Introduction

Re-visiting the Yab Yum

The present studyFootnote 1 focuses on nonduality in the Great Perfection as having several functions: (1) linking ontological non-duality with embodied contemplations; (2) redefining the boundaries of bodies, suggesting the porosity of bodies through aesthetic modes; and (3) positing an extended corporeality that is enmeshed with gnosis. These issues are all folded into a motif of non-duality known as yab yum,Footnote 2 or buddha couple, in The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī (mkha’ ‘gro snying thig). The yab yum are two buddhas shown embracing one another. They are often depicted with the male buddha seated in the classical seven-point posture,Footnote 3 a seated, cross-legged meditation position facing forward, with the female buddha sitting on his lap facing him. However, the two figures may also be depicted as standing, or they may have their positions reversed with the female figure as primary, as the present research will illustrate. Their colors, ornamentation, faces, arms, and positions vary depending on the who the particular buddhas being depicted are. In The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī, this yab yum iconography is used to express a wide range of Buddhist ideals from internal contemplative praxis, to cosmological origins through the framework of non-duality that the yab yum embodies.

Although the iconography of the buddha couple has been analyzed by numerous scholars, a prevailing and salient theme has been the yab yum’s function in subordinating the female subject. For example, Herrmann-Pfandt (1997) noted that the yab yum reproduces female subordination since the female body both adjusts itself to accommodate the male body (physically seated in the classical seven-point meditation posture), and, often, becomes indistinguishable from that male body. Likewise, Campbell (2002) notes that the dichotomous image of the yab yum functions to subordinate the female due to the dimorphous sexed bodies emphasizing a hyper-separation of male and female. Campbell interprets yab yum as iconography that also underscores a denied dependency on the subordinated other. Likewise, Young (2004) notes that the yab yum most often shows the male figures in the dominant position, facing the viewer and larger than the female figure. These interpretations tend to obscure how radical it was for that the yab yum functioned to radically include female bodies in the post-tantric milieu of fourteenth century Tibet. Other perspectives have emphasized the yab yum’s impact on relationality. Gyatso (1998) and Jacoby (2014) note that the yab yum presents a sense of gender complementarity of the male and female.Footnote 4 Jacoby also points out that for the yab yum, enlightenment takes place for the couple, rather than the individuals, providing an alternative to the notion of solitary enlightenment depicted in hagiographies of the Buddha.Footnote 5Gayley (2016) additionally notes the usage of the yab yum in hagiography to convey the joint activity, joint voices, and collaboration between a two Buddhist teachers in love.Footnote 6

Building on these perspectives, further issues remain to be addressed such as the implications of the yab yum’s role in presenting bodies as porous and potentially interpenetrating systems. In the Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī, contemplative praxis centers around visualizations, somatic meditations, and physical exercises that reframe the individual body as one that subsumes other yab yum bodies, making a body—whether male or female—full of male and female deities each in yab yumunion. Gyatso (1998) notes that generally speaking, male and female elements are both considered to reside within an individual body in fulfillment yoga,Footnote 7 a paradigm that is espoused in Seminal Heart literature. However, of interest here is that in the Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī, it is not only the basic constituents of the male and female essence drops (thig le) but instead complete bodies, multiple pairs of conjoined male and female bodies that are within the body of the adept. Thus, drawing on eco-feminist perspectives, this article focuses on The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī’s uses of yab yum as a motif and interpretative structure that expands and extends bodies through non-dual metaphysics, rendering the female as part of a male transcorporeal form, and rendering non-dual ultimate reality as legible through the suggestive aesthetic experience of the yab yum. This does not contest the appraisals of tantric iconography as androcentric, but it illuminates other important issues that transform, contextualize, and complicate that androcentrism. This alternative interpretation of the yab yum illuminates how post-tantric literature re-imagined corporeality, presenting androcentrism in both exclusive and inclusive modes.

About the Scripture

Great Perfection was one of two forms of Buddhist tantra that predominated in the fourteenth century for the Nyingma (rnying ma) tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. One form was Mahāyoga (rnal ‘byor chen po), a form of tantra more closely aligned with Indian Buddhist tantra that developed within the nineth to thirteenth century, and the other form was Great Perfection, representing particular Tibetan reinterpretations of Buddhist tantra.Footnote 8 Great Perfection was distinctive for its reinterpretations of defining Buddhist doctrines including theories of emptiness, embodiment, cosmology, and contemplative praxis, all reframed in terms of the preeminence of gnosis (ye shes). In Great Perfection literature, gnosis is regarded as the source, or ground (gzhi) of reality. Putting forward this ground that is gnosis posited an ultimate reality as beyond karma and samsara that is also their source. The Great Perfection defines ultimate reality as empty, but this emptiness is only the first of a triune expression of gnosis that manifests as empty essence, luminous presence, and compassionate resonance (ngo bo rang bzhin thugs rje). Realization of this triune reality is equated with buddhahood. For example, this is explained in The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī’s Lamp of Awareness: The Explanation of the Awareness’s Dynamism Empowerment (rtsal dbang ti ka rig pa’i sgron ma) which says:

All buddhas likewise are buddhas due to the realization of the self-liberated, naturally occurring, self-arising awareness. All sentient beings likewise become buddhas if they realize the naturally occurring, self-arising awareness. Thus, natural awareness is empty essence, pure from the beginning. It is nature, radiant with multi-colored lights. It is compassion, unimpeded without bias.Footnote 9

This describes the subsuming of emptiness within the threefold characteristics of gnosis in a positive ontology, a framework emphasized in The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī.

The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī is an important revealed scripture detailing the philosophy and praxis of Great Perfection, an influential strand of esoteric Tibetan Buddhism. This scripture is attributed to conversations between the paradigmatic consort couple, the two primary protagonists of Tibetan empire narratives: Padmasambhava acting as lecturer and Yeshe Tsogyal as scribe. They were said to have lived in the eighth century. However, the scripture itself was written down centuries later by the treasure revealer, Pema Ledreltsal (padma las ‘brel rtsal, 1291–1315/17) in 1313 shortly before his death. Ledreltsal regarded himself as the reincarnation of a girl who had received the scripture directly from Padmasambhava centuries before. Although Ledreltsal is a figure about whom little is known, the scripture came to be regarded as significant due to its adoption by the revered Tibetan philosopher, Longchenpa (klong chen pa, 1308–1363). The difference between Ledretsal’s edition and its form in Longchenpa’s works is impossible to know based on extant sources, but in the period after the death of the treasure revealer, Longchenpa came to regard himself as Ledreltsal’s reincarnation. Today, the corpus is extant within the collection thought to be compiled and contributed to by Longchenpa known as The Four-Part Seminal Heart (snying thig ya bzhi). This corpus came to be regarded as a classical scripture of the Great Perfection Seminal Heart (snying thig) tradition, the tradition which came to define Great Perfection in Tibet. The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī is one of the five scriptures in The Four-Part Seminal Heart. It has numerous almost identical editions, but this research relies on the dpal brtsegs version and the a ‘dzom ‘brug pa chos sgar wood block edition, the latter being a double-sided, five hundred and nineteen folio corpus. It has two volumes with one hundred and twenty-nine different texts in verse and prose spanning across an array of philosophical and contemplative genres.

This scripture was written for non-celibate adepts practicing in the post-tantric milieu of fourteenth century Tibet. Although this was an era that came to be remembered for the rise of all-male monastic learning centers,Footnote 10The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī portrays another type of Tibetan Buddhist religious life: a community composed of sexually active male and female adepts who were earnestly interpreting Great Perfection views and practices outside the monastery. Yet, although the scripture does at times present female centric and couple centric scenes in its zhus len literature and cosmologies, the scripture’s instructions on sexual yoga and choosing an appropriate consort are written for a male reader within this female inclusive world. This is in contrast to previous Seminal Heart scriptures written for a male reader in a predominantly male community. One example of the evidence that demonstrates the male readership is when describing how to choose appropriate partners, only an array of possible female partners is provided.Footnote 11 The instructions on sexual yoga tell him to place his “vajra” in the “lotus,” euphemisms for penis and vagina respectively, and tell him not to disrespect the female consort.Footnote 12 The surrounding passages are explicit in nature, directly referring to detailed instructions on intercourse while relating physical sex with visualizations of the yab yum deities throughout the body and as well as visualizing the yab yum as the male and female partners themselves.

Duality and Non-duality in the Great Perfection.

There are multiple tropes of duality in this scripture. The issue of duality (gnyis) is explained most explicitly in The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī’s chapter on the post-death state, where the symbol of the Ḍākki yab yum appears as the expression of the authentic buddha mind (yang dag sangs rgyas dgongs pa). This part of the scripture focuses on how the illusion of self appears to the individual due to not recognizing appearances as empty projections that are not separate from one’s own nature. Because of not recognizing the true nature of these projections, dual conception arises. Appearances (snang ba) is the term to describe how things seem to be in the phenomenal world, and these are the objects of perception. These objects thus appear distinct from the subject who apprehends them. This is one form of explaining duality in this scripture. It can also be explained as the imagined separation between mind’s nature and that which the mind perceives, rather than recognizing them both as non-dual. The metaphor presented for seeming as if dual in structure while really being non-dual is looking in a mirror, such as not recognizing that what one sees in in the mirror is actually oneself.Footnote 13

The scripture begins by addressing the problem of duality as the result of an error that occurs. This error is described using a variety of terms, such as grasping, attachment, and fixation, using a variety of terms. The term ‘dzin pa, refers to grasping or reification, while zhen pa refers to attachment, or fixation. This position is exhibited in explanations of how duality arises from self-grasping, implying that the concretization of the notion of self leads to the false view of subject-object dualism. The perception of duality is also similarly described as taking place because of various types of fixations. These are the attachment to the sense faculties (dbang po’i zhen pa), and the attachment to the psycho-physical aggregates (phung po’i zhen pa). Once there is no grasping onto any objects of perception whatsoever (yul kun zhen pa), then things will no longer be reified as dual (gnyis su ‘dzin pa),Footnote 14 thus duality will cease to be reproduced.

There are numerous variations of non-duality named by the scripture. The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī treats the issue of duality and self-grasping in terms of what is not recognized as ontologically present, the recognition of non-dual gnosis (ye shes), the soteriological goal for Great Perfection. For example, the scripture says that the error of duality takes place due to not recognizing an ontological non-duality (gnyis med), as the union of emptiness and luminosity. It says,

Emptiness and luminosity are not cognized due to subtle self-grasping. Thus, in one’s mind stream, the eight-four thousand afflictions increase. Since the root of samsara is produced there is wandering as the six classes of beings in the cycle of three realms.Footnote 15

This is followed by the prescribed remedy which includes descriptions of what should be recognized in terms of these multiple non-dual pairs: emptiness and luminosity, awareness and emptiness starting, emptiness and appearances. The scripture beginning with the latter says:

The outer and inner imputations are naturally free from beginning… As it says in the Kiss of the Sun and the Moon: “Through observation, whoever realizes that appearing objects have no concrete essence whatsoever, will see that emptiness and appearance are non-dual. The six senses are not halted, but freely relaxed.”Footnote 16

While this passage emphasizes the non-duality of emptiness and appearances, the passage that follows this describes non-duality as the union of emptiness and awareness.

As it is said in the Luminous Lamp: “Since there is a diverse array of awareness’s dynamic expression, awareness-emptiness is free. It is like a ruler with power.”Footnote 17

The yab yum serves as an illustration of all of these forms of non-duality. These are only a few among a various pairings of concepts that are explained as non-dual through the motif of the yab yum couples throughout the scripture. The yab yum stands as the interpretative structure through which the union of many pairs or philosophical concepts are rendered inseparably connected, being placed at the beginning of explanations of non-dual paradigms. For example, in The Explanation of the Six Tantras of Liberation by Wearing (btags grol rgyud drug gi tika):

Therefore, the non-dual yab yum’s significance is the inseparability of space and awareness, luminosity, and emptiness. That teaching is, “Thus, it is said, the yab yum are non-dual union. They speak as one mind.” That saying means that luminosity and emptiness are indivisible, abiding spontaneously. They are momentary, beyond meeting and parting. Its nature which is exemplified when there is emptiness as the light of awareness and light spheres, essence drops and the linked lambs, kayas and wisdoms is like a colored array, how it lucidly abides. When there is luminosity moreover, the essence is inseparable emptiness and luminosity. Likewise, appearance and emptiness are inseparable. Sound and emptiness are inseparable. Feeling and emptiness are inseparable. Experience and emptiness are inseparable. Awareness and emptiness abide as inseparable.Footnote 18

The occurrence of multiple non-dualities is not just an artifact of Tibetan Great Perfection; there are multiple terms used to posit ontological non-duality in Buddhist philosophy overall. One important framework is the non-duality of conventional reality and ultimate reality of Prāsaṅgika-Mādhyamika as discussed in Klein (1985). However, although that issue does factor in this scripture, a chief concern articulated in the passage above is the non-duality of emptiness and gnosis, a related and distinct concept. The yab yum are thereby said to be non-dual in the ontological context. There, the non-duality of the male and female buddha couples is the motif that expresses the concurrence of the positive and negative ontologies of gnosis and emptiness, the defining worldview of Great Perfection.

It is notable that even though it explains aspects of reality that are non-material, that reality is explained through the symbol of forms, the forms of bodies. When the yab yum explains pairs of ontological terms, space and awareness, luminosity and emptiness, awareness, and emptiness and so forth, it emphasizes a non-nihilistic interpretation of emptiness, asserting that gnosis and emptiness are non-dual or that appearance and emptiness are non-dual (snang stong gnyis med), therefore promoting emptiness as concurrent with positive ontological characteristics.Footnote 19 It is necessary to repeat this point because the scripture regards the doctrine of emptiness as being prone to being interpreted in terms of a nihilistic void, whereby emptiness implies nothingness. Such concerns are explained in the scripture in the interview between Tsogyal and Padmasambhava in which the question of the correct view of emptiness is addressed. Padamsambhava explains to Tsogyal that the tendency to grasp onto or reify the concept of emptiness (stong ‘dzin) causes it to appear through a distorted extreme view that sees ultimate reality as void (stong pa phyang chad). This mistaken perspective leads to further mistaken views that since everything is empty that one does not feel obligated to engage in virtuous conduct and thus one gets lost in an ocean of suffering and wrongdoing.Footnote 20 Therefore, the alternative to regarding emptiness as void is to regard it as simultaneously empty and imbued with gnosis. In this passage, gnosis is represented as awareness, luminosity, and as the light spheres that appear in cosmogenesis (and that are directly perceived in advanced Great Perfection meditation). However, to posit gnosis is to risk asserting an essentialist view of reality, which is why this gnosis is qualified in the passage as occurring in a way that is spontaneous and instantaneous, rather than as a static, eternal essence that could be akin to ātman. Thus, gnosis, through its spontaneity, takes place without violating the terms of emptiness, with its non-duality serving to set it apart from essentialist stances.

The ontological non-duality of the emptiness and gnosis is illustrated by the yab yum buddha bodies, when the scripture clarifies that they never were and never will be separate (‘du ‘bral med pa) and thus are used to assert that emptiness and gnosis are not separate (dbyer med) either. Although the union of two buddha bodies in the dharmakāya buddha couple are inseparable, as well as not ever existing as disparate beings, their analog, the two humans in sexual embrace, may only ever temporarily unite, a paradox that simultaneously evokes both the irreconcilability of emptiness and gnosis and the possibility of the realization of their union in states of non-dual perception.

Other Non-dualities

The yab yum is also represented as the inseparability of wisdom and means.Footnote 21 And the yab yum stands analogically for other pairs as well, such as the non-duality of the five bodily elements and the five buddha families.Footnote 22 A frequent pairing is where each type of yab yum deity corresponds to a quality of wisdom and its related features. The yab yum is also a linking concept; it functions as a tantric resignification of the body that links tropes from earlier Buddhist philosophy to tantric subtle body anatomy. One example is the declaration that the five aggregates and five elements of sentient beings are the yab yum pairs.

As it says in the Brilliant Expanse:

“All sentient beings have stainless awareness.

Their bodily aggregates and elements are the five yab yum pairs…”Footnote 23

Furthermore, the eight consciousnesses are also the yab yum. The eight consciousnesses (rnam shes tshogs brgyad) refer to the six sensory consciousnesses (including the sixth mental consciousness), the afflictive consciousness, and the all-ground consciousnesses. The four gates of the maṇḍala are also four yab yum, corresponding to the body in sexual yoga instructions in this manual.

As it says in the tantra,

“…The eight consciousness are the eight bodhisattva yab yum pairs….

…The four gates are the four gate yab yum pairs…”Footnote 24

This pervasive couple imagery in Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī always depicts a heteronormative world, yet one that is not always necessarily focused on reproductive life and householder entanglements that were the object of the Vinaya’s criticisms. Instead, this sexuality mimetically reproduces a cosmogonic process, since the yab yum is implicated in the unfolding of the phenomenal world that progressively arises from gnosis.

The yab yum motif is repeated in every one of the genres of The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī. One example is as ontological expressions when presented as the primordial buddhas, the Omnibeneficent Buddha Couple (kun tu bzang po and kun tu bzang mo).Footnote 25 As noted in the example above, these buddha couples speak Great Perfection philosophical texts while symbolizing the body of reality (Skt. dharmakāya, Tib. chos kyi sku). The scripture describes them in a passage that has been quoted by another text above,

Therefore, they, entwined as the non-dual yab yum, have spoken as one mind to symbolize the perfection of all qualities.Footnote 26

This buddha couple subsequently speaks a scripture that introduces ultimate reality. As they speak, this original buddha couple operates as the symbol of the dharmakāya dimension, or reality body (chos kyi sku). The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī describes their abode as the expanse of space (mkha’ klong rnam par), in the stainless body of reality. This is asserted as the dimension beyond forms, dharmakāya, yet simultaneously they assume bodies, faces, and hands. The scripture says this form takes place without being established as any essential thing whatsoever.Footnote 27 Therefore, this is a dimension where the material body, and materiality in general, is not the primary referent. Nevertheless, in The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī, the dharmakāya is conceptualized through the embodied data of the buddha couple, the kun bzang yab yum, the Omnibeneficent Buddha Couple, as two intertwined bodies. The historical context for this framework is that the dharmakāya is part of a system for explaining multiple metaphysical features in Mahāyāna and Yogācāra literature. It is both a way of discussing other forms of a buddha, and what happens after the death of the Buddha, the human founder of the tradition. In that system, there are three forms of buddha bodies, with nirmānakaya (sprul pa’i sku) as the dimension of material manifestation, and the saṃbhogakāya (longs spyod rdzogs pa’i sku) as a body of enjoyment, a body composed of light and energy. Finally, the dharmakāya is the space-like ultimate reality, expressed in a numinous form. The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī says that the dharmakāya is the state beyond duality.Footnote 28 The modes that The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī uses to describe this non-dual dharmakāya are both in terms of singularities, such as a single sphere from which the universe self emerges,Footnote 29 as well as in binaries that have coalesced such as in the yab yum of the Omnibeneficent buddha couple, who are two buddhas in timeless union representing the dharmakāya. It is also described in the threefold formula detailed above.

The imagery of the yab yum buddha couple also appears in the scripture in explanations of the bodily interior. This is done in the corpus’s contemplative manual on generation stage meditations, wherein the meditator visualizes thereself as the buddha couple, with a body full of yab yum couples. This practice is detailed in The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī’s Horse-headed Deity Couple’s Body Mandala (rta mgrin yab yum gyi lus dkyil). There, the non-duality of the Horse-headed deity and his female consort, Indestructible Sow Lady (rdo rje phag mo), is framed as representing a series of non-dual pairings: emptiness and compassion, method and wisdom, and sun and moon.

Similarly, this non-dual yab yum imagery is also enacted as a central motif in the enactment of religious sexual activity that takes place in ritual in The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī’s ripening empowerment known as the Luminous Lamp Jewel Guide to Empowerment (dbang khrid nor bu sgron gsal). That ritual includes visualization of oneself as the two deities already mentioned, the Horse-headed Deity and Indestructible Sow Lady, as well as visualizing one’s bodily interior full of Ḍākki yab yum (the female centric yab yum) at the head, throat, heart, and navel. Thus, as these examples show, the yab yum iconography appears in a variety of explanations in the text. The non-duality of the buddha couple signifies ultimate reality, acting as an organizing principle for understanding the elemental world, or as an expanded vision of embodiment in contemplative praxis.

The yogi (rnal ‘byor pa) who is the audience of the text is expected to participate in this world of yab yum figures, mimetically embodying the tantric couples that pervade internally and externally through their own embodied sexual praxis that is introduced in The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī’s Empowerment Guide, The Luminous Lamp Jewel (dbang khrid nor bu sgron gsal).Footnote 30 The scripture suggests sexual intercourse and describes it in detail. Moreover, in this contemplative system, even if one opts not to practice physical sexual activity, according to The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī, it instructs one to visualize oneself in this manner, imagining oneself in full body embrace with a sexual partner. This makes the yab yum a central feature of tantric contemplative visions regardless of one’s status as celibate or non-celibate. This choice is dependent upon what type of practitioner one regards oneself as. If one is a desirous adept (chags can), then there is the physical enactment of the yab yum ideal, meaning that one takes a sexual partner and performs the yab yum deity visualization during sexual intercourse. If one considers oneself a desire-free adept (chags bral), then one simply visualizes the partner while practicing yab yum meditation by oneself.Footnote 31 The two categories are notable here since other key Great Perfection Seminal Heart literature sometimes redacts one of these categories, such that there is only the option of the desire-free in previous literature, as noted by Seminal Heart scholar, Khenpo Yeshi.Footnote 32

Female Inclusion

A notable issue with the pervasive use of the yab yum in this scripture is that it facilitates the inclusion of female bodies in its important phases of an unfolding gnostic world and gnostic bodies. The buddha couples featured in The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī are both the female-centric yab yum, the Ḍākki yab yum (DAk + ki yab yum), as well as the male-centric form such as the Hero yab yum (dpa’ bo yab yum). Frequently, the divine couples are identified as the buddha couple simply using the term yab yum. From the perspective of the American and European scholars detailed above, this has been considered an androcentric framing of the couple, in part due to positioning “yab,” the male term, before the female term. However, in The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī, these yab yum are also called ḍākkī yab yum or ḍākinī yab yum, foregrounding the female by positioning a term for female beings before the term yab yum. For example, The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī’s Five Pieces of Advice (gnad kyi gdams pa lnga) frames the couple in gynocentric terms as the ḍākkī yab yum (DAk + ki yab yum). This particular example takes place in the explanation of the bodily interior, linking sexual praxis, the elements, and physical vitality. The scripture says:

…at the secret place, in the center of the chakra’s bliss palace, within the inner channel knot, the material essence of the four elements is there as the Activity Accomplishing Ḍākkī Action Couple (DAk+ki las yab yum). They have the complete enjoyment body, beautified with all the ornaments. They are as one, the couple having performed sexual union. At the place of that union is the vital essence of the four elements having the five colors, each distinct and luminous. Continuously deriving from that are the secondary channels all penetrating from the secret channel knot, where the union of the unsurpassable ḍākkī couple (DAk+ki yab yum) is performed as above. The bodhichitta fills the entire body and thus there is inexpressible bliss. Contemplate it like that.Footnote 33

In this passage, the axis that connects the body to a buddha ontology through contemplation is the non-dual yab yum symbol, which is visualized along with the contemplation of bliss to be within the interior subtle body. The body filled with bodhichitta has a double meaning which refers to the altruistic enlightened intent (chang chub kyi sems) but also refers to sexual fluids that are produced by the yab yum as two buddhas producing reproductive fluids. It is their enlightened sexual activity that facilitates an increasing and spreading of the subtle materials of the life force. This meditation continues with every pore in the meditator’s body being visualized as full of yab yum deities. Because of their presence, illness does not occur, and contemplative states are produced. It is interesting to note that in this chapter of the scripture, the female centric yab yum, the ḍākkī yab yum, are at the bodily centers, chakras, and the male centric yab yum, the pawo yab yum (dpa’ bo yab yum), are in the pores of the body.

The repetition of divine couple imagery in these subtle body meditations naturalizes the consort relationship as fundamental to the order of reality and the lived experience of bodies. This concept of union is also underscored by the repeated inclusion of these female bodies, even within the body of the male adept. In its soteriologically activated form, female bodies are part of male corporeality rather than separate or other. Thus, this couple imagery underscores sexuate difference in the corporeal and cosmological order, yet these assertions are made with a female centric yab yum couple on par with the uses of male yab yum explanations. Therefore, the yab yum functions to simultaneously subsume female bodies (and other male bodies) within the male body, re-defining these bodies.

The buddha couple is also cited in female centric form elsewhere in the scripture. One example is the various interpretations of the Omnibeneficent buddha couple. They represent the first anthropomorphic body and the buddha existing in timeless embrace with his female consort. One way this name appears in Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī is as the Omnibeneficent buddha couple, kun bzang yab yum, literally, the all good couple, with neither the male nor female buddha’s name introduced (even though the term yab, the male, comes first). However, their name sometimes appears as kun tu bzang po yab yum, the male-centric form of the name. Or it may be described as the kun tu bzang mo yab yum, the female-centric form, with the female nominalizer “mo” placed first. These uses where the female moniker is placed first such as in ḍākkī yab yum and kun tu bzang mo yab yum challenge the assumption of yab yum as always male-centric even though the iconography is most often depicted that way today. For this reason, the term yab yum is translated here with sexuate beings as co-extant, using the term “couple,” and adding the gendered referent only if it is applied by the scripture.Footnote 34

The term androcentrism requires qualification when applied to discussions of yab yum in this context, since both The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī and previous Seminal Heart literature are androcentric, but Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī is comparatively distinct for centering female figures in all its genres. The former is androcentric and tends to exclude female figures, and the latter is androcentric but radically includes female figures. Whether male-centric or female-centric, or even within an androcentric worldview, these divine couples facilitate the inclusion of the female body as a partner in contemplative praxis and cosmos and do so to argue for the inclusion of women in the communities of these scriptures. Female forms have a place in this world, which is distinct from the place of the males, and yet their complementarity is portrayed as an integral aspect of both cosmos and body. This inclusion of the female body in the male’s soteriological journey is described as crucial in the text. The male adept must rely on the female consort, as it says that there is no one else other than the female consort who can bestow buddhahood in one lifetime. The yab yum presentation does not remain merely numinous; it correlates with the depictions of human female protagonists that are featured throughout the corpus. The scriptures portray a female figure as the scribe of the text (Tsogyal) and another as the recipient of the treasure (Princess Pemasel). There are also women as consorts to male adepts, women who are highly accomplished female disciples of the treasure revealer,Footnote 35 and women who are crucial assistants in its revelation. Yet, as noted above, the scripture often addresses a male readership when discussing consort practices. In these ways, it is androcentric and yet strikingly female inclusive.

Aesthetic Non-duality

Although the yab yum is evoked in ontological and epistemological discussions in the scripture, one reason that the yab yum can serve to represent these various pairs of non-dual terms is that it also functions aesthetically. Therefore, this section explores aesthetics to highlight the uses of the yab yum in this corpus. The buddha couple symbol qualifies as aesthetics in terms of aesthesis, the ability to perceive based on sensoria, an ability which is linked to gnosis in this literature. Such sensoria are evidenced in the link of the yab yum to the somatics of bliss (bde ba), as well as related to a range of bodily experiences involving fluids, tactile sensations, and interpersonal exchanges between adepts visualizing themselves as yab yum that are described in the scripture. As mentioned above when discussing the Five Points of Advice, such bodily sensations are said to be produced by the sexual union of the buddha couples within the adept’s own body. For example, the bodily bliss of the yogin is contemplated to be the result of the union of the interior yab yum couples at the bodily centers (chakras).

An Embodied Aesthetic Concept

The yab yum also functions in non-dual ways since it is a bodily dependent conceptualization. In other words, the understanding of the symbol relies on first person experiential knowledge of bodies. On the one hand, the Omnibenevolent buddha couple as dharmakāya is described as not concrete,Footnote 36 especially as they are described in terms of space and expanse. Therefore, the first yab yum of reality takes place in the dimension in which the divisions of materiality are not a constraint. Nevertheless, it is bodies that are used to describe this dharmakāya expanse, the male and female body in sexual union. These are particular types of bodies in a specific type of embodied interpersonal activity: sexuate, sexual, and dimorphic. They are not just positioned as two figures cooperating side by side, but instead they are engaged in an affectively charged experience that suggests the visceral experience of bodies.

The yab yum is therefore a suggestive aesthetic field, a presentation of an object that appeals to the subject in a way that requires some involvement with the object, whereby it is inviting one “into its game.”Footnote 37 This is aesthetic in its participatory sense of collusion between subject and object and the way the symbol makes itself felt. This is aesthetics as a relational modality that evokes an experience with.Footnote 38 It produces reflexivity, since the yab yum image refers to an individual’s own experience of bodily sexual union, or even imaginary associations with that aesthetic. Thus, it is analogical in that this personal and embodied experience that makes it possible for the adept to understand what this yab yum as dharmakāya is referring to. Furthermore, the adept’s sexual activity has also thereafter been mediated by virtue of exposure to the yab yum imagery to which the adept’s activity is supposed to correspond.

Yab Yum Ethics

An aspect of aesthetic fields is that they are expressive in an open way, not concrete or predetermined in their interpretations. They facilitate a range of interpretations in an experiential arc that is not completely structured or regulated the way that laws or rules would structure or regulate experience. They correspond to symbols and discursive systems, but their meanings are contingent on subjective interpretations. What the yab yum imagery communicates, in its multiple contexts in the scripture, functions aesthetically and therefore functions openly. There could be multiple meanings derived from the yab yum and multiple experiments with mimetically engaging with it that are contingent upon the adept’s knowledge, experience, and cultural context. Aesthetics have organizing principles, but as Giovanni puts it, they “escape thematic closure.”Footnote 39 And this is why The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī is also ambiguous in its aesthetic discourses. It accommodates a range of interpretations, without a hyper structured ethical scaffolding. Indeed, in its treatment of religious sexuality, The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī lacks a detailed ethical architecture comparable to Vinaya, the monastic legal literature; but it supplies another type of detailed Buddhist sexuality discourse, instead emphasizing an aesthetic one. Sexual aesthetics are foregrounded through the repeated use of the symbol of two buddhas in sexual embrace, the yab yum, or buddha couple, presented as the expression of ontological and epistemological concepts, serving a pedagogic function throughout the scripture. These yab yum are an organizing framework and mimetic device used in this literature to explain non-duality in corporeal terms, to make the concept of non-duality palpable, and relatable.

According to the scripture’s logic, the presence of the yab yumis a motif that corrects nihilistic emptiness and is a safeguard against ethical straying due to the affirmation of gnosis. Nevertheless, the scripture returns to themes of the ethical dangers of sexual praxis repeatedly as discussed in Cape (2020), which notes that the scripture focuses its consort taxonomies on concerns about how to avoid ethical dangers caused by sexual relationships and dangers that threaten individual, social, and soteriological domains.

As an aesthetic field, the yab yum is presented as a prism through which philosophical, contemplative, and ontological principles can be considered without exclusively foreclosing on any one aspect of those range of meanings. It is revealing in that the pervasive use of the yab yum motif in the scripture radically includes female bodies, revising an androcentric vision of the world. Like any aesthetic form, it not only reveals, but it also conceals. One aspect that is concealed by the yab yum is the range of Buddhist sexualities and possible sexual behaviors that are missing from standard yab yum imagery. The yab yum conceals numerous types of sexual experience: non-heterosexual sex, non-penetrative sex, and sex with non-dimorphic bodies, and reproductive sex. It also conceals sexual violence, a narrative which is dissonant with the scripture’s images of bliss, equanimity, and soteriological super-achievement. The topic is not completely absent from the scriptures and that is a significant contribution of The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī exhibiting the authors awareness of harm that could be done to female consorts. Nevertheless, there is still some sense in which this lexicon of sexual imagery is missing an equally elaborate vocabulary, an appendix or commentary on sexual ethics and misconduct, one that would parallel the elaborate detail of other topics covered by the corpus such as medical applications of sexual praxis, embryology, and cosmogenesis. This could be considered an omission that leaves women vulnerable to exploitation but is also integral to the functions of the aesthetic presentation which also functions to promote inclusion of women in a manner that promotes multiple interpretations.

Yab yum As Aesthetic Habitus

Beyond aesthetics as a single symbol, the non-duality of the buddha couples serves as an important motif in an “aesthetic habitus,” of this post-tantric community. The yab yum is an interpretive framework and a sensorial reference point for the scripture. This paradigm is borrowed from Bourdieu, for whom “habitus” refers to a system of internalized structures that serve as frameworks of perception, conception, and action for members of a group. It refers to representations that function in the coordination of practices and the sharing of a worldview.Footnote 40 As such, yab yum imagery is an aesthetic habitus that provides a simultaneous orientation to a social world in which sexuality is venerated and an orientation to ultimate reality where gnosis is legible.

As described above, the example of the yab yum as aesthetic habitus is constructed in The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī’s The Explanation of the Six Tantras of Liberation by Wearing (btags grol rgyud drug gi tika). This text focuses on explanations of the ultimate nature of reality in positive terms of gnosis and how it relates to emptiness. It begins by associating the yab yum with other pairs of terms: space and awareness, luminosity and emptiness, and non-duality. It says:

Therefore, the non-dual yab yum’s state of knowledge is the teaching of the non-duality of space and awareness and the non-duality of luminosity and emptiness.Footnote 41

Here non-duality is a trope that unites all these concepts within the symbol of the buddha couple. However, by that scripture’s conclusion, it takes on a more simplified expression. Yab yum is stated as non-dual without the associated other pairs; that is, yab yum is simply non-dual (yab yum gnyis su med pa). These two presentations alternate throughout the scripture as yab yum are described throughout various genres as a motif that asserts non-duality as well as appearing in contemplative praxis or other explanations to implicitly stand for non-duality.

Transcorporeal Non-duality

In The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī, the yab yum also suggests an intersubjective embodiment that is correlated to key ontological issues, namely the non-duality of emptiness and gnosis. The uses of the yab yum to illustrate non-duality bring non-duality into the material domain, of bodies and their experiences of other bodies. This is an issue illuminated by the eco-feminist concept of transcorporeality that applied here highlights what implications of the non-dual yab yumas redefining bodies. Transcorporeality, defined by Alaimo (2010), is that which emphasizes movement across bodies, interchanges, and interconnections between various bodies and sites, including human bodies, ecological systems, and more.Footnote 42 It is an alternative to the notion of individual, and separate bodies, and instead positing bodies that are enmeshed in other bodies and their environment.

An example of transcorporeal non-duality is The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī’s Five Key Points, wherein adepts are instructed to contemplate their bodily interior with five female-centric yab yum couples inside it. This visualization is used in a proto-medical contemplative healing practice organized according to the five elements, with these yab yum buddhas being visualized at the crown, throat, and other bodily centers and sites. In this case, through the meditation, the body is reinterpreted as entangled with other bodies, including planetary bodies. In particular, the lunar cycle is key, since The Five Key Points advises the yogin how to practice each yab yum deity corresponding to the days of the lunar cycle. During the first part of the lunar cycle, the subtle vital nutrient (dangs ma) of the elements begins at the secret place (gsangs gnas), an epithet of the center associated with the reproductive organs. During the first part of the lunar cycle, the vital nutrient will naturally increase. The scripture says that this is a state which supports meditation on another non-dual pair, emptiness and bliss. On the fourth day of the month, the vital nutrient moves upward to the navel, and on the eighth day it moves to the heart. On the twelfth day, it moves to the throat and on the full moon day it expands to the crown of the head. After that, throughout the rest of the lunar cycle, this vital energy decreases sequentially reversing order until on the new moon, it is located at the sole of the feet. Therefore, through this meditation, the iconography of the non-dual yab yum re-signifies a material body as a landscape of buddhas. This is an alternative to Buddhist literature that framed the body as being full of repugnant substances. Although subtle body practices are Indic in origins, such practices of visualizing bodies full of buddhas in Tibetan Great Perfection are,according to Germano (2007), interiorization of the pure land and buddha field (zhing khams).Footnote 43

Thus, through yab yum figures, this literature proposes a trancorporeal body, specifically a bodily interior re-envisioned in its enmeshment with female bodies, as well as enmeshment with the five elements—all within a gnostic ontology. In the non-duality of the tantric couple, the locus of rig pa, awareness, is a state inclusive of another body. This interprets the body beyond the boundaries of an individual to be porous and interconnected. In this regard, the scripture suggests a contemplative reinterpretation of conventional representations of male corporeality as a separate, material, and single sexed form. Thus, yab yum serves as a semiotic instrument for rendering bodies in expanded and extended forms, as transcorporeal due to its connection with female bodies, buddha couples, and planetary cycles. This motif is how the scripture makes philosophical assertions regarding non-dual personhood beyond the self-other dichotomy, but by doing so in material, contemplative, and aesthetic modes that are distinctive to Great Perfection literature.

Extended Bodies and Sexual Praxis

The theory of sexual praxis in Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī is that when human beings mimetically produce that yab yum activity, either by visualization in generation stage meditation or by sexual yoga, it makes a particular non-dual perception available. By experiencing his own body in an extended way and as coextensive with a female body, a boundary in separate identity has been breached. This opens the possibility for the yogin to breach another bodily boundary: to conceive of intrinsic and extrinsic gnosis. One non-duality is a bond to other non-dualities through the recurrent motif of the yab yum. Therefore, the yab yum couple seemingly refers to an extended aesthetic system, an embodied and extended pathway to non-dual gnosis.

Nonduality as Double Subjectivity and Other Unanswered questions

Sexual yoga is a physical and internal contemplative exercise that also includes visualization of oneself and one’s partner as the yab yum deities. Because sexual yoga is an enactment based on the union of the yab yum buddhas and deities, this non-duality is a mimesis of an intersubjectivity in question. That is to say, it is a coalescence in which there are two entities that are contemplating existing in a manner that is co-extensive with one other rather than as individual, discreet, and separate phenomena. Therefore, the female body and subjectivity in yab yum imagery may not exist as a separate entity but as an extension of the male’s consciousness, body, and identity. She may be portrayed as an aspect of his extended and embodied consciousness, or else as another subjectivity with which he has merged. This issue of double subjectivities requires further attention.

This leads to metaphysical questions that have consequences in how these scriptures theorize consorts, whether the female consorts are another individual or another aspect of an expanded and extended male embodiment. Does the Omnibeneficent buddha couple lack an individual, self-contained separate existence from each other? What are the boundaries between their subjectivity and objectivity or does this represent intersubjectivity? They are intertwined, but to what degree? How far does their non-duality pervade? What does it really mean to say that bodies can become non-dual in the same way that emptiness and gnosis can be non-dual? These are questions that warrant further attention, but also are presented as unanswered questions by the yab yum imagery itself, functioning as a locus of possible revelations for the few who can decipher these images through the embodied contemplative practice of sexual yoga. They function as aesthetic fields that remain open to interpretation, rather than closing into a narrow range of philosophical information.

Access to Contemplative States through yab yum

The results of non-dual physical and visualized union are non-dual contemplative states. Namely, non-dual emptiness and bliss (bde stong gnyis med) are the corresponding states available during sexual yoga. Sexual yoga meditation involves a physical enactment of the divine couple union, but this is ultimately for the purpose of accessing these contemplative states. The scripture posits that the coalescence of bliss-emptiness results in the state in which twoness slips away and co-emergent gnosis dawns (lhan chig skyes pa’i ye shes ‘char).Footnote 44 To accomplish this, the yogi visualizes himself and his female consort as hero and ḍākinī, identifying with the two deities Horse-headed deity and Indestructible Sow Lady, respectively. Through mimetically reproducing that visualization through physical bodies, the desired contemplative states become accessible. However, even their internal somatic bodies are also reinterpreted through tantric couple symbols. The scripture advises the yogi to visualize that their body constituents are composed of tantric couples and that their sexual organs are thereby blessed by these buddha couples.Footnote 45 However, this meditation is only sustainable if the adept is contemplatively trained enough in attentional control and de-reification skills to be capable of not reifying the experiences of bliss that arise. This is the characteristic that separates it from ordinary sexual activity. The liturgy that is spoken as an instruction in sexual praxis says,

Not grasping onto that reality of non-dual bliss-emptiness, look upon one’s own condition. The two-ness slips away, and the two are equal together. This is the co-emergent pristine gnosis (lhan cig skyes pa'i ye shes 'char).Footnote 46

Thus, the instructions for the sexual practice point to non-dual experience both as physical and as contemplative non-duality. This relies however on a complex practice, one that operates in an extended modality. This is metamorphic, formative rather than informative. For these yogis, there is a pre-existing underlying theory of non-duality that is presumed to be understood to some degree, but then non-duality becomes experientially available upon enactment of the yab yum couple. There is a pre-existing context of a discursive architecture of beliefs and emotions related to the deities being visualized as oneself and one’s partner. Interpersonal and physical dynamics are also at play, as well as self-reflexive analysis of the contents of experience. Therefore, the non-duality that is a transcendence of dualistic polarizations is a result that takes place as a holistic process whereby philosophy, somatic experience, visualizations, and sexual praxis are all integrated.

Conclusion

For the Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī, the yab yum is a non-duality that encompasses sets of non-dual pairs as an interpretative motif, constructing an open aesthetic field inclusive of a range of Great Perfection concepts. Through examining the uses of the yab yum, this chapter has introduced frameworks of duality and non-duality in Great Perfection Seminal Heart literature that highlight its own concerns with the positive ontology of gnosis and the porosity of bodies.

This is research that draws from a larger project that addresses questions about how the inclusion of women was facilitated in the fourteenth century post-tantric milieu. As demonstrated by previous scholars, yab yum semiotics can function as underscoring women’s bodies as subordinated others However, this article has argued that they portray female bodies as essential factors in male bodily existence, rather than subjects unto themselves. This chapter has shown, these yab yum images also played alternative and vital roles in their own context. Even without a full inclusion of female subjects (or agents) within snying thig literature, the logic and motif of yab yum is a radical inclusion of female bodies in a vision of ultimate reality, cosmogenesis, contemplative, and ritual praxis. This motif has been recast here in terms of considering its emic functions, especially that which redefines male bodies and bodies in general, as enmeshed with other bodies within non-dual gnosis. This is expressed in the scripture, first, through a focus on sexual aesthetics as well as through redefining bodies as entangled with other bodies, both biological and planetary.

Thus, this research has highlighted the multiple functions of the yab yum, arguing that it is an interpretive structure in which symbolic representations of male and female bodies in union are utilized to signify non-duality in terms of ontological concerns and exploration of transcorporeality. Nevertheless, it is not necessarily the case that yab yum as a central motif in post-tantric semiotics has always been coherent or consistent. Therefore, this research opens the door to important questions that remain to be addressed, namely how yab yum are utilized variantly across different types of tantric and post-tantric Tibetan literature, especially throughout the history of Great Perfection Seminal Heart scriptures.