Visited by Vajrapani

At last I have found out the name of this red-coloured deity who “visited” me recently. He looks the statues in the above pics.

In the past, I have been “visited” by many deities before, but he is by far the most wrathful I have seen. My initial thoughts were that this is a yaksha/raksha and a protector. My hunch was right. I had dreamt in early January 2009 of going to a Chinese temple. At the temple entrance was a Ni'o – the East Asian version of Vajrapani – statue with a big urn for putting joss-sticks. Ni'o is often placed at entrances to temples and found in many temples in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and China. In Malaysia, you can find them in the version of the Generals Heng Ha Er Jiang at Kek Lok Si temple (the 2 guardians in front of the large Kuan Yin statue).

I think I lit up a few joss-sticks and offered to this fierce-looking deity. Then I left, partly because it was too wrathful for me to look at for too long. But the terrifying look of his red-hot face stucked in my mind. I will never forget that look. I have no idea why I dreamt of him or which one of him. Is it the one iwth the open mouth or the closed mouth? Maybe it is the closed-mouth one but I am not sure. I dreamt of only one of them. And it is definitely much redder in colour than the above, and has no facial hair on his face unlike the 2 images above. Yup - no moustache or eyebrows.

I was not reading about Vajrapani or any such fierce Chinese deity anytime before that night. No, I was not reading of ghost or any horror stories either. I am familiar with the Tibetan version, but not this East Asian version of Vajrapani. So, why did he appear to me in that manner? Maybe he came to warn me of something? Maybe I did something wrong? I have no idea. But I now know that he is probably one of my spiritual protectors.

Sometimes, strange deities that I have not seen before would appear to me in dreams/visions, only later to find out that there is indeed such a deity. Sometimes if I am lucky I get to find out who the deity is, but if not lucky, remains unknown till today. I had not seen this red deity before, but yet, at the same time feel like I had. Very difficult to explain, you know what I mean…?? prehaps these deities came about due to my past life connections??

For further info on Ni'o, refer these links:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nio

http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/nio.shtml