Mother of Knowledge

This book was a very interesting lifestory, and one of the best I have seen for a female practitioner. The book has a fairly formal feel to it, so if that's not your thing then there is another book (Sky Dancer- Keith Dowman) that I believe is a bit more fluid, but maybe a bit more interpreted from the original text, which was a terma. However, if you're able to skim certain lists of names, then the formalness isn't too much.

Mother of Knowledge: The Enlightenment of Yeshe Tsogyal Text by Nam-mkha'i snying-po. Translation by Tarthang Tulku, ed. Jane Wilhelms Dharma 1983; £12.25 p/b My first encounter with the tantric text Mother of Knowledge was a bit like walking into a jungle. It was difficult to hold a path or to distinguish between the plants, sounds and life-forms. Often the undergrowth seemed so dense that it was impenetrable. But the jungle was bursting with rich vitality and life. 'She played a lute and sang: "... ai o au am all". After crying out "hrih! hrih! hrih! hrih! she completely disappeared. At the same time the earth trembled and rays of light criss-crossed the sky. An ear-splitting din rent the air, followed by a great rushing, clashing sound and a little spring of water near the palace grew into a small lake.' This strange poetry, this assault on the limitations of my mind set, drew me like a magnet. I wanted very much to understand, but Mother of Knowledge has so many levels of meaning, and so many different dimensions, that I don't believe I will ever fathom them all. Having studied it continuously for seven years, I am still uncovering deeper and deeper levels. The further I go into the jungle. the more there is to see. The text is a terma, a teaching which is traditionally understood to have been given by Padmasambhava and subsequently 'hidden' until the time was ripe for its appearance. His close disciple and consort, Yeshe Tsogyal, was responsible for hiding an enormous number of these termas, including The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava. Mother of Knowledge is the story of Yeshe Tsogyal's spiritual career, her struggles and progress. It is her record of the teachings she received from Padmasambhava, as well as those she herself gave as her spiritual experience deepened. It is also a beautiful and intimate record of the profound connection between disciple and teacher. In this respect it is for me a handbook on how to become the perfect disciple. As she sits meditating in a cave high up on the forest slopes. wearing only one piece of cotton cloth, her body covered with blisters from the cold, she entreats her Dharma Lord to 'look down on me with the sunlight of your compassion'. When I falter in my own practice, I recall such heroic endurance and her example revives me like a fresh fall of rain. Really engaging with the text demands an imaginative identification. You have to wander with Yeshe Tsogyal into the land of the Orgyan Dakinis, where the trees are 'like keen razors and the earth seems made of flesh'. You need to see with her eyes the 'great castle built of three types of skull, its roof covered with a sheath of skin'. You have to feel the heat from 'the mountains of fire burning fiercely all round'. Mother of Knowledge is not something you study in the formal sense. It is vivid experience - a strange new land to be explored and lived in. I used to dip into it every night just before going to s