PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Book Reviews 285as a ma√∂ala of winds, channels, drops, and cakras of the subtle body thatanimate our grosser form. At each power point in the body, ∂åkin∆-s are atwork. She says that “spiritual seeking fully engages bodily experience” (p.162). The author discusses aspects of yoga and yogic practice where the∂åkin∆-s manifest with an acknowledgment of the particularity of relationshipof women to ∂åkin∆-s.The Outer-Outer Îåkin∆In her discussion of the outer-outer ∂åkin∆-s, that is, human ∂åkin∆-s,Simmer-Brown shows the ∂åkin∆ in ordinary lives and takes the opportunityto explore some of the more controversial and perplexing questions ofhuman embodiment. How do we liberate desire and turn its intelligenceand intensity toward awakening for ourselves and others? She cites theHevajratantra, “that by which the world is bound, by that same its bondsare released” (p. 213). The tantra takes the Buddha’s realization of the truthof desire, aversion, and delusion as causes of our malaise and says that thekey to liberation is contemplating, understanding, and working with thesevery factors, rather than running away from or banishing them. All isfodder for practice, including sexuality. Îåkin∆-s, on all levels, includingthe human, have the ability to accelerate the removal of obstacles throughmany methods including sexual yoga.SummarySimmer-Brown tells the ∂åkin∆ story partly through the lens of her ownexperience as a woman who has weathered gender inequities in academiaand appreciates some of the opportunities that feminist activism andscholarship have opened up for women. She includes a critique of somepsychological and gender-biased interpretations of ∂åkin∆ lore that haveperpetuated misunderstanding. For example, Jung's theory of thecontrasexual animus/anima is often treated simplistically as a dichotomyof all gendered symbols, making any female representation symbolic of allqualities socially stereotyped as “feminine.” If one were to interpret the∂åkin∆ in terms of this dichotomy (as has been done for example by HerbertGuenther), such an interpretation would miss the complexity of the nondualprinciple which Simmer-Brown asserts is the core meaning of the ∂åkin∆.Feminist critiques of ∂åkin∆ lore point to the fact that what we know of∂åkin∆-s is largely from the male point of view as the ∂åkin∆-s serve maledeities and practitioners. The yab-yum (father-mother) iconography ofsexual coupling found in Tibetan art, to the best of my knowledge, isexclusively heterosexual and in these sacred unions we never see the faceof the female. Her back is always towards the viewer. This Tibetan Buddhistequivalent of the “missionary position” begs the question to the