Tantra and Toradora! 1/3: Taiga, a Wrathful Dakini
This is weird, I admit. When I started this blog, I did not expect to write anything about anime, in particular as the anime I speak of is superficially just a high school romantic comedy.
But the fun thing is, I found it to be one of the most tantric pieces of non-religious fiction I have read/seen so far. In this following series of posts, I will explain why. I do not think it was the original creator’s intention, but it is important to understand that behind all strange symbolism of Buddhist Vajrayana is still the real world and very extraordinarily ordinary experiences - like falling in love.
I also was also very emotionally shaken, in a positive sense, by the story. After the last episode, I cried for several days. Really.
It was just so beautiful.
The anime in question is called Toradora! (Here is the trailer) Naturally, it is about a boy (Ryuuji Takasu) who meets a girl (Taiga Aisaka). As it should be obvious, the girl tries to beat the living shit out of the boy with a wooden sword, and things continue from there...
I love the story and the characters in particular. If you want to see the anime yourself, there is a DVD-edition and the series is officially available for streaming at least from Crunchyroll. There is also an original novel in Japanese by Yuyuko Takemiya, to which the anime is based on, and a translated manga series.
I will avoid discussing specific plot points, and I will focus more on themes. However, I will not keep secret, who is the real pair in this romance story. Personally, I do not think it is really a spoiler, as it should be blindingly obvious after watching the first three episodes. But I want to say this out of Internet courtesy. Minor spoiler warning ->
Toradora! is actually a word play about a tiger and a dragon. Dragon refers to Ryuuji (= ”Son of dragon”) and tiger to Taiga, who is also called “the palm-top tiger” in a derogatory manner. From the name alone, it should be obvious who are in the focus of the story, and it is not really that interesting “who gets who”, but the personalities of the main cast and particularly the interaction, and the eventual flowering of romance between Ryuuji and Taiga. Here the path is much interesting than the destination. Essentially it is a story about falling in love, and how confusing, agonizing and wonderful it can be at the same time .
Ryuuji and Taiga are both pretty weird. Ryuuji is a seemingly normal high-school boy, but has inherited intimidating eyes of his deceased father, who apparently was a Yakuza gangster. His superpower in the story is housework: he is good cook and obsessed with cleanliness. Taiga is a small framed girl who acts highly aggressively, and therefore resembles a typical stereotype of so-called tsundere character. However, I think her character is more nuanced that just a mere trope. To explain my point of view, I need to go all Buddhist from this point onwards and talk about the marvellous beings knowns as dakinis.
In general principle, a dakini (Sanskrit) is an entity that reflects the enlightened nature of female. In Tibetan the correct word would be khandro, which would roughly mean a “sky dancer”. There is also a male counterpart called daka (pawo in Tibetan), which I will not discuss in this post as much, as my focus is now on Taiga herself.
Understanding dakini is very difficult, and by even talking about it I test the limits of my current understanding of Buddhist Tantra. How a dakini is described, does depend a lot on the chosen point of view and specific vehicle of Tantric practice. You could look it as an aspect of enlightened consciousness, if you want to stay very essential. On the other hand, a dakini could be a living and an ordinary human being, who can be perceived that way by a tantric practitioner. Then in some other cases we could refer to many female awareness beings (”meditation deities” or yidams) as dakinis. And let us not forget that in some cases dakini refers to various feminine spirit-like entities - enlightened, malicious or sometimes both. Sometimes these ideas cannot be separated. I.e. an enlightened yogini could in principle manifest all of these aspects depending on the circumstances.
Perhaps this is just one of those thing, where you know when you see one, but you cannot grasp it too tightly with analytical logic. The dakinis tend to undermine desperate compulsion for reasoning.
You see, a dakini of any kind is a threatening by her nature. As they dance in the sky, as spacious passion in the passionate space, their spacious nature will undermine any form that seeks to freeze itself into something solid, permanent, separate, continuous and defined. However, while some dakinis are very gentle in their approach, some might just happily mess around with you and some would be quite eager to cut you into pieces and make a demonic offering bowl out of your very own skull <3 <3 <3.
These levels of intensity can be categorized into peaceful, joyous and wrathful types - and Taiga is certainly a wrathful one.
Taiga Aisaka as a wrathful dakini
I love Taiga. I admit I have a thing for wrathful dakinis. I have written love songs to cannibal charnel ground witches and black wrathful mothers who dance in the sky with their skull cups and flaying knives.
Taiga is not anything that provocative, but wrathfulness can manifest in many ways, as we can immediately notice in the beginning of the Toradora! when she tries to bludgeon the poor Ryuuji with her wooden sword. Naturally Taiga‘s personality contains a heavy element of dramatic exaggeration, but so does the tantric symbolism of wrathful dakinis turn everything up to eleven.
However, regardless of the exaggerated parts and plainly comedic elements , I find her personality quite believable, even highly relatable. What makes her character also especially delicious is that, as a fictional character, I can try to discuss her from this point of view pretty safely. I have met ordinary women who I could see having dakini qualities, but talking about them would be very awkward and too personal. Taiga provides a nice portal to look into a dakini.
Taiga manifests a great deal of energy, and despite its wrathful manner, it has also a very delightful quality, because it also give power to her compassionate actions. As with all emotionality, there is no emotional energy that would be inherently bad. And this is one of the powerful points in the story of Toradora! as over the story progression, I find that the emotional energy of its main characters releases the neurotic aspects of their emotionality and shows that same thing from a more compassionate perspective.
You see, Taiga is a quite sad individual with deep vulnerabilities. She is shy and cannot express herself properly. She is lonely, has been abandoned by her family and has few friends.
But despite all that she is a dakini, because fundamentally she is very kind, even though her kindness causes her even more problems. You know, most of the people who have a human body, will have their faults and do stupid things. However, this does not prevent them from having kindness in their thoughts and actions; even when they often fail miserably.
Perhaps you still do not agree, and find my opinions unconvincing, which would be fine. However, despite my arguments, only way of perceive anybody as a dakini requires very fundamental openness. It is something to be discovered, instead of putting somebody into a category box.
You need to embrace open space, and this will be discussed in the next part of this series.
Image: A dancing dakini, Public Domain from Wikimedia Commons.
