Graciela GVG

Concepts of 'Guru' and 'Dakini' are internal metaphysical realities. Evidently each human psyche contains both male and female principles. The male principle and its qualities are recessive in woman and the female principle is recessive in man, even as the Dakini's dominant Emptiness cannot be separated from the recessive skillful means, which is ever present but unstressed. In the semiotics of Anuyoga, both the white and red elixirs run in the psychic veins of both men and women, although the Guru's complexion is white while that of the Dakini is red. Women are literally embodiments of a fundamental quality of wisdom and are intrinsically sacred. Men likewise embody the basic qualities of compassion and skillful means and are equally sacred. And yet, in their physical embodiment, both men and women share subtle masculine and feminine qualities of phenomena. In Tibetan Buddhism, the Dakini is, above all, a symbol of embodiment of feminine in esoteric yogic practice. In traditional domestic settings, women's lives revolve around nurture, birth-giving, suckling, menstruating, and caring for the young or infirm. For the female, the Dakini represents embodiment of sacred feminine that is not defilement, nurture that is not a fate, and relationship that is not subordination. Even while she affirms qualities that have been associated with womanhood in every culture, a Dakini is supposed to question the entanglements of home, family, subjugation, and vanity that have bound those qualities. Women have power simply because they have female bodies, which are seen in Vajrayana sacred outlook to be the emanations of the wisdom principle.