Chandra Easton is a vital teacher in the magic mandala we are weaving at the Alembic. Releasing Into Presence, her Tuesday night gatherings, are fierce and compassionate pillars of our week, serving up mantra, movement, and the occasional feast for demons. On Saturday, April 27, Chandra will also be teaming up with the marvelous Eve Ekman to present an afternoon workshop called “Heart Broken OPEN: Cultivating Emotional Balance in the Middle of it All”.
One of the core inspirations for Chandra’s work is Tara, one of the most popular bodhisattvas in Tibetan Buddhism. In her recent book Embodying Tara: Twenty-One Manifestations to Awaken Your Innate Wisdom, Chandra introduces readers to the deep practices linked to Tara’s many faces, figures she also ties to exemplary stories of contemporary women. The following is a selection from the book’s Introduction.
Let me first introduce you to the unique historical and spiritual figure of Tara. By knowing the one Tara—her origins and history, her iconography and symbolism—we can begin to know the many Taras we will meet in this book. On a deeper level, understanding the ultimate meaning of Tara—which is synonymous with the enlightened nature of our own mind—we are able to grasp her myriad manifestations; to recognize her all around us, in others, in nature, and in ourselves.
Like us, Tara is many things all at once. Tara is commonly known as Arya Tara (“Noble Tara”) in Sanskrit and Jetsun Drölma in Tibetan. Tara means “she who helps to cross to the other shore” or “she who saves,” signifying her power to help beings traverse the ocean of suffering (samsara) to the far shore of liberation (nirvana). She is primarily known for saving beings from fear and misfortune. She is the “Savioress” who leads us to our destination, like the North Star guiding us home. In fact, Tara’s name also means “star,” and she is often depicted as ferrying beings across the night sky in her boat, signaling the metaphor of stars guiding beings across the ocean of samsara. In this way, we can understand Tara to be the light of our internal North Star that helps us navigate home to our true nature. We can understand Tara in the following ways:
Tara is a legendary princess who became a bodhisattva—one who commits to liberation for the benefit of all beings.
Tara is a fully awakened buddha, the “Blessed One, Noble Tara” (Bhagavati Arya Tara).
Tara is the wisdom dakini, or khandroma in Tibetan, meaning “sky-goer”—the ultimate nature of mind as expressed by the fierce power of the divine feminine.
Tara is the mother of all buddhas, called the Great Mother in Tibetan (Yum Chenmo), who is synonymous with Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom.
Tara emanates as the twenty-one manifestations of her limitless enlightened activities.
Tara is a tantric deity who bestows blessings and invites us to unify our consciousness with her and recognize that she is us and we are her.
Tara is you at your most essential inner core, beyond individual identity of your sex, gender, name, and form; she is your own pristine awareness3—the innermost nature of mind.
Yet all these identities are not the actual Tara because the actual Tara is beyond label or concept. You may well ask: If she is beyond label or concept, then why should we try to define her? We do so as with everything in this world—by naming something, we help to bring it into being, to bring it into the foreground of our experience. We give her names and epithets to honor and understand her, write poetry to her, meditate on her, chant mantras to her, and embody her—and in so doing we find meaning in our own lives and traverse the ocean of our suffering.
Tara’s Origins
There are various origin stories regarding Tara’s life, each beautiful in its own way, but the one that speaks most poignantly to me is the version of Tara as the princess Wisdom Moon. According to this origin story, Tara was a woman before becoming a deity. Legend says that many eons ago, the princess Wisdom Moon lived in a world system called Manifold Light where the Buddha named Drum Sound also resided. A devoted student with profound faith in the Dharma, Wisdom Moon developed the desire to take the bodhisattva vow after years of study and practice. The bodhisattva vow is the commitment to work tirelessly toward enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, not just for oneself. When she expressed this wish to the abbot and monks at Buddha Drum Sound’s monastery, they rejoiced in her aspiration but told her that she should first pray to be reborn as a man so that she could benefit more beings. At that time, it was commonly believed that beings were not able to attain liberation in a female body but must first be reborn as a man to pursue liberation. Dismayed by their small-minded misogyny, she replied:
Here there is no man, there is no woman,
No self, no person, and no consciousness.
Labeling “male” or “female” has no essence,
But deceives the evil-minded world.
And then she made this vow:
There are many who desire enlightenment in a
man’s body, but none who work for the benefit of
sentient beings in the body of a woman. Therefore,
until samsara is empty, I shall work for the benefit
of sentient beings in a woman’s body.
And this is exactly what she did. Buddha Drum Sound gave her the bodhisattva vow, and she brought her spiritual practice to culmination and attained liberation. To this day, she is said to continually dwell in a state of concentration called “saving all sentient beings.” As a result, Drum Sound Buddha gave her the name Tara, the Savioress. Tara is called a bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism (Great Vehicle) and a buddha in Vajrayana Buddhism (Diamond Vehicle) where women tend to have a more elevated status than in earlier forms of Buddhism.
Another popular yet less empowering origin story says that Tara appeared in another eon called “Without Beginning” and arose from the heart (or teardrop) of Avalokiteshvara, the male buddha of compassion. In this myth, she is referred to as the daughter of Avalokiteshvara and is said to have benefited innumerable beings through her blessings.
Tara was already well established in eastern India by the onset of the Pala empire in the eighth century before she began to travel abroad. As Buddhist traditions in their many forms were transmitted from India to other parts of Asia, Tara’s traditions and practices traveled there as well. Tara appears in statues as far south as Sri Lanka; as far east as Myanmar, Cambodia, Java, Thailand, and the Philippines; and as far north and northeast as Tibet, Mongolia, and China. For example, in Myanmar, Tara was worshipped by various tantric monastic and lay communities up until the Bagan era (ninth to thirteenth centuries) as evidenced by stone statues, terra-cotta votive tablets, and mural paintings.
Tara is believed to have first arrived in Tibet with the Nepalese princess Bhrikuti, who brought a sandalwood statue of Tara with her when she married the first great Tibetan king, Songtsen Gampo (c. 617–650 CE). However, Tibetans credit the great Buddhist teacher Atisha Dipamkara (982–1054 CE) for bringing Tara’s devotional practices and texts to Tibet on a grand scale in 1042. For this reason, let’s learn more about Tara’s role in Atisha’s life, and subsequently his role in her renown across all schools of Tibetan Buddhism.
Tara as Spiritual Guide to Atisha
Atisha was born to a royal family in East Bengal. One day while he was still a baby, he was sleeping in his cradle outside on the upper story of the palace when his parents heard beautiful music coming from the sky. The queen looked up and saw a lotus falling from the sky, and simultaneously, the little prince’s face transformed into Tara’s face. Because of this, everyone believed that Tara must have been his tutelary deity (ishtadevata) for many prior lifetimes.
Tara continued to appear in Atisha’s life as he grew into adulthood. One story tells how Tara advised him to avoid marriage and devote his life to the Dharma due to his strong karmic potential for becoming a great spiritual teacher. Based on this vision, he took monastic vows and went on to be one of most renowned teachers at Vikramashila, a prestigious Indian Buddhist monastery during the Pala dynasty.
Another story tells of a dream Atisha had in which Tara told him that enlightenment is unattainable without bodhichitta, the compassionate wish to awaken for the benefit of all beings. This caused him to seek out the great teacher Dharmakirti, who was renowned for his realization of bodhichitta. Atisha made an arduous trek over land and sea to Sumatra to find him, remaining with him for twelve years while studying and practicing meditation. Eventually he returned to India where he settled at Vikramashila monastery, planning to live out his life in peace and solitude. Dharmakirti’s instructions on bodhichitta were to become the seeds of Atisha’s famous Mind Training (Lojong) teachings that he brought to Tibet years later. Mind Training is a Tibetan practice focused on cultivating compassion for others and generating bodhichitta.
Meanwhile, the Tibetan empire was beginning to thaw from two hundred years of political fragmentation and religious persecution. The newly established Tibetan king Jangchub Yeshe Ö (c. 959–1040 CE) was intent upon reviving the Dharma in his country and had heard of Atisha’s renown. The king invited him to Tibet three times. Atisha was reluctant to make the arduous journey, but upon receipt of the third invitation, he prayed to Tara for guidance. In response, she appeared to him in a vision and told him that if he went to Tibet, he would benefit many beings, yet his life would be cut short. He decided that benefiting beings by spreading the Dharma was more important than living a long life, and so finally, in 1042, Atisha crossed the Himalayas into Tibet. As Tara predicted, Atisha spent only the last twelve years of his life there, playing an instrumental role in the revival of the Dharma through teaching and translating texts, many of them devoted to Arya Tara, particularly Green and White Taras.
CHANDRA EASTON is a teacher, scholar, practitioner, and translator of Tibetan Buddhism. She is the Vajra Teacher (Dorje Lopön) at Tara Mandala Retreat Center under the guidance of Lama Tsultrim Allione. She studied Buddhism and Tibetan language in Dharamsala, India, and at UCSB’s religious studies department. During her studies, she co-translated with her mentor, B. Alan Wallace, Sublime Dharma: A Compilation of Two Texts on the Great Perfection (Vimala Publishing, 2012). Seeking to bring forth the voice of the empowered feminine in Buddhism, Lopön Chandra regularly leads retreats and classes on Tara for various organizations, develops programs and curricula for Tara Mandala, and teaches nationally and internationally. For more information, please visit www.chandraeaston.com.
Transmutations is a biweekly publication from the Berkeley Alembic, a transformational bodymind center that offers classes, workshops, retreats, and warm cups of tea.