Green Tara Mantra
OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SOHA
This female aspect, Tara, Mother of all the Victorious Ones guides you and other living beings from the danger of falling into samsara or the lower nirvana, and leads you to the perfect state of enlightenment, which is qualified with the five transcendental wisdoms and the four kayas. The rough meaning of these three words TARE TUTTARE TURE is: “To you, embodiment of all the buddhas’ actions, I prostrate always—whether I am in happy or unhappy circumstances—with my body, speech and mind.” By establishing the path of the three capable beings within your heart, you purify all impurities of your body, speech and mind, and achieve Tara’s pure vajra holy body, holy speech and holy mind, which are signified by OM.TARE means liberating from samsara. This samsara is found within or ‘tied to’ the physical body; emotions; thoughts; actions; and deeds. These aggregates, which are attached to the ego (the ‘I’), are caused by the contaminated seed of karma resulting in negative thought, words and deeds. As a result of these karmas, upon ‘death’ our consciousness is circled back to a life with the intent of being liberated from Samsara. As the seed of the disturbing thoughts is there upon reincarnation, you again create karma. The cycle continues. As we continue to work through, or carry forward past aggregates, we also create new ones, which means the journey to samsara is further, but not unattainable. TARE shows that Mother Tara liberates living beings from samsara, from true suffering, or problems. You can relate this to the particular sufferings of human beings: birth, old age, sickness and death; meeting undesirable objects and experiencing aversion; not finding desirable objects or finding them but gaining no satisfaction. If you rely upon Tara by taking refuge in her and doing Tara practices—such as the recitation of mantra or praises—with TARE, Tara liberates you from all these true sufferings.
TUTTARE liberates you from the eight fears. There are eight fears related to external dangers from fire, water, air, earth, and also from such things as thieves and dangerous animals. However, the main dangers come from internal fears: ignorance, attachment, anger, pride, jealousy, miserliness, doubt and wrong views. By taking refuge in Tara, you are liberated from these eight internal dangers/thoughts. As deeds or actions follow thoughts, by liberating ourselves from the internal fears, these negative actions do not cross over into the physical word, freeing us from the eight external fears as well.
TURE, liberates you from disease. Of the Four Noble Truths, TURE shows the cessation of suffering, which is the ultimate Dharma. In terms of liberating from disease, the actual disease we have is ignorance not knowing the absolute nature of the ego, or ‘I’, and all the disturbing thoughts that arise from this ignorance. These are the actual, serious diseases that we have. With cessation of all these diseases of disturbing thoughts, all the true sufferings, all the resultant problems, are also ceased. By liberating us from disease, TURE actually liberates us from the true cause, disturbing thoughts, and also the true sufferings. How can we achieve this ultimate Dharma, this true cessation of the cause and result of suffering? What can lead us to this state, the cessation of suffering, which is the meaning of TURE? You achieve this by practicing the true path. As revealed in the Lesser Vehicle paths of the Hearer-Listeners and Self-conquerors, and in the Mahayana path, the true path is the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness. This is the absolute Dharma. Actualizing this wisdom within our mind leads us to the state of cessation of suffering. This true path is contained in TUTTARE. And as I have just explained, the third word, TURE, liberates you from the actual disease, the disturbing thoughts.
The conclusion is that by taking refuge in Tara, doing Tara practices such as recitation of the Tara mantra, and practicing the path contained in that mantra, you can achieve the fully enlightened state with the four kayas, which is the cessation, liberated from the two obscurations. In short, OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SOHA means “I prostrate to the Liberator, Mother of all the Victorious Ones.” Tara is the mother of all the Victorious Ones, or buddhas. Why are buddhas called Victorious Ones? Because they are victorious over the two obscurations.
