Thanghkas and yantras are used as meditation tools. Just calmly looking at them is meant to hook you up into the divine geometry of the universe, to retune you. Music can do the same thing.
Tara comes in many colors, each of which focus her particular strengths. Isn't that cool? Doesn't that make sense? I will show you an image of White Tara later. White Tara, as you would imagine, looks Asian -- usually Chinese, at least to me. To me, Green Tara looks African. My favorite girlfriend, Debbie McLeod -- she and Green Tara look so much alike, it's jolting! Ah, Debbie! But Debbie is another story ...
Green Tara is often known as "The Giver of Prosperity." Another one of her names, or aspects, that I particlarly like, is "Unchallenged Furious Lady."
My high-school English teacher once told me that I had a big nose that made me look like an elephant. My mother didn't think it was funny. My mother almost got him fired. He never made that kind of mistake again. My mother was Green Tara at that moment. Green Tara kicks ass!!
Green Tara is the mother who protects us from fear. She protects us from our own inner demons, or negative, habituated thoughts and feelings. Tara saves us from ourselves. Tara saves me from me. To keep things light, Tara also mirrors back to us the best things about ourselves. Just like my grandmas did. I could do no wrong in their eyes. Tara is that mother, too.
If you will notice in the painting, Tara's right palm is facing toward us, and her right foot is extended off her throne toward us. The point is: she is willing to come on down and set things right in short order. Tara does this because she is unconditionally loving. And, like I said, she's not afraid to kick your ass or mine if it is in the interest of elevating all life.
Gazing upon the image of Tara is supposed to help us deal with our own craziness, and specifically heal us mentally, emotionally and physically. Tara really keeps me sane.
More about the Green Tara
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I deal with bipolar depression, which I have fortunately been able to successfully treat. Yes, I have to do a lot to keep on this human plane: one, take medications under a psychiatrist's care as directed and only as directed. I see a fantastic therapist! My psychiatrist is also great. [You have to see a doctor who thinks and cares about you as a person. I have fired many MDs and psychiatrists along the way to get the treatment I needed.]
As long as I am doling out advice: if you are dealing with depression, anxiety or some other form of mental illness, you need to ask a physician for medical help, don't worry about what the family will think, and fucking change your life. If you are drinking alcohol and/or using recreational drugs such as marijuana and cocaine, then you are doubly fucking yourself! You have no hope for mental relief until you stop self-medicating! I have been sober for 19 years. I have seen the addicts who can't get or stay sober because they will not address their mental health issues. I have also seen the people who deny their mental troubles and try to drown their pain with drugs and alcohol. It's like putting a match into an open gas tank ...
Check out my web link to AA. Everyone needs to know and understand about AA, because everyone knows a drunk and/or addict.
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Alcoholics Anonymous
If it wasn't for Alcoholics Anonymous, I still would be out of my friggin' mind!!! AA and my spiritual practices. Buddhism and AA together have been essential for quieting my mind. You will hear about both of these inevitably.
What I believe is, the best of the universe, both inside and outside me, collaborated to take me out of insanity and give me what I never had: a stabilized mind, a stabilized neurochemistry, and a greater, inherently spiritual, consciousness beyond my understanding that is responsible for this stability. Of course, I have to be willing and conscious to stay stable one day at a time. But I give credit to this harmonizing super-consciousness, and to me, she is Green Tara.
So: Green Tara saves me from the worst in me, and brings out the best in me. I wish everyone had a conscious awareness of this kind of feminine spirituality. Thank goodness that those Christians, who want her, have Mother Mary.
I remember when I was four years old that I could not fall asleep until my mother came into my room and tucked me into bed so that I felt like I was being held. I do believe I was being held! God as Mother was there all along! I think more of Mother Mary when I visualize me, a very little kid, back then in Colorado Springs, before my family fell apart, and then came back together in California, the land of the hippies. The Mother was there in that room with me. She was like the light coming through the open door that my mom knew to keep only three-quarters shut for me.
I always think of God as Mother as being around me. Green Tara kicks ass and encourages and emboldens me, so I like to think of her as riding shotgun with me here in my life in the City of Our Lady Queen of the Angels. She, and Our Lady of Guadelupe!
For any of you who think I am crazy, you may have a point, but along with the craziness comes mysticism. I believe in the spiritual world, and I feel sorry for you if you don't. It's real, dudes. If you have ever surfed, you have felt the presence of nature in harmony with something greater than the physics of wave mechanics.
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Hey, I am going to go surfing later this week -- up the Malibu coast an hour until I hit the LA/Ventura County lines. I pity you landlubbers who have never danced with the Pacific! I am going to play like an otter and swim like a dolphin. And I will come back a new man.
Hopefully, there won't be too many other surfers there. The ocean turns surfers mellow; it isn't the drugs. Some of the most spiritual people you will ever meet in the world are surfers, seriously.
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