Yamantaka- Tibetan GodDeity"Destroyer of Death"

The Meditator and the Buffalo

A holy man sat in a cave on the edge of enlightenment. He had meditated for years. He was close. Then thieves burst in with a stolen buffalo, killed the animal, and found the meditator watching. They cut off his head.

The holy man, interrupted at the threshold of awakening, did not pass into nirvana. He rose in fury, took the severed buffalo head as his own, and became Yama, Lord of the Dead. He began killing everyone in Tibet. Village after village fell. The land would be empty if no one stopped him.

The people prayed to Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, and Manjushri answered by becoming something worse than Death. He manifested as Yamantaka. Nine heads crowned the body, the central one a buffalo face like Yama's own. Thirty-four arms held skull cups and flaying knives. Smoke poured from his nostrils. He was Yama's shape made larger, fiercer, and driven by enlightened mind rather than rage.

Yama looked at what faced him and submitted. Death knelt before its own reflection. Yamantaka bound him to serve the dharma, and the slaughter ended.

Ra Lotsawa

The Yamantaka teachings reached Tibet through Ra Lotsawa, a translator-monk who traveled to India and Nepal in the eleventh century. He brought back the Vajrabhairava Tantra and the practices that went with it. He also brought back a reputation.

Tibetan histories credit Ra Lotsawa with killing thirteen opponents through Yamantaka rituals. He did not deny it. His position was that wrathful practice could be turned against enemies of the dharma, and he turned it freely. The stories made him feared across Tibet: a monk who wielded Death's conqueror as a weapon.

The Gelug school inherited his lineage. Tsongkhapa, the school's founder, made Yamantaka one of his three principal meditation deities, and the practice has been transmitted with care ever since.