Goddess Green Tara - Own Your Power (Goddess Prayers - Change Your Life Book 26)

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Tara (Buddhism)

I really enjoyed the blend of the scholarly with the spiritual in your post. I also got a lot out of the comments and your replies. Thank you for sharing! Congratulation in your work. May Tara continue to inspire you and support you gently. I appreciate you stopping by and checking out my blog post, Leopoldo. I hope I see you again soon.

Thank you for this wonderful post, and for sharing further insights about Tara with us. Green Tara has center position on my altar and guides me with Her loving flow through each day. I had not heard of Tara before this, but do know a lot about fear! I look forward to learning more and befriending this goddess.

Thank you for sharing your dissertation. I look forward to reading it once this semester is finished. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Image courtesy of the artist, Ella Brewer. Please familiarize yourself with our Comment Policy before posting. Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: Email required Address never made public. Traditionally, even in Buddhism, which has seen countless enlightened women, the female form has most often been seen as disadvantageous for the pursuit of the spiritual life compared to the male form, to the extent that female spiritual aspirants often aspire to be reborn in male form to help them in their future spiritual endeavors.

Enlightened beings are said to be beyond the limiting conditions of ordinary human consciousness, and are not defined by the gender of their body. Gender is seen in Mahayana Buddhism as being a psycho-social construct that can be transcended. An important passage in the Vimalakirti Nirdesa , an important Mahayana Sutra, illustrates this. The goddess then seriously messes with Shariputra by transforming herself into his form and transforming him into a female. While they are not women in reality, they appear in the form of women.

Although the goddess is not named, she may have been a prototype for the much later emergence of Tara herself, who is said to have spoken the following words in her earlier incarnation as Jnanachandra:. Here there is no man, there is no woman, No self, no person, and no consciousness. The other striking thing about Tara is her greenness.

She is represented as a beautiful, often voluptuous, sixteen-year-old woman, clad is silks and jewels: And yet the color of her skin is green, and this surely clashes with her otherwise attractive appearance. Tara is associated with the color green in a number of ways. Secondly, both Tara and Amoghasiddhi are connected, in the Five-Buddha Mandala, with the element Air, which is itself associated with that color. Thirdly, Green Tara is a forest goddess, and in one story is shown as being clad in leaves. Her Pure Land, in distinction to others that are composed of precious gems, is said to be lush and verdant:.

Covered with manifold trees and creepers, resounding with the sound of many birds, And with murmur of waterfalls, thronged with wild beasts of many kinds; Many species of flowers grow everywhere. Tara holds an utpala, or blue lotus, in her right hand, which is held at chest level. This hand is simultaneously in the vitarka , or teaching mudra. Tara may save, but the beneficiaries of her protective powers learn to save themselves through following her teachings! The utpala is a night-blooming flower, and so Tara protects at the time of greatest fear, during both literal darkness and while we are in the darkness of ignorance.

The core significance of the lotus flower is that it remains unstained even in the most contaminated environments. Early Buddhist texts often refer to the fact that water simply runs off of a lotus. The Dhammapada, an early Buddhist teaching, refers to the unstained nature of the lotus in this way:. As upon a heap of rubbish, Thrown out by the highway, May grow a lotus Delightful and of pure scent,.

The lotus has therefore, since the earliest days of Buddhism, and probably even before then, signified the way in which awakened wisdom can exist in the world without being contaminated by it. Tara makes of herself a gift to the world. She is an advanced Bodhisattva whose entire life is devoted to helping others. The origins of Tara are, as with most Bodhisattvas, obscure and sometimes contradictory. He saw the pains involved at birth.

He saw old age, sickness, and death. He saw beings suffering because they lacked what they wanted, and saw them suffering because they were burdened by things they did not want. He saw beings seeking happiness but creating suffering, and saw beings trying to avoid suffering but running headlong into it. Since Avalokiteshvara had expended a vast amount of energy trying to liberate innumerable beings from the sufferings of existence, and since there were still uncountable beings suffering, he began to weep.

His tears flowed down, and kept flowing until they had created a vast lake. She vowed that, rather than take the traditionally more advantageous form of a man in her future lives, she would continue to manifest in female form in order to save sentient beings. Historically, there is no record of Tara before around the 5th or 6th century C. As might be imagined, Tara first appeared in India. There are many forms of Tara, each of a different color. Tara is, not surprisingly, very popular amongst women in both East and West.

Bodhipaksa is a Buddhist practitioner and teacher, a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order, and a published author. He founded Wildmind in Bodhipaksa has published many guided meditation CDs and guided meditation MP3s. Thanx so much for your prompt reply.

Green Tara Mantra svaha Cora Namaste. As long as you have Flash installed in your browser you should be able to play it OK. Thank you so much for such a concise and easily understood explanation. I am giving a set of prayer flags, which carry the image of the Green Tara, to a healer who has shown me tremendous compassion.

On noting her deep devotion and bodhicitta, a monk suggested to Her that She could pray to become male, and attain Buddhahood Herself. She would always work for the benefit of beings always in the form of a woman, until all are successfully brought across the oceans of samsara to the other shore. Buddhism honors both the ultimate and relative. Ultimately, there is no male, no female, nor neither or both. Relatively, though, there are men, and women, each both having masculine and feminine aspects within themselves. Just so, reverend Sariputra, all things do not really exist.

Thereupon, the goddess employed her magical power to cause the elder Sariputra to appear in her form and to cause herself to appear in his form. My body has changed into the body of a woman! I do not know what to transform! All women appear in the form of women in just the same way as the elder appears in the form of a woman. Thank you for this information.

Could you give a translation of the Tara mantra? Thanks for a concise, valuable site— I found it via the Wikipedia link. It answered many of my questions clearly. I linked to it on my blog. As an Irishman, without indulging too much in fancy, is there any etymological link between the holy hill of Tara in Ireland now threatened by motorway construction and the name of this bodhisattva?

Perhaps a Sanskrit-Gaelic connection? Vajrapani seemed unconventional to say the least. He wore a tiger skin or sometimes […].

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Can you please explain it for me? I discuss on another page how I think mantra meditation works. I hope that page is helpful. There are also tantric explanations that hinge on the idea of there being magical correspondences between different levels of reality. So there are sounds that correspond to various forces in the universe and reciting those sounds can evoke those forces. Jayarava talks about this perspective over on Visible Mantra and his stuff is always worth reading. Amazing it was my first time to hear about the mantra Om Tare was told that it is extremely powerful I am hoping that will encourage communication between a friend whom I miss greatly…..

Any suggestion woul be appreciated…. I think off all the mantras as being powerful in different ways. Hi not sure what you mean by second class mantras my thinking is that a mantra is said to enlighten and cast positive energy on a situation correct me if I am wrong. I heard about the Om Tare mantra from a friend and said that it worked for her in changing situations in her life…..

I guess she meant shifting blockage and that is why I asked as I feel that their is a blockage between my friend and I and I really want to get the chance to explain myself to talk with him and either get closure or clarity to what has being going on, I hope you can understand this and offer suggestion without me going into the specifics, kindest regards kaiylyn.

It might in fact be useful to bear in mind, while reciting the mantra, that both you and your friend are fundamentally Green Tara. It might be, for example, that under no circumstances will the other person let you explain or accept your explanation.

Thankyou for your reply, I feel that that you are correct ins saying clinging to a out come or situation is often self-defeating as that is exactly what I have been doing and yes it has made me unhappy and agigtated as I want the air time to explain myself but I need to let go and bring that energy back into myself as it is not working.

I really appreciate your comments I need to let go and resign that we all have free choice no matter how it hurts…. I will recite the mantra hopefully I will get inner peace and acceptance of this situation…. Tara is amazing, i think from my experience with Green Taras mantra i can say its protected my mind from many negatives in the beginning i thought buddhist dieties where just nice flowery mind things but since my awareness has expanded i can somewhat feel the power of the blessings, truly a inspiring experience, for extreme transformation its worth the , recitations and beyond.

Deva taught us a mantra for compassion and the Goddess Tara which I really enjoyed. Om Tare Tuttare Ture […]. Hi, I have been reciting the mantra of boddhisattva Tara since the time when i was in 7th grade. Now when I am in third year of engineering I really feel very much bonded with her. I like her qualities very much and the mantra is indeed so extremely powerful and is so helpful. I mean its something very beautiful and creates an very strong ever lasting connection with her. If you can will you please help me by telling me how can I relate with her more. She is after all called as the mother of all buddhas and she so extremely superior and powerful so compassionate.

You may want to take up the formal visualization of Tara. Probably the easiest way to do this would be to find a Tibetan teacher in your area and to ask to be initiated into the practice. Apart from that, surrounding yourself with images and reading as much as possible about Tara will help you to bear her in mind. Hi, I am happy for your reply. Well I too always felt the same, but the problem is that I stay in a small place in India and there is no Tibetan teacher in this place.

I am very much thankful to you for your beautiful suggestions. Therefore, she resolves to always be reborn as a female bodhisattva, until samsara is no more. She then stays in a palace in a state of meditation for some ten million years, and the power of this practice releases tens of millions of beings from suffering. Following her cultivation of bodhicitta , the bodhisattva's motivation, she looked upon the situation of those striving towards full awakening and she felt that there were too few people who attained Buddhahood as women.

So she vowed, "I have developed bodhicitta as a woman. For all my lifetimes along the path I vow to be born as a woman, and in my final lifetime when I attain Buddhahood, then, too, I will be a woman. According to Miranda Shaw, " Motherhood is central to the conception of Tara". She is known as the Mother of Mercy and Compassion. She is the source, the female aspect of the universe, which gives birth to warmth, compassion and relief from bad karma as experienced by ordinary beings in cyclic existence.

She engenders, nourishes, smiles at the vitality of creation, and has sympathy for all beings as a mother does for her children. Within Tibetan Buddhism , she has 21 major forms in all, each tied to a certain color and energy. And each offers some feminine attribute, of ultimate benefit to the spiritual aspirant who asks for her assistance. Another quality of feminine principle which she shares with the dakinis is playfulness. She often manifests in the lives of dharma practitioners when they take themselves, or the spiritual path too seriously.

There are Tibetan tales in which she laughs at self-righteousness, or plays pranks on those who lack reverence for the feminine. She takes delight in an open mind and a receptive heart then. For in this openness and receptivity her blessings can naturally unfold and her energies can quicken the aspirants spiritual development. These came out of a felt devotional need, and from her inspiration causing spiritual masters to compose and set down sadhanas , or tantric meditation practices. Two ways of approach to her began to emerge.

In one common folk and lay practitioners would simply directly appeal to her to ease some of the travails of worldly life. In the second, she became a Tantric deity whose practice would be used by monks or tantric yogis in order to develop her qualities in themselves, ultimately leading through her to the source of her qualities, which are Enlightenment , Enlightened Compassion, and Enlightened Mind. He asked that she hide it as a treasure.

It was not until the 20th century, that a great Nyingma lama, Apong Terton rediscovered it. It is said that this lama was reborn as Sakya Trizin , present head of the Sakyapa sect. A monk who had known Apong Terton succeeded in retransmitting it to Sakya Trizin, and the same monk also gave it to Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche , who released it to his western students. The function of the Yidam is one of the profound mysteries of the Vajrayana Especially during the first years of practice the Yidam is of immense importance.

To some extent they seem to belong to that order of phenomena which in Jungian terms are called archetypes and are therefore the common property of the entire human race. Even among Tantric Buddhists, there may be a division of opinion as to how far the Yidams are the creations of individual minds.

What is quite certain is that they are not independently existing gods and goddesses; and yet, paradoxically, there are many occasions when they must be so regarded. Dharmachari Purna writes on the various forms of Tara:. She appears in all the five colours of the Jinas. There are at least ten green forms, seven white, five yellow, two blue and one red. She has both peaceful and wrathful forms. Her figure is shown in virtually all postures from standing to sitting, full lotus, half lotus, one leg down, and both legs down.

Most all of them include some introductory praises or homages to invoke her presence and prayers of taking refuge. Then her mantra is recited, followed by a visualization of her, perhaps more mantra, then the visualization is dissolved, followed by a dedication of the merit from doing the practice.

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