Notes on Music and Artifice: Rolling Some Stones in Various Directions, Sometimes Uphill, part II

The search for a path through life

Photo: Yogini Nairatmya. Tibet; 17th century. Gilt copper alloy, gems, and pigment. Rubin Museum of Art.

The female tantric deity Nairatmya, or Goddess without Self, is considered the embodiment of the profound understanding of the nature of reality, which posits that the self, or ego, is empty of inherent existence. She sits on a corpse, symbolizing the…