Non-duality as Yab Yum in Tibetan Great Perfection (rdzogs chen)

This article explores how a Tibetan Great Perfection (rdzogs chen) scripture uses the buddha couple (yab yum) as an interpretive structure that illuminates doctrines of non-duality, uniting pairs of concepts such as emptiness and gnosis, male and female, individual and cosmos. The focus of this research is an influential fourteenth century esoteric Buddhist scripture known as The Seminal Heart of the Ḍākinī (mkha’ ‘gro snying thig). There are multiple tropes of non-duality espoused in this scripture, yet the present research explores those discourses in their ontological, aesthetic, and transcorporeal functions while also addressing the non-dual yab yum’s role promoting female inclusion in the fourteenth century post-tantric literature. This article also includes a discussion of the female centric yab yum figures presented by the scripture, underscoring that yab yum does not have a singular meaning; in Great Perfection literature, it is deployed to illustrate multiple paradigms.