Who Is Green Tara?

She who carries across

In Tibetan Buddhism, Tara is revered as a fully awakened being who appears in the form of a woman. Her Sanskrit name is often linked to crossing over; her Tibetan name, Drolma, means she who liberates. Of her many forms, Green Tara is the one most often called upon in fear and in danger.

The first verse of the Praises to the Twenty-One Taras greets her as swift and fearless. She does not wait to be convinced. She comes.

Her posture

Green Tara sits on a lotus with her left leg drawn in and her right leg extended, the foot resting on a smaller lotus, as if already rising to come to you. Her right hand rests open beside her knee in the gesture of giving. Her left hand, at her heart, holds the stem of a blue utpala flower.

Stillness and movement are held in one body. Her green is the colour of enlightened activity: compassion that acts.

The vow of Yeshe Dawa

Tibetan histories tell of a princess named Yeshe Dawa, Wisdom Moon, who lived countless ages ago and made offerings to the buddha of her time. When monks urged her to pray for rebirth as a man, she answered that in truth there is no man and no woman. Many, she said, seek awakening in a man’s body; few work for beings in a woman’s. She vowed to remain in a woman’s body until every being was free.

This is a sacred account, held in devotion rather than in history books. Its meaning has not dimmed. A woman’s body was never too small for awakening.

The Twenty-One Taras and her mantra

Tara appears in twenty-one forms, each with her own colour and activity: pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, wrathful. Lineages describe and arrange them differently, and those differences are kept with care.

Her mantra, OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SOHA, has been recited for centuries by people in every kind of trouble. It is a call, and those who say it trust that she hears. For the deeper practices of visualization and initiation, a qualified teacher in her lineage is the door.

Why women come to her

Tara does not ask a woman to become someone else before she is worthy of rescue. She does not ask her to be strong first. Her extended leg says the help is already on its way, and that you, too, can rise from where you sit.