Interesting...A while back I was asking about Rudra, and Trouser helped me out with a story:
The wrathful heruka Hayagriva (Padma Heruka) belongs to the set known as the Eight Sadhana Sections from the Mahayoga division of the Inner Tantras. From the two types of Buddhist teaching transmission, Transmitted Precepts (kama) and Revealed Treasure (terma), this form of Hayagriva belongs to the latter. Both forms were received, discovered and taught by Arya Nagarjuna. The Terma text was procured from a copper casket in the Shankarakuta stupa at the charnel ground of Sitavana near the present day Bodhgaya in Northern India. Hayagriva Heruka has three faces and six arms, wearing wrathful attributes. He is manifested in this extremely wrathful form in order to subjugate a demon named Matong Rudra.
Here, a rudra is someone who has achieved complete ego-hood. There were two friends studying under a master. The master taught that the essence of his teachings was spontaneous wisdom, and even if a person was to indulge himself in extreme actions, they would become like clouds in the sky and be freed from fundamental spontaneity. These two disciples understood it differently. One went to meditate and began to work on the spontaneous way of relating to one's characteristics, positive and negative, and became able to free them spontaneously without forcing anything, neither encouraging nor suppressing them. The other one left and built a brothel, and organised a big gang of his friends who all acted in a spontaenous way, making raids on the nearby villages, killing the men and carrying off the women.
One day, these two friends met again and both were shocked by each other's understanding of their master's teachings. So, they decided to go and see their teacher. Both presented their experience to him, and he told the first disciple got it right while the second disciple got it wrong. But the second friend could not bear to see that all his efforts and energy had been condemned, so he drew a sword and killed his own teacher on the spot. After he himself died, he had a sucession of incarnations: 500 lives as a scorpion, 500 lives as a jackal and so on, and eventually he was born in the realm of the gods as Rudra. He was born with three faces and six arms, with fully grown teeth and nails. His mother died as soon as he was born, and the gods were so horrified that they took both him and the mother's body to a charnel ground, and sealed them in a tomb.
Rudra survived by drinking his mother's blood, eating his mother's flesh. So he became very terrifying and powerful. Roaming around the charnel ground, he began to control all the local ghosts and deities, creating his own kingdom, seeking revenge, he conquered the whole threefold universe. At that time, his former teacher and his friend had already attained enlightenment, and they thought they should try to subjugate him. Out of compassion, Vajrapani manifested himself as Hayagriva, and uttered three neighs to proclaim his existence in the kingdom of Rudra. Then he entered Rudra's body by his anus, and Rudra was extremely humiliated; he acknowledged his subjugation, and offered his body as a seat. All the attributes of Rudra, such as the royal costume, the crown of skull, skull cup, bone ornaments, garland of fresh human heads, tiger skin skirt, capes of flayed human and elephant skins, armour, pair of huge wings, cresent moon in his hair, and so on, were transmuted into the heruka costume.
That may provide more insight on how Hayagriva eats sin, although that story seems to infer sodomy as a tool for this particular demon.
You might also note that there are various deities that "turn into" Hayagriva as a wrathful form. In this story it is Vajrapani. Sometimes it is Amitabha, as well as Avaloketishvara. Also, Vishnu, in Hinduism. |
