Zen and the Red Dakini 3

One of the most fascinating stories of enlightenment comes from Japan – that of Zen master Chiyono. Incidentally Chiyono, it is said, is the first Japanese woman to be enlightened through Zen.

Chiyono, also known less commonly as Mugai Nyodai, was an incredibly beautiful woman when she decided to devote her life to Zen and became a bhikshuni. A story tells us that she was so beautiful that monasteries one after the other refused to admit her. The chief monks of the monasteries were afraid that if Chiyono became a bhikshuni, the monks in the ashram would be tempted by her beauty and would forget all about Zen and instead fall in love with her.

When Chiyono realized that no master would take her as an inmate of his monastery because of her beauty, she did an amazing thing. In her eagerness for Zen, to be accepted as a disciple and allowed to live in the monastery to practice Zen, she burned her face with fire. She got so badly scarred that now it was difficult to make out she was a woman.

Chiyono has been the subject of many paintings and statues, portraying her either as extremely beautiful or as extremely ugly. We can see her face in one of the statues made in the thirteenth century, while she was in all probability still alive [she died in 1298], and looking at it, it is really difficult to believe she is a woman.

After scarring her face, she approached the great Chinese Zen master Wuxue Zuyuan, who had in his later years come to Japan and was popularly known in Japan as Bukko Kokushi, or Bukko Engarku, or simply as Bukko. He accepted her as his disciple.

Her guru was a couple of years younger to her.

It is said that Chiyono studied Zen under Bukko for several years but was still unable to attain the fruits of meditation, even as the boy in Paulo Coelho’s story was unable to hear temple bells ringing under the sea.

Sometimes your own eagerness to attain enlightenment becomes an obstacle in the way of attaining it. When your eagerness for enlightenment becomes like a restless, all-consuming fire, that restlessness itself can become your obstacle.

Because enlightenment happens to you on its own, and it is not something that you can make happen.

In a way enlightenment is like sleep. So long as you are struggling to fall asleep, you cannot sleep. And when you give up, sleep happens on its own.

There is no way we can make sleep happen. It has to happen on its own.

There is no way we can make enlightenment happen. It has to happen on its own.

Years went by, the story tells us, and then one night it happened. One beautiful moonlit night, when Chiyono least expected it. In a way Chiyono never expected it to happen. In a way nobody expected it to happen.

Each experience of enlightenment is unique. Because each one of us unique.

That night Chiyono was carrying water in an old pail bound with bamboo. All on a sudden, the bamboo broke and the bottom fell out of the pail, and at that moment Chiyono was enlightened!

It is a Japanese custom to write a poem in commemoration of your awakening. Here is the poem that Chiyono wrote:

“In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.

No more water in the Pail!
No more moon in the water!”

It is one of the most beautiful poems ever written by an enlightened master, one of the most beautiful poems ever written about enlightenment.

The reflection of the moon in the water is there only so long as there is water in the pail. When there is no water in the pail, there is no moon in the pail.

For Chiyono, the world disappeared. And there was only the reality left.

When the mind disappears, the world disappears. The world that is perceived as the other, as the object of perception. Leaving only the perceiver behind.

The triputi of the subject, the object and the process of perception – all become one. The experience, the experienced and the experiencing become one.

This is the state Vedanta calls advaita – non-duality.

Adi Shankara says in his classic Vivekachoodamani:

“There is no Ignorance other than the mind. Mind itself is Ignorance, which is the cause of bondage. When it is lost, everything is lost; and when it is manifest, everything comes into being. In a dream, which is without true substance, it is the mind alone using its own power that brings into existence the entire universe of the dreamer. It is no different when we are awake. Everything that we see around us is nothing but a projection of the mind.”

So long as the mind is, everything is. And when the mind has ceased to be, everything disappears, leaving behind only the reality that is beyond the mind.

When the pail is broken, the reflection of the moon disappears. What is left is the original moon alone.

Chiyono realized this when the pail broke and the reflection in water disappeared.

It was a spontaneous experience to her. Something that happened when she least expected it.

Which is to say if we break a pail and watch the reflection disappearing, there is no chance it will happen to us. Because then it will be a contrived trick.

Had it been otherwise, it all would have been so easy. All you need is a pail of water and a moonlit night!

Tricks do not awaken us into reality.

Our mind has to be ready.

Chiyono has been preparing her mind, just as the boy in the Manual of the Warrior of Light had been waiting for a long, long time.

And then it happened.

The Kathopanishad puts it beautifully when it says:

nayamatma pravacanena labhyo
na medhaya na bahuna shrutena |
yamevaisha vrinute tena labhyah
tasyaisha atma vivrinute tanum svam ||


“This Self cannot be attained through lectures on it,
Nor can it be reached through intelligence or by great learning;
It is attained by him whom It chooses,
To him, this Self reveals its body.”


The Self reveals itself only to him whom it chooses.


Truth is like a coy bride who reveals her body only to the one she chooses for herself.


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There are several other stories of sudden enlightenment from Zen. One of them is of the master Kyogen. Here is Osho speaking about his enlightenment.


“Kyogen was a scholar of great learning, and for some time, this stood in the way of his enlightenment. One day Isan asked Kyogen,”When you were with our teacher, Hyakujo, you were clever enough to give ten answers to a single question, and hundreds of answers to ten questions. Tell me this: what is your real self – the self that existed before you came out of your mother’s womb, before you knew east from west?”


At this question, Kyogen was stupefied and did not know what to say. He racked his brains and offered all sorts of answers, but Isan brushed them aside.


At last Kyogen said, ”I beg you, please explain it to me.”


Isan replied, ”what I say belongs to my own understanding. How can that benefit your mind’s eye?”


Kyogen went through all his books and the notes he had made on authorities of every school, but could find no words to use as an answer to Isan’s question. Sighing to himself, he said, ”You cannot fill an empty stomach with paintings of rice cakes.” He then burned all his books and papers, saying, ”I will give up the study of Buddhism. I will remain a rice-gruel monk for the rest of my life and avoid torturing my mind.”


He left Isan sadly and took on the self-appointed job of grave-keeper. One day, when he was sweeping the ground, a stone struck a bamboo. Kyogen stood speechless, forgetting himself for a while. Then, suddenly, bursting into loud laughter, he became enlightened.


Returning to his hut, Kyogen performed the ceremony of purification, offered incense, paid homage to his teacher, Isan, and with the deepest sense of gratitude said, ”Great master, thank you! Your kindness to me is greater even then that of my parents. If you had explained the profound cause to me when I begged you to give me an answer to, I should never have reached where I stand today.”

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Zen and the Red Dakini 2

But of course, he does not give up. He cannot give up. She has initiated him into the path. She has held his hands and led him to the path. Now there is no walking back.

When he does not find the island and the temple, he walks to the nearby fishing village and asks the fishermen about it. Of course, they know about it, they have heard about it. But the temple is no more. It used to be there in the days of their great-grandparents, but has been destroyed by an earthquake and swallowed up by the sea.

They tell him: ‘But although we can no longer see the island, we can still hear the temple bells when the ocean sets them swinging down below.'

The boy cannot hear the temple bells, but they can.

The ordinary fisher folk can hear the temple bells that the boy is not able to hear.

The boy goes back to the beach and tries to hear the bells. He spends the whole afternoon there, but all he hears is the noise of the waves and the cries of the seagulls.

This is something tremendously beautiful. What the boy cannot hear with all his efforts, the fishermen are able to hear without any effort.

But of course, they are not obsessed with it. The temple bells mean nothing to them. Their chimes are mere sounds to them, like the crashing of the waves, the chirping of the birds and the shrieks of the winds.

They hear the bells, but are not initiated into their meaning. They have not met the Red Dakini.

They hear them not consciously, but unconsciously, absent mindedly. And attach no significance to them.

They have not been initiated. The Red Dakini has not visited them.

The boy cannot hear them now. But when he hears them, they would mean something very different to him. They would have great significance to him. Because he would be hearing them consciously, wide awake, with an awakened mind. The fishermen hear them as though in their sleep. He would hear them awake.

But that would be later. At the moment he cannot hear them at all.

He goes back to the beach and sits listening again.

At night his mother and father come looking for him and take him back home. But the next day he is again at the beach.

He cannot hear the sounds but he trusts the beautiful woman. She could not have lied to him – she is so beautiful.

A long time passes and yet he has not been able to hear the bells. Not once.

“Many months passed; the woman did not return and the boy forgot all about her; now he was convinced that he needed to discover the riches and treasures in the submerged temple,” says Paulo Coelho.

Of course it is Paulo Coelho’s story, and he can tell it the way he wants, but I disagree with Paulo Coelho here. One never forgets the Red Dakini. The boy cannot forget the beautiful woman who initiated him into the path. She has to be there in his mind. One does not forget one’s initiatrix. He might forget her after he has heard the bells. But not so long as he has not heard them.

At this stage it is for her that he wants to hear the bells, more than for himself. What Coelho said earlier is more true – he wants to hear them and tell her that he has heard them. If hearing them is a need, telling her that he has heard them too is a need. An equally powerful need, if not more.

A time might come in his spiritual journey when he would possibly forget her and the search will become meaningful in itself, the search will gain other purposes than hearing the temple bells. But for that he will have to become an old man, past boyhood, past youth. In our story, our boy does not reach that tage. He is still a boy of school-going age. So he has to be still enchanted with the Red Dakini.

His school friends taunt him. He becomes the butt of their jokes. 'He's not like us,’ they say. ‘He prefers to sit looking at the sea because he's afraid of being beaten in our games.'

The world never understands people who are not like themselves. The world never understands people who have other calls, people who are on other journeys, people who are not interested in what they are interested in.

In this story, they just taunt him. But worse things could have happened to him. They could have attacked him. They could have pelted stones at him, calling him mad.

Even his parents could have misunderstood him.

I used to know a young boy some years back. He became interested in what other people were not interested in. His parents consulted doctors and, unknown to him, they fed him sedatives mixed with his food. For years. With every meal. Until he became so dull, his eyes lost all brightness, and when he spoke you could hardly make out what he was saying.

The boy in Coelho’s story was more fortunate.

He continues to sit there, oblivious to the ridicule of his schoolmates, oblivious to their laughter.

Now even the fishermen are scared by his commitment. They tell him that perhaps only fishermen can hear the bells, no one else.

At last he decides to give up. Who knows if it is all not a myth?

One afternoon he decides to give up and go back home.

He walks down to the ocean to say goodbye. He looks once more at the natural world around him and because he is no longer concerned about the bells, he can again smile at the beauty of the seagulls' cries, the roar of the sea and the wind blowing in the palm trees. Far off, he hears the sound of his friends playing and he feels glad to think that he will soon resume his childhood games.

And then, at that moment, he hears the bells. He hears them for the first time.

He was not trying to listen to bells any more. And at that moment, he hears them.

It happens by itself. When you are least expecting it.

This is how Coelho puts it: “Then, because he was listening to the sea, the seagulls, the wind in the palm trees and the voices of his friends playing, he also heard the first bell. And then another. And another, until, to his great joy, all the bells in the drowned temple were ringing.”

He gives up the struggle to listen to the bells, and the moment he gives up the struggle, he hears them. Along with the sounds of the sea, of the seagulls, of the wind in the palm trees and the voice of his friends playing.

Because he is no longer concerned.

It is not that he is still interested in it and gives it up. No, he gives it up altogether. His mind is free from his need to hear it. And at that moment it happens.

The Buddha gives up all sadhanas and sits under the Bodhi tree and he attains enlightenment.

It is not in struggle that enlightenment happens. For enlightenment to happen you need relaxation. Stillness born of relaxation.

Struggles make your mind noisy. When struggles cease, when all noises end, when your mind is free, still, then you hear. Then you see. For the first time.

And this seeing is different from the seeing of the common man. This hearing is different from the hearing of the fishermen.

This is conscious hearing. Awakened hearing. As though you are hearing for the first time.

Does it mean that all struggles are useless, all sadhanas are useless?

Does it mean that dhyana is useless, yoga is useless?

Absolutely not.

Sadhanas are required for creating that relaxation. Dhyana is required to create that stillness. Yoga is needed to create that stillness. The struggles are needed so that you can go beyond them and be still.

Without them, you do not reach stillness.

What is required for enlightenment is relaxation and stillness. The sadhanas are for creating this relaxation and stillness. That is the purpose of all yogas – jnana yoga, dhyana yoga, bhakti yoga, karma yoga. They create relaxation and stillness and the moment you reach this relaxed, still state, and give up all struggles, it happens.

The bells start ringing.

And you realize the bells have always been ringing. They have been ringing even when the sea was roaring, even when the seagulls were crying, the wind was whistling and your friends were playing noisily.

The bells are ringing even now. When you are busy in your office, in the market, or wherever you are.

Once you hear them, you realize you can hear them everywhere. You can hear them in the middle of your conferences, in the middle of your negotiations, in the middle of your presentations, in the middle of working to meet your deadlines, in the middle of whatever you are doing.

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Polo Coelho tells us that years later the boy comes back to the beach as an adult and there he meets the beautiful woman again. He notices that, despite the passing of years, the woman looks exactly the same; the veil hiding her hair has not faded with time.

The Red Dakini does not change.

She is beyond time and beyond space.

Eternally waiting to tell all who are ready to hear about the temple bells.

Here is a song of the Red Dakini from the Tibetan tradition:

“I am the Vajra Dakini
of light the color of crimson roses and flowing blood
I transmute the life energies into their spiritual origin
By filtering out gross elements, and giving them form
By changing weak currents into strong ones,
Dribbling energy into pounding waves
Opening blocks and barriers.”


“I am the guide and introducer of men to the spiritual path
I strengthen and purify them
That they may encounter the great Buddhas of Light
I prepare them for the Great Awakening
I harmonize the spiritual striving of all beings
I call them forth, into the realms of the enlightened ones
That they may pass through the dangerous waters
To watch the rising of the sun upon the other shore.”


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Continued …3