This meditation illustrates the power of Vajra Yogini to purify
the Buddhist practitioner's past. It also shows her ability to release the past pain of the group,
thus showing how she can serve as a force of release of karma for the
collective as well as for the individual.
The yogini will often pull images and ideas from the mind of the person, and take on a dramatic form appropriate to the kind of interaction that will occur between the person and the yogini.
Vajra Yogini appears in the form of a pirate queen on board a ship flying a flag of skull and bones, dressed in rags with a black eye patch. Her ship, the Black Moon, comes into port with the Creedence Clearwater song "Bad Moon Rising" playing as background music. Her dance today is to the sound of Apocalypse Rock.She says,
The traumatic events of Laodicea in Asia Minor happened centuries ago in a different incarnation when you were only a child. You had been born in the mountains but your mother had been raped. Your father, who was a soldier, then disappeared when your mother died in childbirth. Her brother and his wife decided to raise you until you were old enough to be sold as a slave - in those days seven years old. Before that, children were considered incapable of serious labor.
You were female and attractive, with curling black hair and gray eyes. Your uncle made his investment in food back many times. He sold you to a wealthy family to do cleaning tasks early on, and probably courtesan work later. But after only a year or so in their villa, one day you went to the latrine to dump out the cleaning water, and wash the pails. While you were there, you heard screams and shouts, and the place was overrun with soldiers dressed in metal armor carrying bloody swords. You hid in a tiny space in the back of the latrine, as the villa was looted and its inhabitants killed. Nobody cared about the latrine. The town's people ran screaming into the water, and when all the boats were taken, the crowds jumped into the water and swam for their lives.
But the soldiers had brought a special weapon - great canisters of oil. They dumped the oil into the water, and set it on fire. The people were burned to death as they swam. They tried to stay under water but eventually they had to come up for air.
You could see through a crack in the latrine wall, as the town's people were charred, and the soldiers laughed. Then they came back to the house to see if they had missed anything in the first wave of looting. It was sheer luck that none decided to visit the latrine when they returned.
The villa was stone, and while the latrine was only wood, nobody bothered to burn it. The rest of the village was on fire, but the soldiers did not want to waste their fuel on storage houses and smaller buildings. They took the food, the pillows, the tapestries, and the wine. They left the villa stripped bare, and full of corpses.
As a child, you were paralyzed with fear, and did not know what to do. You stayed in the tiny hidden space in the latrine for two days and nights in case the soldiers came back. When they didn't, you emerged and saw the devastation. Wild dogs came to gnaw the corpses, which were starting to decay. It was a sea of death. You just stood and stared until hunger drove you, and you found some food that had been hidden away by the mistress of the house, who liked to eat in secret.
There was only one person in the household who had been kind, and you decided to bury him. The soldiers had taken the tools and agricultural implements, but they had left a few cups and pails. You used these to dig a shallow grave, and you dragged him there. He was a poor relation living in the household, and could sympathize with your situation there. Sometimes he told you stories and gave you bits of food. His body should not be torn apart by dogs. You dragged heavy items on top of the grave, so the dogs could not dig him up.
Then you wondered what to do. It was two days later, and you were still shaking with fear. The massacre at Laodicea was revenge for the town leader's misdeeds, and his people died while he was told in advance and escaped. But few others escaped.
You sat in the villa paralyzed, occasionally throwing things at the wild dog packs. But a few days later, a trader came into town, calling out to see if anyone remained alive. You hesitated - he could be a slaver. But the desire to see another human being was too strong. It seemed that only you and an old man who had hidden under a bed remained alive.
The trader was a kind man, and not a slaver. He had known the horrors of war. He told you to collect what food and valuables you could find, and to dress in new clothing. He said that this was not stealing - there was nobody left to claim anything. It was inheritance.
So you went to the house, changed your robe, bathed, and filled a sack with goods. The old man refused to leave. He said his life was now with the dead, and his moral obligation was to bury his relatives and neighbors. So you left town with the trader.
The trader then spoke to you of what you might want to do with your life. You were walking in a trance, a living nightmare, and did not know how to return to the normal world. The image of the burning waters stayed before your eyes.
The trader finally decided that the best thing to do would be to bring you to an old wise women he knew, who was known for healing. She lived far from the towns, up a winding road in the mountains, and people called on her in emergencies. Those she helped paid her in food, drink, and fuel delivered to her house once a month for a year. She was said to be an oracle, a Sybil, who could get in touch with the gods. Perhaps she could tell your fate.
So you traveled many weeks to see her. You were still haunted by the massacre. Eventually you came to her house, and she was still alive. The trader told her what had happened, and she looked into your staring eyes. See said, "I will take her. Today she sees only death, but in the future she will see the gods." So he left you off there, and wished you well. He said that you should see the events that had happened as the desire of the gods to save you from slavery, and give you freedom. He said that if you ever came to see the gods, you should ask them to bless him. He gave you an old medallion with an image of his family crest, and said his name was Glaucos. He also gave you a small coin, and said to offer it to the old woman, which was traditional.
He left and you turned to her. One of her eyes had a bluish film, thought the other looked normal, even piercing. You gave her the coin and she smiled and said, "If I were to ask for payment, it surely would not be this amount. Keep it in case you ever want to go down into the town."
You showed her what you had taken from the villa, and she was interested in the mirrors and jeweled knives and cloth. She said,
"Child, you have been brought here by the fates, for I have prayed to them for an assistant, and someone to learn the ancient practices. I was married once but my husband and child died, and there was nobody to carry on as my mother and grandmother had done. You are fated to learn, and these rare and precious objects will be your magical tools."So the torture and killing of your town sunk into your heart like a stone. It was always there like a knife blade, but over time, it stopped being a conscious presence. It has stayed as a presence in life after life. It is rising to the surface now. It made you feel its painful echoes many times; bringing unconscious pain that resonated with outer pain, acting as a mirror of the hatred of others.
This is what you must deal with. As for the past life, you lived with the old woman who taught you divination and healing. She renamed you, so that you were no longer a slave, but a member of a once honorable family that had been killed off. You were Melecia, nobly born, and adopted into the woods to be a seer. That was the story she gave out and others viewed you with respect.
You had a natural ability at water gazing once you relaxed and the memories of the past faded. You could see past and future, and sometimes speak with divine figures. Such beings preferred virgins and they would come to you instead of the old woman. There was Gaia of the land, Black Thetis, and gray Zeus of the Crag. You refused to speak with the war gods, and dreaded the gods of victory.
You came to marry the son of Glaucos who brought his son to meet you thinking it would be a good match. He was right. You waited until the old woman was dead and properly buried before entering into marriage. Your future husband waited three years until your obligation to take care of the old woman was fulfilled, and she died. You had a daughter whom you later trained in the arts of divination and possession. Your husband was a farmer and a trader who worked some of the land that you inherited from the old woman.
The lesson of this life is to raise the burning sea, heal the wound of pain, and take the bloody sword of Laodicea, and excise them.
It is time to kill off your past. I, the one-eyed warrioress with rags and armor, will tell you how. You must slay the past. The charred faces of the dead rise up to haunt you. You have not seen them, but you have seen their negative influence during meditation. They come and have power because of this trauma which is associated with the restless ghosts from your past .
Let us return to the beginning of the trauma - the knife of horror whose source is the child cowering in fear observing the wanton destruction during a massacre. This is the sword, which goes through your heart. Its symbol is the blade that killed the head of the household where you worked as a slave. Before that, he had power of life and death over you, and he told you so. Now it was the forces of death and chaos that controlled him. Once he was in charge, now death was in charge. Death could rule you. It had power.
In your heart, the sword glows red hot. It is still there. It glowed like a mirror so you could see the weaknesses and secret hatreds and desires of relatives and friends. You could see that which you did not want to see, and eventually chose to cloud your vision, and see nothing at all. But the sword was still there.
We shall remove it. My hand is now skeletal, and made of charred bones. Only this kind of hand can touch the sword. I reach into your heart through the burned and gaping wound which made your heart a wasteland. The sword glows red with heat and power. It cannot burn the flesh of my hand. There is no flesh left. It chars the hand that is already charred. It seeks to destroy what is already dead. It holds the power of military blood lust, the murder of innocents, and the joy of destruction. But it is subject to the power of Death, and I, Vajra Yogini, am the goddess of sacrifice and death.
I grasp the sword and its power radiates in waves of living death. But I am death, and I welcome its power. I pour the blood from my skull cup on it, and its power is dampened, for this is not only the sacrifice of the individual but it is also the sacrifice of the universe. The individual power of pain and death can only be conquered by greater power.
As the blood pours down on the sword, the red light forms lightning, electricity, sparks, and eventually sputters. Its power is absorbed in the skull cup of blood, which holds the pain and suffering of the universe. The cries of the charred and screaming swimmers are stilled, and they sink below the burning waters.
I call upon the waters. The burning water rises up to serve me. The flames rise again but this time in sacrifice. They are mine to command, and I command them to leave your heart, to dedicate their power to obedience, not to harm the dying, but to carry their spirits to the other shore. They must release the burdens of the dead now. And the fires turn blue and black, and the dead rise to the surface like charred logs. The fires move them to the riverbank, where the human forces of sorrow and love reduce them to ash. By the fires of sorrow, the dead are freed, and their souls are no longer bound by horror. They are no longer imprisoned in their charred forms, but can move on to new rebirths. I take their ashes and place them into a memorial urn of iron. Over it is placed the sword, now stripped of its power, also made of iron. We place an inscription that says:
Dedicated to those who were massacred without warning, who had no chance to meditate or pray. May they move on to better lives, and may the suffering of this life and its bondage purify their souls, bringing them future happiness.I raise my hands and the winds rise full of golden sparkles of blessings, and the newly freed souls travel on them as they blow over the burning ground which was your heart. It now glows with golden light, and the sword and its power are gone. Go in peace, you have been purified.