The Seba library treats Dakini in 8 passages, across 3 authors (including Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Eliade, Mircea, Coleman, Graham).
a Khadoma is therefore a heavenly being of female appearance, who partakes of the luminous nature of space or ether, in which she moves. She is gifted with higher knowledge and appears to the earnest seeker
Govinda provides the definitive etymological and doctrinal account of the Dakini as a space-dwelling feminine being of higher consciousness whose forms — divine, demoniacal, or peaceful — serve the practitioner’s spiritual ascent.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960thesis
The inspirational impulse of the Dakinis drives us from the protected, but narrowly fenced circle of our illusory personality and our habitual thought, until we burst the boundaries of this circle and of our egohood in the ecstatic thrust towards the realization of totality.
Govinda articulates the Dakini’s core psychological function as the disruptive, ego-dissolving force that drives the practitioner beyond illusory selfhood toward the realization of the Great Void.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960thesis
Tibetan tantrism has a secret language, called the ‘tongue of the dakini,’ just as the various Indian tantric schools use the ‘twilight language’ in which the same term can have as many as three or four different meanings.
Eliade situates the Dakini within comparative religion by identifying her associated esoteric idiom as a tantric secret language analogous to the spirit-languages of Siberian shamanism.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
a third meditation sets the yogin the task of contemplating himself as transformed into the raging Dakini, stripping the skin from his own body.
Eliade documents the Wrathful Dakini as a meditational figure in Tibetan chöd practice, where the practitioner imaginally identifies with her in an act of radical self-dissolution.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
The Dakini lives in a palace of human skulls: the human body, composed of the inheritance of millions of past lives, the materialization of past thoughts and deeds, the Karma of the past.
Govinda interprets the Dakini’s skull-palace symbolically as the karmic body, linking her domain to the esoteric meaning of corporeality revealed through Padmasambhava’s initiatory encounter.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960supporting
the eastern petal combines the principles of Ratnasambhava (Earth-Element) and Vajrasattva-Aksobhya (white body-colour and White Dakini); the southern petal combines the principles of Amitabha and Ratnasambhava (yellow body-colour and Yellow Dakini)
Govinda maps the four-colored Dakinis onto the directional petals of the Bardo Thodol mandala, showing how each Dakini embodies a specific conjunction of Dhyani Buddha principles and elemental qualities.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960supporting
These twenty-five mantras which follow are again rendered in the dakini language of Oddiyana, as distinct from Sanskrit.
Coleman’s annotation confirms the existence of a distinct ‘dakini language’ associated with Oddiyana as a ritual register separate from Sanskrit in the transmission of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
, The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Penguin Classics), 2005supporting
Vajra-Dakini, 195 Heruka, 205 kaya, 222, 230 Krodesvari, 205
The index entry confirms that the Vajra-Dakini figures as a named deity within Govinda’s systematic presentation of the Tibetan tantric pantheon alongside the Heruka and Krodeshvari.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960aside