PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

BOOK REVIEWSDakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in TibetanBuddhism. . By Judith Simmer-Brown. Boston: ShambhalaPublications, 2001. xxv, 404 pages. Hardcover, $29.95;paperback (2002), $18.95.Susan M. AbbottStarr King School for the MinistryIn Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism,Judith Simmer-Brown explores many aspects of one of the morecompelling, complex, and misunderstood figures of Tibetan Buddhism—that compassionate, fierce, powerful, and transforming group of femalewisdom energy beings known as ∂åkin∆-s. Simmer-Brown takes her titlefrom the fact that dzogchen is a “whispered tradition” with instructiontransmitted via the breath in the whispering voice of the teacher. The∂åkin∆’s warm breath implies a quality of intimacy, the closeness to be ableto hear the whisper, to feel the warmth, and the essential juicy truth of theteaching. To understand the ∂åkin∆ is to understand the deepest wisdomof the dzogchen tradition in this intimate way, for according to Simmer-Brown, the ∂åkin∆ represents “the inner wisdom mind” of the tantricpractitioner. In this tradition, “every word of Vajrayåna is the ∂åkin∆’sbreath” (p. 290) and it is a gift of the tradition’s innermost wisdom.By introducing the student to the dakini, the guru is introducinghis or her own realization and the treasury of the lineage’s realizationas no different from the student’s (p. 96).Simmer-Brown characterizes her methodology as “wildly messy,”taking her information from a wide variety of sources: oral teachings,personal practice, hagiographic literature, sutras, tantras, sådhanas, commentary,history, interviews, and conversations. She is also influenced byacademic studies of gendered symbols in various religious traditions,which inform her understanding of patterns and meaning in ∂åkin∆ lore.This eclectic approach combines to make Dakini’s Warm Breath an interestinglyreadable and rich piece of scholarship. The ∂åkin∆-s that inspireher work personify:281