Alex Wilding

If such offerings one day are brought by an attractive young woman, and if he immediately then imagines that she is his destined darkening, and tries it on, there and then, he becomes nothing but a figure of fun, to Tibetans as well as to Westerners. I suppose it's what we might call the male gaze gone wrong again.

And when a lama, surrounded by Western students, focuses on a pretty young woman and calls her a dharkini, what are we to think? It can be a Tibetan Buddhist equivalent to the way Joey Tribbiani in Friends would meet a young woman and come out with something like, Well, hello there, and how are you today? People are people.

Finally, I'd like to pay a bit of attention to those cycles of practice whose deities are all female and all, in a sense, forms of the dharkini. The ultimate primordial Buddha cannot really be represented, but that doesn't stop us from doing that. Most often, this Buddha is shown in male form. In the Nyingma tradition, this will be Samantabhadra. He is shown naked and dark blue.

dark as the night sky, to represent being beyond conceptual coverings. But in the cycles I'm talking about here, the primordial Buddha is shown as Samantabhadri. Note the change to the final syllable, Samantabhadri rather than Samantabhadra, and is female. The visionary realms that emerge from this very abstract level

are very often populated by well-known Buddhas, such as the Red Amitabha or Chenrezig, Buddha of Compassion. In the systems I'm now talking about, such a visionary figure may be seen as the Red Darkini Vajravarahi.

And on the concrete level, where we might meet Enlightenment, if we are extremely fortunate, in physical form, she may well appear as Yeshe Tsogyal rather than a male form such as Guru Rinpoche. Another aspect of the darkening is a close association with activity.

And we may be called on to see boundless darkenings, millions and billions emanating throughout the universe, in fact underlying the universe or even being this universe, if we can just overcome our conceptual grasping and purify our perception. It's a vision of reality that brings us back to the visions known to mystics across the world.

Those of us who are old enough to recall the relatively early days of the Incredible String Band may remember the words of Thomas Traherne. We might or might not want to go along with his Christian framework of thinking, but the sentiment, I think, is something we can appreciate. When he said,

You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars. That's the frame of mind to understand darkenies. Well, gosh, that was a bit of a flight, wasn't it? I hope it did make sense. Please remember, once again, to like, subscribe and so on, and whatever you do, keep an eye open for the darkenies. Bye.

Hello everybody, including those who are listening regularly and those who've just stumbled across this podcast. Please feel truly welcome to the Double Doge. I'm Alex Wilding and in this episode I'm going to talk a little bit about death and what Buddhists do about it.

Hello everybody, including those who are listening regularly and those who've just stumbled across this podcast. Please feel truly welcome to the Double Doge. I'm Alex Wilding and in this episode I'm going to talk a little bit about death and what Buddhists do about it.

But to follow the motto of first take care of business, it'd really be great if you would take a moment to press the like button, the subscribe button, or whatever it is that you have on your listening platform. It really will help to grow and maintain the podcast. And tell your friends too. And there's one more thing that I say every time.

But to follow the motto of first take care of business, it'd really be great if you would take a moment to press the like button, the subscribe button, or whatever it is that you have on your listening platform. It really will help to grow and maintain the podcast. And tell your friends too. And there's one more thing that I say every time.

At the time of first publishing, the podcast is hosted on Podbean, but it's very likely that you're listening somewhere else. If you do want to see the brief comments, or indeed the transcript or the other document that I'm going to include in the notes, and they don't appear on your channel, or if you want to see a bit more about the episode in any way, you'll find that information on Podbean.

At the time of first publishing, the podcast is hosted on Podbean, but it's very likely that you're listening somewhere else. If you do want to see the brief comments, or indeed the transcript or the other document that I'm going to include in the notes, and they don't appear on your channel, or if you want to see a bit more about the episode in any way, you'll find that information on Podbean.

Now, first things first. There are two obvious sides to teachings about death. Firstly, there is the question of how we should think about, prepare for and ultimately handle our own death. Secondly, the question of what we do when somebody close to us dies. Preparing for our own death is a major issue in Buddhist teaching.

Now, first things first. There are two obvious sides to teachings about death. Firstly, there is the question of how we should think about, prepare for and ultimately handle our own death. Secondly, the question of what we do when somebody close to us dies. Preparing for our own death is a major issue in Buddhist teaching.

In Christian thinking, and I believe in other Abrahamic religions, once one is dead, there is nothing left to do but to hope for some kind of resurrection in the future. What happens then will have been determined by things in our life, but death is the ultimate bottom line.

In Christian thinking, and I believe in other Abrahamic religions, once one is dead, there is nothing left to do but to hope for some kind of resurrection in the future. What happens then will have been determined by things in our life, but death is the ultimate bottom line.

The Buddhist view is rather different and suggests that the way we think about death, the way we react to it, our motivation and intention continue to operate and influence where we go next. Of course, the thoughts that we've habitually cultivated in this life will have a very strong effect, forming our mental states after we've left our bodies.