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Marcia Dechen Wangmo
I am delighted to present The Tara Compendium, Feminine Principles Discovered, the second book in the Three Roots series of lama, yidam, and dakini. Normally, the second book concerns yidam practice, the source of accomplishment. Yet, paradoxically, this book is about Tara, who often gets categorized under the dakini section of the Three Roots, as per Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche’s advice for my own practice. To complicate things, Adeu Rinpoche teaches on Tara as yidam, and in the preliminaries for the Drölma Zabtik cycle, she is the lama. So how does all of this fit together in a neat sequential package? It does not, because all of the Three Roots are interchangeable; each can be a lama, yidam, or dakini. It is only our childish minds that want to limit their capacities, conforming them to our narrow constraints. Thinley Norbu Rinpoche clarifies this for us here:
The nature of all buddhas is the meditation deity; there is no distinction. Meditation deity is the embodiment of all lamas, yidams, and dakinis. Until enlightenment, never separate your mind from awareness of the meditation deity, which is the nature of the Buddha, the nature of your own mind.1
In essence, all deities are the same. If we realize one deity, whether imagined as lama, yidam, or dakini, we realize all of them. We need to trust this, even though we harbor preferences based on our karmic links and proclivities. Connecting with the positive qualities of the deity, we see them mirrored in ourselves and can easily relate to them. Our inherent familiarity with these qualities drew us to this training in the first place. We create an amazing energy field around ourselves, by setting the environment as sacred and by also viewing ourselves as sacred. Trungpa Rinpoche summarizes this sense of sacredness and well-being:
You begin to develop affinity with a particular buddha principle … that is associated with your basic being…. The deities represent your energy rather than being external entities…. Your own basic beingness is discovered in an enlightened form…. You identify with such principles … [which] is realization of sacredness of the universe and of yourself…. This approach of Vajrayana Buddhism to sacredness … is a matter of truth.2
Tara has so many beautiful qualities, many of which are the most special strengths of the feminine. These are not merely stereotypical characteristics of being soft and graceful. Read the Twenty-One Praises of Tara, and you’ll see she has a lot of kick-ass force within her. Her power to nurture, care for, and protect us—combined with her ability to honor, love, and heal—are qualities I identify as feminine, without making a big separation between masculine and feminine, which should always be viewed as a unity.
Tara practice allows us to accomplish many different activities. In fact, she is the activity aspect of the lotus family in many of the practices included in The Compendium. Lotus energy includes magnetizing, inspiring, creating, and joyfully fulfilling positive things as the activity aspect. Tara translates
