"Yakshi"? The Melissa Huckaby Case

WQ (Buddhist cosmology, Wikipedia, national headlines)

In Buddhist cosmology, a yakṣa (Sanskrit) or yakkha (Pali) or yeti (Nepali) is an "ogress." The yakṣa world is intermingled with the human and animal planes. Sunday school teacher and mother Melissa Huckaby is a possible modern case of the existence of such beings.

Sutras speak of yakṣas entering animals, typically a cow with a calf, who go on to gore and murder someone. The most famous case of this is the story of Bahiya of the Bark-cloth. Cows of course are not normally thought of as deadly. But it is not uncommon that they become overprotective of their young. A "mad cow" (as distinct from the very territorial and violent male of the species, the "bull") becomes mad, on occasion, because of the intervention of these unseen inimical beings.

While it is quite possible for human beings (Idi Amin, Adolf Hitler, George Bush) to perpetrate atrocities that boggle the mind, it is generally believed or hoped that they are possessed while doing so. To think that ordinary humans in ordinary human consciousness are capable of such affronts is simply too hard to bear.

What is a Yaksha?

In Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain mythology, the yakṣa has a dual personality. On the one hand, a yakṣa may be an inoffensive nature-fairy, associated with woods and mountains. This is similar to the more exalted fairy proper, the bhummattha deva (dryad or tree sprite). But there is a much darker version of the yakṣa, which is a cannibalistic ogre, hungry ghost (preta or naraka), or demon that haunts the wilderness and waylays and devours travelers, similar to the rakṣasas.

This inimical spirit has the capacity to enter or "possess" an individual briefly or may take up a more persistent residence.

The latter seems to be the case in the modern horror story that is the unfolding case of Melissa Huckaby (also Huckabee). She is in jail on charges she kidnapped, raped, and murdered 8-year-old Sandra Cantu (pictured right), who was a fellow mobile home park resident and her daughter's best friend. Huckaby then hid the corpse in her suitcase and placed it in an irrigation pond as investigators searched for her.

When arrested, police were so hard pressed to believe that she acted alone -- a female pedophile and murderer -- that they doggedly investigated her past searching for a male accomplice. In the meantime, Huckaby attempted suicide by consuming razor blades in jail. Investigators did not find a male accomplice but did discover two previous murders she is now also charged with -- accusations she surreptitiously poisoned a child and a man. These charges have been added to the allegations she was already in jail facing.

• Melissa Huckabee's family shocked in Cantu case - 4/12/09
• Deborah King: Melissa Huckaby and the Unthinkable Sex Object
  As horrifying as the murder of an 8-year-old is, the truly unimaginable aspect of the Melissa Huckaby case, for most people, is her use of a... (huffingtonpost.com)
• Melissa Huckaby: Rape alleged in death of 8-year-old girl
• Melissa Huckabee connected in another case - San Francisco

Is an ordinary human in ordinary human consciousness capable of such grievous acts? Perhaps. One is occupying a plane of existence usually because of habitual action (karma). While on that plane, human or otherwise, one is capable of action that is unable to ripen on that plane. Consequently, one is reborn elsewhere to experience the karmic fruit-and-result (phala-and-vipaka) of those actions.

In Kālidāsa's poem Meghadūta, for instance, the yakṣa narrator is a romantic figure, pining with love for his missing beloved. By contrast, in the didactic Hindu dialogue of the Yakṣapraśnāḥ ("Questions of the Yakṣa"), a dangerous cannibalistic yakṣa, the tutelary spirit of a lake, threatens the life of the epic hero Yudhiṣṭhira. This corresponds in a number of significant details to the Buddhist story of the Yakṣa Alavaka (SN 10.12).

Yakṣas may have originally been the tutelary guardians of forests and villages that later came to be viewed as steward deities of the Earth and the wealth buried beneath it. Devas and nāgas are now often seen in that light, respectively.

• See Plane 6 (Catumaharajika):
• 31 Planes of Existence (PDF)

In Indian art, yakṣas (males) are portrayed either as fearsome warriors or as portly, stout, and dwarf-like creatures (kumbhandas in Buddhist cosmology).

On the other hand, Yakṣhis, also known as yakṣiṇīs, are portrayed as beautiful young women with happy round faces and full breasts and hips. In the southern state of Kerala, India, yakshis are depicted as vampire enchantresses.

In the Pali Canon
The Alavaka Sutta (SN 10.12) of the Pali Canon details a hair raising story during which the Buddha is harassed by a yakkha named Alavaka. The yakkha orders the Buddha to leave a certain spot and then orders him to return. This happens repeatedly. Finally, the Buddha refuses, at which time Alavaka threatens great bodily harm unless the Buddha can answer his questions.

The remainder of the sutra concerns the question and answer dialogue. In the end, the "demon" (for lack of a more fitting translation) is convinced and becomes a follower of the Buddha [Ref]. Sri Lankan (Sinhala) ancestral legends refer to yakshas as well [Ref].

Another famous sutra tells of two warring women (one a princess, the other a baby sitter) repeatedly killing one another's babies from life to life. The Buddha intervenes revealing how this animosity has been playing itself out. He saves them not only in their present life but in future lives from the same horrific fate they were setting up for themselves through incessant revenge and retribution.

• PHOTOS: Undated cellphone photo (above right) provided by the family shows Melissa Huckaby of Tracy, California. Huckaby, 28, remains in custody at the San Joaquin County Jail in California. She was being held without bail on suspicion of murder, kidnapping, and rape of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu (pictured above) in addition to multiple murder counts in unrelated cases (AP/Connie Lawless). Police arrested the Sunday school teacher on suspicion killing the 8-year-old, whose body was found stuffed into the teacher’s suitcase in an irrigation pond. Huckaby was Cantu’s neighbor, and Huckaby’s 5-year-old daughter was one of the victim’s best friends.