Sukhasiddhi

I had mentioned that some stories in Tibetan Buddhism are blessed in the sense that merely reading them with a reverent and receptive manner can connect one with a blessing. There was one concerning an immortal dakini in Rechunpa's biography. The following one is about a wonderful dakini named Sukhasiddhi and is known to be a blessed story. I have retranslated the story and added some notes in brackets.

SUKHASIDDHI (Dewai Ngodrup)

Om Namo Dakini Sukhasiddhi Ah.
Om Namo Dakini Sukhasiddhi Ah.
Om Namo Dakini Sukhasiddhi Ah.

[The original story had merely put a homage to Sukhasiddhi. I am giving a mantra for her. The mantra is not a traditional one, but is based on the mantric formula, starting with "om" which is the vibrational Dharma field as a whole which all the enlightened beings are one with, then "namo" which is means "I call upon", "I invoke", and "I open up to", then the title and name of the specific being, and lastly the bija mantra of the energy family that the being associates and belongs to (some of them, like Padmasambhava are initiated into all of them, but still belong to one specifically). The formula is repeated three times to generate the connection energy, eventually this by itself is enough to connect with Sukhasiddhi, once the story is absorbed. Some people will feel an energy in their head and/or belly and/or heart when repeating this devotionally right away.]

Long ago in India, in a country of 38,000 villages named Katchie, there lived an elderly couple with three sons and three daughters. They lived in one of the western villages which was undergoing a period of drought and scarcity. They lived in extreme poverty and only had one vase of rice among them.

[In Tibetan Buddhism, a gathering is considered auspicious when the genders are perfectly balanced. When males dominate the numbers, it is considered a "bodhisattva feast". When females dominate the numbers, it is considered a "dakini feast". When the numbers are equal, or near equal, then it is an "enlightenment feast". It is a good sign that in this family the balance was perfect between the genders.]

This vase was sealed and hidden, to save it for when it would really be needed. They all went out to look for food. The sons went south. The daughters went north. The father went west. The fifty nine year old mother stayed home and took care of the home.

[There is a mandala pattern in the hunting for food, but it is a little incomplete since the mother stays home rather than goes east. Fifty nine years old, in the lands near the Himalayas, is considered very old. The harsher climate seems to shorten the lifespans. This age is already a very long lifespan and it would not be uncommon to die near this age.]

While she was taking care of the house by herself, a beggar came to the house. The beggar was even poorer, hungrier, needier, and in more distress than the family. She had compassion toward his needs. She took the vase out of hiding, unsealed the jar, and cooked all the rice. She fed him with all that the family had, leaving no reserve behind.

The father eventually returned home. He was very hungry and weak. He had not found any food in his searching. He returned home in hopes of eating from the vase of rice and then leaving again to once again hunt for food. The sons and daughters also returned about the same time. None of them had found any food and all of them were very hungry. They all asked the mother get the vase of rice out and cook it, in order to satisfy their hunger. But the mother told them that she had given all the rice to a beggar who was in great need.

The family was very upset with the mother. They had experienced her seeming over generosity before and exclaimed that she had given away all their food before. They blamed her for the misery that they were experiencing and expelled her from the house. The mother left the house, moved across Katchie, and came to the western land of Uddiyana. In this new land, she found that the men were noble and courageous and the women were strong and virtuous. The vibrational field of the land allowed her to experience her natural mind, which gently became calm and clear. The land was experiencing harvest time. She took her place in this new land, obtained a bag of rice, and found a spot in the village market making and selling rice wine.

[Uddiyana seems to have been near the Afghanistan Himalayas, possibly near Pemir, where the Sarmouni existed. These were the teachers of Gurdjieff and also of Padmasambhava, who said that he came from Surmang - which is the same word when pronounced with Tibetan guttaralization. The symbol of the Sarmouni is the bee and the bee hive. They learn from all the spiritual teachers that have come to teach humanity and keep their teachings alive in their community, releasing the teachings back into the world when the world is able to hear those teachings again and when those teachings are needed for further growth in humanity. They do a special dance, much like the bees in their hives, to communicate this knowing. It is a dance of dakinis which takes over a thousand years to complete. By taking your place in the dance and feeling the slow motion movements of the dance, you can feel the whole time dance and feel a wisdom flow into oneself in the moment of harmonization with the dance.]

A very advanced meditation teacher named Birwapa (Awa Dotipa) lived in a nearby jungle. He was usually engaged in deep and profound meditation. He had a very devoted and reverent dakini companion who would go periodically to the market, get supplies and buy some wine. This dakini eventually bought her wine from the mother, since her wine was very well brewed, tasted very good, and was nourishing. The mother asked the dakini who she was buying the wine for. The dakini replied that she bought it as a gift offering for a very advanced yogi who lived in the jungle nearby. When the mother had heard this, she was inspired to give a container of her wine as a gift to this yogi and chose the very best that she had as her gift.

Upon receiving wine gift, Birwapa noticed the wonderful quality of the wine and asked where it came from. The dakini then shared where it came from and felt that the mother was a very devoted being who selflessly gave the wine as an inspired offering to him. When Birwapa heard this, he felt inspired to give her a Dharma Transmission that would liberate the mother from the three worlds of sorrow. The dakini then came back to the marketplace and invited the mother to meet the yogi. When the mother heard the invitation, her heart soared with great joy and felt a deep aspiration to embrace the gift of the Dharma Transmission, already feeling the gift within the telepathic intention of the Lama. She came to meet him with a gift of some of her best wine and with some pork to offer him.

[Original Buddhism was very vegetarian, even very vegan, but when it came to Himalayan region, not everyone felt able to fully embrace this diet and continued to eat some animal flesh, especially when food in general was scarce. Buddhism accepts people where they are and gently brings them, step by step, beyond karma and into a higher ethical ideal. Here the intention of the gift is accepted as coming from a good and sincere heart.]

When she came to Birwapa, he gave her the four secret empowerments, the path of accumulating merit, the path of completion, the meditations with form and the meditation beyond form. Very quickly her sixty one year old impure karmaic body was completely and naturally purified through her devotion, practice, and accomplishment. She reversed the aging process and became a youthful dakini who appeared to be sixteen years old.

[Again, when translating from the lifespan of people in this harsher climate into modern times, this sixteen year body in her world would be equivalent of a 25 year old body in the modern world. In short, it would be a fully developed adult body before any aging has set in. The very short time was somewhere between one month and one year.]

She was so beautiful and sensual that men who saw her would find her deeply desirable and would desire to look at her for a very long time. Her skin was luminous white and her complexion very clear. Her long hair flowed down her back. She became a dakini named Sukhasiddhi. She became a "sky dancer" [the meaning of the word "dakini"] and started to dwell always in the sky itself. Her name means "the union of bliss and accomplishment" (meaning that all the miraculous powers of a Buddha are found in the blissful energy of enlightenment). She had become completely selfless, having pierced completely through the illusion of a personality self, and became the spiritual companion of Birwapa. She presently lives beyond the cycle of reincarnation, beyond the karmaically driven rounds of birth, aging, death, bardo, and rebirth. She radiates wisdom and blessing energy to all sentient beings everywhere. She teaches all sentient beings who come to her with a pure, humble, and innocent thought intention to learn and to become enlightened. She initiates sentient beings who pray or chant devotedly to her into a secret sadhana. She gives blessings and empowerments to those who are receptive to her and ripe for those blessings and empowerments. Those who even merely hear about her story, through even these words, will experience her blessing and be inspired with devotion. After hearing this story and opening up to her blessing through this story, even hearing her name will bring the same blessing and inspiration to a sentient being.