Traditional Tibetan biography of Niguma

The separate Tibetan life story is titled The Liberation Story of Niguma, Wisdom Ḍākinī (ཡེ་ཤེས་ཀྱི་མཁའ་འགྲོ་མ་ནི་གུ་མའི་རྣམ་ཐར). It is attributed to Mokchokpa Künga Ö and belongs to the Shangpa Golden Rosary collection of biographies.

The text opens with homage to the authentic masters. From dharmakāya, whose nature is compared to space, the rays of the form kāyas, compared to the sun and moon, dispel the darkness in the minds of those to be guided. The author bows with devotion at the feet of those masters.

It then offers a brief account of Niguma. She is said to have been born in Kashmir in the great city called Incomparable. The hagiography explains the city through a marvelous origin story. In the age of Buddha Kāśyapa, the region was covered by water. An arhat called Nyimé Gungpa wished to establish a monastery there and asked the nāga kings for land. They promised him as much ground as his cross-legged posture could cover. He manifested an immense body that covered the Kashmiri region; land appeared, and a monastery called Amṛta Gaṅgā was established.

To inspire wonder, a magician was summoned and manifested a magnificent city called Great Incomparable. The magician was killed before dissolving the illusion, so the city was said to have remained. Since no city like it could be found anywhere in Jambudvīpa, it became renowned as Incomparable. To magnify the city’s scale, the account claims that even its wine merchants numbered thirty-six hundred-thousands—3.6 million.

The great paṇḍitas Nāropa and Ratnavajra are said to have lived there. Niguma was born to the brahmin Śāntivarman and the brahmin woman Śrīmati. The text calls her Nāropa’s lcam mo and identifies her family as brahmin. Because lcam mo is a relation term whose exact force is debated, it is retained here rather than silently converted into a more specific relationship.

The life story says that she had cultivated the path for three incalculable eons. In this life, after hearing only a few words of instruction from several accomplished masters, she directly saw the truth of dharmatā. Her contaminated illusory body manifested as an uncontaminated kāya, and she met great Vajradhara face to face, described here as abiding on the three pure grounds.

Within an emanated maṇḍala of the Mahāyāna secret-mantra vehicle, she received the four empowerments in full. Her wisdom expanded through every gateway of Dharma—sūtra, tantra, pith instruction, treatise, and the rest—and she actualized phenomena both as they are and in all their multiplicity.

She is described as becoming a bodhisattva abiding on the tenth bhūmi, the Cloud of Dharma, with only the most subtle cognitive obscuration remaining to be relinquished. The text presents her as nondual with buddhahood and as embodying the three kāyas. Having brought relinquishment and realization for her own benefit to completion, she works for others through the two form kāyas, guiding beings according to their needs for as long as saṃsāra remains. It especially emphasizes her impartial compassion, blessings, and enlightened activity toward holders of her lineage.

The biography then turns specifically to the great adept Khyungpo Naljor. In an emanated maṇḍala, Niguma bestowed the four empowerments upon him in full and gave an inconceivable range of tantric authorizations and pith instructions. In particular, she conferred many profound and extensive key instructions said to be capable of establishing a suitable person in manifest buddhahood within one lifetime and one body.

She sealed these teachings with a command that for seven generations they were to be transmitted only through a single succession, from one lineage holder to one successor. She prophesied that the disciples and lineage holders would go to the pure realm of Khecara. The life story presents this sealed single transmission as a special excellence of the lineage.