My Dangerous Beauty

Feminine practice really encompasses everything and everything can be made into a practice. Taking a bath can be a feminine practice, masturbating can be a feminine practice, having an afternoon nap can be a feminine practice.

When women are heavily aligned with masculine and their to-do lists to get everything done, adding more feminine tasks to the list is often easier – Monday night ‘have a bath’, Thursday night ‘get a massage’, Friday night ‘dance class’, Saturday ‘be a sex goddess’. As they strengthen their feminine practice they might be challenged by actually becoming the reclining goddess and ‘do nothing’ but surrender and let go.

Some women often begin by ‘doing the feminine’ - they will dance around in their living room to their favourite music for 10 minutes a day. Some women will go to a class to learn how to dance or to deepen their bodily understanding of a particular form of movement like Belly Dancing for example.

The next stage of this type of practice could mean that you begin to move your body to music you dont like. Or if you dance for 10 minutes and then feel done in a way that you are closed, continue to dance beyond your closure, as a way to train your body to offer love even when you dont want to do it. It’s very easy to want to dance when you ‘feel like it’, it is a very different matter if your personality doesn’t feel like it, but it would totally serve the moment deeper by continuing to dance.

Eventually some women learn to dance the music that arises within their own body and give birth to that through moving their bodies.

A lot of women will be happy to just change their clothes and dancing around at home and in class.

Dancing is also only a metaphor for life, which is why feminine practice encompasses everything. The point of practice is to discover what you will do when you hit the wall of your habitual heart closure.

It is easy for a person to sit in loving meditation on a cushion in the privacy of a special room, it is another thing entirely to practice a disposition of loving meditation when you’ve been pushed into a corner or the shit is hitting the fan in a situation. Many Buddhist monks during their torture times with the Chinese Government would have been putting the fruits of their meditation practice into action and to the test.

Some women will be called deepen in their feminine spirit beyond their mental, linear understanding.
Are they willing to get naked with themselves physically and then can they get bare-naked with their feminine soul and listen to her voice from deep within. Once you can hear the voice for yourself, how do you offer that in the world.

That is what ‘being’ a My Dangerous Beauty is all about.

At some point, women can and do know what is inherently feminine and beautiful within them from a true heart perspective not the illusion being reflected to them through media and the world of preferences we currently live in. Some women will be called to move beyond superficial practices to really embodying and radiating the divine love that is their true self even while wearing a pair of grubby jeans and a checked flannel shirt.

A lot of traditional spiritual practices like meditation are often about escaping life and it’s inherent messiness and are often therefore more aligned with a masculine spiritual practice. The masculine is still and constant and the never changing witness we all have within us. All women are a unique mixture of masculine and feminine energy, so when women meditate they are feeding their masculine and reinforcing it’s presence. For women whose energy is highly scattered and unmanageable taking up a disciplined art like meditation would serve the taming of their feminine energy. Women who are very disciplined and controlling taking up a practice of hip-hop dancing would serve the unravelling of their feminine energy.

Most of the written spiritual teachings are written to finding and stimulating this masculine within us all. Men have a higher portion of this masculine energy naturally, but women have a more highly developed and stimulated masculine energy that is often exaggerated.

Many feminine spiritual teachings were oral or handed down through our matrilineal lines, or they were written on the walls in symbols, or hidden inside quilts and handicrafts. Not a lot of time was spent writing them down they went transmitted through each woman’s body.

Discovering the sacred art of knitting or beading for example, you will discover that where you place your hands and the piece you are making is usually pretty close to your heart chakra, and in moments it can feel like you are knitting or beading a sutra. In actual fact knitting is a little passion of mine at present, but I like to knit like each stitch is a prayer.

Making a cake can be a sacred practice, remember the movie ‘Like Water for Chocolate’, like Tita the main female character all of her emotions went into making her food. The chaos in the plot was the range of emotions she experienced in her love drama. So taking up the feminine practice of pouring love into a cake or a vegetable stir-fry, this is a feminine spiritual practice. Offering your gift of cake making is also another beautiful aspect of this practice.

And unfortunately as is often the case in speaking about the feminine it is often lost in translation from ‘being place’ into structured words on a piece of paper. Close but somehow still missing the mark hence the word ‘mystery’. That which cannot be uttered will always a mystery and also very feminine.

In the movie Samsara, Tashi the young monk is leaving his wife Pema and their children to once again join the monastery to deepen his practice and calling. Pema has the same yearning deep in her heart, but she makes it very clear that she doesn’t not extract herself from life, she must find the divine while caring for her children, growing the vegetables and tending the house. It is through life not out of it, that the feminine will find the divine.

It is somewhat easy to sit on a cushion and find your inherent freedom with no distraction – a more traditional form of spiritual practice. But to find your inherent freedom with a vomiting sick child is a more feminine path.

If a woman is leaning towards meditation as a practice, she only need see and feel into the reason why that particular practice appeals to her. If she is wanting to escape from life, then it may potentially be her masculine essence she is feeding rather than her feminine essence. The test would be to see if she is willing to be in her unbridled feminine rollercoaster messiness and emotional interior landscape just as much as she is willing to sit in silent meditation or if she is meditating to control her ‘out of control feminine’.

To still a muddy pond of thinking to hear her true voice, to really feel herself and what her heart wants in a sitting meditation would be a feminine practice. To feel the breath enter your body and lovingly kiss the insides of your being is a more feminine practice. As you can tell intention is everything.

When I feel into feminine practice an image often comes to my mind. The ‘Primavera’ by Botticelli, as Flora the goddess of spring is scattering flowers. All these women are barefoot and pregnant with life. It is a painting that feels very fecund to me. So often when I am doing the dishes by most standards I feel the part of me that is Primavera. Young, abundant, pregnant with creation and barefoot. A very different feeling sense then the downtrodden impression and feeling state of barefoot and pregnant – which feels like stupid, ignorant and less than trailer trash.

This is a feminine practice for me. It is also a practice of reclaiming something that has been defamed. And I do this as a practice at the kitchen sink, because the other piece missing from the statement above is barefoot, pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink – that is where she belongs. A very downtrodden statement often handed out by misogynsts and

I totally belong in nature, I am a constantly pregnant - full of infinite possibilities and i love being of service. This is a feminine practice.

Liana Gailand Copyright 2008

TongLen is a meditation done in conjunction with one’s breathing, and in relation to one’s parents, friends and enemies, to all beings gathered around oneself. As one breathes out, imagine that with the exhalation out goes all one’s happiness and all the causes of happiness, all the good karma that one has, in the form of white light rays. These light rays go out to all beings to touch them, so that they obtain present temporary happiness and the cause for the ultimate happiness of buddhahood.

With inhalation one imagines that all the suffering, the causes of suffering and the bad karma that beings have are drawn into oneself with the incoming breath, in the form of black light rays. These black rays enter and merge into oneself, so one thinks that one has taken on the suffering of all other beings. Thus this Sending & Taking meditation involves giving away happiness and taking on suffering, in combination with one’s breathing.

What does this meditation accomplish? Generally, happiness & suffering occur as a result of karma, one’s good or bad actions. If someone has done a good action, then naturally from that there will come a result of happiness. That person will receive the result of happiness that cannot be denied him or her. Likewise, suffering occurs as the result of bad actions. If someone has done a bad action then the only result that can be obtained from that is suffering, which cannot be avoided.

In doing this meditation one changes the attitude of seeing oneself as more important than other beings; one will come to consider others as more important than oneself. The normal attitude that people have is to think that it does not matter if other beings are not happy, it does not matter if others are suffering, but it is important that oneself is happy & free from suffering. One normally considers oneself, takes care of oneself first, regarding oneself as more important than others. Through doing this sending & taking practice it is possible to change one’s attitude so that it does not matter if oneself is unhappy or suffering, but it does matter that others are happy & free from suffering. Thus one develops the attitude that one is able to take on the suffering of other beings.

Some people new to this practice get worried because they think that by doing the practice they will have to lose happiness and experience suffering, which makes them fearful. However, there is no need for this anxiety because whatever happens to oneself is solely a result of one’s karma. Doing this practice does not bring suffering.

Other people do the practice with great expectation, with great hope. They think of a friend who is ill, unhappy or otherwise suffering and they visualise this friend during the meditation in the hope that they will remove the suffering. When they find it does not work they lose hope and become disillusioned. This also is not what the practice is about. The point is to cherish other beings as important, rather than regarding oneself as important. So there is no need to have worry, fear or expectation.

However, it is not true to say there is no result from the practice. In the immediate present one is not able to bring happiness or remove suffering, but by doing this practice one will gradually cease to cherish oneself over others. Instead, one will develop the wish to practise in order to benefit other beings, eventually leading to the ability to help beings, teach and train them in the Dharma, and so forth. Consequently, one will be able to give them happiness and relieve them of suffering, and offer them whatever qualities and abilities that one has. This is the relative bodhicitta.

The ultimate bodhicitta is approached by pacifying concepts and dualism: all one’s thoughts are calmed; one’s clinging to dualism assuaged; one just rests in the state of peace, of meditation. One dissolves into emptiness and just rests in the true nature of the mind. This is the ultimate bodhicitta.

Taken from the Oral Instructions on the Karma Pakshi Practice
given by Thrangu Rinpoche‚ to the retreatants of Samye-Ling, December 1993.