SIX: TĀRĀ AS OUR LADY OF THE VOID
Emerging from the vajropama-samādhi Mahasiddha Acintapa discerned all that just came before him, the Scrutinies and the Divine Liturgy of Vajrasattva, were all Sacred Events conveyed to his Mind’s Eye. He found himself sitting and holding the mysterious sphere that was the mystic-source of his epiphany:
He began to ponder all that had transpired when suddenly the hooded figure with the imageless face once again appeared before him:
The Imageless One sat motionless and did not utter a sound. Intrigued, Acintapa Mahasiddha slowly approached the figure and peered into the darkened countenance:
He was amazed to discover the miniature figure of Arya Tārā beginning to form until her full stature appeared before his Mind’s Eye:
With Siddhaic-precision Mahasiddha Acintapa soon recollected what was unfolding before him: the significance of the sphere and Arya Tārā’s presence emanating from its depths was a clear signal highlighting the emptiness and void state that Mind must encounter as a heightened realization of its True Nature. This was Tārā as Our Lady of the Void—one of her many manifestations and the most profound of them all. She is “the dark principle that freely animates all phenomena in fertile fashion and the Void into which they all eventually return—like decaying elements drawn back into her uterine womb.” She is the Yin-Element that enlivens and supports and nurtures the Yang Element—indeed, the “Via Negativa, or undercurrent, from which the Via Positiva flows.” As such, she is representative of a Dharmodayā –a triangular symbolism of the interaction of the Yin and Yang Elements within the Cosmic Womb:
There is no escaping from this Universal Realization—that as Arya Tārā is the Divine Matrix that nurtures and brings the seed of Buddha-nature to fruition, she is also simultaneously the womb into which everything returns and dissolves once again into the Pure and Adamantine no-position of Śūnyatā. Mahasiddha Acintapa soon found himself dissolving into the Dharmodayā—not into nothingness, but into the Creative Imageless Nexsus within which All is manifested and re-absorbed into the Unborn.
COMMENTARY
Mahasiddha Acintapa discerned that all that just came before him: as the Tantra states at this junction, all that previously transpired was self-realized by the Yogin/Yogini in vajropama-samādhi—the pinnacle of Samādhis.
She is “the dark principle that freely animates…: extracted from the blog Post here, “Our Lady of the Void”, from the Lankavatarian Book of the Dead. This extraction highlights the continuity (in the spirit of Tantra) between these two works.
Dharmodayā: fascinating symbolic representation within Tantric Buddhism. Exploring this further, the Active-Feminine Principle is also depicted as other various manifestations, most notably as Narodakini, a Feminine Tibetan Deity who is oftentimes found in the center of a Dharmodayā. The feminine energy here is represented by the inverted triangle, directly intersecting the masculine vertical one. The following depicts her; curiously this brings to mind a type of Vajrayana Walküre like figure:
