Preliminary Notes

Here are some preliminary notes and ideas to help you get ready for the Saturday Green Tara Empowerment. I have been terribly busy this week dealing with the blizzard and shoveling along with other items heading into March schedule and etc. So please forgive the nature of these notes. They are not polished poetry. There may be repetition or run-ons, but I think the message will come through…

Tara is a female Buddha. Green Tara is considered the root form/color of Tara. There are numerous other Tara ceremonies, such as White Tara, Red Tara, etc. (there are 21 Taras), but it is customary to start with the root, Green Tara. For Tibetans (and many others), green is the color of vibrant, active energy. Green Tara, where our blossoming energy bursts into the light of love and wisdom.

Tara is fearless, and lifts us from fears, which lifts us from all the anxiety and limitations that even the most hidden and subtle of fears, such as that quiet anxiety in the back of the mind, which have been subtly draining our energy. Tara is love – the mother of all Buddhas. Like an idealized mother, she is the ever-understanding hug that ends suffering. Even deeper, as the mother of all Buddhas, Tara meditation gives birth to the Buddha inside us, creating new Buddhas in every moment. Remembering here that “Buddha” is a term, not only a historic person, and that a “buddha” is a person who has awakened to their already present, inherently miraculous nature. “The Buddha” in a historic sense is simply a charismatic person (and persons, as there have been many Buddhas) who figured this out and shared it with others. All of us are Buddhas, and we simply need to look and see this, right now. “To see a Buddha, look within” as Zen Masters say.

Tara is infinite compassion, love embodied. Tara is wisdom. This is the wisdom of seeing and accepting ourselves, piercing through the delusions and illusions that distract us from the beautiful act of Being. She is associated with the moon, so her wisdom is laden with the soft light of intuition.

Fearless wisdom and love. With her right leg always depicted as stepping forward, she is swift in action and represents enlightened activity in the world.

EMPOWERMENT CEREMONY

Lama Migmar will guide us through the empowerment ceremony and will supply the depth of experience and guidance, so that is not included here. I am supplying here just a few tips to help you prepare for this:

Tibetan Buddhism is a beautifully artistic medium through which to explore profound meditative experiences. It is full of light and colors and imagery. The imagery is laden with meaning, guiding us into poetic expressions of our marvelous human experience within a cosmic expansiveness. Adding texture to the visual journey is a profound expression of sound in the Tara mantra. Sound, color, light, and image come together in this ceremony, with all of it fueled by feeling, as we generate a deep sense of love and compassion.

The heart of the empowerment ceremony is a guided visualization. In short, we open into a vision of Green Tara, giving tangible shape and body to house wisdom and love, and then we absorb those enlivened, activated qualities back into our Self, becoming the vision itself. See Green Tara in all her qualities – absorb Green Tara into ourselves – embody the qualities of Green Tara, right now. Inner and outer merge. There is a profound journey within the visualization, and Lama Migmar will guide us on this journey, ranging from the depths of our inner being, through the cosmos and back.

It’s a really interesting process. Again, the main idea is around a vision of Green Tara. That vision is our inherent Buddha nature taken shape. We perceive it outside of ourselves, seeing it in a pure and unhindered form. When we then merge with that vision, we step immediately into our pure and unhindered Buddha (Tara) nature.

When we visualize Green Tara, we have let our fearless love, wisdom, and energy flow into the form of Tara, a body woven for our creative act, allowing that energy to be seen in tangible form in front of us. When we step into that space, absorbing and receiving Tara back within us, we are now existing in that reality. We are the qualities that we have perceived. We open our minds and hearts to the healing we need or the insight that we are awaiting, or whatever our journey brings us. Our definition of ourselves shifts. There is no “path,” so to speak. We generate the “result,” and we step directly into it. Our Buddha nature was there all the time, so, not only generating, we are receiving - we receive the qualities that were already there, laying in a latent state, waiting for us to tune in to their frequency.

It is profound and it is simple. Lama Migmar will guide us into a visualization, and guide us into becoming that visualization. We recognize that we are the energy of the universe, and the universe is creating itself in every moment

TIPS:

-How effective this is can be influenced by how much you believe it. Powerfully connect to these feelings of love and wisdom, powerfully connect to the truth that you are inherently a perfect Buddha-being, and allow yourself to truly enter that space. Give yourself to the creative act of being. It is a courageous and beautiful thing to do.

-be open. While much of this is creative, it is also receptive. There is an energy that flows through the empowerment ceremony, and if we open ourselves to receive it, the ceremony will guide us into itself, and we don’t need to do any work at all!

-if you get lost in the visualization or any other aspect, don’t worry! Just conjure the overall feeling of the ceremony. If you lose the details, keep engaged with the essence. This ceremony can also be done as a blessing, where you just receive and are washed in the energy of the empowerment, so, whatever happens, you are going to be there and you can be open and receptive, and the energy will flow through you. It is simple, all we need is our presence (which is also rather profound)

REFUGE CEREMONY

Generally, Lama Migmar does a refuge ceremony as part of the Green Tara Empowerment. In this ceremony, we take refuge in the traditional Buddhist Three Jewels: the Buddha; the Dharma; the Sangha. Added to the three jewels is a fourth refuge object: the Guru. In taking refuge, we connect with and are supported by the Guru, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. It is also a connection to the living tradition of Buddhism. To mark this connection, participants have the option of receiving a Buddhist name from Lama Migmar. The idea of receiving a name is to remind us of the relationship between form and emptiness, and to remind us that we have the creative power to shape, to “name,” our existence moment by moment. I have come to value this refuge ceremony more and more. I think as we shift ever increasingly into online pre-recorded video programs, we are losing so much of the magic of human-to-human connection. Lama Migmar has been a Buddhist Lama since he was a child. I have known him for about 20 years, and in that time, I have witnessed his constant embodiment of love and compassion. He has learned directly from great masters, has been recognized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who comes from a long line of spiritual leaders, and has worked closely with H.H. Sakya Trizin, who is the head of the Sakya Buddhist lineage (which is a hereditary position that has been unbroken for centuries). All this energy from all these generations across all these continents passes through Lama Migmar to us, in person. It is a current of human energy that we are celebrating being a part of. It is actually an unbroken chain all the way back to the historic Buddha, closing the loop of the refuge (in that we connect to the historic Buddha, but also recognize that we are peers with the historic Buddha, as we are Buddhas ourselves)

A few ideas on the refuge ceremony:

Each aspect has an inner and an outer quality.

The outer Guru is the teacher. It is helpful to have a guide, or a “good friend” as they say in Zen. The inner guru is that inner teacher within you – the voice that guides us if we take the time to listen.

The outer Buddha is the historic Buddha. The inner buddha is our inner enlightened nature, in that we actually are Buddha.

The outer Dharma is the Buddha’s teaching. The inner Dharma is our awakening to the energy of the universe, the true nature of ourselves – the true dharma is the essence that the outer dharma can only ever point to.

The outer Sangha is the Community, the people around us, who support and encourage us. The internal Sangha is the cultivation of support for all the diverse aspects inside of us that create a Self.

PREPARATION:

-meditate. Spend some time prior to the ceremony being quiet. Open your mind, enhancing your receptive and perceptive awareness. Spend time letting your thoughts and worries wash through and wind down, opening more space in your mind. There is no pressure to do any particular style of meditation, really just allow yourself to relax over the next day or so

-practice visualization and become familiar with the image of Green Tara. You can practice visualization by looking at the image of Green Tara, closing your eyes and trying to conjure that image. Do it repeatedly, and don’t get attached to “performance.” You can use the image below. No need to try to print it or anything, just use your screen for now, and enlarge your screen enough to see the image well. Everyone will receive this image on a card on Saturday.

-allow yourself to feel. “Visualization” is an incomplete description. We also want to feel, not just “see.” What would it feel like if you were unafraid? What would it feel like to be full of love and compassion? What would it feel like to be open to intuitive, insightful wisdom?

-be organized and observant. Don’t try to cram in a bunch of stuff Saturday morning! Let the day unfold slowly and elegantly. Observe the world around you on your way to Cedar Wind Center. Experience the play of light on the snow, the beautiful contrasts of branches and sky. This observation is our receptive energy. The more we have allowed our receptivity to open, the more we will be receptive to the energy that flows through the Green Tara Empowerment. Let the day finish just as gently and fully. Allow yourself the space to witness the day darken and merge into night.

See you Saturday!