Dhahuli was from a low caste family in Dhakara, who made a living by making ropes out of grass. One day hard at work, rolling the kusha grass into a rope, great blisters erupted on the palms of his hands. In great pain he ran weeping to a lonely place, and there a Yogin found him and asked him what was the matter.
Dhahuli told him the truth.
"If you break down over such a petty pain, what will happen
when you suffer the intolerable agony of the lower realms?" the
Yogin asked him.
At that, Dhahuli requested a method to free himself and was given the initiation which transfers spiritual strength and was given instructions to practice the path of realization.
"Visualize both the apparent form of your rope
And your notion of its existing in all embracing space.
Then meditate with incessant energy
Upon the one, original, insubstantial essence".
Persevering in meditation on the meaning of these words of instruction for twelve years, the rope-maker understood that the conventional, nominal concept of "rope" had no substantial basis; that the relative, sensorially perceived occurrence of rope was a constituent part of a field of relativity comprising the totality of the
universe; and that the absolute verity of his experience of the rope
was a vast expanse of pure space without boundary or center.
He realized that concept and appearance are essentially one in the
dharmadhatu, and he gained siddhi. He became well-known as
Dhahulipa, and for seven hundred years he wandered through India
working selflessly for other people, before proclaiming his realization
and attaining the Dakini's Paradise. When he departed for the realm of the Dakas, he had 500 followers who followed him.
