Slayer of Death

Yamantaka (Slayer of Yama, conqueror of Death), also called Vajrabhairava, is a wrathful meditational deity (yidam) of the Highest Yoga Tantra, understood in the Gelug and Sakya schools as the fierce manifestation of Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom. His terrifying form, most characteristically buffalo-headed, many-armed and many-legged, wreathed in flame and trampling figures underfoot, expresses wisdom's power to overcome death itself and the ignorance that binds beings to the round of rebirth; the wisdom-bodhisattva is often shown seated at his heart, the key that reads the wrath as compassion.

Yamantaka is one of the three principal meditational deities of the Gelug school, alongside Guhyasamaja and Chakrasamvara, and was a favoured yidam of its founder Tsongkhapa. As with the other tantras his practice is esoteric, requiring initiation and a qualified teacher, and the deity is approached as a form of the practitioner's own mind rather than an external being.