Vajrayogini- Buddhist GodDeity"Queen of the Dakinis"

From Heruka's Fire

Vajrayogini emerged from the Chakrasamvara Tantra cycle as the consort of Heruka, but Indian tantric masters between the tenth and twelfth centuries developed practices centered on her alone. She was no longer the consort. She was the path. The Vajrayoginī sādhana texts presented her as a complete practice: a red-skinned dakini dancing in charnel ground flames, through whom a practitioner could reach enlightenment without reference to the male deity.

The Old Woman at Nalanda

The story that made Naropa's lineage begins not with the dakini dancing in flames but with an old woman. Naropa was a scholar at Nalanda, reading a text in the courtyard, when a shadow fell across the page. An ugly, aged woman stood over him. She asked if he understood the words. He said yes. She clapped her hands in delight. She asked if he understood the meaning. He said yes again. She wept.

He was lying, she told him, and he knew it. His understanding was intellectual, not realized. She told him to find her brother, the guru Tilopa. Then she vanished. In Naropa's hagiographies, this old woman was Vajrayogini herself, testing him in a form designed to strip away every expectation of what a dakini should look like.

Naropa left Nalanda and endured twelve trials under Tilopa before receiving the tantric transmissions. The form of Vajrayogini he received, Naro Khechari, "the Dakini who flies through space," became the foundation of his lineage. His students carried it to Tibet, where the Kagyu and Gelug schools adopted it.

Sankhu

In Nepal's Kathmandu Valley, Vajrayogini's oldest temples stand at Sankhu and Pharping. Newar Buddhists have maintained these sites for centuries. Tibetan pilgrims climb the steep forested paths to offer prayers before images of the red-skinned dakini, curved knife in one hand, skull cup in the other, flames painted behind her on the temple walls.