Kurukulle's Symbolism

Kurukulle's Body and Adornmnets

Kurukulle's single face symbolizes the single sphere of dharmakāya. Four arms symbolize the four kinds of wisdom. Alternatively, they can also symbolize love, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity.

Since Kurukulle is beautified with the elegance of the nine traits of peaceful deities, she is attractive with nothing unpleasant to the eye.

The nine features are as follows. Kurukulle has a slender and soft body, symbolizing pure birth. All parts of her body are pliable and well proportioned, symbolizing the purification of disease. As the basis for dying has been purified, her body is not loose, but firm, and also supple and upright. Furthermore, she is soft and youthful and have an attractive appearance because the basis for aging has been purified. These are the essential qualities; when counting “firm” and “supple” separately, there are five in total.

Since Kurukulle is adorned with the flowers of excellent signs and the fruits of illustrative marks, the deities’ body is pure and has a clear complexion. Having perfected the sphere of totality, her body is radiant. She is also attractive, being both dignified and beautiful.

Finally, as her radiance overpowers those to be tamed, she has an overwhelming presence. These are the four physical features. Thus, in total there are nine aspects.

As a sign of being free from the torments of disturbing emotions, Kurukulle wears a silk scarf. Ornaments of jewels and flowers illustrate the superiority of not abandoning sense pleasures as the adornment of wisdom. 

Kurukulle's jewelry illustrates the seven factors on the path of enlightenment. To elaborate, her jewel necklace represents mindfulness, while her crown illustrates the discrimination of phenomena and her bracelets signify diligence. Her earrings stand for pliancy and their armbands represent concentration. The shorter necklace stands for equanimity and, finally, the flower garland illustrates joy. Her six bone ornaments symbolize the complete purification of anger. Symbolizing the perfections, the necklace represents generosity, the bracelets and anklets symbolize discipline, the earrings stand for patience, the ring on her head symbolizes diligence, the belt represents meditative concentration, and the offering string symbolizes transcendent wisdom.

The naked body of Kurukulle illustrates freedom from the obscuration of conceptual symbols. As an illustration of unchanging great bliss endowed with the sixteen joys, she appears in the form of a youthful, sixteen-year-old girl. Her hair raises straight up, untamable and uncontrollable, showing the unlimited way that wisdom expands impartially out of basic space. She is adorned with five bone ornaments. Of these, the ring at the top of her head symbolizes the wisdom of the basic space of phenomena, while her bone necklace represents the wisdom of equality. Her earrings stand for discerning wisdom, her bracelets for mirrorlike wisdom, and her belt for all-accomplishing wisdom. Illustrating the unity of calm abiding and insight, her secret space is joined in union.

Kurukulle's three eyes symbolize the vision of the three times. She bares four long fangs to illustrate that the four types of birth are severed at the root. She displays a wrathful presence to tame all violent beings. She also display the nine expressions of the dance, which embody the five families and four consorts. Displaying these nine expressions, she is captivating, heroic, terrifying, laughing, ferocious, fearsome, compassionate, intimidating, and peaceful. Her tiger skin skirt signifies the way anger is conquered through bold and wrathful acts of subjugation. Her ornamental silk streamers symbolize the enlightened mind overcoming desire. Her crown of five dry skulls embodies the five buddhas, symbolizing that pride is conquered. Her necklace is composed of garlands of fifty-one fresh human heads, which indicates the complete purity of the fifty-one mental states that ensues once jealousy has been overcome. Her body is adorned with six ornaments that embody the six perfections. She stands in the center of a mass of fire of the five wisdoms and amidst streams of five-colored light, symbolizing that the knowledge that realizes egolessness burns away the three levels of existence. The five-pointed crown and bone jewelry signify her possession of the five transcendent insights of a Buddha: immovable concen­tration, impartial generosity, universal compassion, unimpeded liberative ac­tivity, and the ability to mirror reality without distortion.

The manifestation of her retinue is simply an emanation created by Kurukulle that accords with the capacity of those in need of guidance. As such, Kurukulle and retinue are indivisible. Furthermore, the entire celestial palace and all its deities do not have any independent existence. Rather, they appear exclusively as the magical display of the unceasing wisdom of Kurukulle, the miraculous manifestation of blissful aware emptiness. In fact, like a rainbow appearing in the clear sky or stars and planets reflected in a still lake, all these visualizations appear yet lack true existence. For this reason, it is important to rest in the recognition that the nature of all these features is one of interdependent origination.

Kurukulle's Bow & Arrow

This symbolism has to do with Tibetan archery where you go with the arrow as you. It has to do with being the bow, arrow, and the target bringing yourself as all three together. A practitioner who utilizes your practice as the bow, yourself as the arrow, and pierces is the target with undivided enthusiastic attention attains the supreme.

The symbolism of the arrow is revealed in such legends as that of the mahasiddha Saraha and his dakini consort, who was a master arrowsmith. Saraha is usually depicted as sighting along an arrow's shaft to determine its smoothness and straightness. Here the arrow-shaft represents the central channel, and the smoothness of the three bamboo joints symbolises the untying of the psychic knots that constrict the flow of wind into the central channel. The three sections of the bamboo shaft and the three steering-feathers represent the trinities of body, speech, and mind; the three kayas; the three times, realms, and poisons. The four splits made in the bamboo shaft for the arrowhead symbolise the four concentrations; mindfulnesses; immeasurables or boundless states; activities or karmas; and the four joys, four moments, and four levels of tantra. The sharp vajra-point of the arrowhead symbolises the concentration of wisdom as penetrating awareness or single-pointedness of mind. The sinews or threads represent the binding of tantric commitments. The five-coloured threads, which are bound and glued at the flight-end of the shaft, represent the binding of the Five Buddha wisdoms, and the five perfections of method (generosity, discipline, patience, effort, and concentration) with the bow representing the sixth perfection (wisdom). The two sides of the arrow's releasing-notch represent the union of relative and absolute truth, and the union of conventional and ultimate bodhichitta. 

Kurukulle's Flower Hook

She also holds a hook which symbolizes the taming of minds. When someone rides an elephant they have a hook that they use to steer the elephant or bull. The hook symbolizes the tool of mindfulness which we use to tame and guide our mind, our attention. 

Kurukulle's Flower Rope/Lasso

The rope the lasso sometimes called a noose binds beings to wisdom and it binds demons to powerlessness. The essence of Kurukulle is the innate and inevitable magnetism of enlightenment.

Metaphorically the noose may be used for 'snaring' the ego, symbolising discipline; for 'binding' the ego, symbolising meditation; and for 'hanging' or strangling the ego, symbolising wisdom. 

The Eight Great Charnel Grounds

The Eight Great Trees

Eight kinds of great trees grew from the demon Rudra's dismembered body parts, and around these trees evolved the 'other worldly' sanctuaries of the eight great charnel grounds. 

These eight trees - which symbolize the subtle body's central channel - are iconographically depicted in each of the eight great cemeteries, which form part of the protection wheel in most anuttarayoga tantra deity mandalas. 

The branches of the trees are the auxiliary channels of the body. 

The charnel grounds themselves represent the complete path of sutra and tantra. 

Eight 'field' or realm protectors appear above their branches, and eight directional protectors beneath them. Eight specific mahasiddhas, stupas, nagas, jewels, fires, clouds, mountains, and lakes are also directionally assigned to each of the charnel grounds. Vultures, crows, owls, jackals, wolves, dogs, tigers and snakes roam within these cemeteries devouring corpses, whilst yogins and yoginis, human and divine 'knowledge holders' practice amidst yakshas, spirits, zombies, hungry ghosts, ogres, cannibals and ethereal beings. The great cemetery is said to be 'perfect' if it contains the four kinds of corpses. These are fresh corpses; mutilated, hanging or decaying corpses; skeletons; and 'mindless corpses' or zombies. The symbolism of these elements, as explained in the Vajrabhairava or Yamantaka Tantra, is as follows:

Cemeteries: the complete paths of the sutra and tantra vehicles. 

Fresh corpses: cyclic existence; the impermanence and sufferings of birth, sickness, old age and death. 

Impaled, hanging, dismembered and decaying corpses: ego annihilation. The death of ego. The revolting imagery which is an antidote to attachment.

Skeletons: emptiness.

Zombies or mindless corpses: selflessness.

Devouring animals: realisation of the 'generation stage', as the animals devour the 'corpses' of ordinary appearances and conceptions.

Nagas: cultivation of the six or ten perfections.

Gems held by nagas: the four ways of gathering disciples. 

Trees: the central channel.

Lakes: conventional bodhichitta.

Clouds: the white bodhichitta-drops at the crown of the head. 

Fires: the 'inner heat.'

Directional protectors: the 'downward-voiding wind', located just below the navel.

Realm protectors: the 'life-supporting wind', located at the heart.

Mountains: the immovability of medative equipoise placed single-pointedly on the union of great bliss and emptiness.

Stupas: the attainment of the three kayas or bodies of the Buddha.

Yogins and yoginis: those who uphold the tantric commitments.

Human and divine knowledge holders: those who have attained the realisation of the 'generation stage.' 

Mahasiddhas: the tantric practitioners who have attained the realisation of the 'completion stage'; the attainment of the eight great siddhis.

The protection wheel of the eight cemeteries: the experiencing of the sixteen joys; the eight joys generated by the descent and ascent of the white bodhichitta drop as it enters each of the four main chakras, and the eight joys generated by the ascent and descent of the red drop. 

Flowers & Bees

In the Hindu archetype, the arrow string is made of bees. In the Tibetan pantheon, she is simply surrounded by protector bees. She is the honey they protect.

The goddess Kurukulla is an aspect of Red Tara, who is invoked for the controlling activities of subjugating, magnetising, and attracting. She is extremely seductive: her red color and subjugating flower-attributes emphasise her more mundane activity of enchanting men and women, ministers and kings, through the bewitching power of sexual desire and love. The eroticism of her sym- bolism is further enhanced through the imagery described in her sadhana. For attracting or subjugating a man, the flower-hook and red utpala arrow are visualised as piercing his heart; and for attracting a woman these attributes are visualised as penetrating her vagina. From a red eight-petalled lotus at the practitioner's heart arise eight red bees, which are visualised as flying out from his nostril and entering the nostril of the person to be subjugated. Here they suck the vowel syllables from that person's heart with their 'pollen-gathering sucking-tubes', then return with their 'nectar' to their 'hive' in the practitioner's heart. The symbol- ism of red bees intoxicated with honey, of red utpala flowers laden with fragrant nectar, and of the snaring, hooking, and piercing activities of Kurukulla's flower-attributes, reveal the sexual magnetism of this seductive goddess.

Flowers (Skt. pushpa; Tib. me tog) are a universal symbol of love, compassion, and beauty. They are open, giving of their glory and fragrance, they attract and nourish bees to produce the nectar of honey. Essentially they are the sexual organs of plants and their short season of love produces an abundance of fruit which sustains the cycle of nature. Flowers abound in Tibetan art. As symbols of the paradise realms they surround deities and blossom profusely in the landscape. 

In her red four-armed form, Kurukulla holds the attributes of a flower-bow (Skt. pushpadhanus; Tib. me tog gshu); a flower-arrow (Skt. pushpasara; Tib. me tog mda') with a red utpala flower arrowhead; a flower-hook (Skt. pushpankusha; Tib. me tog lcags kyu); and a flower-noose (Skt. pushpapasha; Tib. me tog zhags). These four attributes are described as being fashioned from flowers, or more specifically from the flowers of the red utpala lotus or water-lily (Tib. ut pa Ia dmar po).

Kurukulle's Trample

In Vajrayana iconography Kamadeva, as the 'god of desire' (Tib. 'Dod pa'i lha), is depicted being trampled upon by Kurukulle.  This symbolises Kurukulle's triumph over, and her exhaustion of, the hosts of Mara.

Kurukulle's Protectors

If looking to add a protector practice, the two protectors of the 21 Taras, which are Green Tara's protectors also work for Kurukulle. They are Marici (Özerchenma) & Ekajati.

Kurukulle's Offering Substances

While meat and alcohol are allowed to be offered, Kurukulle's favorites are flowers and honey.

Kurukulle's Lineage

The lineage of this Red Tara Kurukulle meditation began in an exalted way in the intentional mind of Amitabha Buddha. From Amitabha it passed to Avalokiteshvara and then to an emanation of Tara herself. From Tara it went to the renowned Indian Buddhist master Nagarjuna and then to Padmasambhava, the great Buddhist teacher who brought Vajrayana Buddhism to Tibet in the ninth century. Padmasambhava gave this teaching to the son of the Tibetan king Trisong Detzen. He also gave it to his wisdom consort, Yeshe Tsogyal.

💖 Amitabha Buddha

♥️ Avalokiteshvara

♥️ Tara

♥️ Nagarjuna

♥️ Padmasambhava

♥️ Tibetan king Trisong Detzen

♥️ Yeshe Tsogyal 

Three Reasons Kurukulle Came into Being

There are three stories told of why the practice of Kurukulle came to be given by the Buddha. Avalokiteśvara tells of these three stories, and I will list them here below. 

Once when young Rāhulabhadra had gone to Rājagṛha to receive alms, he went to the Veṇuvana grove, and there descended into a long pond to wash his alms-bowl. While there, he, the son of Yaśodharā, was mistaken for a white ascetic and so was pulled into the pond. At that time the young Rāhulabhadra recited this spell. No sooner had he recited the mantra than— just like someone emerging from his house—he arrived in the presence of the Blessed One.

Having approached the Lord, he said, “Father, I have seen the power of the secret mantra which you have granted.”

The Blessed One spoke: “Where have you seen that?”

“In the presence of the nāgas. Therefore, I request that the Blessed One teach this mantra, so that other beings too may be protected by it.”

So then, at that very time and on that occasion, the Lord dispatched Vajrapāṇi, and benevolently granted this mantra and this manual of instruction to the listeners and the bodhisattvas, to monks and nuns, and to male and female lay practitioners. Therefore, children of noble family, one who creates a sandalwood maṇḍala and reads this mantra and this manual of instructions will not be harmed by poison, will not die from poison, will have no fear of boils, eczema, leprosy, disease, nāgas, snakes, tigers and other beasts of prey, weapons, enemies, poverty, or untimely death. None of these will occur.

In order to protect the Teachings, the Lord granted Mahākāla the demoness Hārītī, whom he had nourished from his own alms-bowl. She however, was lacking in fortune because of her former bad deeds. She was not agreeable to Mahākāla, and so he did not stay with her, did not love her, and did not protect the Teachings either. She therefore became depressed, and in order to enthrall Mahākāla this Kurukullā compendium was taught. From then on, her fortune became vast and excellent. For that reason, children of noble family, if you wish to enthrall sentient beings you should familiarize yourselves with this mantra and this manual of instructions.

It also came to pass that Sunanda’s son was born handsome and good looking, athletic and in possession of auspicious marks, and yet nevertheless dull-witted.

Sunanda therefore asked the Blessed One, “O Lord, my son was born handsome and good looking, athletic and in possession of auspicious marks, and yet nevertheless dull-witted. How, O Lord, may he develop insight? Lord, if this child becomes literate he shall become a protector of your doctrine.”

Upon hearing this, the Blessed One, with words preceded by mindfulness, spoke this manual of practice and gave this mantra. As soon as he had done so, Sunanda’s son, Rohiṇīkumāra by name, acquired insight. By the twelfth year he was free from being intimidated by any of the treatises, as he was thoroughly acquainted with all of the crafts and arts. Therefore, children of noble family, in order to accumulate great insight, you should study this very mantra and its manual of practice.