It's Spring! Starting last week, I know. But I had a cold and was neither bright-eyed, nor bushy-tailed. However, the blooming that is currently occurring in LA, and which wafted through my house this weekend, plucked me from the depths of phlegm-dom with the beguiling scent of orange and lemon blossoms, mixed with the ever present jasmine, and added to by whatever blooming tree that is that lines my street. (I've even seen what look like cherry blossoms on occasion).
What smells better than orange or lemon blossoms, I ask you? Not much, I tell you back. I remember as a pretty young kid going to a Moroccan restaurant in San Francisco, where you sit on the floor, and they pour tea from about five feet above your cup, and you get to wash your hands in orange blossom water. Really, is there anything to make you feel more like a princess than orange blossom water? I'm not even going to wait for an answer on that one. That one's rhetorical.
Of course, as a seven year old, I was much more interested in being a princess than I am now, some cough-cough years later. Although, it was probably always the Princess Leia kind of princess, who, as my friend Kira points out, is a superior kind of princess because she gets to be a princess and shoot a gun.
And while, as an adult, and a Buddhist, I'm maybe not so interested in the shooting the gun part as I used to be. But maybe the powerful princess is not such a bad role model. Or even, dare I say -- powerful queen. Yes, I dare. Because, actually powerful queen, when you add in attributes like compassion, wisdom and purity of mind, is an entirely apt description -- and a utilized description at that -- of many of the female Buddhas.
Female Buddhas? You (maybe) say? I've never heard of such a thing. Well, let me tell you something... and here I will use the phrase: grrrllll (Oprah-like) (and, as an aside, I'm about as likely to use that phrase as it's counterpart: dude). If there were no female Buddhas, my becoming a Buddhist would have been way less probable. Because the female Buddhas are where it's at (for me, at least).
There's Green Tara, who, besides all the previous descriptions is also called "the swift one, the heroine" - she's a total super hero. Or, again, heroine. Most Buddhas are depicted with their legs crossed in the vajra posture (or lotus position), usually in a version of a meditation posture. Tara has one leg sticking out, showing she's ready to get up and come to your rescue. Here's one of the most awesome things about Tara. Before she became a Buddha, she was a princess (ahem), in another world system (not getting into that right now), who was a very advanced spiritual practitioner. At one point, a monk told her she should pray to reborn as a male in her next life, so that she could attain enlightenment. (Oh, no, he didn't!)
At which point Tara tells him (or them, depending on the story), that it is only the limited minds of ordinary beings that see genders as inherently different and a barrier to enlightenment. She does, however, note that there is a lack of beings who have become Buddhas in a female form, and so she makes this vow: "I have developed bodhichitta as a woman. For all my lifetimes along the path I vow to be born as a woman, and in my final lifetime when I attain Buddhahood, then, too, I will be a woman." So, as you see, she's the bomb.
The Perfection of Wisdom is depicted as the female Buddha Prajnaparamita.
And then there's Vajrayogini, a female tantric Buddha. (A small aside about tantra here, so you don't get all distracted. True tantra is first and foremost an inner realization. There's more, but that's not for here.) All I'll say, is that Vajrayogini will rock your world.
Sometimes people wonder why, in Tibetan and other Northern Himalayan traditions, the Buddhas are depicted in so much detail, and why, in their practices, there's so much description of what they look like, what they're wearing, how they're sitting (or standing), what they're holding. Two reasons: these are folks you want to get to know, and when you really get to know someone, you know everything about them, you see them clearly in your minds eye. Secondly, these are our role models. We want to become like them. One of the ways you become like someone is to visualize yourself as them. (Like, if you wanted to become a rock star, you visualize yourself as a rock star, you visualize yourself directing a movie, or becoming a successful surgeon, or being a good parent, or whatever. That's what you do.)
It's a Buddhist practice to relate to the Buddha nature - the potential to become a Buddha - in everyone we meet. We relate to that potential instead of to the deceptive appearance of what we normally see. We also relate to that potential in ourselves. It's like building a house. You can't build a house without first visualizing what it will look like. And you can't become a Buddha without imagining what it would be like.
When you're a kid, you imagine yourself as different kinds of people, and maybe different kinds of animals or made-up creatures, all the time. We stop doing that when we're adults, and we start to harden our image of who we are. Sometimes this makes us get stuck. So, just as, as a kid, I imagined being Princess Leia, now I imagine being one of those other powerful compassionate princesses/queens.
Imagination. I think that's the key to getting unstuck, to moving forward, to doing anything extraordinary. Don't you? So let the wafting perfumes of spring make you feel like a princess (or a prince). Everything's only your imagination anyway.
What smells better than orange or lemon blossoms, I ask you? Not much, I tell you back. I remember as a pretty young kid going to a Moroccan restaurant in San Francisco, where you sit on the floor, and they pour tea from about five feet above your cup, and you get to wash your hands in orange blossom water. Really, is there anything to make you feel more like a princess than orange blossom water? I'm not even going to wait for an answer on that one. That one's rhetorical.
Of course, as a seven year old, I was much more interested in being a princess than I am now, some cough-cough years later. Although, it was probably always the Princess Leia kind of princess, who, as my friend Kira points out, is a superior kind of princess because she gets to be a princess and shoot a gun.
And while, as an adult, and a Buddhist, I'm maybe not so interested in the shooting the gun part as I used to be. But maybe the powerful princess is not such a bad role model. Or even, dare I say -- powerful queen. Yes, I dare. Because, actually powerful queen, when you add in attributes like compassion, wisdom and purity of mind, is an entirely apt description -- and a utilized description at that -- of many of the female Buddhas.
Female Buddhas? You (maybe) say? I've never heard of such a thing. Well, let me tell you something... and here I will use the phrase: grrrllll (Oprah-like) (and, as an aside, I'm about as likely to use that phrase as it's counterpart: dude). If there were no female Buddhas, my becoming a Buddhist would have been way less probable. Because the female Buddhas are where it's at (for me, at least).
There's Green Tara, who, besides all the previous descriptions is also called "the swift one, the heroine" - she's a total super hero. Or, again, heroine. Most Buddhas are depicted with their legs crossed in the vajra posture (or lotus position), usually in a version of a meditation posture. Tara has one leg sticking out, showing she's ready to get up and come to your rescue. Here's one of the most awesome things about Tara. Before she became a Buddha, she was a princess (ahem), in another world system (not getting into that right now), who was a very advanced spiritual practitioner. At one point, a monk told her she should pray to reborn as a male in her next life, so that she could attain enlightenment. (Oh, no, he didn't!)
At which point Tara tells him (or them, depending on the story), that it is only the limited minds of ordinary beings that see genders as inherently different and a barrier to enlightenment. She does, however, note that there is a lack of beings who have become Buddhas in a female form, and so she makes this vow: "I have developed bodhichitta as a woman. For all my lifetimes along the path I vow to be born as a woman, and in my final lifetime when I attain Buddhahood, then, too, I will be a woman." So, as you see, she's the bomb.
The Perfection of Wisdom is depicted as the female Buddha Prajnaparamita.
And then there's Vajrayogini, a female tantric Buddha. (A small aside about tantra here, so you don't get all distracted. True tantra is first and foremost an inner realization. There's more, but that's not for here.) All I'll say, is that Vajrayogini will rock your world.
Sometimes people wonder why, in Tibetan and other Northern Himalayan traditions, the Buddhas are depicted in so much detail, and why, in their practices, there's so much description of what they look like, what they're wearing, how they're sitting (or standing), what they're holding. Two reasons: these are folks you want to get to know, and when you really get to know someone, you know everything about them, you see them clearly in your minds eye. Secondly, these are our role models. We want to become like them. One of the ways you become like someone is to visualize yourself as them. (Like, if you wanted to become a rock star, you visualize yourself as a rock star, you visualize yourself directing a movie, or becoming a successful surgeon, or being a good parent, or whatever. That's what you do.)
It's a Buddhist practice to relate to the Buddha nature - the potential to become a Buddha - in everyone we meet. We relate to that potential instead of to the deceptive appearance of what we normally see. We also relate to that potential in ourselves. It's like building a house. You can't build a house without first visualizing what it will look like. And you can't become a Buddha without imagining what it would be like.
When you're a kid, you imagine yourself as different kinds of people, and maybe different kinds of animals or made-up creatures, all the time. We stop doing that when we're adults, and we start to harden our image of who we are. Sometimes this makes us get stuck. So, just as, as a kid, I imagined being Princess Leia, now I imagine being one of those other powerful compassionate princesses/queens.
Imagination. I think that's the key to getting unstuck, to moving forward, to doing anything extraordinary. Don't you? So let the wafting perfumes of spring make you feel like a princess (or a prince). Everything's only your imagination anyway.
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