Why are cups made of skulls used in Buddhist tantric rituals and imagery?
The skull cup or kapala indicates the traditional origins of Tantric Buddhism; traditionally it indicates Shiva’s form as King of the Blood-drinkers or Lord of the Charnal Ground. In the early tantric mythology, Shiva, in a fit of irritation, kills Brahma and Brahma’s skull attaches itself to Shiva. Shiva, in order to free himself from the skull, engaged in extensive acts of penance [1].
Traditional ascetics tend to withdraw from the world of action (karma) to various degrees, i. e. they become celibate nuns or monks living lives somewhat removed from lay society. Tantrikas - those who practice tantra, on the other hand, tend to fully engage in the world of action with the goal of directing that engagement, or the energies so generated, towards inner transformation. Tantrikas are generally categorized according to the deities they invoke in their rituals; the primary categories are the Saivas (Shiva), Vaishnavas (Vishnu), and Saktas (Sakti) [2]. Since the tantrikas’ goal is transformation through active engagement, they would often seek out highly stimulating environments, one such being the charnal grounds.
In medieval India, each town had a charnal ground but there were 8 rather large charnal grounds which were of tremendous importance to the various tantric sects. These charnal grounds were just open fields where the townspeople would take the bodies of their deceased. The idea was to seek karmic balance; the deceased consumed natural life while living, hence, upon death, their body is offered to natural life for consumption, thus closing that karmic cycle. But these bodies were often consumed by wild predators, tigers and such, so conducting meditations and rituals in these charnal grounds during the night could provide considerable opportunities for stimulation; in addition, we have Shiva as Lord of the Charnal Ground, King of the Blood-drinkers, the charnal grounds themselves being the blood-drinkers.
The skull cup was a defining characteristic of the Kapalikas, who engaged with both Shiva (Saivaism) and Sakti (Saktaism). From [1], Chapter 5, page 178:
“Kapalikas celebrated the penance of their deity by displaying several (Ramanuja lists six) primary signs and two secondary indicators. Ramanuja’s six consist of a necklace (kanthika), a neck ornament (rucaka), a large earring (kundala), a jewel in their hair (sikhamani), ashes, and a sacred thread. The two “secondary” indicators actually came to represent their defining characteristics: the possession of a skull (ostensibly a cranial cap for eating) and a type of slender staff called a khatvanga. This latter might be topped with a skull and hung with their small, double-headed drum (damaruka).”
During this time in medieval India, all of these ascetics and tantrikas from different religions - Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, together with various tribal and shamanic, and different sects would gather at various pilgrimage sites and over time they incorporated aspects, both ritualistic and philosophical, of other traditions into their own. In this manner, it would seem, Tantric Buddhism emerged; of course, I take as self-evident the fact that Buddha Shakyamuni was himself a tantrika. Why would one on the cusp of Buddhahood ignore the Diamond Way? It’s a rhetorical question . . . But with regards to the distinct communities themselves, there was clearly a great deal of opportunistic appropriation which is common when metaphysical systems jostle over the hearts and minds of the people. From [1], Chapter 5, page 191:
“The clear Buddhist appropriation of non-Buddhist designations and practices appears to reflect the adventurism of the medieval Indian world, rather than the ecumenical atmosphere of recent Euro-American discourse. Our evidence suggests that all the religious traditions - Buddhist siddhas not the least - arrogated others’ religious activities when they appeared popular in court or on the street. This sometimes surreptitious appropriation was born not from respect for the religious competitors but, rather, from a sense of urgency in the face of potential extinction in the fluid medieval environment.”
In this manner, the Saiva’s Shiva becomes the Buddhist’s Heruka; not only that, Shiva is originally cast, together with Mara, as a primary opponent of Heruka. From [1], Chapter 5, pages 213 - 214:
“In the Kalika-purana description, Heruka is clearly divine, yet is to be worshiped only mentally, rather than with great physical offerings. Moreover, the Heruka origin myth, as recounted in the longer Sarvabuddhasamayoga, describes Heruka in the manner of a cemetery divinity, rather than specifically either as the tamer of Mahesvara or as his imitation. In this mythic beginning, Mara and other criminal elements are more clearly specified as his opponents. Thus the Buddhists apparently appropriated a local term for a specific Assamese ghost or cemetery divinity and reconfigured it into the mythic enemy of evil beings in general. Because Shiva and Mara were at the head of the very long list of criminal gods, they were included and subordinated to Heruka’s establishment of his mandala.”
A mandala is a metaphorical representation of the non-dual cosmos [2] and, when meditated upon, it helps lead the adept to liberation in the Great Unborn Expanse. Heruka, being a protector deity, is presented in wrathful form and this is reflected in his mandala. This expression, perhaps, found its zenith when Tantric Buddhism was integrated with the earlier Shamanic tradition in Tibet, culminating with the Practice of the Insane Observance [3].
“Kunga Zangpo then underwent a transformation that would profoundly change the course of his life. One day he went before a statue of the Buddha and removed his maroon monks’ robes. Then he smeared himself with the ashes and blood of a corpse, and put on bangles and a necklace made from human bone. He dressed in a cloak of human skin and a skirt made from a tiger pelt. He took up a trumpet made from a thighbone, a cup made from a human skull, and a khatvanga, an ornate ritual staff incorporating skulls and other tantric symbols. In this way he took on the guise of the wrathful deity Heruka.
[…]
In this context, Heruka refers to Cakrasamvara or Hevajra (most often Cakrasamvara), supreme wrathful deities that are prominent in the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras, including the Cakrasamvara, Hevajra, and other tantras. Tibetans most often leave the Sanskrit term heruka untranslated. When translated, it is rendered as traktungwa, “blood-drinker,” connoting the absorbent ground in which bodies are buried, showing the deity’s deep association with the macabre.
As the Madman of Tsang glosses the term in one of his compositions on the Aural Transmission, in the name Sri Heruka, the syllable Sri expresses how appearances and emptiness are inseparable, like a wave and the water it is made of. He expresses how all appearances are produced by specific causes and conditions, but nevertheless do not diverge from the great universality of emptiness. Ru expresses how, given the emptiness of all phenomena, that which is perceived and that which perceives it cannot be established as independent entities. Lastly, Ka expresses how emptiness and the consciousness that perceives it are not in fact independent of one another; this same kind of mutual dependence characterizes the relationship between samsara and nirvana. The Madman of Tsang goes on to state that all of reality is represented by the mandala and the deities that inhabit it, and that the mandala and its deities are represented by the single deity Heruka. Therefore, Sri Heruka represents all the phenomena of reality and the mode in which they exist.
The distinctive dress adopted by the Madmen of U and Tsang is described throughout their biographies as “the emblems of the Heruka” (sometimes said to be eight-fold), “the mode of dress of the Heruka, “the emblems of the charnal ground,” or “the bone ornaments” (often said to be six-fold). Within the tradition there is less than total agreement over what precisely each of these designations refers to. For example, some commentators list the Six Bone Ornaments as consisting of a head ornament, earrings, necklace, Sacred Thread, bangles on the wrists, and bangles worn on the ankles, while others count the bangles as a single item and add ashes to the list.
The sixth chapter of the first book of the Hevajra Tantra, which outlines the Practice, states that the practitioner should wear earrings, a circlet (which may have served to bind up the hair), bangles on the wrists, bangles on the ankles, a sash, upper-armlets, a bone necklace, and the hide of a tiger. The chapter later adds that the practitioner should also wear ashes, a Sacred Thread strung together with hair, a headdress representing the five buddhas, and should carry a drum and khatvanga. This Sacred Thread, typically sported by wrathful deities, is a set of interconnected garlands of bone, worn over the torso and crossing over the chest and back. The twenty-seventh chapter of the Cakrasamvara Tantra, on the Practice, prescribes a similar list of adornments.
Also pertinent is the question of how the deity Cakrasamvara/Heruka is typically described, visualized, and depicted. In one of his compositions the Madman of Tsang describes the deity as adorned with the Six Bone Ornaments; smeared with ashes, blood, and fat from a corpse; wearing a human skin, a tiger-pelt skirt, and an elephant-skin cloak; a crown containing five skulls, a garland of fifty dripping heads, and a snake. In his many hands he holds a vajra, bell, hand drum, khatvanga, hook, skull, arrow, spear, sword, and other items.
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One important element of the madmen’s distinctive garb was the khatvanga. These staffs have long been used in South Asian religions in varying forms - sometimes as a trident, sometimes with a single point; with one skull or three; with actual skulls, or skulls shaped from metal or carved from wood. According to one of his biographies, the Madman of Tsang was once asked by a disciple to explain the significance of the many features of the khatvanga. The yogin explained that when carried by a female practitioner, the staff represents Means, or her male counterpart. When carried by a male practitioner, it represents the Wisdom of emptiness, or his female counterpart. The staff should be about the length of the person who is to carry it. It should be festooned with a pot (which represents the Jar Empowerment, the first in the standard series of tantric intitiations), a “wet” head with flesh still attached (which represents the Secret Empowerment), a half-desiccated head (representing the Wisdom Empowerment), and a “dry” head without flesh (representing the Word Empowerment). The staff is topped with three trident points, which represent the three “bodies” (kaya in Sanskrit) or levels on which buddhahood can become manifest.”
Alexander Duncan
Updated 2 years ago · Author has 617 answers and 984.1K answer views Amrita, or soma, is the drink of the gods, or the draft of immortality, referred to in the Pali Canon as “deathlessness.” This drink was an actual entheogen, possibly a psychedelic, used by the ancient rishis to induce altered states of consciousness wherein they had the divine visions which inspired the Vedas and the whole Indian spiritual tradition. Although the recipe for soma was forgotten after the early Vedic period (circa 1100 BCE), the Tibetan Buddhists used a variety of non-entheogenic substitutes. The skull cap cups, called kapalas, from which the soma was drunk, and other death-related symbols allude specifically to the ability of soma to induce a state of impercipience, which facilitiated altered states of consciousness, as well as the spiritual symbolism of the death-rebirth experience, which is the essential spiritual experience. This type of symbolism pervades Tibetan Buddhism in particular, eg., Chöd, sky burial, etc. The use of skull cups is found not only in Tibet, but also in many other ancient cultures, especially among the nomads of the Eurasian steppe.
Abdias DeMarin
, studied at Florida International University
In addition to what Alan Chui has said, it is also interesting to reflect on how much of tibetan tantric imagery was inspired by the Shivaite sects of india:
The form of the Buddhist khaṭvāṅga derived from the emblematic staff of the early Indian Shaivite yogins, known as kapalikas or 'skull-bearers'. The kapalikas were originally miscreants who had been sentenced to a twelve-year term of penance for the crime of inadvertently killing a Brahmin. The penitent was prescribed to dwell in a forest hut, at a desolate crossroads, in a charnel ground, or under a tree; to live by begging; to practice austerities; and to wear a loin-cloth of hemp, dog, or donkey-skin. They also had to carry the emblems of a human skull as an alms-bowl, and the skull of the Brahmin they had slain mounted upon a wooden staff as a banner.These Hindu kapalika ascetics soon evolved into an extreme outcaste sect of the 'left-hand' tantric path (Skt. vamamarg) of shakti or goddess worship. The early Buddhist tantric yogins and yoginis adopted the same goddess or dakini attributes of the kapalikas. These attributes consisted of; bone ornaments, an animal skin loincloth, marks of human ash, a skull-cup, damaru, flaying knife, thighbone trumpet, and the skull-topped Tantric staff or khaṭvāṅga.
Alan Chiu
, I edit Tibet related articles on Wikipedia
Practice in the charnel ground has a long history in Buddhism. The Pali Canon already described meditation in the charnel ground with decaying bodies to remind yogis that the nature of body is not attractive(to dispel sexual fantasies and attachment to our own body), and death is an inevitable fate for ourselves, to arose urgent desire of liberation from suffering and death. In Theravada Buddhist countries, a skeleton of the human body is still used by some monks as the object of Recollection of Death.
In addition to the above reasons, tantric deities usually appear in complementary forms: one is wrathful or fearful, and the other is loving or peaceful. They correspond to the root defilement of hatred and attachment, respectively. Tantric practice aims to transform these two into wisdom and compassion, respectively. Kapala(skullcup) falls into the category of fearful form, and the purpose is to transform fear of death into wisdom - the wisdom of impermanence.
