Yamantaka
The Conqueror Of Death
Yamantaka, the ferocious emanation of Manjushri (Bodhisattva of wisdom), is the most complicated and terrible of all the wrathful Buddhist divinities. As this existence he conquered death, Yama, who was ravaging Tibet with his insatiable thirst for victims. According to this myth, in his paroxysm of insight, Manjushri travelled all the way to the underworld to seek out Yama, the God of death, who dwelt with his minions in the sealed up iron cities of hell. Yama appears in Indian mythology with the head of a water buffalo. To vanquish Yama, Manjushri adopted the same form, adding to it eight other faces and a multiple array of arms, each holding murderous weapons. He sprouted a corresponding number of legs, and surrounded himself with a vast host of terrifying beings. To confront death, he manifested the form of death itself, magnified to infinity. Death (Yama) saw himself endlessly mirrored back to himself, infinitely outnumbered by himself. Death was literally scared to death. The yogi who meditates through the imagery of Yamantaka intends and hopes to develop a sense of identity strong enough to face down death, and the fear that attends it. Each head, each limb, each attribute, symbol and ornament of Yamantaka expresses the total mobilisation of the faculties of enlightenment needed for this ultimate confrontation.
Both Yama and Yamantaka are represented with bulls heads, but Yama always has an ornament, shaped like a wheel on his breast, which is his distinctive mark.
"Jambel Shinje is the form in which Yamantaka enters the world in times of direst circumstance, when the world is filled with grievous difficulties, terrible dangers, great conflict and flagrant intolerance. His special powers annihilate the very root of all these troubles - atmagraha, or self-cherishing. He turns the minds of living beings away from selfishness and hate, and leads them to universal loving kindness and compassion. He enters the mind of the practitioner and completely destroys the most stubborn, habitual tendencies to hold to the reality of the dualism of self and other that is the basis of all error, misery and samsaric rebirth." - Dudjom International Group
The shakti (the personification of divine feminine creative power) of Yamantaka is Zhags-pa-ma - 'she holding the noose'.
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