TARA IS AWAKENED awareness manifest in a female form. She’s a beloved Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist figure whose countless devotees have invoked her compassionate presence since the late sixth century in India. While Tara’s wisdom is inconceivably profound, she’s immediately accessible to us in any moment.
Wisdom and compassion are the two wings that carry us to awakening. As the divine feminine, Tara represents wisdom, which is the essential counterpart to the masculine principle of compassion. Tara is the dynamic expression of mind’s empty essence, which is pure, unbounded potentiality and creativity—the womb of all that is. As such, she’s the mother of all the buddhas. Tara embodies innate wisdom and unconditional, boundless love as she continuously nurtures and protects sentient beings.
Tara’s name is derived from the Sanskrit root tṛ, which means “to traverse” or “to cross.” Tara guides and protects us as we journey across the ocean of the suffering of cyclic existence and arrive at the shore of enlightenment. In Tibetan, she’s known as Jetsun Drölma. Jetsun means “noble, revered” and Drölma means “she who liberates.” Tara is the noble one who liberates us from the ocean of suffering.
She arises in many forms of varying colors and demeanors, each of which has a specific way of supporting us on the path to liberation. Green Tara is a principal form
