Adept: The Irrepressible Tara

In my last post, I wrote about some of the benefits of the loving-kindness meditation practice demonstrated by Jack Kornfield, in Beginner’s Guide to Buddhism, and my inexplicable reaction to reading about a certain Buddha named Tara. To reiterate, “I’ve found you at last!” I exclaimed. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere!!!”

In Tibetan Buddhism Tara represents many virtues, compassionate wisdom being chief among them. She has many faces or aspects, but most importantly in my case, she is associated with healing. As Wikipedia puts it, “she expresses maternal compassion and offers healing to beings who are hurt or wounded, either physically or psychically.” There are mantras associated with her, but it is said in Tibetan folklore that simply calling her name is enough to invoke her powers.

Is she considered real? Yes and no. My impression is that she is a symbolic representation of various elements of the feminine aspect in all of us. Coincidentally perhaps, as I understand it, in traditional Chinese medicine it is an imbalance between masculine and feminine forces that causes ill health.

‘Could this be what I was lacking?’ I wondered.

Or, maybe it was the legend that impressed me so much. For, one version of the story goes that once upon a time, “millions of years in the past,” there was a princess named “Yeshe Dawa,” who became a very advanced student of Buddhism, under the Buddha of that particular era. Some, undoubtedly ignorant male monks then made the foolish mistake of suggesting to her that if she really wanted to make progress, she ought to come back in her next life as a man. (Oops!) Her reaction was along the lines of, “excuse me, there’s something wrong with being female!? Hmm? And just to show you how dumb you are, not only am I not going to do that, but I am going to achieve Buddhahood as a woman. So there!!!” (What a woman!)

And, you guessed it, she did exactly that! She then sat down in “meditation for some ten million years,” which resulted in the liberation of “tens of millions of beings.”

Is that cool, or what! LOL I certainly thought so. On my good days, she is like a spirit friend, on my not so good days she is like a guru (spiritual guide), and on my really bad days, she’s like a Mother. You know those days, when you feel like screaming, “MOMMY!!!” That’s how I feel about her.

Next time: more about Tara and practices associated with her.