Guide to the Bodhisattvas (Meeting the Buddhas) by Vessantara
Author:Vessantara
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Windhorse Publications Ltd
Published: 2013-09-27T04:00:00+00:00
Plate One Vajrapāṇi - wrathful form
Plate Two Green Tārā
Plate Three White Tārā
Plate Four Maitreya
Plate Five Prajñāpāramitā
Plate Six Vajrasattva
Plate Seven Padmasambhava with the set of eight manifestations
Plate Eight Milarepa
The attention paid to Tārā by Western scholars reflects the tremendous devotion shown her by Tibetans. In Indian Buddhism, too, she gathered enough of a following to appear in many different forms. The Green Tārā is the most commonly represented and meditated upon, though there are many sādhanas of the White Tārā, associated with long life, whom we shall meet in the next chapter. There is also a very important set of twenty-one Tārās who are frequently depicted in Tibetan thangkas, usually with the Green Tārā occupying a central position.
Tārā appears in Buddhist canonical literature only at the point where the Mahāyāna is beginning to show Tantric influence. Although she is an embodiment of Avalokiteśvara’s compassion, she does not appear in those early Mahāyāna sūtras in which he plays a central part. The text that has come down to us which provides the basis for many later Tārā sādhanas is an Indian Tantric compilation known as The Origin of All Rites of Tārā, Mother of All the Tathāgatas, which was translated into Tibetan in the late twelfth century.27
Chapter 3 of that work includes the ‘Homages to the Twenty-One Tārās’, which Martin Willson says ‘became in Tibet the most popular of all hymns to Tārā, or indeed to any deity. Still today, at Tibetan monasteries around the world, it is chanted several times daily by all the monks, and on special occasions and when it is desired to enlist the Venerable Mother’s aid for some particular purpose it is this praise that is recited over and over again by both monks and laity, and in some cases by nuns too.’28 Repetition of the ‘Homages’ also forms a central part of the very common devotional ritual known as the four mandala offering to Tārā. Here, the word mandala is used in a different sense from the mandala of the five Buddhas. It refers to a visualization of the entire universe, along with everything beautiful and valuable, which is repeatedly offered to Tārā in the course of the ritual.
In Tibetan history, one name stands out above all others in connection with Tārā, and that is Atīśa. Atīśa was a great Indian scholar, who answered an invitation to go to Tibet in the eleventh century, despite a prediction that the journey would shorten his life by twenty years. Atīśa is a central figure for Tibetan Buddhism. His ‘Lamp for the Path’ is a model for the Lam Rim or ‘Graduated Path’ teachings. He introduced some much needed reforms into the Buddhism of Tibet, and founded the Kadam school, whose adherents were the spiritual ancestors of the Gelukpas. Above all, though, Atīśa had the deepest love and devotion for the Bodhicitta teachings and for Tārā. This communicated itself to everyone he met. It is from the crystal spring of his own practice that so much of the devotion to Tārā in Tibet flowed.
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