About Arya Tara

Arya Tara is the wisdom form of all the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the 10 directions.  In the ultimate sense she has since primordial time attained the state of original wakefulness that is the very essence of the female Buddha Prajnaparamita.  However, to portray her background in a way that ordinary people comprehend, here is her story:

Long time ago, in the past eon, in the world Myriad Lights, there was a Buddha known as Drum Thunder.  It was in the presence of this Buddha that she was the princess Wisdom Moon and first formed the resolve to attain supreme enlightenment, and here she took the oath to work for the welfare of all beings in the form of a woman until the whole samsara is emptied.

In accordance with her vow, she practiced day and night and became able to liberate every day one hundred billion sentient beings from their mundane frame of mind and made them attain the ‘acceptance of the non-arising of all things’.  Through this, she was given the name Arya Tara, the Sublime Savioress,

the mere recalling of whose name invokes the blessings to dispel the attachment to both samsara’s suffering and the shortcomings of the passive state of nirvana.

After that she took the vow in front of Buddha Amoghasiddhi to protect the beings of the 10 directions from fear and all kinds of harm.  At another occasion, she acted as an emanation of Avalokiteshvara’s wisdom in order to assist him in working for the liberation of all beings.  In this way, her life examples surpass the reach of ordinary thought.

Particularly in this world, during the golden age the compassionate Avalokiteshvara taught one hundred million vajrayana tantras on Mount Potala in India, and has continued through this age of strive (kali yuga) to teach medium and concise versions in accord with people’s capacities.  These practices pacify the eight and sixteen types of fear, and cause a wish-fulfilling attainment of all needs and aims.  Ultimately, one can realize the wisdom body of mahamudra.

There are innumerable wonderful stories of past practitioners to support this.

In short, since Arya Tara is the activity of all Buddhas embodied in a single female form, her blessings are swifter than that of any other deity.  Most of the learned and accomplished masters of India and Tibet kept her as their main practice and attained siddhis.  This is why we today have such a boundless supply of practiced and instructions of Araya Tara.

text courtesy Rangjung Yeshe Publications