Moodboard/From the Chiasmus Archive: August 16th, 2022 "MAHASIDDHA SHYALIPA "THE JACKAL YOGIN"

(Image of the "The Jackal Yogin" Shyalipa, sitting in his charnel ground, attending to the bodies of the deceased in a tantra ritual with his female tantrikas partner assisting)

Of Tibetan esoteric Buddhism, Shyalipa was a poor laborer who lived in the edge of  cremation ground and was terrified by the sounds of Jackals at night, until a monk who was wandering through the grounds, was offered a place to rest.  Shyalipa explained to the monk his fears of the howling Jackals at night, the monk taught him a mediation technique that would be known in Vajrayāna  as the “The Fear that Destroys Fear.”  Shyalipa was instructed to meditate on the sounds of the howling Jackals, until the sounds became void through the monk's teaching.  And with this emptiness of sound, despite it once terrifying him, he was able to maintain the practice and eventually overcame the fear of death.  After many years of destroying his fears with this fear meditation  Shyalipa became one of the 84 Tantric Mahasiddhas. 

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(A.Glass 2022)