Anatomy of a Ḍākinī:
Female Consort Discourse in a Case of Fourteenth-Century Tibetan Buddhist Literature
Original Article
Published:
Volume 3, pages 349–371, (2020)
To Find the Article at The Journal of Dharma Studies
Abstract
In the wake of the brave voices of the #metoo movement, Buddhist responses to sexual abuse have led to important questions about Buddhist sexual ethics and the female consort in Tibetan cultures. One issue raised by current debates is the question of who is an appropriate consort, a discourse that has historical precedent. These debates highlight the gaps left by the understudied history of consorts in Tibetan tantric communities. This research addresses that history through a study of female consort discourse in key scriptures of the Great Perfection (rdzogs chen) from the fourteenth century. The text studied is The Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit (dakki lam ‘bras skor), which is part of a corpus known as The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī. The scriptures are analyzed in terms of taxonomic discourse, interpreted with attention to structures of knowledge production as described by Foucault. It addresses the discursive transformations that facilitated the inclusion of women in the androcentric world of esoteric Tibetan Buddhism. Overall, the argument is made that this scripture sheds light on how knowledge of women and sexuality was constructed in a web of ever-changing, contradicting, competing discourses that reflect an ambivalent misogyny that simultaneously promoted and subjugated women.
Introduction
In the wake of brave voices of the #metoo movement, Buddhist responses to sexual abuse have ranged from denial, to victim blaming, to doctrinal defenses.[1] Among these responses are also important questions about Buddhist sexual ethics and the female consort in Tibetan Buddhism. Such questions highlight gaps left by an understudied history of female consorts in Tibet.
One issue raised by current debates is the question of who is an appropriate consort, a discourse that has historical precedent. Due to androcentric record keeping practices, Tibetan textual evidence of female consorts and their history are rare. There is important scholarship on histories of yoginīs or ḍākinīs[2] in India, such as that done by White (2018) and Hatley (2016). However, much of what little is known about consort culture in Tibet comes from scholarship focused on more recent figures from the nineteenth-twentieth centuries, such as those studied by Jacoby (2014) and Gayley (2016). Despite this excellent, groundbreaking work on Tibetan consorts in the modern period, as well as Gayley’s (2018) important overview of perspectives on the “secret consort,” scholars have yet to address the early history of consort culture in Tibet. Without such research, a crucial historical context is missing from current debates, leaving them problematically decontextualized. That history is the focus of this paper. It addresses Tibetan female consorts in an effort to bring to light discursive practices which facilitated women’s inclusion and served to order knowledge about women and sexuality. It contributes to the history of consort-culture and women in Tibet by presenting a case of a short text entitled, Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit (dakki lam ‘bras skor). This study does not presume that consort culture in Tibet has been homogenous in all times and places nor does it attempt to trace consort discourse to its origins. Instead, it contributes a study to locate a Tibetan indigenous construction of consort discourse, with the intention that such studies may possibly provide an alternative to colonialist tendencies to discursively vacate or oversimplify indigenous ideologies while also confronting the complex task of a feminist appraisal of indigenous literature. It is hoped that research in this area has potential to shed light on current debates on sexual ethics in religious communities and could serve to fill gaps left in histories of women in Tibet.
Jacoby (2014) notes that due in part to the androcentric nature of texts, as well as the highly esoteric nature of texts so heavy in symbolism, Tibetan consorts have been characterized as victims of a misogynistic religion or valorized as goddesses, but rarely as something more complex.[3] Likewise, Gayley (2018) notes that the question is often framed in simple binary terms, as whether female consorts in Tibet were exploited or empowered by tantric sexual praxis, again overlooking the complexity of the numerous contexts of this discourse. For an alternative, complex portrayal of female consorts, this study turns to evidence in Seminal Heart literature, an influential corpora of Great Perfection (rdzogs chen) scriptures. The consort discourse studied here is from The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī (mkha’ ‘gro snying thig). This corpus played a central role in the culmination and systematization of Great Perfection in the fourteenth century.[4] It is a scriptural revelation by Pema Ledreltsal (pad+ma las ‘brel rtsal, 1291-1315/1317),[5] which built upon previous Great Perfection literature. Passed on through the collected works of Tibetan luminary, Longchenpa (klong chen rab ‘byam pa, 1308-1363), it contains the guide to finding appropriate sexual partners that will be analyzed here, The Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit.
Monasticism has played a prominent role in Tibetan religious life, however it is not the only form of Buddhist practice in Tibet where non-celibate religious specialists have also flourished. This study focuses on scriptures of such a community of tantric adepts for whom religious sexuality was considered a crucial support. According to The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī, sexual praxis is necessary and beneficial for numerous reasons including health, [6] to train through desire to go beyond desire, namely by recognizing desire as gnosis itself [7] and even for companionship. [8]
As an aid to finding a sexual partner, Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit contains a taxonomy of seventeen types of female consorts and three hundred and fifty-two variables by which to identify them. It discusses an array of possible consorts who are human, semi-divine or demonic, ordered through taxonomic classification. It classifies them by physical features, mental characteristics, personality and interpersonal relationships among other traits. Their physical traits are framed as meaningful signs of soteriological potential. Salvic, ideal types are listed alongside warnings of horrific consequences of failing to identify an appropriate consort. This scripture will be analyzed in terms of discourse that reproduces and transforms discourse about women and women’s bodies. It analyzes how sanctioned consorts are discursively constructed and argues that such texts functioned to manage concerns about the perceived dangers of women and sexual relationships.
The scripture addresses a tension in interpretation of sexuality as sanctioned, liberating praxis. If sex is no longer the downfall of the Buddhist but now his support, how is one to guarantee with moral certainty that this sexual activity is indeed the liberating, authorized kind of activity? The answer is via taxonomic knowledge, through a discourse of classification, of order, of knowable bodies and corporeal signs. The same discourse of meaningful bodies that makes buddhas evident, the same taxonomic structure which is used to describe lists of students or types of adepts, also provides a sense of meaningful, knowable, classifiable consorts and their link to predicable mental, social and soteriological results. Through taxonomic knowledge, obstacles to health and soteriological progress are warded off and the possibility of safe, blissful, sanctioned sex is assured. Thus, it is through discourse (and its familiarity) that a semblance of security is constructed.
Methodology
This paper contributes an analysis of one iteration of the history of the concept of an appropriate consort, an idea that has been displaced and transformed in different contexts. It contributes a brief micro-history, taking a philological approach in the sense of making sense of a text and its meanings.[9] Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit is interpreted with attention to structures of knowledge production as described by Foucault. His theories provide numerous useful tropes for illuminating Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit including attention to building blocks of discourse such as representation, resemblance, analogy, sympathy and antipathy, classification and taxonomy. This study investigates what instruments are deployed, how consorts were classified and described through these instruments and what tensions are exhibited therein. Following Foucault, attention is also paid to irregularities, complexities and internal contradictions in consort discourse, especially in light of its Buddhist literary pasts.
Overall, the argument presented here is that Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit sheds light on how knowledge of women and sexuality was constructed in Seminal Heart literature, via a web of interlocking, contradicting, competing discourses, which negotiated concerns about liberation and danger, ordered knowledge about women and by extension controlled women in consort communities.
Discourse functions to consolidate, implement and establish power.[10] Indeed, consort literature arose in a patriarchal context, with misogynistic elements. However, misogyny is shaped in different ways in different cultural contexts and time periods, especially in the context of Buddhist views that are internally diverse and contradictory from one context to another. As pointed out by Kandiyoti (1988), “…the term patriarchy often evokes an overly monolithic conception of male dominance, which is treated as a level of abstraction that obfuscates, rather than reveals the intimate inner workings of culturally and historically distinct arrangements between genders.”[11] To seek to understand the particularities of these dynamics in context is a post-colonialist approach. As pointed out by Kuokkanen (2007), from an indigenous studies perspective, sexual violence [and inequalities] must also be explained and understood within the frameworks of indigenous communities.[12] In early Indian Buddhist contexts, Sponberg (1992) theorizes an‘ascetic misogyny’ generated by male celibacy.[13] He argues the literature exhibited diverse views articulated by different voices with different concerns, rather than ambivalence. He classifies this multi-vocality in the following way: soteriological inclusiveness, institutional androcentrism, ascetic misogyny and soteriological androgyny. Yet, Langenberg (2017) notes that this paradigm does not address the simultaneous inclusion of women in this literature.[14] Notably, she also argues that specifying what women are, however problematically, creates a space for them as legitimate members of the community such that misogyny has unintended consequences.[15] Extending this theory into the setting of consort discourse, this research accounts for an ambivalent tantric misogyny generated by male non-celibate discourse, which simultaneously objectifies and promotes women while having its own unintended consequences of as well.
Limitations
A constraint of this work is the limited use of Foucault whose interests include the manner in which discourse mutates into new epistemological arrangements. Applying this lens to consort discourse will require a groundwork that has not yet been laid in terms of histories of Tibetan consort taxonomies and consort literature. However, this study is an attempt to present one case study towards that goal with the hope that further research will continue. Likewise, a complete assessment of the pre-existing discourses and numerous Buddhist pasts upon which the concept of the consort relies are also beyond the scope of this paper.
About the Text Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit
Authorship
The Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit is drawn from a revealed scripture dated to the fourteenth century known as Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī. This revelation was produced in 1313[16] by Pema Ledreltsal (padma las ‘brel rtsal, 1291-1315/17[17]) shortly before his death.[18] Following typical Tibetan scriptural revelation conventions, this corpus, The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī, is attributed to a constellation of authors. This includes a male adept, Pema Ledreltsal, as the revealer. It also includes the influential scholar yogi, Longchenpa (klong chen rab ‘byam pa, 1308-1363) and students of the Third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje (rang ‘byung rdo rje, 1284-1339).[19] They each add to the text either directly or through commentarial literature and redactions. Little is known about the level of redaction between its first iteration by Pema Ledretsal and its uses by Longchenpa, since it is through Longchenpa’s collected works that this corpus was preserved. Authorship is also claimed to derive from two key protagonists in Tibetan hagiographies, Padmasambhava (eighth century) and his female disciple, Yeshe Tsogyal (ye shes mtsho rgyal, eighth century).
Text format, Corpus
Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit (dakki lam ‘bras skor) is nested within the Four Seminal Hearts corpora, inside a corpus entitled The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī, (mkha’ ‘gro snying thig). Within that corpus, a single text is studied here, Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit. It is a double-sided seven-folio pecha or scripture, written in verse, in a typical seven-syllable meter style with the titles as nine syllable lines. In the dpal brtsegs[20] edition, it is nested between a contemplation manual and eschatological (bar do) scriptures. It is situated within a series of seven texts that discuss sexual praxis along with philosophy, the elements, physical health and places to practice. Ancillary texts in the greater corpus include descriptions of sexual techniques while Ḍākkis Path and Fruit focuses exclusively on classification of consorts.
The corpus does not address female subjectivities, except to the extent in which discourse forms the building blocks for subjectivities. Instead, Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit is a manual by and for male adepts in a heteronormative context, a production of knowledge by and for men.
Anatomy of a Discourse
What are Ḍākinī
Now we will analyze Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit in detail beginning with the key term in this text, which is dākki and its related terms, ḍākinī and sky-goer (mkha’ ‘gro). According to Foucault, the building block of taxonomy is a name or term,[21] the foundation of all classification.[22] In that case, the foundation of the scripture studied here is one riddled with ambiguity. The usage of this term in Tibetan literature activates a field of possible meanings, covering multiple opposing discourses about females and sexuality. The corpus presents various iterations of those possibilities.
The topic of ḍākinī, has been covered by numerous scholars including Willis (1997), Simmer-Brown (2002), Gyatso (2008), Hatley (2016) and Shaw (1994). However, Tibetan documentation of theoretical definitions of Ḍākinī is notably missing as Gyatso points out.[23] Whereas scholarly literature notes the elusive characteristic of ḍākinī in Buddhist hagiographies, Ḍākkis Path and Fruit is an attempt to define ḍākinī as consort as knowable, analyzable and classifiable.
The etymology of the term ḍākinī is linked the Sanskrit root ḍī, “to fly” a topic that has been covered repeatedly.[24] The term dākki is the diminutive term for the Sanskrit ḍākinī.[25] This scripture also uses its Tibetan interpretation, sky-goer (mkha ‘gro ma), linking it to the etymology of flying.
Ḍākinī were originally considered to be non-human demonesses associated with the divine and horrific in India.[26] Gyatso identifies the source of the term ḍākinī to occur as early as fifth-fourth century B.C.E in Indic writings on flesh-eating female deities.[27] Hately [2016] links it to a term for mother spirits used in India in the fifth century,[28] noting that Indian Śaiva goddess taxonomies used the term to connote dangerous female entities but that Buddhist Yoginītantras use the term as a synonym for yoginī, suggesting that the change in usage reflects a ‘conversion’ and assimilation of the terminology parallel to the discourse of conversion of hostile deities. This change was evident during the rise of Indian Tantric Buddhism when the term ḍākinī referred to consorts either of male buddhas or male adepts.[29] According to Gray (2007) the first Buddhist text to portray ḍākinīs as non-demonic is a yoginī tantra, the Samayoga from the late seventh-eighth century. That text describes ḍākinīs in a positive light as spiritual beings but also retains the older image of them as non-human and carnivorous.[30]
In Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī, the term ḍākinī is notable as a vehicle for the inclusion of women in a previously androcentric scriptural tradition. Ḍākinī are described as disciples and transmitters of Seminal Heart scriptures, representing a range of figures: horrific and malevolent figures, objects of refuge, deities, consorts of buddhas, moral watch guards – watching over the conduct of adepts, human lineage holders, disciples and emissaries of crucial instructions to lead male protagonists to discover scriptural revelations. Ḍākki is even equated with emptiness and luminosity itself, a key aspect of Great Perfection ontology.[31] Ḍākinī is also used as a term for highly realized female adepts in the scriptures, in the description of its primary protagonist, Yeshe Tsogyal. Gayley (2018) notes that in such uses, to denote a highly realized woman, the concept of ḍākinī provides a model for actual women to “become culturally legible and publicly acknowledged.”[32] However, in Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit, the terms ḍākinī, dākki and sky-goer all more narrowly denote consorts – the sexual partners of male adepts.
Taxonomic Knowledge
Taxonomy is the instrument the corpus favors for identifying types of consorts, future disciples and types of adepts; a way of making sense of the variety of beings, whether beautiful or terrifying. In the most basic sense, taxonomy orders knowledge through defining sets and relations among them.[33] Taxonomy is defined by Foucault as, “a system of identities and differences, articulations and classifications, it is the knowledge of beings.”[34] Taxonomy has a long history, even used in non-linguistic cultures.[35] Preceding formal systems of taxonomy as information science we know today were folk taxonomies.[36] Folk taxonomies are ordered by culturally relevant characteristics and may be local in character. A sub-category of folk taxonomy is functional taxonomy which differentiates the useful from the harmful, [37] such as the one studied here.
While taxonomies of consorts are not uncommon in tantric literature, structures of consort taxonomies vary. A contemporaneous example is Longchenpa’s commentary to the Guhyagarbha. He lists five types of consorts, each with three subdivisions. Unlike Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit, the types to be renounced are described as non-virtuous but not horrific and not-non-human. [38] Longchenpa’s Treasury of the Supreme Vehicle (theg mchog mdzod) classifies acceptable consorts as outer, inner, secret, wisdom awareness holder and perfected types, including subtypes of these categories. [39] Unlike Ḍākkis Path and Fruit, demon types are acceptable and inappropriate horrific consorts are not centered in that taxonomy. A twentieth century example of use of a consort taxonomy is that of Gendun Chopel, who refers to four classifications of human consorts with sixteen subdivisions.[40] These differences suggest that consort taxonomies could be novel and flexible structures while also retaining common features. In contrast to those taxonomies, Ḍākkis Path and Fruit is concerned with a binary framework, how to discern the difference between a consort who would lead one swiftly to attainments and a horrific consort that would lead to hell.
The taxonomy in Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit is arranged as a series of succeeding elements with 352 descriptions of variables to be analyzed. It describes outer, inner and secret signs to be read. Of these characteristics, the physical and anatomical make up the largest group, with 174 instances of physical characteristics being described. 28 descriptions refer to social characteristics. The taxonomy also describes 78 attributes that could be considered psychological states, including personality traits, emotions and ethical dispositions, composing 22.16 % of the total factors described. Odor is of significant concern, since bad odor indicates a bad consort. But even though smell is only described ten times, the descriptions have their own emic subheading and are quite vivid in terms of affective salience. For example, the Animal Headed Demoness has a bad smell under the armpits and genitals that smell like rotten meat.
Taxonomic Structure
The taxonomy is structured as a binary series of salvic and demonic consorts. The types are not mixed, consorts fall into either of the two categories, both of which are presented successively with clear delineations between the two groups.
Table 2. Taxonomy of Consorts in Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit:
Eight Types of Suitable Consorts
- Conch Shell Woman (dung can ma)
- Elephant Trunk Lady (glang sna ma)
- Deer Type (rid wags can gyi rigs)
- Lotus Consort (pad+ma can)
- General types of appropriate consorts which are also referred to as Wisdom Ḍākinī type (ye shes mkha’ ‘gro rigs)
- Action Woman (las skyes ma)
- Buddhafield Lady (shing skyes ma).
- Local Guardian Ḍākinī in a human body (zhing skyong mkha’ ‘gro mi lus blangs)
Nine Types of Unsuitable Consorts
- Demoness, Gnome Spirit Type (dud mo dam sri’ rigs)
- Serpent Demoness Type (klu bsen rigs)
- Animal Headed Demoness (phra men gnod sbyin rigs)
- Action Woman with Red Eyes & Fangs (mche ba yod la mid dmar zhing/ las kyi mkha’ ‘gro rigs yin spang)
- Hungry Ghost or Gnome demon (yi dwags dam sri’rigs)
- Four Female Rākshasī (demonesses) in Human Bodies (‘di bzhi bdud mos mi lus blangs)
- Flesh-eating Woman (sha za rigs)
- Blood-drinking Woman (trag ‘thung ma rigs)
- Bone-Marrow-Sucking Woman (rkang ‘jibs ma yi rigs)
- Elixir Yak Woman (bcud ‘phod ma)
Types of Suitable Consorts
This is a system of representations that consolidates the diversity of bodies into just seventeen types. First there are the seven types of suitable female consorts described, they are the Conch, the Elephant Trunk Lady, the Deer Type and the Lotus Consort. There are also the general types who are Wisdom Ḍākinīs, the Activity Consorts and the Local Guardian Ḍākinīs (a divine protector with a human female body).[41]
The ideal consort is beautiful but this is not based on just one body shape. The varieties of body types of appropriate consorts spans a wide spectrum, they could have a thin waist or large body, swelling breasts or narrow breasts. The body could be large. Wide set eyes or narrow eyes can indicate a suitable consort. However, hygiene is mentioned repeatedly and so too a good heart and a relaxed mind are a common ideal. Virtuous conduct is a common element, since the ideal consort is one that fulfills ideals for a Buddhist personality and attitude.
All the types of consorts are further analyzed in subdivisions to describe their observable characteristics. For categories of classification, Dakki’s Path and Fruit can be compared to similar lists. Whereas Treasury of the Supreme Vehicle classifies based on the type, color, shape and behavior, Dakki’s Path and Fruit includes those categories plus it adds: speech, odor, extent of wealth and power and level of awareness. There is some repetition but overall it follows this order of classification as the major subjects: types of suitable consorts, shape/figure, color, speech, odor, behavior, mind, wealth/power, awareness level and then returns back to enumeration of consorts types by listing the types to be renounced.
Types to be Renounced
Horrific ḍākinī are the second of the two kinds, the nine types of non-suitable consorts. The text warns that one should not have intercourse with them, ‘not even one time.’ These are the Female Serpent Demoness, Animal Headed Demoness, Action Dakini with Red Eyes & Fangs, Hungry Ghost or Gnome, Flesh-Eating Type, Blood-Drinking Type, Bone-Marrow-Sucking Lady, and Elixir Yak Woman.[42] The last four are, Rākshasī, a class of flesh-eating females inherited from Indian folklore.[43]
The typology of consorts to be avoided identifies distinctively horrific features, ordering a confrontation with the unknown represented by the deviant and anomalous. The Bone-Marrow-Sucking Lady exhales mucous in the ten directions and has a loud ‘male’ voice. The Blood-Drinking Lady has coarse flesh and a beard. Their physical characteristics include features such as talons, fangs, red eyes and animal heads. Of primary concern is the appearance of the face, which is mentioned the most of any physical feature, twenty-eight times. Their abnormal faces may be the wrong color, feature beards and have soot on them. These faces do not depict the beautiful, smiling, radiant appearance of the salvic consorts who have such great, straight teeth, energetic faces and twinkling eyes. On the contrary, the horrific consort is not smiling. Her complexion is dull and grey, purple or black. The body shape could be big or small but sometimes has horrific attributes like being made of excrement. Their awful hair is the third most mentioned characteristic, it is wild, uneven, coarse, wrinkled and angry.
There is an explanation for why the horrific consorts would need to be classified as inappropriate in the first place – in order to negate their allure. There is precedent for the allure of non-human consorts in tantric literature, variously depicting non-human consorts as unseemly or acceptable if they are divinely sent or consecrated.[44] The fearless yogi who turned to dangerous, non-human females for sexual satisfaction was a typical trope in seventh and eighth century Indian yoginītantra texts.[45] In the eighth-tenth century Cakrasaṃvara Tantra, ḍākinīs transfer their magical and predatory powers to male adepts. Serbaeva (2013) likewise documents Hindu references to tantric practices in the eighth-ninth century in which male adepts sacrificed their bodies and its vital fluids to yoginīs who were in the forms of jackals, hyenas, carrion-feeding birds and other predatory creatures. White (2013) notes Indo-Tibetan narratives in which animal headed ḍākinī cause gnostic revelation by tearing apart the body of their consort.[46] The status of human or non-human was ambivalent or mixed[47] in such literature or in other cases such as the Cakrasamvara, yoginī consorts are framed as human but with ghoulish characteristics.[48] Tibetan hagiography continued this ambivalence whereby it is not always clearly articulated whether Ḍākinī refers to humans or not. Such consorts who resembled malevolent, predatory, non-human female entities were recast in this taxonomy as the inappropriate consorts to be renounced.
In this context of a literary heritage where the human – non-human status of female consorts could be ambiguious, it is notable that in Dakki’s Path and Fruit, all appropriate consorts have human bodies, including the Local Guardian Ḍākinī in a human body.[49] However, four consorts, Four Female Rākshasī can appear in a human body.[50] The distinction raises a question about this portrayal of a positive ontology of the Ḍākinī. What does it suggest as the ontological distinction of a human in a human body, a local guardian deity in a human body, or a demoness who appears as human? It is not stated explicitly in this text, but it points to a greater question about the ambiguous ontological status of Ḍākinī.
Good Buddhists who are in harmony with others are classified as suitable consorts, described with qualities of trust and devotion to the adept, to the lamas or leaders, signifying compatibility with Tantric ideals of devotion proscribed in the accompanying texts. In contrast, opposing Buddhism is linked to the horrific. A Serpent Demon Woman has no faith in Buddhism, is conceited, full of rage and quarreling. Anomalous bodies are linked to traits that contradict Buddhist ideals such as wild, evil minds full of jealousy, anger, conceit, lack of faith or being expert on perverted (non-Buddhist) views. Unsuitable consorts have little devotion. Instead of the blissful heart, mindfulness, wisdom and faith of the ideal consorts, they have rampant mental afflictions. Such is the Bone-Marrow-Sucking Lady whose jealousy is so intense that the adept will feel as if he is being seized at the heart.
In contrast to some Mahayana scriptures permitting sex for the sake of conversion (even on the part of female bodhisattvas),[51] this text seems to exclude sex for the sake of conversion. In Ḍākkis Path and Fruit, horrific consorts are fixed classifications, not portrayed as candidates for conversion or rehabilitation. Symptoms of disease are a defining characteristic of the demonic consorts as evidenced by the bad smell of bodies, rotten smell in their armpits, stinky breath, malodorous genitals and emaciated flesh. Likewise, the burning feeling, emaciated flesh and low eye sockets allude to signs of illness classified as a form of deviance to be kept outside a social order in which healthy, vibrant, youthful female adepts are the ideal type.
Could the lack of social or emotional salience be the reason that arms, backs, toes, feet and organs are missing, while bellies as big or trim are included? For example, a small, bony buttocks is predictive of a demonic Ḍākki but calves and ankles are not predictive.[52] Does this mean that calves and ankles of a salvic and horrific consort were believed to be the same? Foucault suggests that classification is based on difference, even the smallest difference,[53] yet these differences are left unspecified, the taxonomy is therefore conspicuously incomplete. A possible explanation is that it emphasizes traits that are most soteriologically salient, including those traits associated with cultural constructions linking beauty as to soteriological potential.
Nomenclature
In taxonomy, naming serves to facilitate storage and retrieval of information.[54] For the names of salvic consorts metaphors based on non-humans and objects are used. These are metonyms such as the conch-type, elephant trunk lady, deer type and lotus consort. This nomenclature is repeated in other Tibetan texts and inherited from Buddhist India. One example is a text by Surūpa, which Vogel (2015) found to be extant in Tibet in the fourteenth century, a treatise on passion included in the Tibetan canon (bstan ‘gyur). It is attributed to India before the seventh century. It lists Lotus, Conch, Elephant and Variegated type as well as four types of male consorts. [55] In Tibetan consort literature, the names of salvic consorts are linked to the shape of their sexual anatomy. Accordingly, Dakki’s Path and Fruit describes the anatomy of the Elephant lady to resemble an elephant trunk, “The inner sign is that the snout of her channel is very long.”[56]
In Ḍākkis Path and Fruit twelve of the seventeen consorts are described by their vagina (bha ga) and/or female sex channel (rtsa, nang rtags rtsa), a feature of paramount importance its sexual praxis.[57] The Deer type’s vagina is gathered and looks like a crow’s beak, the Lotus type is said to have a tight vagina. However, some consorts do not have sexual anatomy described. For example, seven demonic consort’s sex organ descriptions are omitted, but two do have allusions to genitals. The scripture says, the animal headed type’s secret place has a rotten smell, the Flesh-Eating type has much water there. [58] The Hungry Ghost has non-functioning sex organs (gsang mi thub).[59] It is notable that she is still being classified in a typology of females even though she has non-functioning sexual anatomy, rather than being designated as third sex. Women and men who don’t have functioning sex organs are classified as third sex (ma ning) in Vinaya, Indian Buddhist monastic code literature.[60] However, Cabezón notes that there is variation on this issue in classical South Asian Buddhist literature.[61] These signs of a more intimate nature may be presented as a demonstration of knowledge in terms of how a naturalist would observe as species – at a distance constructed by the abstraction of texts, taxonomic knowledge and oral tradition. Just as a flower has a pistil, a stamen, petals and so forth, a demonic consort is said to have a boney buttocks, bad odor and genitals that don’t function.
A Different Take on Taxonomy
Ḍākkis Path and Fruit purports to be a reliable method of analysis, “complete advice, for future generations of Yogins who have desire.”[62] It reflects a systematic way of thinking about how an ordinary person can know others and their bodies. How can one tell what others are like, whether they are good or evil? Ḍākkis Path and Fruit suggests that one can know others through the senses, through observation. The male adept must be able to see, smell, feel and hear the consort in order to analyze accurately, in the encounters with viable candidates presumed by the text.
The scripture gives preference to direct observation. Fifty percent of cues are observable physical features, but the rest are not. This manifests taxonomy in a way that conflicts with Foucault’s definition of natural history as a discourse that relies on visual observation. He says it “reduces the whole area of the visible into a system of variables all of whose values can be designated, if not by quantity, at least by a perfectly clear and always finite description.”[63] The visible reduces uncertainty because it is observable by anyone, because the description can be recognized as corresponding to an entity easily observable at a glance.[64] Yet, this taxonomy does not create an entirely visible system.
The subject/object position of a visual system is salient, but this taxonomy’s observations are not entirely restricted to that dichotomy. Some evidence for knowing whether the consort is the right kind of Ḍākki is based on experiences the observer observes within himself. For example, just by seeing a consort who is really a Gnome type, mental afflictions will arise within observer’s mind. This assumes that the adept is capable of recognizing and identifying afflictions as they arise in the highly loaded context of attraction and sexual desire. The taxonomy identifies numerous self-reflexive observations, such that the male adept’s body is repeatedly posited as an instrument of decoding other’s bodies.
What is readily observable is contextually determined. One sign of a demoness consort is her bad odor from her under arms, genitals or mouth – observations requiring physical proximity. There are nine visible observations that could only be made either during sexual encounters or by testimony given by a former sexual partner. Such qualities may not be intended for direct observation (or testimonial observation). After all, to get that close to a demonic Ḍākki, it could already be too late, one could suffer the grave consequences such as shortened lifespan. The observation process is fraught with risk. Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit says that just by seeing the demonic type, defilements would arise.[65] Likewise, by meeting Blood-Drinking type the male adept’s attainments (dngos grub) would be consumed and one will be lead to hell at death.[66] For the Bone-Marrow-Sucking Lady, “If meeting with that one, siddhis will be exhausted. Obstacles to the life span will be swiftly produced.”[67] In contrast for the Wisdom Ḍākinī type, just by touching this type, bliss is produced.[68]
Another classification included is sound, listening to language and voice. Classifications based on smell account for only 2.8% of the total. Foucault points out, smell as a classification is fraught with difficulty because of the lack of certainty and lack of universal accessibility.
Discursive Techniques
Erotic constructions can be located in descriptions of the body parts, fragrances, sounds and the voyeuristic tone of facilitating a male observation of a potential sexual object. Moreover, consort taxonomy could be considered an aspect of erotic discourse in terms of what Foucault describes as “the pleasure of analysis,” a subtle form of erotic art, “a multiplication and intensification of pleasures connected to the production of the truth about sex.”[69] An erotic aspect of the taxonomy is its tone of truth-telling, secret-revealing, its lavish curiosity-satisfying function, which makes sense of those blissful lotus ladies and animal headed demonesses that a male adept would have heard rumors of.
Ushering Ḍākinī into the Known World Through Analogies
The literary convention used most frequently to construct consort discourse in Ḍākkis Path and Fruit is analogy. Analogies and the images they evoke are key instruments of this discursive formation, appearing repeatedly, eighteen times. The analogies for the salvic consorts include: smile like a lotus, channel like a crow’s lips, complexion like grey ash or gold ash, voice like a swan or cuckoo bird melody, language like a deer, smell like sandalwood or camphor. The analogies of the demonic consorts include: genitals with odor like bad meat, skin smells like donkey dung, like an animal, sleep like a corpse, finger nails like bird’s nails, index finger like a bird’s talon, voice like a male. There are eight total analogies that rely on resemblance to animals. Such a use of analogies to describe bodies is also used in the thirty-two signs of a buddha, such as “leg’s like an antelope, eyelashes like a cow’s.”[70] As Foucault points out, analogies make a human the fulcrum point in relation to animals, plants and so forth, like a “universal atlas.” He suggests that analogies create a grid through which figures can enter into knowledge.[71] Here analogies create connections between the unfamiliar and familiar. It creates a bridge between females and the rest of the known world of plants, animals and organic matter. They usher ḍākinī into the domain of knowledge through connecting them to a world the male adept already knows. Yet, it is notable that these resemblances are never to males except in the one case of a demonic ḍākinī, whose voice is a male-like voice. This implies an ever-looming specter of androcentrism, where males are humans and Ḍākinī consorts are more like another species with the closest resemblances being drawn to the world of non-humans.
Sympathy and Antipathy
One great danger imposed by the consorts is resemblance between consorts to be abandoned and those who are a support. The taxonomy excludes non-humans however four of the inappropriate consorts are actual demonesses with horrific bodies, but appearing in human forms. This property of resemblance may be what makes taxonomy necessary, as Foucault notes, without resemblance there would be no basis for comparison, even if the discourse reduces those resemblances to a mere murmur.[72] For this reason, the discourse utilizes sympathy and antipathy throughout the text, functioning to assert resemblance while simultaneously constructing difference and preventing assimilation between the two types.
The most prominent antipathy structure in the text is the binary classification of the salvic and demonic consort. The separation of salvic and horrific, divine and demonic is apparent when comparing Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit’s taxonomy to that in Longchenpa’s commentary to the Guhyagarbha Tantra.[73] That structure taxonomy presents six types of consorts organized in a hierarchy of progressive gradations such as the case of the Superior Lotus type, Middling Lotus type and Inferior Lotus type. In this case the superior is an appropriate consort and the inferior one is a consort to be avoided. [74] The quality of resemblance in that work is diminished by a continuum structure, perhaps increasing the dangers of misidentification. In contrast, in Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit, the Lotus refers only to the salvic consort, there is no bad lotus consort, no chance that one would fall into error by choosing a Lotus consort. Consequently, the taxonomy of Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit solves the problem of the resemblance of salvic and horrific females by presenting a reduction of the disorder presented by the complex variability of bodies and persons into binary order, those to be adopted and those to be renounced (brtan bya dang spang bya).
Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit participates in a transformation of the discourse of the horrific female body. Early images of female bodies as horrific served monastic communities pedagogically by promoting sexual abstinence through cultivating repulsion for women’s bodies,.[75] However, here the opposite purpose is served. The horrific females are acknowledged to exist but safely ensconced in the category of the bad ones. Consequently, Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit reconciles both discourses of the salvic female and the horrific female by relegating the horrific into antipathy, as the enemy of the adept and opposite of the salvic female. Foucault says, “Antipathy maintains the isolation of things and prevents their assimilation; it encloses every species within its impenetrable difference and its propensity to continue being what it is.”[76] Whereas sympathy has the power of assimilation, rendering things identical to one another such that their individuality and difference disappears, antipathy allows resemblance to be acknowledged without losing distinction. The juxtaposition of salvic versus the horrific serves to establish that there is a salvic consort and it is one which is safely differentiated and distinguished from the horrors of female bodies and dangers of sexuality encoded in the memory of Buddhist literary past. The discordance of the juxtaposition of the salvic and horrific serves to make the identity of the salvic female all the more apparent for its salvic, positive potential. Without the presentation of salvic counterbalanced by the demonic consorts, the salvic ones could possibly be confused with the horrific, leaving all female bodies as a homogenous horror to be avoided. Through consolidation and re-signification via sympathy and antipathy, Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit separates salvic and horrific into its own discreet categories, presenting a tidy binary classification system to assure the male adept of sanctioned sex.
Sex & Danger
Ḍākkis Path and Fruit reflects an alternative to literature preoccupied with renunciation of sexuality. It appears instead as literature advocating its regulation and control. As Foucault notes in History of Sexuality, regulation of sexuality requires the individual be capable of controlling sexuality and the very medium of control is a web of discourses, special knowledge and analyses.[77]
Despite its orientation towards sanctioned sex, Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit also perpetuates discursive links between sex and danger, between women and danger. For example, Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit quotes the Tantra of the Luminous Expanse,
“One must have a consort who is endowed with auspicious signs, if one meets a partner with bad signs, they will fall to the lower realms. Therefore, this is the instruction on the method of analyzing [the consort].”[78]
The dangers described in Ḍākkis Path and Fruit are severe. It links sex with wrong consorts to negative consequences in social, physical and soteriological domains. Multiple dangers are recorded in Ḍākkis Path and Fruit, all which result from not recognizing what kind of consort one is involved with. The named dangers include interpersonal problems, social consequences, economic consequences, shortening of one’s lifespan, grave soteriological consequences and even sexually transmitted diseases.
The link between sex and social dangers is underscored when the text asserts that other people in the male adept’s social circle may lose their merit if the wrong consort is chosen.[79] The text places repeated emphasis on the social impact of sexual relationships, sex as both a personal issue and public issue, sexual power as both soteriological and social. Thus, it could be read as an attempt to demarcate ‘safe’ sex in terms of soteriologically and socially safe, for the male adept and his community. This is safety secured through discursive measures.
The dangers are even economic. Consider for contrast the benefits of having a Wisdom Ḍākinī consort, food and wealth increase. It says, “Since this is the Wisdom Ḍākinī type, meeting that one, wealth, food and beings will assemble. Meditative stability, experience and realization will be born in mind.”[80] Indeed wealth and power are one of the categories by which appropriate consorts can be identified (bsags rgyab che chung dbang thang). In contrast, with a demonic consort, one’s wealth will vanish.[81]
Ḍākkis Path and Fruit taxonomy applies a rhetoric of control and predictability to a situation which would be fraught with uncertainty. As Foucault suggests, when the meaning of words is no longer representative of a definitive object, anxiety is the result. Anxiety could result from the enumeration of dangers of text and as well as the oscillating usage and multi-valence of the term ḍākinī which denotes someone whose mere visage could lead to bliss or to hell. In the ambivalence in which Ḍākinī, refers to a flesh eating demonic being that would take one to hell and to a primordial wisdom consort who takes one to liberation, how is one to achieve a sense of security? That security is achieved through discursive order. It provides assurance of meaningful, knowable, classifiable consorts and the assurance of mental, social and soteriological benefits from sexual praxis.
These passages legitimize non-celibate practice and by extension, the participation of females in inner circles of tantric religious activity. It presents appropriate consorts as persons who could bring blessings not only to the male adept but also to an entire religious community. Yet, despite so many links between sex and danger, the dangers of sexual praxis for female adepts is entirely absent from Ḍākkis Path and Fruit. Such dangers could have included unwanted pregnancies, vulnerability to predatory behavior, harassment and rape. Such dangers are described three centuries later in a Tsogyal biography.[82] Sex and danger for women is a theme articulated in the autobiography of Sera Khandro that describes the social dangers in terms of unwelcome propositions, concerns about the appearance of impropriety and others’ jealousy. Those examples of linking sex to danger for female adepts could be considered as a transformation of this earlier discourse. It reflects an unintended consequence of the consort discourse – its appropriation for and by women, taking the themes of scrutiny, soteriological purpose, religious sexuality and danger, and transforming them into a language that promotes some measures of female agency.
Social Milieu as Constructed by Discourse
The production of knowledge, including knowledge about consorts is socially situated, reflecting particular concerns of those who produced it. The text proscribes a performance that will be interpreted and recognized by social members. This is an obvious reason why the text articulates norms for sanctioned sex that are posited to be beneficial for the entire community. If an adept is supported in his choice of an appropriate partner, benefits are promised for everyone else, even food and wealth. This promise of social benefits may serve the function of mitigating against social critiques of tantric adepts.
The defining characteristics of a proper consort are also socially embedded. Their identifying characteristics include others, they are embedded in a field of power relationships. These are not the outcaste women valorized in other tantras, [83] they are women who are connected to powerful families in the adept’s society. The salvic consort is said to be the child of a good family who practices dharma or practices tantra. Her characteristics are recognized in terms of social relations. For example, the appropriate consort is charming, respectful to teachers and leaders, in contrast, Female Serpent Demoness has bad friends and relatives. The appropriate consorts are known in the community as such. For example, the salvic consort has a good reputation as a tantric adept. It is notable that her relationships do include sexual ones, since sexual experience is framed as a positive trait in Ḍākkis Path and Fruit. Whereas the demonic female consort has no knowledge of sexual techniques, the salvic consort, an Elephant Type, has skill in sexual intercourse. The consort’s suitability is socially defined, her bodily signs are likewise linked to interpersonal and social status. Therefore, in Ḍākkis Path and Fruit, consorts are not identified as individuals, but as one node in a field of power relations and social connections.
This social embedded-ness of the consort is a factor that diminishes instrumentalist portrayals in which the consort is interpreted as merely an instrument of the male adept’s needs. Gayley (2018) documents the social embedded-ness of the consort’s position in present day Tibetan Buddhism. This is evidenced by the customs of passing lineages and teachings through the family, the respect and veneration of the consort by the wider community, the role of consort as mothers and in the case of esteemed lamas, the status of consorts as revered figures after their partners pass away and the status of consorts who become teachers in their own right. It is also evidenced by the regard for consorts as having attained high-degrees of realization themselves.[84]
Conclusion
Foucault asserts that the value in taxonomy is not what it makes possible to see, but also makes it invisible, what it hides.[85] What it has hidden here is the complexity and agency of real human females, rendering its female subjects into subaltern status through the absence of their subjectivity and agency. Martin (2005) argues that female religious leaders may have been more common during this period than in later times. [86] Yet, due to androcentric record keeping practices, there are few materials detailing the actual lives of women in early non-celibate tantric communities outside the monasteries.[87] Voices of such women are glaringly absent from The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākini. Yet, for its time it was inclusive. As noted by Germano (2018) The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākini is the first Seminal Heart text revealed in a century. Unlike the previous Great Perfection work, Seminal Heart of Vimalamitra (eleventh-twelfth century) this corpus is built around the hagiographies of two female figures [88] and prophecies of other female disciples and lineage holders. What tales of those exceptional women do not necessarily convey are women’s subordinated status in non-celibate tantric circles in which female consorts were utilized as instruments of male-centric religious rituals.[89] This status may be inferred from elements missing from Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit, such as consideration of whether the consort desires the male adept in return. Only three sanctioned consorts are described as having affection, trust and devotion towards the male adept. Also missing is consideration of whether the consort will benefit from the sexual encounter or how they would benefit. This notion of whether the partner will benefit or not is present in other Buddhist literature. Take for example, bodhisattva discourse in which sexual acts for the benefit of others, as acts motivated by compassion (and not self-gratification) were permitted.[90] This includes the notion that bodhisattvas must be able to “intuit the mental states of their partners, and (b) to discern what the result of having sex with them will be, whether it will cause the sexual partner to flourish or not.”[91] In contrast, in Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit, the benefit of the consort is not mentioned as a definitive consideration of who to choose.
This subordination is explicit in an ancillary text. The rules imposed on women in tantric circles in the fourteenth century are evidenced in The Golden Garland Ambrosia (zhus len bdud rtsi gser phreng) where it says that a woman who has sex with someone not assigned by the teacher breaks vows, leading to a shortened lifespan and birth in a hell realm. [92] This passage places female sexuality in a restrictive control in which she must be available to men but may not exercise sexual agency outside that context. It constructs a religious milieu in which women were constrained by the choices made by men. The difference in advice to female adepts is underscored in the instruction to have devotion towards whatever man she is with, even if it is a lewd man.[93] Tying this acceptance and submission to protection of vows, she is admonished to practice in this way lest, she become a demon of the dharma. [94] It is the direct opposite of the instructions in Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit, in which men are advised to judiciously choose only virtuous consorts or suffer horrific consequences.
It is noteworthy that in addition to objectification and subordination, the female subject being analyzed is simultaneously presented in a more holistic light as a socially embedded person, in terms of mental dispositions, social relationships, psychological traits and soteriological attainments, as opposed to just appearance. For example, the Wisdom Ḍākki, is described in terms that evoke a sense of personhood, it describes her faith, devotion and good personality, not just her body shape. It says, “She has faith and depends on the three jewels… She is known for charming conduct.”[95]
The scriptures exhibit an ambivalent tantric misogyny. On the one hand, the text subordinates women, promoting male adepts as sexual agents and female adepts as sexual objects. On the other hand, it is also worth noting that objectification is not consistent throughout the greater corpus in which Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit is housed. Instead, its scriptures overall reflect the complexities of inclusion of female adepts in the fourteenth century non-celibate contemplative milieu, wherein the texts sometimes venerate females and at other times subordinate and exploit them.[96] Indeed, the corpus presents a promotion of women to the role of lineage holders and transmitters of scriptures, along side simultaneous misogynistic, androcentric and instrumentalist portrayals. This tension bears witness to complex the struggles of these communities as they strove to include women but were simultaneously constrained by androcentrist culture.
On the one hand, Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit is instrumentalist in its ethics. It conveys a conspicuous sense in which a subject-object relationship is proscribed, wherein the primary value of the female is her function to promote or erode the male adept’s soteriological momentum, life-span, social standing and even material success (and that of the community). On the other hand, it should be noted that the power dynamics depicted in this corpus were not entirely one-directional. The scripture evidences some expression of bi-directionality of power in its response to the perceived influence women had on male tantric adepts and their communities. It could be presumed that female consorts responded to consort discourse in varying ways. Indeed, as noted by Kandiyoti, within different forms of patriarchy, women strategize and negotiate against the set of constraints they face with considerable variation according to their social position.[97]
Male-centric consort discourse may have had unintended consequences. As Foucault says in his History of Sexuality, discourse can be, “…an instrument and effect of power, but also a point of resistance… and starting point for an opposing strategy.”[98] The adoption and transformation of consort discourse for women is evidenced in later works such as the seventeenth century biography of Yeshe Tsogyal, written by the treasure revealer Nuden Dorje (stag sham nus ldan rdo rje, 1655-1708). In this hagiography, a female assumes the role of examining, choosing and training a consort. Likewise, in Sera Khandro’s (1892-1940) autobiography, she receives instructions in a dream to summon, examine and train a male consort. She is instructed in the dream to confer ritual empowerment upon him and engage in sacred sexuality for her own liberation.[99] She is both constrained by her subordinate social position but also resists it when deliberating for herself who is a worthy and unworthy consort.[100] Whether or not such role reversals occurred in the fourteenth century is unclear, but these cases serve as evidence that consort discourse itself has been repurposed for and/or by women.
Ḍākki’s Path and Fruit exposes the wide matrix of textual traditions, web of discourses, cultural conventions, cross-cultural interpretations and appropriations that have already taken place in the long complicated history of consort discourse. Current debates about appropriate consorts and sexuality in Tibetan Buddhism are happening in a very different cultural context and are not necessarily referring to particular textual traditions. However, it is noteworthy that the question of appropriate consorts as central to theories of sexual misconduct is a discourse with historical precedent. It is a question with a long history of discursive transformations and disruptions. As noted by Cabezón, “Contemporary Buddhist teachers’ inappropriate sexual behaviors are part of a more general problem that the Buddhist tradition has confronted for centuries.”[101]
Interpreting consort discourse in the cross-cultural nature of the current debates on Buddhist sexual ethics poses major challenges. What historical consort literature has in common with these debates is numerous. Current efforts by #metoo in Buddhism today could be regarded as the further development and transformation of a historical discourse focused on the link between sex and danger in non-celibate communities. Another factor in common is attention to how inappropriate consorts and ‘wrongly’ chosen sexual relationships can have dangerous consequences for entire religious communities. There is historical precedent for the discursive complexities and discontinuities manifesting in Tibetan Buddhist consort discourse. Indeed, such tensions may be the necessary ground from which sexual ethics are constructed, deconstructed and again.
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[1] Gleig and Langenberg (2020)
[2] Ḍākinī is a multivalent term referring to accomplished women, goddesses, spirits, protectors and more.
[3] Jacoby, Love and Liberation, 189-190.
[4] Germano, Architecture, 206.
[5] There are various enumerations of dates for Pema Ledreltsal, these are sourced from Germano, Possession, 244.
[6] ‘od-zer, snying, 339.
[7] ‘od-zer, snying, 399.
[8] ‘od-zer, snying, 344.
[9] Pollock, Future, 954.
[10] Foucault, Two Lectures, 93.
[11] Kandiyoti, Bargaining, 275.
[12] Quoted in Olsen, Gender, 514.
[13] In the context of Buddhism in India, (1992). See Sponberg, 29, 1992.
[14] Lagenberg, Birth, 154.
[15] Lagenberg, Birth, 154.
[16] Germano, Architecture, 270.
[17] Germano and Gyatso, Possession 244.
[18] Germano and Gyatso, Possession, 245.
[19] Germano and Gyatso, Possession, 248, dates for Longchenpa are listed variantly elsewhere.
[20] There are numerous editions extant today which also include: sde-dge, a-‘dzom, rdzogs-chen shri-seng par-khang, bla-rung and numerous digital versions.
[21] Foucault, Order, 128-129.
[22] Foucault, Order, 130.
[23] Gyatso, Apparitions, 263.
[24] See Gyatso (2008), White (2003), Hatley (2016)
[25] Gyatso, Apparitions, 305.
[26] Gray, Cakrasamvara, 84; White, Ḍākinī, 22.
[27] Gyatso, Apparitions, 246.
[28] Hatley, Converting, 4-5.
[29] Gyatso, Apparitions, 246.
[30] Gray, Cakrasamvara, 86.
[31] ‘od zer, snying, 369.
[32] Gayley, Revisiting, 2018.
[33] Kay, Taxonomy, 868.
[34] Foucault, Order, 81-82.
[35] Kay, Taxonomy, 867.
[36] Kendig and Witteveen, History, 40.
[37] See Zubin and Kopcke, Taxonomy, 152.
[38] See Chonam, Guhyagharbha, 469-473.
[39] Rab ‘byams, theg, 298-305.
[40] Lopez and Jinpa, Passion, 10-12. In addition to the shared categories of Lotus, Conch and Elephant, this source also includes a typology of four types of males. See Vogel (1965) for another example with a typology of males.
[41] Treasury of the Supreme Vehicle adds a Cow Type and an Ox Type. Whereas Longchenpa’s commentary to the Guhyagarbha lists six types: Lotus, conch, Patterned, Deer, Elephant and Variegated. Rab ‘byams, theg, 470-471.
[42] Treasury of the Supreme Vehicle posits an alternate classification of demon girls, god girls, naga girls, priestly girls and the Indra girls.
[43] See Hatley, Converting, 10.
[44] Davidson, Indian, 324.
[45] Gray, Cakrasamvara, 88.
[46] White, Ḍākinī, paragraph 8, 16.
[47] Gray, Cakrasamvara, 90.
[48] Gray, Cakrasamvara, 90-91.
[49] This could be interpreted as one who was previously a local guardian and reincarnated as a human.
[50] ‘od-zer, snying, 214.
[51] Cabezón, Sexuality, chapter 5, paragraph 65.
[52] Powers, Bull, 236 also notes hidden ankles in buddhas characteristics.
[53] Foucault, Order, 174.
[54] Kendig and Witteveen, History, 1-2.
[55] Vogel, Surūpa 18-21. The male types are classified as Hare, Bull-man, Horse-man and Deer man.
[56] ‘od-zer, snying, 407.
[57] “Sex channel’ is described in ancillary texts as something that protrudes and emerges form the genitals of female consorts and emits a red light sphere (thig le). This is an anatomical feature connected to tantric sexual techniques, the details of which are beyond the scope of this article. For a description see Rab ‘byams, theg, 300. The sex channel’s importance is definitive in another classification of consorts in the corpus that classifies consorts by the fitness of this channel. ‘od-zer, snying, 415-419.
[58] ‘od-zer, snying, 412; 413.
[59] ‘od-zer, snying, 412.
[60] Gyatso, One, 97.
[61] Cabezón, classical chapter 6, paragraph 68
[62] ‘od-zer, snying, 105.
[63] Foucault, Order, 148.
[64] Foucault, Order, 144, 146.
[65] mthong ba tsam gyis grib ‘byung. ‘od-zer, snying, 413.
[66] de dang ‘phrad na dngos grub zad/ tse ‘phos mnar med dmyal bar ‘khrid. ‘od zer, snying, 413.
[67] de dang ‘phrad na dngos grub zad/ tse la bar chad myur du ‘byung/ od zer, snying, 413.
[68] reg-pa tsam gyis bde ba skye. ‘od zer, snying, 410.
[69] Foucault, History, 71.
[70] Powers, Bull, 9.
[71] Foucault, Order 24-25.
[72] Foucault, Order, 152.
[73] The Guyhagarbha represents Nyingma interpretation of Buddhist tantric MahāYoga scriptures.
[74] Chonam, Khandro and Berotsana, Guhyagarbha, 470-471.
[75] Wilson, Charming, 17.
[76] Foucault, Order, 27.
[77] Foucault, History 26.
[78] ‘od zer, snying, 408.
[79] Loss of accumulated positive karma
[80] ‘od zer, snying, 411.
[81] nor dang longs sbyod snyan pa yang / de dag brten tsam gyis yang. ‘od zer, snying, 413
[82] See Gyalwa (2002)
[83] Gray, Cakrasamvara, 103 discusses the search for outcaste consorts in Buddhist India’s yoginī tantra literature.
[84] Gayley, Revisiting, 6-8.
[85] Foucault, Order, 150.
[86] Martin, Lay, 35.
[87] Germano, Possession, 241; Germano, David (2018). “Rise of the Lotus, Hidden Treasures and Tantric Sexuality in 14th Century Tibet.” Lecture, University of Virginia. 12 Dec 2018.
[88] See Germano and Gyatso, Possession, 244.
[89] For example a familiar trope in tantric descriptions of religious sexuality, in which the consort is shared by both master and disciple as described in Davidson, Indian, 198-199, 204, 222.
[90] Cabezón, Sexuality, chapter 5, paragraph 79..35 (2013). Nov 2020..s. Oxford: e one disciple may be a male or a female.and Columbia University’f Darkness throughout the Ten
[91] Asanga quoted in Cabezón, Sexuality, paragraph 82.
[92] ‘od-zer, snying, 364.
[93] khyed bud med las ngan pas mos gus byi pho la byed. ‘od zer, snying, 363.
[94] ‘od-zer, snying, 364.
[95] ‘od-zer, snying, 410.
[96] A point brought to my attention by Germano in 2017.
[97] Kandiyoti, Bargaining, 275.
[98] Foucault, History, 101.
[99] Jacoby, Love and Liberation, 201.
[100] Jacoby, Love and Liberation, 230.
[101] Cabezón, Sexuality, chapter five, paragraph 102.