So, today, we will start the talks for the retreat from afar, and I thought what to do is to
talk about White Tara; to make it a series. Then, we will go through the sadhana and talk
about different parts of the sadhana – because that will help everybody who is doing the
retreat from afar and everybody who is doing the retreat here.
So just to talk a little bit about White Tara to start with. All the Buddhas have the same
realizations; you can’t differentiate them. From the side of a Buddha, they don’t have
the same feeling of “I” that we deluded beings do. The minds of all the Buddhas know
the same thing; they have the same realizations and so on, but because we can’t communicate
with the Buddha’s mind directly, the Buddhas appear in different physical forms and the
physical forms represent certain aspects of a Buddha’s omniscient mind.
So, Tara’s aspect—there are a few different things it represents. One is that she represents
the enlightened activity of the Buddha, the trinley of the Buddha. So that's the way in
which the Buddhas interact with sentient beings to help ripen our minds. Tara represents that
kind of activity of interacting with sentient beings to help ripen their minds. This is
one way to think of Tara.
Lama Yeshe used to say, “Women have quick wisdom.” And so Tara represents also wisdom,
but quick wisdom; it is not deluded wisdom. Actually, wisdom can’t be deluded; that’s
an oxymoron. But you know how sometimes we think we’re acting from a space of wisdom,
but it’s actually a space of ignorance? Have you ever done that? Like: “I know this
is the right thing to do. My motivation is good and I’m acting completely right,”
and then, we find out later our mind was completely under the influence of ridiculous ways of
thinking – that we thought were wisdom at the moment. Tara’s quick wisdom is not that;
Tara’s quick wisdom is actual wisdom.
Also, she represents a long life, and the ability to extend our lifetime not simply
because we don’t want to die. We’ve died infinite times in previous lives; we don’t
need to be afraid of it. We need to be concerned with what happens after death: where we are
reborn. But dying? We’ve lived through it many times. You know, when you think about
it, we’ve died infinite times in samsara. We’ve lived through it! So to extend our
lifespan so we have more time to practice the Dharma—that's the purpose of it. If
we don’t practice the Dharma, then it really doesn’t matter whether we have a long life
or a short life. However, if we practice the Dharma, then having a long life is very, very useful.
So those were the specialties of Tara; a way to relate to her.
Then the white color of her body usually represents cleansing. So we can think, especially in
the visualization - it is very much a purification visualization. Because we’re purifying things
that could shorten our lifespan, such as degeneration of the elements of the body, or the life force
being stolen, or broken ethical restraints, broken precepts, broken commitments.
You’ll remember, in initiation, that we invoke Tara’s blessings in the form of her
implements, small deities, the mantra, and the letters om ah hum. And Rinpoche said that
that represented restoring the energy of our broken commitments and ethical restraints.
Because those broken precepts can degenerate our lifespan, so we want to restore them.
So we invoke all of that energy, and this beautiful white energy from Tara is coming
down into us, purifying everything that needs to be purified, including negative karma.
But also restoring the lifespan, any kind of rebalancing the elements in our body, or
restoring any lost energy of any of the elements in our body, and also restoring the vows,
our ethical restraints, and our commitments. That is just one way to think about Tara to start with.