Tara (Arya Tara, also known as Jetsun Dolma) in Tibetan Buddhism, is a female Bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism who appears as a female Buddha in Vajrayana Buddhism. She is known as the 'mother of liberation', and represents the virtues of success in work and achievements. In Japan she is known as Tarani Bosatsu but virtually unknown in China. In Hinduism, the Goddess Tara (meaning 'star') is the second of the Dasa (ten) Mahavidyas or 'Great Wisdom [Goddesses]', Tantric manifestations of Mahadevi, Kali, or Parvati. As the star is seen as a beautiful but perpetually self-combusting thing, so Tara is perceived at core as the absolute, unquenchable hunger that propels all life.
In the Hindu epic The Ramayana, Tara is the name of Vali's queen. Vali is the monkey king who is killed by Rama, at the behest of his brother Sugriva. The similarity however is only in the name and she should not be confused with the Supreme Goddess. Tara is a tantric meditation deity whose practice is used by practitioners of the Tibetan branch of Vajrayana Buddhism to develop certain inner qualities and understand outer, inner and secret teachings about compassion and emptiness. Tara is actually the generic name for a set of Buddhas or bodhisattvas of similar aspect. These may more properly be understood as different aspects of the same quality, as bodhisattvas are often considered metaphoric for Buddhist virtues.
The most widely known forms of Tara are:
- Green Tara, known as the Buddha of enlightened activity
- White Tara, also known for compassion, long life, healing and serenity;
also known as The Wish-fulfilling Wheel, or Cintachakra
- Red Tara, of fierce aspect associated with magnetizing all good things
- Black Tara, associated with power
- Yellow Tara, associated with wealth and prosperity
- Blue Tara, associated with transmutation of anger
- Cittamani Tara, a form of Tara widely practiced at the level of Highest Yoga Tantra in the Gelug School of Tibetan Buddhism, portrayed as green and often conflated with Green Tara
- Khadiravani Tara (Tara of the teak forest), who appeared to Nagarjuna in the Khadiravani forest of South India and who is sometimes referred to as the'22nd Tara.'
- There is also recognition in some schools of Buddhism of twenty-one Taras. A practice text entitled 'In Praise of the 21 Taras', is recited during the morning
in all four sects of Tibetan Buddhism.
Within Tibetan Buddhism Tara is regarded as a Boddhisattva of compassion and action. She is the female aspect of Avalokitesvara (Chenrezig) and in some origin stories she comes from his tears, Tara is also known as a saviouress, as a heavenly deity who hears the cries of beings experiencing misery in samsara. The Tara figure originated not in Buddhism but in Hinduism, where she, Tara, was one of a number of Mother Goddess figures alongside Sarasvati, Lakshmi, Parvati, and Shakti. In the 6th century C.E., during the era of the Pala Empire, Tara was adopted into the Buddhist pantheon as an important bodhisattva figure just a few centuries after the Prajnaparamita Sutra had been introduced into what was becoming the Mahayana Buddhism of India. It would seem that the feminine principle makes its first appearance in Buddhism as the 'Mother of Perfected Wisdom' and then later Tara comes to be seen as an expression of the compassion of perfected wisdom. However, sometimes Tara is also known as 'the Mother of the Buddhas', which usually refers to the enlightened wisdom of the Buddhas, so in approaching Buddhist deities, one learns not to impose totally strict boundaries about what one deity covers, as opposed to another deity.
Cold Cast is a modern method of casting sculptures using a mixture of resin and powdered polymer materials. The finished sculpture has a surface which looks very similar to traditionally cast material, but tends to be much lighter.
