The Divine Mother is called Tara, in Tibetan Buddhism

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Dear All,

 

Here is a beautiful and vibrant description of the Divine Mother, which Lex

Hixon wrote in his 'Mother of the Buddhas' which is a recreation of the

Prajnaparamitra Sutra:

 

" I sing this spontaneous hymn of light to praise Mother

Prajnaparamita. She is worthy of infinite praise. She

is utterly unstained, because nothing in this

insubstantial world can possibly stain her. She is an

ever-flowing fountain of incomparable light...She leads

living beings into her clear light from the blindness

and obscurity caused by moral and spiritual impurity as

well as by partial or distorted views of reality...Mother

Prajnaparamita is total awakeness. She never substantially

creates any limited structure because she experiences none

of the tendencies of living beings to grasp, project, or

conceptualize...She is the Perfect Wisdom that never comes

into being and therefore never goes out of being. She is

known as the Great Mother by those spiritually mature beings

who dedicate their mind streams to the liberation and full

enlightenment of all that lives. "

 

Appended, is more understanding given about the Divine Mother in Buddhism, by

Andrew Harvey & Anne Baring.

 

regards,

 

violet

 

 

 

While the sex- and body-hating aspects of some of the Buddha's teaching cannot

be denied, what is also undeniable is that this teaching has at its core a very

profound understanding and advocacy of compassion as the only possible wise

response to life and living beings. The statues that convey - or try to -

something of the Buddha's presence always have a certain radiant androgyny, and

all the accounts of his personality stress marvelous gentleness and tenderness

toward all life, including animal life. The Buddha's poignant sense of the

suffering of all sentient beings flowered into a philosophy and practice of

compassion that enfolded all living things in an unconditional embrace and

acceptance. That the nature of this compassion was recognized and celebrated as

feminine is made clear in the early Sutta Nipata Sutra, which claims to hand on

the Buddha's own teaching on loving kindness:

 

May creatures all abound in weal and peace

May all be blessed with peace always.

Let none cajole or flout

His fellow anywhere

Let none wish others harm

In dudgeon or hate.

Just as with her own life, a mother

Shields from hurt her own, her only child,

Let all-embracing thoughts

For all that lives by thine -

An all-embracing love for all the universe

In all its heights and depths and breadth,

Unstinted love, unmarred by hate within...

 

This magnificent vision of compassion, of " an all-embracing love for the

universe...unmarred by hate within, " is the deathless contribution of Buddhism

to the religious imagination of the world. In mystical elaborations of this

compassion - in the Mahayana vision of the Mother of Compassion, in the

evolution of a female savior named Tara, in the Tantric sexual and philosophical

vision that embraces sex and the holiness of women - we find developments of the

Buddha's teachings that expand the Divine Feminine truths already inherent in

them.

 

Let us take, to begin with, the later Mahayana vision of supreme wisdom being

the " Mother " of all things, including authentic compassion. It is one of the

greatest strengths of the Buddha's teachings that he views compassion and wisdom

as essentially one at the highest level. Compassion is not merely an emotional

response to the suffering and need of beings; it arises out of the revelation

that supreme wisdom (Prajnaparamita) alone can " mother " (give birth to) an

understanding of the " emptiness " of all phenomena. Milarepa crystalized this

teaching in his statement, " Seeing emptiness, have compassion. " What the Buddha

invites us to do is to let go of all the structures and concepts that inhibit

our awareness of our inherent nonexistence, or, putting it differently, our

" interdependence " with every other thing that exists, so that we can be released

from all suffering that comes from a mistaken narrow belief in one identity and

also cultivate intense compassion for all others caught in its imaginery hell.

All words, structures, dogmas, formulations, and conceptions are " empty " ; when

this is realized beyond thought we are inititated into the ground of our being,

which is that shining boundless void of wisdom and compassion that is the Mother

of all reality, and so, of all true awakening. That this experience of the void

is an experience of the Mother of all things is made clear in hymn after hymn in

the Mahayana tradition. Take Rahula Sadra's wonderful celebration:

 

Homage to Thee, Perfect Wisdom,

Boundless, and transcending thought,

All thy limbs are without blemish,

Faultless those who thee discern.

 

Spotless, unobstructed, silent,

Like the vast expanse of space;

Who in truth does really see Thee

The Tathagata perceives.

 

As the moonlight does not differ

From the moon, so also Thou

Who abounds in holy virtues

Are the Teacher of the world...

 

Teachers of the world, the Buddhas

Are thine own compassionate sons;

They are Thou, O Blessed Lady,

Grandmoter thus of beings all.

 

All the immaculate perfections

At all times encircle Thee

As the stars surround the crescent,

O Thou blameless holy one!

 

To realize the voidness of phenomena then is to realize the immense " spotless,

unobstructed, silent, " all-embracing nature of supreme wisdom, the Mother of all

phenomena. To awaken this sublime, all-cradling Mother truth, is to give birth

to the supreme virtues needed for the freedom of enlightenment - fearlessness,

boundless stamina, indefatigable concern, and commitment to liberate all beings

from their prisons of false understanding. As Lex Hixon writes in Mother of the

Buddhas, his vibrant re-creation of the Prajnaparamita Sutra:

 

I sing this spontaneous hymn of light to praise Mother

Prajnaparamita. She is worthy of infinite praise. She

is utterly unstained, because nothing in this

insubstantial world can possibly stain her. She is an

ever-flowing fountain of incomparable light...She leads

living beings into her clear light from the blindness

and obscurity caused by moral and spiritual impurity as

well as by partial or distorted views of reality...Mother

Prajnaparamita is total awakeness. She never substantially

creates any limited structure because she experiences none

of the tendencies of living beings to grasp, project, or

conceptualize...She is the Perfect Wisdom that never comes

into being and therefore never goes out of being. She is

known as the Great Mother by those spiritually mature beings

who dedicate their mind streams to the liberation and full

enlightenment of all that lives.

 

Perhaps because such a concept was too abstract for many people, there gradually

grew up within Mahayana Buddhism a need for a female figure to crystalize such

intuitions about the feminine face of reality. This figure came to be Tara, the

Savioress, whose name means Star. Veneration of Tara seems to have begun around

the seventh or eighth century in India. It was then imported into Tibet by

Atisa, who arrived there in 1042, and it became a potent spiritual force in

Tibet by the fourteenth century and continued to grow in intensity until the

present day. The worship of the Goddess Tara is now one of the most widespread

of Tibetan cults, unaffected by sect, education, class, or position; from the

highest to the lowest, the Tibetans realize with Tara a personal and enduring

relationship, unmatched by any other single deity, even among those of their

gods most powerful in appearance or seemingly more profound in symbolic

association. Tara, in other words, is the Divine Mother of Tibetan Buddhism, a

tender, beautiful, intimately and personally concerned deity who protects all

who turn to her from what is called in tradition, the eight great terrors -

drowning, thieves, lions, snakes, fire, spirit, captivity, and elephants - and

also from the sixteen great terrors that include the eight already mentioned and

add doubt, lust, avarice, envy, false views, hatred, delusion, and pride. As an

ancient Tibetan prayer ends:

 

I pay homage to Tara, the Mother

Who saves us from all poverty and danger

May I and all sentient beings

Live directly in your sublime presence.

 

In some of the many beautiful stories that have come down to us, merely saying

Tara's name, brings her instant help. In Tibet, the power of her mantra - Om

Tara Tuttare Ture Svaha - when repeated in the heart with devotion is

universally recognized. Gedundrub, a great devotee of the Goddess, writes; " If

one knows enough to recite her mantra, then it is said though one's head be cut

off, one will live, though one's flesh be hacked to pieces, one will live; this

is a profound counsel. " Another lover of Tara, Dorje Chopa, has written, " The

recitation of her mantra has great consequences...just sharing its sound has

inconceivable effect that saves from suffering whatever one wants to have,

whatever unpleasant thing one wants to be without, she responds to it like an

echo. Tara loves and protects the practitioner, as if she were the moon

accompanying him, never a step away. "

 

The Divine Feminine

Andrew Harvey & Anne Baring - Conari Press

Berkeley, CA

ISBN 1-57324-035-4 (hardcover)

Pgs. 137-141