Dakini Songs

[unpredictablebijou]

Oddly, I've never done this before.

This, meaning start a new thread specifically to post pieces of my own.

However, like all my threads, I open this one to other contributors, to discussion, chatter, threadjacking and flirtation of any sort. But let me tell you what this is about.

Dakinis are the demi-goddesses and enlightened mortals of Tantric legend. There is a great deal to say about them but I'll limit myself to their poetry, which is rare and mostly not yet translated into English.

Yogis were told that if they happened upon a bunch of wild-looking women partying in the woods, they should approach with caution and respect, because this may be a gathering of Dakinis. Dakinis aren't your typical sex goddesses. They're described as fierce, ungovernable, perhaps unattractive, angry of countenance, indomitable, temperamental. But if you approach them just right, and know who you're dealing with, they often show you both their true identities and their skills.

There are legends told by the ancients, of yogis who observed, and occasionally even joined, these gatherings. These women would often hold their parties in charnel grounds or other wild places. They'd drink wine from skull cups, dance wildly and reach altered states of deep enlightenment, from which, often levitating above the ground, they would recite poetry. Apprentices would attend and write down the songs they sang from their heightened consciousnesses, in which they would describe what they were seeing and feeling, in an attempt to teach the younger women about ecstasy and transformation.

What follows are some of my own pieces in this "form." I welcome feedback of all sorts, including conventional feedback on the poetic aspects of these pieces, and I also welcome others to contribute their own attempts. Dakini songs are not "poetry" in a conventional sense. They are teaching songs, songs that are sung extemporaneously from altered states, songs born out of ecstasy and revelation.

All are welcome here. Come sing with me.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Acquiring the rainbow body

1.
a.
You may notice a cicada clinging calmly
to a second story window.
This will be a sign.
Do not perform for it or worry
that it does not approve of you.
If the evening is cold, and the sun
sets early, then these delicate tips
of feet, like brittle brown threads
curling through the screen,
may already be stiff. Life and death
often look similar, and
these things are naturally still.

b.
Now consider the fire
and how in its light these bodies
are animated, rose-lit
through like stone they do not
actually move. Come toward
that red light and notice
skin under rags, dirt on the pure stone,
the black inside the sweet.
Do not perform for them, or worry
that fire and death do not approve of you.
If the evening is cold, you may
find that you are warmer here.
Be still, and you will find
that you can, suddenly
move,
breathe.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

.



2.
a.
Never claim to be a dancer.
Let it throw you into a pure rage
for someone to accuse you of it.
If someone calls you human
or wise, drive them away brutally
screaming curses like a crow.
Threaten them with sticks,
with arrows, if you must.
If they return after that
tell them one of your names.

b.
Think in small numbers
and primary colors. Focus solely
on making the arrows, perfectly.
Consider how the entrance of the point
into the flesh, opening it,
how like God it is, how like love,
how like the lotus thrust through its stem,
and the root of it in the deep spine. One
and two, the wooden shaft
and the point, bound with
the stretched cord of sinew, bound with flesh.


.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

.


3. a

Pursue silence in small portions
and carry a weapon in case
it attacks. Seek out war zones
and burning ground.
Peace is an event, a visitation
and its wings are terrifying.
If peace revealed its whole face
behind that shifting distance
you would faint in fright. Wait
and do not make the mistake
of asking for the vision. In that
deep silence is the bright
deafening buzz of the cicada.

b.

Notice anyone whose feet are bare
anything made of stone.
Notice sacred objects and icons
and climb them when possible.
Let holy spaces fill you with desire.
Go up, and hang from the tip
imagining fierce whirling blades below you,
hearing the chatter of their chains.


.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

.



4 a

Make a habit of falling in love.
Be fierce, be hysterical about it.
Begin with natural objects: the stray dog
the Sun, handfuls of leaves. Develop
obsessions for stones, for strangers,
for furniture and words. Become impossible.
Wear purple, wear gold and red
disguise yourself as a seductive beggar
and go among the nets, catching
fish with your bare hands
like a saint, like a bear.

b.

Allow yourself to see how necessary
you are to those who devour you
Be terrified by it, let it baptize you
with the hell of a deep union.
Imagine everyone you meet
dissolving, eaten by small creatures
even their bones, and find
fierce desire for their dust
and ecstasy within the thick liquid
of decay. Each time you spit
or drink the juice of a lover
death sparkles there like a charred stone.



.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

.

5.
a.

Levitation, control of the weather
wild animals becoming tame
these are to be ignored as inconvenience.
Focus instead on the miracles
of fingernails and flies
and see the way you work
the simple wood, the trampled grapes
the slaughter of your meal.
Watch your own hands grasp
the stone, the arrow, the flesh
and worship the rapid clicking
of time in the falling keys,
a simple yes, no, the split twig
that finds water, points a direction,
the split twig you are, standing
on buried bones, finding the well
of fire at the center of the earth
just there. Exactly there.

b.
Use rain to save villages, and send
yourself high and still above the lake
only if no one sees, or if someone
would be frightened by it. Devour
their hatred for you, eat all of it
gleefully, being the goat of God.
Less discerning than a fire,
consume in a widening circle
all destruction, and leave white ash
that becomes verdant, after your death.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

.



6.
a.

As you fall asleep send yourself
deep toward the impossible lover.
Imagine uniting in red ecstasy
while coiled on a blue wheel.
Imagine that you have no head
and that your liquids, the gushing blood
the salt water, the bright juice
falls to fields, and trees spring up
ashes and fruit from the roots
of your joining. Imagine that your cock
is the deep trunk of a tree
thrust like lightning. Imagine that you
are all lotus, that you engulf every sun
swallow it deep, rhythmic.

b.

Unite in midair in the space
between waking and sleeping
where if your eyes were open
you would see the solid shapes
around you curl and approach
grow rounded, or split and rise.
Go up out of your mouth
take the fabric of your heat and hunger
and coil it around the hips of your shadow
and go out, armed this way.
Find it, engulf it,
enter it.




.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

.


7.
a.

It is expected, required
that you feel too strongly, always,
that you weep at nothing,
that you are exuberant about birds
about the simple act of speaking
or a single piece of bread. It is correct
to work from the deepest space
despite the threat. It is called
crazy wisdom, and you are
six thousand years old
when you weep at visions
and rage at dreams.

b.
You must be at the peak of everything
at the pure zenith, nothing less.
Everything else will destroy you.
You must find your most deadly rage
and balance it with abject gratitude
your terror of serpents
with an adoration, a bright prayer
and revulsion must contain desire.
In the burning ground of bodies
you will raise the bright flags and the bower
and drape flowered vines
over the bones. Think of the relics
in the cathedral, the crowned skull
and the jewel-wrapped long bones
and the brittle hand with its bright ring
rattling gold against the snapping stick.

.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

.


8.
a.

As soon as you decide something
decide its opposite as well
then imagine a silk rope between
two fierce territories.
Hang upside down by one foot
in the center, suspended
over that bliss, watching it
boil, seven bright colors
opening like a rose, like lava.
Stretch toward the flight
balance with an umbrella on the cord.
Become invisible, pointless,
without opinion, reaching
forever, endless fingers to both sides
and the volcano of the beating heart
in the center,
informed like a galaxy by the light
by the colors of your elements.

b.
Eventually you will become aroused
when you can hang between opinions
like an acrobat, a wheel
balanced on a rope. Then,
standing on one foot, you
will meet something
covered with dirt, barefoot,
a ragged ritual of limbs
perched, rude, on some holy place.
Go with her. She will hold out her hand
inclined toward you. Go with her.


.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

.


9. a

She will tell you about how
the earth happily devours death
and all around you the howls
of anger, of petty self
hang uneaten. You can feel
the triangle in your abdomen
if you make it with fingers
and thumbs, pointing
down, into the heart of ground.
Breathe in
and send it deep to feed
the filthy ghosts. Send yours
along with it.

b.

The forehead, the eyes
the breath can ingest
as can the heart, the belly,
the root of the spine. Find
the mouths of your body, find
what they have eaten,
what they have spat out
and after you have learned to rest
in this immense hunger
and all these doorways
then open,
take,
eat.
Say to yourself,
this is my body.


.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

See a tree for what it is
translucent to the shining light within
that glows and brightens
every forest, for those that watch
for you to lie down upon her roots
and be as one, woman in the green.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

See a tree for what it is
translucent to the shining light within
that glows and brightens
every forest, for those that watch
for you to lie down upon her roots
and be as one, woman in the green.

Yes, exactly!

 

[champagne1982]

a.
when breath suspends on delicate
advance and retreat
aching slow inhale, smooth release
exhale
don't stop
flow with the pulse of the stones
rest and descend this awareness
of light supressed
be dark, breathe slowly

b.
focus on the brilliant point
and let it squeeze away the vestiges
of there, be here
your heart pulse lungs breath
slowly
slower until near gone
your grip on the night relax
let the light expand and grow
until breath releases and sends
awareness out through the stones.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

You are mole
you are bird
you are dolphin.
each have their own beauty.
Earth, sky and sea.
Hold to the earth.
slipstream the sky
follow ocean paths
Mother nature is yours and in you.

 

[Kelterotic]

through leaves I discern your shape
though a cape shrouds your true form
from my vision , intuition reveals you to me

You dance beautifully, as beauty ,as filly
would that I could shake this trance
and will you into my world



no idea what I was doing here , but reading your stuff I decided to try a wee experiment.
I have never written poetry before , perhaps it shows , but thats what I came up with , without thinking about what i was writing , I just streamed it after reading about your Dakinis. No idea how the verse scans but had fun trying that

 

[unpredictablebijou]

There are no wrong answers in this thread, Kelterotic, and welcome! Anything that inspires someone to write is a good thing, in my opinion.

Champy, that's gorgeous! I had missed this the other day and now I'm catching up, with that and UYS' second piece as well.

I'm so pleased this is inspiring folks to try stuff.

I've finally gotten my book back, the one that actually contains some bits of original Dakini songs, so I thought I'd put one or two in as examples. This is not to limit or structure your own attempts to sing like a Dakini, but just to give you some samples of what the traditional form is like, at least once it's been translated from Sanskrit to Tibetan and then into English, possibly with a sidetrip through a translation into Hindi.

Here's part of a song from a very famous Dakini named Lakshminkara. She is addressing her student Mekhala:

Lay your head on a block of butter and chop -
break the blade of the axe!
The woodcutter laughs!
A frog swallows an elephant!

It's amazing, Mekhala,
Do not doubt.
If it confounds you, adept,
Drop concepts now!

My teacher didn't tell me,
I didn't understand -
Flowers blossomed in the sky!

. . . . .

Amazing! An elephant sits on a throne
Held up by two bees!
Incredible! The sightless lead,
The mute speak!

Amazing! A mouse chases a cat!
An elephant flees from a crazy donkey!

It's marvelous, Mekhala,
Do not doubt!
If you're stunned, adept,
Drop your doubts.


******


Here are a few more beautiful excerpts.

Who speaks the sound of an echo?
Who paints the image in a mirror?
Where are the spectacles in a dream?
Nowhere at all -
That is the nature of mind.

- Dakini Tree-Leaf Woman


***

Kye Ho! Wonderful!
Lotus pollen wakes up in the heart's center -
the bright flower is free from mud.
Where do the color and fragrance come from?
Why accept or reject them?

- Dakini Kambala


***

Hum! What do you think when you cry out in surprise?
What can distract you when you stare in amazement?
How can the sky be polished?
What does a butterlamp think?
The track of a water-bubble can't be found.
Upon waking, dream-thoughts evaporate. ...

Who does the mother of a dead child love?
Which of the six flavors is the taste of water?
What is the speech of a mute woman?

- anonymous, 8th century

***

On the lake, Dombiyogini becomes two.
How can they sit in the middle of the lake?
The two of them sport in a palace of enlightenment,
Dancing in the sphere of phenomena,
In a land of stainless purity. ...

Vajrayogini appears in four forms
And traverses the world.
The one with a boar's head, Vajravarahi,
Embraces her lover.
She sits on a four-cornered mandala, bestowing compassion.
Sometimes in one form, sometimes in another,
She embraces the blue-faced lord.

Dombiyogini, from Vajra Songs

 

[UnderYourSpell]

You belong beyond the sky
travel there,
snowflakes and clouds
are stepping stones
where the bird rests in flight
upon the rainbow

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Kumari tantra

The alternative is blood, but if you would prefer
you can find it through me. I'm accustomed to being beheaded
and considered limb by limb, and it's enough. Remember
that I mean nothing. The leg you draw around your waist
that love of which you are as sure as this slick flesh,
simply travel in it like a boat, knowing that it has always been here
that it was never here, not in the flesh, but in boundless ocean.
We sail now toward that mountain and moan
rise, float, weightless.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Be aware of your enemies
seek the paths they walk
where they falter,
their tiredness and follies,
but most of all
where they soar.
For here it is
the white horse of honesty
bears them gladly
never mindful of the arrows
of uncertainty
the bitterness upon the tongue
poison supped
from a broken pot.