the mother of tantric Buddhism was herself having to evade capture in her early life – her feminity. she still hadnt met Guru Rinpoche, because she was later carrying him – like a tigress, once she knew what she had to do with what she was born with – her body.

• Great Play of the Quintessential Lotus and the Treasury of One Thousand Essential Instructions of Tantra on the Union of Hayagriva and Vajravarahi

The princess Dakini that encouraged Guru Padmasambhav Himself to start hiding His termas. Imagine convincing a grown up woman to play hide and seek with you. Imagine a renounced woman with years of penance behind Her, convincing a Revolutionary Guru to do so.

As she suckled upon her already dead mother in the charnel grounds, looking for milk, having been left there … she arose great temper in her observer: Mandarava, who broke her sadhana and turned into a tigress. Then the trident of Rinpoche Himself fed the little girl Kalasiddhi on her own feline breasts, while keeping the body of the mother warm. Then her and Yeshe Tsogyal, in a larger, later role, would raise Kalasiddhi to be presentable to their Guru, who granted Kalasiddhi mercy and accepted her as a consort when she was already 14.

Tashi Khyidren manifested as the tiger we know to have carried both Yeshe and the Guru Rinpoche from the Samye, the first Tibetan monastery to the Tiger’s Nest, in Bhutan where her father was the diseased King, and practised Vajrakilaya in the cave of Sengyephu.

Tashi was actually Yeshe’s disciple, who then offered her to The Rinpoche, who was merciful enough to accept her as his consort.