Out of the Darkness

Karma gets a lot of bad press or maybe, just like any complicated abstract idea, it’s just easy to misunderstand. Sometimes it’s accused of being fatalism - there is nothing we can do about it. And sometimes it sounds like paying off a debt for the bad stuff we have done in the past. Of course, neither of these are true. One very ancient story, going back over two thousand years is in part about karma and how it is actually full of hope. It’s about the  demon Rudra.

Once upon a time there was a rich man called the ‘Black Liberator’, Tharpo Nakpo. He and his servant were both students of a Buddhist teacher, however, while the servant devoted himself to the teachings and had authentic realisations, Tharpo Nakpo preferred to puff himself up and make out he was more realised than he was. When the teacher pointed this out, that he was suffering from spiritual pride and that his ego had colonised his practice, Tharpo Nakpo had the mother of all hissy fits and broke all contact between them. Just about the worst thing you could do in terms of creating really seriously bad karma.

Now Tharpo Nakpo in his rage goes on an orgy of murder, cannibalism and debauchery, creating even more bad karma which then begins to snowball with each hellish rebirth. In one he is reborn as an anguished spirit who can only take nourishment from vomit. This continues for an unimaginably long time - in one account the momentum of his bad karma even survives the entire dissolution of the universe and is carried over into the creation of the next. Finally he is reborn as the child of a demon prostitute who has had sex with three demons. The villagers are so disgusted and enraged that they bury her alive beneath a poisonous tree and it is within the grave of his mother that Tharpo Nakpo - now with the new name Rudra - is born and it is upon her decomposing flesh that he feeds until he is strong enough to break free from the earth, manifesting as a hideous monster.

Here the story reveals its true purpose. The buddhas realise that they must give a teaching that is powerful enough to overcome the vast obscurations that prevent Rudra from recognising his buddha-nature. They try everything but nothing is strong enough until they come up with tantrism and this does the trick. The message is clear: sometimes our inner demons are so powerful it takes a particularly powerful teaching to overcome them and this is the Buddhist Tantras. However, there is also another moral tucked away in this story which I think is particularly beautiful. Rudra was not always a demon. Once he had been just somebody who was attracted to the Dharma and wished to become a bodhisattva. This created good karma and, despite the later events that entirely eclipsed this, these seeds were not destroyed and enabled by the fierce compassion of the buddhas finally came to fruition. Rudra once again made contact with Dharma where he is now its most powerful guardian and protector. A happy ending.

It’s undeniably a grisly story, graphic in its violence, but it tells us that whatever we have done or whatever we may be doing we do have a way out of it. It’s never too late even when we have been a monster. There is also a lovely little twist in it. It seems on the surface that it’s the buddhas intervention that is the cause of Rudras eventual redemption, not the seeds of his distant good karma coming to fruition. If this was the case then we would have a different idea here - not that we are the masters of our own fate but that we are dependent on divine help for our salvation. However, once we remember that the buddhas are in fact awakened mind, the empty luminosity of buddha-nature, then the story comes true. However deeply buried in horrible thoughts and emotions, devouring disgusting things, the luminosity of our awakened nature is not diminished or harmed in any way and it’s almost as if it’s reaching out to us so that it may be known. Accumulating good karma we reach back but even bad karma - very bad karma - can’t prevent this for ever.

NW. 10 July 2026