Becoming A Goddess of Compassion

The Buddhists have a female goddess who embodies essential powers to aid those on the journey to enlightenment, and for us, an essential secret on the road toward optimum psychological health. Tara is the embodiment of compassion.

Her name in Tibetan means “she who saves.” She is the feminine counterpart of the male god of compassion who goes by the name of Avalokiteshvara (“Buddha-to-be”). He was famous for something that later cropped up in a Woody Allen movie. When asked why he was always so unhappy, Woody said he could never be happy as long as he knew another human being was suffering somewhere. Avalokiteshvara said essentially the same thing.

Here’s the romantic part of the story. According to popular belief, Tara came into existence from a tear of Avalokiteshvara, shed as he looked back upon the sufferings on earth as he ascended into the heavens. His tear fell to the ground and formed a lake. Out of its waters arose a lotus, which, upon opening, revealed the goddess Tara.

Like Avalokiteshvara, she is a compassionate protector guiding spiritual travelers along the path to enlightenment. However, she was not created simply as a story for our entertainment. She is offered as someone to emulate via meditation and applied practice.

By visualizing Tara during meditation, you imagine what it would be like to actually be her in your everyday life, outside of meditation. For example, when you see suffering, you ask yourself what action Tara might take. What would she say? How would she react? Of course, these visualizations could be used in any religion as in, “What would Jesus do?”, “What would Mohammad say?”, “What would Buddha have done if I were him?”, etc.

I once lived with Tibetan nomads who were largely illiterate, and stories such as Tara’s were the main source of passing on knowledge from generation to generation. However, my background is in Western-based psychotherapy, a serious topic. While it may be interesting to learn how to embody a Goddess of compassion coming out of a lotus flower, what could these stories possibly have to offer our evidence-based approaches to effective psychotherapy for science-based researchers?

Becoming Tara

Imagine what it would be like to be the most compassionate person on Earth. Visualize being the greatest imaginable goodness, whatever form that takes or whatever that means to you. Voila! You are now the emanation of the greatest imagined goodness!

What would it be like if you lived your life from this perspective? Would you change anything in your life? Would it be possible to use your imagined image as a guide in life?

Tara, the goddess of compassion, is also illustrated as being multi-colored. She is typically displayed in two main colors: white to symbolize peace and love, and green to symbolize growth.

While we may associate compassion with a soft warm way of relating, Tara was also presented in a variety of additional colors, including fiery red where she is ferociously angry. As in Mamma-bear furious. Thus, from an Eastern perspective, compassion can also be tough and even violent in self-defense.

I recall a story of an American woman who traveled to India to meet her Buddhist teacher. On the way to visit him, she was assaulted by a man who she fought off and escaped. Feeling guilty for having become aggressive, upon arrival, she told the teacher what had happened and asked what she should have done instead. “You should have hit him over the head with your umbrella!” was the teacher’s response. Compassion is not weak but, without wisdom, can be dangerous.

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