I have readThe songs of Drugpa Kunley (1455–1529)
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I have written... nothing ...
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an improbable book that has always been in my Polyglot Library
I am happy that I am a free Yogi.
So I grow more and more into my inner happiness.
I can have sex with many women,
because I help them to go the path of enlightenment.
The songs of happiness of Drugpa Kunley
Among the books in Polish I possess since I was a teenager, published during the edition boom of the early 1990s, when the Poles, liberated from the communism, discovered a sudden appetite for strange, unorthodox and vaguely erotic reading, there was a tiny yellow connoisseur volume entitled Życie i nauki szalonego tybetańskiego jogina Lamy Drugpy Kunleya. For a long time I had no hint to connect this little curio with any larger cultural context. Much less I expected to have any item of Bhutanese literature in my book collection. But in fact I had, and there is a very interesting story behind.
Drugpa Kunley, also called the Madman of the Dragon Lineage, was a Buddhist monk living on the brink of the 15th and the 16th century. Not quite an individual madman, rather a member of a traditional madness school, described as the Nyönpa. Having obtained his training in the Ralung Monastery in western Tibet, he immortalized himself by the introduction of Vajrayana Buddhism to Bhutan, as well as by his poetry. He built a chorten (i.e. a stupa) in the place where the Chimi Lhakhang (Monastery) was to develop over the subsequent period.
The most famous achievement of this holy person was to bring illumination, more specifically to women, through the use of his... well, the whole thing has to do with sex, but we are certainly oversimplifying and misinterpreting this venerable tradition. Drugpa Kunley is also believed to have introduced the practice of phallus paintings in Bhutan (by which we should understand esoteric paintings representing a sort of cosmic phallus, but he also "painted" with his penis, adding a golden touch of urine as a complement to some artistic masterpieces). Anyway, it was not a normal penis, it was the Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom. There was also an oenological tradition connected to the whole affair, and even today the tiny Chimi monastery is famous for its collection of weaved portable wine bottles as well as its holy lingam made of wood and ivory.
Drugpa Kunley, also called the Madman of the Dragon Lineage, was a Buddhist monk living on the brink of the 15th and the 16th century. Not quite an individual madman, rather a member of a traditional madness school, described as the Nyönpa. Having obtained his training in the Ralung Monastery in western Tibet, he immortalized himself by the introduction of Vajrayana Buddhism to Bhutan, as well as by his poetry. He built a chorten (i.e. a stupa) in the place where the Chimi Lhakhang (Monastery) was to develop over the subsequent period.
The most famous achievement of this holy person was to bring illumination, more specifically to women, through the use of his... well, the whole thing has to do with sex, but we are certainly oversimplifying and misinterpreting this venerable tradition. Drugpa Kunley is also believed to have introduced the practice of phallus paintings in Bhutan (by which we should understand esoteric paintings representing a sort of cosmic phallus, but he also "painted" with his penis, adding a golden touch of urine as a complement to some artistic masterpieces). Anyway, it was not a normal penis, it was the Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom. There was also an oenological tradition connected to the whole affair, and even today the tiny Chimi monastery is famous for its collection of weaved portable wine bottles as well as its holy lingam made of wood and ivory.
