – great practitioners and teachers of the Buddhadharma – and made offerings to them. At that time, the power of the Hindus was increasing, and they were destroying holy Buddhist teachings and institutes, so a debate between the Hindu and Buddhist panditas was arranged.
Suraya Singha and the panditas prayed single-pointedly to Guru Rinpoche for help and he then appeared and tamed the Hindu teachers through miracles. When the Hindus then started using black magic, Guru Rinpoche revealed the Lion-faced Dakini treasure hidden by Vajrapani, did the practice, and in removing all obstacles he defeated the Hindu panditas.
Guru Rinpoche remained in Tibet for 111 years and in his 73rd year there he gave many teachings on the Eight Command Deities and also on the Lion-faced Dakini.
The practice was transmitted to Yeshe Tsogyal, who is an emanation of the Lion-faced Dakini, and with her siddha of infallible memory, she recorded the text in dakini script and concealed it, to be revealed later by tertons. This particular treasure was revealed by Dudjom Lingpa, and kept secret for 44 years. When he felt it was the right time, he opened the practice, recorded it in human script and transmitted it to others.
The practice of the Lion-faced Dakini is said to be a reliable source of protection when obstacles arise…. “Defilements attract the maras of hindrances and enemies just as a magnet attracts iron filings. When you clear away the negativity of your own poisons, there is nothing to attract the maras.”
Your lion face is shocking and black as a storm cloud; You strike terror with your bared teeth shining, tongue lashing, and glare so violent As you wield a knife and skull cup in the midst of your dance; I praise and revere the one who burns with fiery wisdom. Wearing dry skulls, snakes, and a tiger skin around your waist, Draped with bone ornaments, with a complete retinue of enlightened females, Gleeful executioner of all obstructers and destroyers, I praise and honor the one who holds fast to the fortunate. Your raging body terrifies the host of detractors; Your shout, hum! phat ! KILL! destroy! terrifies from afar; Your diamond like mind penetrates ultimate reality. I praise and render homage to you, powerful Dakini!
Simhamukha: The Lion Headed Dakini
The female Buddha, Simhamukha is lion faced with the body of a woman. She is a startling awakeness of an enlightened awareness. Her mouth is drawn as roaring with untamable fury and exultant laughter. Her vibrant body dances in the waves of pure, primal power. She embodies the unstoppable energy that is immune to any external forces. Her fiery persona expresses the intensity required to experience ultimate reality. But her rage is not a selfish power. But rather it's her absolute intolerance towards the hindrances in the spiritual path of Enlightenment. As seen in some thangka, the lion-faced female Buddha is accompanied by two attendants. They are the Tiger-faced (Vyagramukha) and Bear-face (Rikshamukha) dakinis. This association shows that she communes with every living being and is kin to all that is sovereign, wild, and free.
Simhamukha, whose name means “Lion-Faced Lady,” is a fully enlightened being. She attained Buddhahood, the state of ultimate wisdom and bliss. Her mind flows in a pure, non-conceptual stream, free from distortion. Thus, she is a “wisdom dakini,” a great victorious mother, and a female who delights in the highest knowledge. She is an enlightened being whose nature is primordial wisdom and ultimate reality.”
Because her mind is completely purified, every experience arising in her mental stream has the essence of supernal joy. She enjoys a continuous flow of spontaneously arising supreme bliss.
Her bliss is spontaneous because it is not dependent on external objects. It is supreme because it can never be diminished or destroyed. It is the primordial nature of the mind. An intrinsic quality of being that naturally arises when all the attachments are severed.
One who has attained this realization is said to dwell in the realm of bliss. This “Realm” is not any worldly paradise or afterlife destination, but rather the same world we live in. But it is experienced with enlightened awareness. In Tantric practice, the world itself becomes a mandala mansion, a palatial abode of shimmering perfection, for those who behold it with pure vision.
Simhamukha’s joyful demeanor and dance portray this sublime enjoyment. Her mind dwells in absolute freedom and her experiential stream is a river of bliss. Her mode of being in the world is one of transcendent playfulness.
In the center of an ocean of blood and fat Is the spontaneously wise dakini, Playfully dancing amidst appearances and emptiness, Here in her pure mansion, the world of ordinary appearances. Her lion’s head is an expression of humorous delight. Her body form is an artistic medium, that she molds to create astonishing, liberating illusions. Her dancing posture, ornaments, and implements remain the same, but her body hue varies. Her prevalent color is dark blue with a white face. Blue is the color that expresses anger. It transforms into stable wisdom and mirror like clarity in Tantric practice.
The Simhamukha Practice:
The practice of Simhamukha on the Tantric level is the irreducible aspect of the psyche. Enlightenment is not a passionless state, devoid of mental and emotional content. In fact, it is impossible to sustain a condition wherein thoughts and feelings do not occur. Hence, instead of striving to avoid them, one should practice observing each emotion as it arises. And they must refrain from adding a conceptual overlay.
Regardless of many emotions, it is possible to achieve clarity. By pinpointing the attachments that cause pain, one can achieve clarity. The emotion, viewed as solid and unavoidably painful, now dissolves into a luminous dance of energy. When the suffering associated with ego and attachment are eliminated, the practitioner can tap the emotions as a source of energy for meditative transformation.
The tantric practice of Simhamukha is recommended for those with an intensely passionate nature. It is for those with abundant anger, for she represents the enlightened essence of that incendiary energy. She symbolizes the transformation of anger into the clarity of mirrorlike wisdom. She exhibits the quality of anger in its ultimate purity. The term “anger” (dvesa/krodha) encompasses hatred, aggression, and a drive to destroy anything considered a threat.
When the delusory elements are removed, the result is pure anger or transcendent anger. It is devoid of neurotic attachments and reaction patterns. It then becomes a potent source of tremendous energy to overcome mental and emotional obstacles.
Iconography in Simhamukha Thangka and Statue
The following is a song of praise that also describes her iconography, from a Sakya meditation manual:
Your body rises like a dark-blue mountain, Your lion face glows like moon-crystal, Your tongue is the vermilion hue of the dawn sky Amidst the light-garland of your terrifying fangs. Your laughter resounds from afar: h u m ! p h a t ! p h e m! Your black iron hair hangs down, Your bone ornaments tinkle musically, You dance wondrously, in a heroic mood. Terrifying female of intensely burning wrath, With a sharp copper knife in your right hand And a skull bowl in your left, Supping the heart-blood of the worst evildoers, You are a female who delights in highest knowledge; Your favorite consort is supremely blissful Heruka, Embraced in the form of a mystical staff.
She displays many attributes similar to wrathful deities: such as an angry visage, tiger-skin skirt, and bone ornaments. Her dancing pose, curved knife, and skull bowl are characteristics of female Tantric Buddhas. On one level of interpretation, these features connote overcoming negativity. Simhamukha dances in triumph on negative forces and opposition she has overcome. It is personified by the prostrate corpse beneath her feet.
Her knife “shatters the hearts and heads of those with horrible karma,” and sends them to a higher state. From her skull bowl, she drinks the heart-blood of the worst evildoers.
Her roaring laughter terrifies and repels the evil forces. She brandishes her knife to cut off dualistic thinking from the root and raises her skull cup to drink the nectar of supreme bliss. She laughs loudly as she dances joyfully on the corpse of ego. She is encircled by the purifying flames of wisdom.
Her mystical staff (khatvanga) signifies the traversal of all the stages leading to Buddha hood. Her consort, a male Buddha is equal in attainment to herself. Like her, he is also supremely blissful and yet appears in a wrathful guise. She is envisioned in a cremation ground. The channel ground accords with her fearsome nature.
Externally, Guru Simhamukha is the nirmanakaya master and wisdom dakini Lekyi Wangmo; internally, she is the sambhogakaya master in peaceful form as Sangwa Yeshe or in wrathful form as Simhamukha; secretly, she is the Great Mother of All the Victorious Ones, or Samantabhadri. Thus, in actuality, she is the essence that embodies the potentiality of all the masters, sugatas, vidyadharas, and victorious ones. She is the yidam through whom any yogin or yogini on the path accomplishes without effort all supreme and common siddhis, and she is very powerful in removing in an instant all the interruptions on the path, such as curses and magic formulas sent by the Eight Classes of gods and spirits and by both human or nonhuman beings.
Her body is dark blue and her lion face is white with a fiercely wrathful expression. As a symbol of eradicating the emotions, the root of samsara, her right hand raises a curved knife, or trigug, with a vajra handle into the sky.
As a symbol of concentrating all the power, capacity, and blessings of the universe in the essence of primordial potentiality, her left hand holds a blood-filled kapala at the heart. As a symbol of the inseparability of method and prajña, she has a khatvanga in the crook of her left arm. As a symbol of manifesting in the total equality in which samsara and nirvana are nondual, her left leg is extended and her right leg is bent in a dance movement while she is standing in a dignified manner on the seat of a lotus, a sun disk, and a corpse. As a symbol of having naturally perfected all the qualities of total wisdom, she has all the ornaments of wrathful female manifestations.
The simhamukha is a dakini of great vengeance and wrath but also of vast enlightenment. It appears as a titanic woman with blue-black skin and the head of a white lion with a golden mane. The lion’s face has three yellow or red eyes with the third in the center of its forehead.
Manifestations of Energy. Dakinis are lesser goddesses that take active roles in the world. They are an embodiment of enlightened awareness and wisdom and seek to help others to achieve a higher state of being. Of the dakinis, the simhamukha is the most wrathful, seeking to punish those who have harmed protected beings.
The Tantric Sources The Lion-Faced Ḍākinī (Tib: Senge Dongma, Skt: Siṃhamukhā) is a female deity considered to be especially effective for dispelling black magic, curses, obstacles and harm-doers. In the Nyingma terma tradition, she is considered as one of the many forms of Padmasambhava, specifically a secret form of Guru Rinpoche manifested to avert spiritual obstacles and negativity. In the Sarma traditions she arises out of the Chakrasamvara cycle of tantras and belongs to the Highest Yoga Tantra ‘wisdom’ classification.
According to Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, the original scriptural source for Simhamukha is the Drwa-ba’i sdom-pa’i rgyud. This Tantra, where Simhamukha is linked with the eight wrathful Gauris (ke’u-ri-ma brgyad) and the eight Tramenmas or animal-headed sorceresses (phra-men-ma brgyad), appears to be connected with the Guhyagarbha Mayajala cycle (sGyu-‘phrul drwa-ba). In the “Tibetan Book of the Dead” (Bar-do thos grol), these Gauri witches, representing the eight types of mundane consciousness, and these eight animal-headed sorceresses, representing the eight objects of consciousness, appear to the deceased consciousness on the twelfth and thirteenth days of the Bardo experience after death. However, it is mainly through the Termas or hidden treasure texts discovered since the 11th century that Simhamukha is practiced among the Nyingmapas.
According to some sources, it is said that ”at the time of Buddha Amitabha, many aeons even before Shakyamuni Buddha, there was a demon called Garab Wangchuk whose daughter was a lion-faced demoness called Tramen Sengdongma. She delighted in taking the lives of countless beings, and by harming practitioners she increased the negative forces in the world and undermined the Amitabha Buddha’s doctrine.
All the buddhas gathered together and concluded that to tame her they would need to manifest an identical-looking being. The enlightened beings’ collective wisdom arose in the form of a wisdom being – the Lion-faced Dakini, empowered by all the Buddhas of the ten directions with their power and compassion to tame the demoness. The Dakini became far more powerful than the demoness, who then began to lose her strength. While the Dakini was in a deep samadhi of taming the maras, countless dakinis emanated from her and subdued all the demons. Tramen Sengdongma, now pacified, took an oath to serve the dharma and became a protector.
In the time of the 100-year lifespans, Buddha Shakyamuni appeared in the world and turned the wheel of dharma in many places such as Varanasi, Bodhgaya, Vulture’s Peak, and the charnel ground of Lanka, teaching on many levels including Vajrayana. He said that at that time it was as if the sun was in the center of the sky, and there was no darkness anywhere, but when the sun went down then the darkness of ignorance would arise. But Lord Buddha continued that there would be a method to dispel this ignorance, and so Vajrapani requested that Lord Buddha teach this method. Shakyamuni Buddha rested in the samadhi of taming the maras, and then taught the whole cycle of the Lion-Faced Ḍākinī. He taught in many different ways, and these transmissions were concealed by Vajrapani as treasures after he received them.”
Lion-Faced Ḍākinī
The Lion-Faced Ḍākinī is a fully enlightened deity and not a protector spirit or dakini alone. As one source says:
It is important to understand that, despite her exceedingly wrathful appearance and animal head, she is not a guardian spirit (srung-ma), subdued by magic, converted to the Dharma, and bound by oaths of service by some powerful Mahasiddha in the past. Rather, she is a wrathful manifestation of Guhyajnana Dakini, who, according to the Nyingmapa tradition, was the principal Dakini teacher of Padmasambhava in the country of Uddiyana.
Therefore, although Simhamukha is a Dakini in her aspect, she functions as a Yidam or meditation deity and her special functions are averting and repulsing (bzlog-pa) psychic attacks that may assault the practitioner and the subduing of negative female energy as personified by the Matrikas or Mamos. These latter are wild uncontrolled female spirits inhabiting the wilderness, both the mountains and the forests, beyond the confines of patriarchal civilization. These female spirits are generally hostile to the male gender.
Simhamukha appears in a form wrathful, feminine, and demonic; indeed, her form is said to be actually that of a Matrikia or Mamo, not because her nature is evil or demonic, but because her wrathful aspect (khro gzugs) skillfully overcomes and subdues those violent negative energies. Simhamukha is a Jnana Dakini or wisdom goddess. According to Jigmed Lingpa (1726-1798), the famous Nyingmapa master and discoverer of hidden treasure texts or Termas, Simhamukha represents a Nirmanakaya manifestation, appearing in time and history, whereas her Sambhogakaya aspect is Vajravarahi and her Dharmakaya aspect is Samantabhadri, the Primordial Wisdom herself.
