A Story Of Padmasambhava's Meeting Shakyadevi

"Thence, Padma went on a pilgrimage for the ritual tour of the convent of Sankhu.

One of the king's queens had died in childbirth, and the child, along with her, had been carried to the cemetery.

But there a monkey was feeding the little girl;

By day she perched on a tree eating the fruits,

By night, dressed in the leaves of the tree, she slept on a rock.

Her name was Shakyadevi the Nepalese,

And she had hands and feet webbed like a goose.

Seeing by these notable signs that she was a messenger of happiness,

Padma guided her,

and they went to the cave Yang Leshod in Nepal.

As Padma placed in the cave for safekeeping seventy hundred billions of treasure works,

the four scourges broke out.

At twilight, at the time of meditation, half-human demons dried to disturb his meditation;

in the evening, the demons were wiped out and disappeared into space.

But the sky was without rain, and the sun was burning like fire.

At noon, the time of the recitation of texts, demons appeared;

in the evening, the demons were wiped out and disappeared into space.

And in the land of Nepal famine grew like a red cloud.

At the dawn meditation, the Master With the Sign of the Tree appeared;

in the evening, he was wiped out and disappeared into space.

As a result, one could see whirling around in the daylight the gnomes of the plague

who spread epidemics, parasites, calamities.

And the people of Nepal carried the dead away like dung heaps.

But Shakyadevi sang the song which chased away the four scourges:

'Atrocious devastators, O intolerable ones.

You have violated the commandments of the Buddha!

Like the flower of the lotus

unsullied by the mud of the marsh,

is the yogi with the supreme methods

who lives happily according to his desire

and has been liberated from all bonds.

He is unknown, O evil ones, to all four of you.

The written treasure is to be hidden,

for the beings of distant times will be difficult to subdue.

How could you renounce this Dharma treasure!

It is only in the function of these Scriptures that the Doctrine of the Buddha will be able to flourish again.

If you have no hook of mercy,

in whom will the perverse ones have hope?

By guarding the treasure, there will be no more obstacles!"

Thus she spoke, conquering the army of demons of the scourges.

Vapors mounted from the lake, rain fell from the sky, trees bore their fruits, and sickness and famine ceased."

~ The Life & Liberation of Padmasambhava

(Artwork: Carmen Mensink)