Shakti

Sakti [shakti] means “power”; in Hindu philosophy and theology sakti is understood to be the active dimension of the godhead, the divine power that underlies the godhead’s ability to create the world and to display itself. Within the totality of the godhead, sakti is the complementary pole of the divine tendency toward quiescence and stillness. It is quite common, furthermore, to identify sakti with a female being, a goddess, and to identify the other pole with her male consort. The two poles are usually understood to be interdependent and to have relatively equal status in terms of the divine economy (David R. Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986], 133).

notes on Shaktis from the web

source: http://www.lamatruth.com/ying/?type=detail&id=201

In ancient times, Tibet had a native local god/goddess religion, parallel to the Indian local/regional god/goddess systems. Around the time of the Aryan invasion of India, Aryans consolidated the triple-god concept (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva) by absorbing the various Dravidian local goddesses as “shaktis” (originally the word meant “power” but it came to imply “female consort”) for their triad.

Buddhism then swept in and the Tibetans really took to it in a big way, but rather like the parallel example of the Mayans in Mexico adopting the Catholic religion but warping it to fit their own local religions (viz. The Virgin of Guadelupe) – the Tibetans never abandoned their ancient god/goddess pairings, so suddenly you have these big Buddhist tankas (religious paintings) showing the 108 Bodhisatvas (108 is a sacred number for mathematical reasons in many cultures, most notably Asia, while Bodhisatvas are nearly enlightened monks who could achieve nirvana (“nothingness”) but choose as good Samaritans to reincarnate and help other souls evolve to the point of nirvanahood) — and each of these 108 Bodhisatvas is shown with a naked woman, his shakti, in his lap having sex with him…

Now, just as the Catholic church took “The Song of Solomon” from the Bible and said, “This is not about having sex with a woman, folks, this is about the Church’s longing for Jesus,” so did the Tibetan Buddhists explain away the sexual congress between these 108 Bodhisatvas and their shaktis as a kind of ephemeral spiritual congress.

The major difference between the Judaic system and the Tibetan Buddhist one is that the Tibetans never stopped drawing representations of the shakti. Over the years she was drawn smaller and smaller, however. In the Vedic (Hindu) Tantra sects, the shakti is represented by a woman of normal size, or perhaps a little smaller-than-average. In the Tibetan tankas, the shakti is smaller-than-average on down to little more than doll-size. She is always there, though, in the Bodhisatva’s lap. Asking about this from a Pokara Monk, China Expat was told: “Well, without his shakti, the Bodhisatva would not be enlightened.” So they are acknowledging this ancient tantric (for lack of a more universal word) union as a prerequisite for what they now (being nominally Buddhists) call “enlightenment.”