Nairatmya (Tibetan Dagmema), "she who has no self", is a female Buddha of the Hevajra Tantra and the consort of Hevajra. Her name is the teaching she embodies: the absence of a fixed, independent self, which is the wisdom of emptiness. She is especially important in the Sakya school, whose central teaching, the Lamdre, is traced back to her.
How she is shown
- Dark blue or black, depending on the text, with one face, three eyes and bared fangs.
- Dancing on one leg with the other drawn up, on a corpse lying on a lotus, in a blaze of wisdom fire.
- Her hair, often painted yellow, rises upward like flames.
- Her right hand raises a curved knife, which cuts through clinging and delusion.
- Her left hand holds a skull cup at her heart.
- A khatvanga, a long staff topped with a vajra and skulls, rests in the crook of her left arm.
- A crown of five dry skulls, a garland of skulls and bone ornaments.
Hevajra and Nairatmya
The Hevajra Tantra, one of the major "mother tantras", centres on Hevajra, a blue deity with eight faces and sixteen arms that hold skull cups. Nairatmya embraces him: the union of method and wisdom. She is also practised on her own, alone or at the centre of her own mandala of fifteen goddesses, and in another form she has four arms.
Virupa and the Sakya tradition
According to Sakya tradition, the Indian master Virupa had practised tantra for many years without signs of progress and had decided to give it up, when Nairatmya appeared to him in a vision, told him to continue, and gave him the instructions he later set down as the Vajra Verses. These are the root of the Lamdre, "the Path and its Fruit", the central teaching of the Sakya school. In Sakya paintings of Hevajra and Nairatmya, Virupa and the Sakya masters often appear above them.
In a painting
Look for a balanced dancing pose, the weight clearly on one leg; an even, deep blue body; and crisp line work in the knife, skull cup and khatvanga, which crowd into a small space at the side of the figure. Her rising hair and the flames behind her should have movement without becoming muddled. The garland of skulls and the bone ornaments are small but should be drawn one by one. Some of our paintings show her alone, dancing before flames under a deep blue sky, with hills and a river below.
To recognise her at a glance: a blue dancing female figure, knife raised in her right hand and skull cup at her heart. Red figures in a similar pose are Vajravarahi, with a sow's head, or Vajrayogini, drinking from the skull cup.
