Red Tara Commentary: Instructions for the Concise Practice Known as Red Tara by Chagdud Khadro

Author:Chagdud Khadro [Khadro, Chagdud]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Padma Publishing
Published: 2015-04-12T03:00:00+00:00

Transformation into the Wisdom Body of Tara

Visualization

INITIATION INTO THE APONG TERTON lineage of Red Tara empowers practitioners to follow the prayers for accomplishment with the development stage of visualizing themselves as Red Tara. Empowerment is necessary for this stage, self-visualization, because it increases the mind’s receptivity to the blessings of the lineage lamas and opens the possibility of full realization. While by visualizing and praying to the deity’s outer form we remove obstacles and establish good conditions, it is empowerment that enables us to actualize Tara’s qualities of enlightened body, speech and mind.

We first relax the mind, allowing ordinary appearances and the habit of holding to them as solid to subside, to recede from our consciousness, so that we experience the nature of nondual emptiness. This emptiness is not nothingness, for it is the source of all phenomena. The experience of pure phenomena begins with clarity, a spontaneous focusing of the mind’s natural energy that gives rise to the pure appearance of the seed syllable Tam. It is a seed syllable in the sense that from it evolves the entire display of Red Tara, her retinue and her pure realm. Thus, Tam transforms into the luminous form of Tara—meaning that one’s own body transforms into the wisdom body of Tara—with the Buddha Amitabha above the head, in her pure realm of Yulokod, the Land of Turquoise Leaves.

The fullness of this inner aspect of Tara practice corresponds in large degree to the depth of our realization of emptiness. Although we must exert ourselves conceptually in creating and sustaining the visualization, we also develop a sense of great spaciousness, a recognition that this is the spontaneous display of pure phenomena. Tara’s form is not some imaginative artwork; it is the effortless expression of the qualities of enlightenment. One might say that Tara’s ruby-red color symbolizes discriminating awareness, love and the lotus family. From a more profound perspective, one would say that from the emptiness of dharmakaya, replete with the full potential of phenomena, the color red manifests as the pure display of discriminating awareness, of love and of the lotus family. What this means in meditation is that the deeper we relax into intrinsic awareness, buddha nature, emptiness, the more natural and genuine the qualities of visualization become. Nothing need be fabricated; we recognize our buddha nature as the ground from which arises the pure appearance of Tara.

The visualization is set forth in traditional sequence, but the focus during any particular meditation session may vary. For example, as Tara’s blessings radiate to the beings of the six realms, often specific conditions of suffering arise in one’s consciousness—the problems of a friend perhaps, a natural disaster or some catastrophic war. It is not incorrect to focus compassion on such situations in that moment, but we should always maintain a profound impartiality. All beings suffer, not just our acquaintances or those we see or hear about, but also those in realms unseen. Likewise, from now until they reach enlightenment, all beings benefit from Tara’s blessings.

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