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The Vajra Dakini says,

The next form is the goose, a bird who looks heavy and earth-bound but can fly high into the clouds. This is my social form, for geese migrate in groups and communicate well with each other. This is the form suited to interaction with persons, whether in a monastery, a convent, or a town for householder practitioners. Geese can both fly high and also work with others, traveling and helping each other in the tasks of life.

They can live in the air, on water or land, and act as models for adaptation. They have the universality of the four noble truths, not that all beings suffer but that all being seek to avoid suffering.

The goose form is the inspiration for modern Vajrayana, which has left the renunciants behind in favor of wealthy householders who also wish to escape from suffering.

This is not a choice for hedonism, but for survival. It allows modern money to go to monks in exile, and it allows the teaching to be transmitted through computer archives and printed texts.

However the problem is that the religion becomes so simplified as to be unrecognizable in this desire to be broadly accepted. In this practice, I am Mother Goose, with little stories and parables that make people feel better. We see such simplification of Vajrayana in the spread of Theravada mindfulness meditation becoming simply relaxation, and the disappearance of Yidams.

I do not condemn the desire for survival by fitting in with other cultures. But when deeper ideals and values are sacrificed, this is a problem.

The goose form travels en masse, migrating from place to place, through time and space. There can be strength in adaptation, spreading knowledge as we shed our feathers in the high winds over the mountains.

The goose is more nurturing that the vulture or the hawk. The yogi should meditate on migrating together, traveling the spiritual worlds with other sincere practitioners.

For the goose form, the yogi should meditate in a group with others. He or she should contemplate enlightenment as shared by all sentient beings, and on the willingness to help all others who suffer. The meditation is the sharing of awareness with all living beings, first nearby and later through time and space.

Here, humanity is not a construct by an individual, but by the deepest collective identity of incarnate souls. It may be limited to those with human bodies, or expanded to all beings who think and feel.

The goose form is an important counterweight to the hawk and eagle forms, who tend to be more independent. A full understanding of humanity needs both individual and group identification.

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Introduction | Methodology - Participant/Observer | The Bodhi Tree Sadhanas | Vajra Dakini Discussion | Vajra Dakini Commentary | Vajra Dakini Sadhanas | Vajra Yogini Commentary | Maitreya Sadhanas | Vajradhara Speaks About Yidams | Lost Sadhanas Conclusion