The wrathful buddha personifying the true nature of all forms and all the sensory fields and elements; a wrathful deity of the vīra type; also an epithet applied to some wrathful deities, especially Hevajra and Saṃvara.

A type of bloodthirsty, charnel ground-dwelling being considered threatening to people and practitioners. In the higher classes of Buddhist tantra, the central deity of many maṇḍalas takes the form of a heruka.