Way back in 2007ish I took thangka (Vajrayana religious paintings) classes from a traditional thangka teacher. The paintings are actual sacred geometry with paint, it’s all math.
Simhamukha Dakini is my favorite because of her active compassion. I like this Dakini because she protects the mind from psychic attacks. When I say psychic I don’t mean magic, I mean my own gross conditioned reaction to sense data. Everything we sense is filtered through veils of conditioning. I’ve alway wanted to know what it would be like to experience what my ears hear, what my eyes see, what my nose smells, what my tongue tastes, and skin feels without all the conditioned reactions to things I like and don’t like. My reaction to sense data is the cause of all my suffering. There is no me or my in sense data or conditioned reaction, the eye records things like a camera, the ear hears sound like a recorder and so on...I Had to say that or I might get thumped on the head with a shoe😂😂😂
24 x 14, 90lb watercolor paper, watercolor, gouache, and uni Posca Pens date 2020
Simhamukha, the Lion-Faced Dakini practice is used for clearing obstacles of the most horrible and evil kind, and cutting through the “three poisons” of mind. Padmasambhava used this practice, he is also known as Guru Rinpoche. That’s how old this practice is, 8th-century! Guru Rinpoche was a Buddhist master from India, he was invited to Tibet by king Trisong Detsen and help establish Tibetan Buddhism along with other scholars and masters king Trisong Detsen invited. Tibetan Buddhism is part of the larger Mahayana schools, it’s known as Vajrayana.
Simhamukha “ is particularly focused on pacifying the destructive influence of the Mamos, the forces of disturbed “yin” or feminine demonic energies. The wanton destruction of the environment and degradation of human culture greatly stirs up and enrages these elemental forces. They retaliate with disease, epidemics, weather disturbances and calamaties on a major scale. This practice is one of the great antidotes for this critical time of the “five degenerations.” As a wrathful dakini, the Lion-Faced Dakini is also one of the Phramenma, a group of female deities from the Bardo Thodol, or ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’. “ (https://www.himalayanart.org/search/set.cfm?setID=153&page=2)
The three poisons in Buddhism, refer to a persons delusions, confusion, greed, sensual attachment, and aversion.
