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| [Some general remarks about the Tibetan interpretation of these visions. The Wrathful Deities are regarded as "only the former Peaceful Deities in changed aspect." Lama Govinda writes: "The peaceful forms of Dhyani-Buddhas represent the highest ideal of Buddhahood in its completed, final, static condition of ultimate attainment or perfection, seen retrospectively as it were, as a state of complete rest and harmony. The Herukas, on the other hand, which are described as "blood-drinking," angry or "terrifying" deities - are merely the dynamic aspect of enlightenment, the process of becoming a Buddha, of attaining illumination, as symbolized by the Buddha's struggle with the Hosts of Mara. . . . The ecstatic figures, heroic and terrifying, express the act of breaking through towards the unthinkable, the intellectually "Unattainable." They represent the leap over the chasm, which yawns between an intellectual surface consciousness and the intuitive supra- personal depth-consciousness." (Govinda, op. cit., pp. 198, 202.)] |
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