The deity SimhavaktraAsian Art Museum
The Lion-Faced Sky-Walker
Simhavaktra, the “lion-headed one,” is a sky-walker (dakini), a magical being who inhabits the sky realm. A Tibetan legend says the buddhas created her to overcome a visually similar demon. When visualized in meditation, she helps practitioners master their own internal demons.
How She Helps
Simhavaktra's magical third eye transcends ordinary vision. It sees into the core of apparently solid objects, which are completely empty (shunya) in Buddhist philosophy. It also perceives the process of reincarnation in the form of the Wheel of Life and Death (next slide), which the Buddha observed with his own divine eye.
The Buddhist Wheel of Life and Death (1800-1900)Asian Art Museum
Emptiness: The Wheel of Life and Death
This painting depicts what the Buddha saw at the moment of his Enlightenment and what the dakini’s third eye also sees: all beings are reborn in six different realms according to their karma. The red figure holding it all is Mara, personification of time, death, and illusion.
The deity Simhavaktra detailAsian Art Museum
Hair Ablaze with the Fire of Wisdom
The fire of wisdom blazes in Simhavaktra’s hair. This fire is thought to burn away obstacles to recognizing the illusion that objects are physically solid and different from the mind. Obstacles include negative emotions and thoughts, which we project outside the mind and into the world at large, thus creating the experience of suffering. Her hair floats upward as if in waves of heat; Tibetan Buddhists understand flame to be simultaneously destructive and purifying.
In some meditative systems, the fire of wisdom is the product of meditation that concentrates and directs heat within the meditator’s own body. It is an advanced practice involving precise breath control and visualization closely associated with dakini practice.
The Buddhist deity Naro Dakini The Buddhist deity Naro Dakini (1700-1800)Asian Art Museum
Although the fire of wisdom appears in Simhavaktra’s hair, fierce deities like this sky-walker, Naro Dakini, often appear within entire haloes of fire. She dances victorious over two prostrate bodies that represent negative thought and emotion.
The deity SimhavaktraAsian Art Museum
Simhavaktra’s Terrifying Regalia
Simhavaktra’s cape of freshly flayed human skin, strings of bones around her body, and tiger’s skin at her hips symbolize how our perceptions are covered up by illusions. In visualizing Simhavaktra endowed with this regalia, meditators symbolically peel back these illusions.
The deity Simhavaktra side viewAsian Art Museum
Flayed Skin: The Veil Removed
The cape of flayed human skin on Simhavaktra’s shoulders symbolizes stripping surface appearances from seemingly different things like people and objects. In meditation this stripping reveals the underlying unity of all phenomena.
The Buddhist protector deity Palden Lhamo (approx. 1700-1800, Qing dynasty (1644-1911))Asian Art Museum
The flayed skin also appears in legend. In one of Simhavaktra’s manifestations, she is an attendant of Palden Lhamo, who also sits upon a flayed human skin. This skin belongs symbolically to her own son, who had disrespected the teachings of Buddhism. The fierce imagery symbolizes an uncompromising commitment to the Buddhist teachings.
Accompanied by a lion-headed dakini at left and a crocodile-headed dakini at right, Palden Lhamo, “The Glorious Goddess,” rides her mule across a sea of blood to liberate living beings from the endless cycle of birth and death. The sea of blood is a symbol of that cycle.
The deity Simhavaktra side viewAsian Art Museum
Impermanence Revealed through Skin and Bones
In Buddhist philosophy, ultimate reality is not what our senses report. Senses veil reality, preventing us from seeing the empty, non-personal nature of our experience.
The flayed tiger skin around Simhavaktra's waist emphasizes the removal of this veil and victory over harmful emotions.
The strings of bone beads around her body symbolize simultaneously the emptiness (shunyata) at the core of things and the notion that all things are impermanent (anitya).
Bone apron (sanmudras) (1700-1800)Asian Art Museum
Dakinis and other fierce deities often wear bone skirts of this type, which symbolize the inevitable truths of decay and death. Tibetan traditions have long recognized bone as the appropriate material for ritual tools designed symbolically to access the land of the dead (bardo).
The deity Simhavaktra side viewAsian Art Museum
Her Implements Transform Poison to Nectar
Missing now, two symbolically powerful objects would have been held in Simhavaktra’s hands: a flaying knife symbolizing spiritual techniques (upaya) in her upraised right hand . . .
and a skull bowl symbolizing transcendent wisdom (prajna) in her left.
Skull cup (kapala) without lidAsian Art Museum
Simhavaktra uses the knife to puree the poisonous raw material of ordinary sense experience; the skull bowl holding this material then transmutes it into the elixir of immortality.
The Buddhist deity Green Tara, (1200-1300)Asian Art Museum
The Peaceful and the Fierce Moods
Himalayan Buddhist deities manifest in two primary moods—peaceful and fierce. Peaceful deities appear with calm expressions, meditative postures, and light-emitting haloes with jeweled crowns.
The deity SimhavaktraAsian Art Museum
Simhavaktra, on the other hand, is a fierce deity who dances her powers into full functionality.
Simhavaktra’s Fierce Dance
Simhavaktra’s pose evokes classical Indian dance, which symbolizes her unobstructed movement as a dakini, a being capable of time-transcending travel in space.
Dakini Dakini (approx. 1600-1800)Asian Art Museum
In the Tantric traditions of India and Tibet, dakinis like Simhavaktra are closely associated with yoginis, female Hindu practitioners of yoga. Like yoginis, the Buddhist dakinis are known for edgy behavior, miraculous powers, and exceptional flexibility.
The Buddhist teacher Padmasambhava as Guru Drakpochey (approx. 1475-1525)Asian Art Museum
Simhavaktra and Hidden Texts
Most meditation practices focused on Simhavaktra derive from Tibetan texts called “hidden treasures” (terma). These teachings are thought to have been composed and hidden by the Indian adept Padmasambhava (top left), when he foresaw a crisis: the ninth-century decline of Buddhism in Tibet.
Guru Drakpochey, the Great Fierce One at the center of this painting, is a visionary form adopted by Padmasambhava to overcome obstacles to meditative progress.
The Relationship of Simhavaktra to Padmasambhava
Padmasambhava implanted the locations of his treasure texts in the minds of selected disciples whom he foresaw would discover them in future births. Only dakinis like Simhavaktra have the ability to decode the cryptic calligraphy of these texts.
The Buddhist lama Padmasambhava (approx. 1500-1600)Asian Art Museum
Padmasambhava is credited with establishing Buddhism in the Himalayan region. He created meditations based on Simhavaktra’s form, and by some accounts she assisted him in the creation of the meditations. By encountering Simhavaktra, whether in meditation or as an artwork, the meditator can access the power of the termas hidden so long ago by Padmasambhava.
A bronze sculpture of Padmasambhava in the Asian Art Museum's collection.
The deity Simhavaktra versoAsian Art Museum
A Hidden Treasure inside Simhavaktra
Just as dakinis like Simhavaktra helped recover treasure texts (terma), this physical sculpture guards a different kind of hidden treasure.
Using a small camera on a scope, Asian Art Museum conservators were able to follow the hollows of the sculpture to discover consecration materials deposited inside Simhavaktra’s head.
The deity Simhavaktra 6 inch bundle inside Dakini muzzle. (Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Reign of the Qianlong emperor (1736-1795))Asian Art Museum
Consecration Deposits
Consecration deposits might contain scrolls upon which mantras, or sacred verbal formulas, have been written, small gems, or coins. While no scrolls, gems, or coins have been identified in this deposit, a variety of dried seeds and herbs that play important roles in Tibetan consecration practice had been inserted into the sculpture. These materials were inside the tied bag visible in the photograph and remain there now.
The Buddhist deity White Tara (approx. 1400-1500)Asian Art Museum
Fierce or Peaceful?
Throughout the Asian Art Museum's collection, you will see fierce deities like Simhavaktra and peaceful deities like White Tara here. Tara’s calm posture echoes her tranquil expression. With the eyes on her palms and the soles of her feet, she compassionately observes the sufferings of all beings.
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