Yamantaka Home
	Yamantaka : Website : Prayer Wheels : Join : Members Yamantaka is a Mahayana Buddhist deity. (Deities are not gods in Buddhism). 'Yamantaka' is a sanskrit name, which can be broken down into two primary elements: 'Yama', which is the name of the god of death, and 'Antaka' which means 'terminator'. So here, the name of the deity describes a quality that the deity has, and this deity is named for the primary activity- Yamantaka is the terminator of death. This quality is actually a quality of all Buddhas: Yamantaka is a Buddhist deity - and is indeed a Buddha. In this context, Yamantaka represents the goal of our journey. How does Yamantaka terminate death? This question depends upon the meaning that we ascribe to the term 'death' - but one way in which we can identify this ability is through the power of the enlightening activity of wisdom. This wisdom mind is able to perceive that death has no intrinsic, concrete existence: Our understanding of death emerges solely from the conventions of the world; therefore, one way of identifying with Yamantaka is through the power of wisdom activity - and so we can see Yamantaka as a manifestation of Manjushri, the Bodhisattva-Buddha of Wisdom. Another way of understanding Yamantaka is as the journey, or the path to Buddhahood, it is through the practice of Yamantaka - the practice of terminating death, that we are able to awaken into the city of enlightenment.