Disclaimer: This article contains observations of my readings on Tara. Observations are neutral. I can see how you might think there is anger* behind them, but there is not. However, I find it useful to call out the spiritual texts, especially the old ones which come from a time when women were completely disregarded, or regarded as inferior, and the perpetuation of those texts as such and as valid teachings in their entirety.
I find that spirituality without social awareness is just ego tripping or escapism. We live in this conventional existence, even if one understands that there is nothing (or that everything is in your mind/ perception – which sience also agrees with). Since we are here and not in samadhi, its’s just a cognitive understanding of nothingness. Therefore using that as a justification that injustice is just a matter of perspective and only the victim can get out of it by not perceiving themselves as a victim, it’s just a shield for not being inconvenienced by the suffering in the world, or how I like to call it “spiritual gaslighting”.
So, I’ve been into Tara lately and I’ve watched a lot of Buddhist monks and especially nuns talk about her. For the past two days, I read “In praise of Tārā” by Martin Wilson. The book is from 1946, but this author proved to be more socially aware back then than most people now, even though not aware enough to see the current (to his time) struggles of women, but at least he acknowledged the historical injustice.
He also says:
and furthermore, looking at the mess the pursuit of mostly male ideas and values has got the world into, ‘Battle against Nature’ and all, not a few men as well as women now find it hard to believe that the ideal human being has to be male, and the thought of an all-male Pure Land often fails to arouse undiluted enthusiasm. In these circumstances the ideal of humanity represented by Tärä is more than welcome.
I would also like to highlight Tara as a feminist. The story goes that Buddha’s were ordinary people (as far as being a king or princess is ordinary) who achieved enlightenment. Tara was a princess who showed immense compassion (comparing to most man probably) and some monks told her to wish to be reborn as man so she can attain enlightenment, but she was like hold my whatever they were drinking at the time and did it as a woman.
Here there is no man, there is no woman,
No self, no person, and no consciousness.
Labelling ‘male’ or ‘female’ has no essence
But deceives the evil-minded world.
And she made the vow, “There are many who desire Enlightenment in a man’s body, but none who work for the benefit of sentient beings in the body of a woman. Therefore, until samsāra is empty, I shall work for the benefit of sentient beings in a woman’s body.
The author says:
even in Tantra, most of the female deities are almost anonymous consorts of the male deities; Tārā’s independence is unusual. It seems to match the way She took Her Bodhisattva Vow, relying on Her own wisdom even against received radition with all its weight of authority, a courageous example, most relevant now Buddhist teachings come laden with much tradition that need not always apply to us. It illustrates Her completeness, that She has fully developed both the feminine and the masculine within Herself, as every
practitioner, woman or man, must.
I started to have doubts about this book at page 180 when I read a story about a 12-years old girl saved by Tara from an elephant. The king saw this and considered the girl had merit so he made her his. 😮💨 Don’t tell me that this was the culture back then because raping girls isn’t culture. Also, if the law was such that permitted this, then one should wonder at the validity of this law since it wasn’t in the benefit of half of the population. I am sure there are plenty other stories about Tara saving people from elephants which do not condone child abuse. Unfortunately I am not overthinking this:
How many children are raped or abused in your country? Also, did you know the Talibans reduced the age of marriage to 9 years old? You might think that we are not like them, but we are not very far off either.
Stories shape culture and society. Is it not time to have one where abuse of children isn’t shrugged off?
Next come the praises to Tara which are in places questionable, if not downright misoginistic. And yes, at least in this book all praises are written by men and they are recited daily in different monasteries by Buddhist monks and nuns, who I’m sure have an interpretation of the verses which makes them not seem bleah, but I don’t care for it. I don’t know if there ever was a Buddha, but the more I go on the spiritual path, the more I am sure most of this men were frauds. After all, the only proof that they were enlightenment is them saying so, because their actions …pfff… I keep finding in Buddhist/ Hindu books that the master/Buddha/Guru can do no wrong. Even if they did something that seems wrong, they must of had a good reason and done it for the benefit of the others. 🤢 No wonder so many gurus got away with abuses for a long time and probably still do.
Let’s start with the praise Mātrceta wrote to Tara where he says :
Full-breasted, since loving-kindness moves Your heart
Weren’t Jesus and Krishna portrayed and the loving man ideal or something? I never heard they were full-breasted because of this. Also, let’s keep in mind that Tara is usually described as a 16-years old maiden.
In this same prais there are those verses:
43 If a king, when entering battle
wears this essence on his crown
And recites this praise and mantra
he will subjugate foes at will
44 Any woman who desiresto be free of womanly things
Or wants to achieve the supreme worldly
purpose, or the supermundane,
45 If she bathes, puts on white raimenand on the eighth of the waxing moon
Fasting, worships, makes praise and recites
she will achieve it without doubt.
“free from womanly things”, really? Like what can be worst in those “womanly things” than killing in battle, especially since Buddhists are against killing of other beings, even animals? Note how many things a woman must do to fix …well, nothing, as opposed to a man to achieve killing or enslaving his foes.
Let’s move on to Candragomin’s praise, who says:
Karma amassed in past lives, and defilements
Whatever unbearable evil acts I’ve done
Such as the five immediate and ten unwholesome
Let all these be purified without remainder
That last line… No accountability. Such a masculine thing.
Next comes the praise written by Sarvajnamitra, who wrote :
One who, deprived of livelihood
knows not what to do,
reviled by his wife in tattered garments
And avoided at great distance
since they are selfish, by
his kindred, children, friends and relatives
Having informed You of his sorrow
is master of a house
whose bounds are roughened by horses’ hooves
Where he is woken from his slumbers
just by the jingling of bangles
of the women of his harem
Let’s keep in mind this is India of around the 8th-9th century or earlier. Do you imagine it was possible for a woman to drive a man out of his house? Isn’t it more likely there was the other way around? Also, he got a harem. Imagine the fantasies of those ‘enlighted’ men who wrote those praises.
I also read in a praise a verse I didn’t save about a man who lost his family to bandits who killed them and prayed to Tara to get a new family. I can’t imagine a woman doing that. She would still hold her killed family in her heart, not just move on like nothing existed.
Sarvajnamitra continues with some more sexual fantasies:
Pearl necklaces press between their breasts
blue lotuses in their ears
vie with their elongated eyes.
Noble mandara flowers in their tresses
distil a fresh perfume
whose scent intoxicates black bees
The constant tinkle of [bells on] their girdles
is magnified by the musical
ornaments upon their feet.
The heavenly maidens, devoted and
delighting in amorous raptures
long for him who takes Refuge in You
Maybe incels should try taking refuge in Tara. Idk, maybe it works. Maybe here is the cure for the “male loneliness epidemic”.
Nāgārjuna writes:
O youthful maiden possessing breasts swollen with milk
I’m sure there’s nothing pervers in that verse, just the author referencing Tara as a mother figure …at sixteen
Tara is considered the mother of all Buddhas because she is the embodiment of wisdom, which is the main quality from which a Buddha arises. Martin Wilson, the author of this book, writes:
Wisdom can only be feminine because it is insight into late True Nature or Emptiness one and indivisible (…) All the Perfections that lead to Buddhahood have to be practised with Wisdom, thus it is in the womb of the Perfection of Wisdom that is nurtured the embryo of Buddhahood, conceived of the Thought of Enlightenment (Bodhicitta) at the time of taking the Bodhisattva Vow.
In another verse, Nāgājuna says:
Old woman of youthful appearance, following all the Buddhas
In one of the other praises cited above, it says something like “sixteen years old maiden, mature in appearance etc”. A sixteen years old is not mature though she may look so or even think she is. I thought so, but I wasn’t. Also, if you though praise of young looking women even if they are older is a modern/ Hollywood thing, then here’s proof that it is not. If they wanted to praise her immortality, they could have said ageless. I though it could be a translation issue, but this author seemed to be very careful in the translation and also followed commentaries by ‘enlightened’ men who wrote on those praises and, where possible, used the original Sanskrit text. The choise of youthful didn’t come from his bias, I’m quite sure.
Matisāra’s praise is particularly ify and fool of emotional manipulation and lack of accountability and pretension that he deserves everything while being worthless. He says something similar as below in several verses:
If now, Aryā Mother, without a glance
You abandon me amid my mass of sins
Where has Your loving Mother’s Compassion gone?
If You damp down Your surging BodhicittaIn Your sacred office, is this quite the thing?
Of yore, You’ve shown Your face and cared for peopleTimes past counting, here in Tibet, I’ve heard
Aryā, is this a lie, or have You favourites?
He does say in the end that by the merits he achieved “may all sentient beings reach Omniscience”, but since we are far from that, I guess there weren’t many merits achieved. 🤷♀️
They are not all self centered pervs though. This guy, Lozang tänpä gyälts’ än, apart from calling out the hypocrisy of all the gurus of his time in most of the praise, saying the only one he trusts is Tara herself, he wrote:
Myself and all the beings with hopes of me
I offer to You, Venerable Tarā!
Make us Your own, and to the highest Pure Land
Make us go quickly, with no births intervening
My mothers, who do not follow the Conquerors TeachingsAll mother sentient beings, whoever they are
With Your hook of compassionate skilful Means
Please transform their minds into the Dharma.
🙏
This last one was Tibetan, the rest were Indians. I’m sure this means nothing. Martin Wilson says that Tibetans were violent people who would use Tara mantras for evil deeds. Idk. Could be true, since the last author of praises was so dessilussioned with his fellow Buddhists.
Unrelated to this book, but as testimony to Buddhist misoginy, I remembered a story I read in the book “Zen and daily life” by Taisen Deshimaru. He told with great admiration of a Buddhist master who caught a monk and a nun sleeping together and threw out of the monastery the nun. He mentioned nothing about the monk, who was probably not punished and who, for all I am concerned might have raped the nun. This book was full of misoginistic remarks. It isn’t the first book on Zen, I’ve read and gagged. Reading on Zen when I was younger made me think the spiritual people are jerks. This Deshimaru seemed like a particularly miserable person from his writing.
In one of the conferences, I’ve watched online, the speaker who is a Buddhist nun, said that the 8th chapter of Santideva’s poem might seem misoginistic because it speaks of the uncleanliness of the female body, but she justified it as being written according to the audience, which was all male at the time. She said that If there were women, he would have spoken about the male body as being unclean. I disagree, because as far as I’ve noticed,women who make a vow of celibacy or decide to stay single don’t fall on their back because a pretty guy shows up. It may be like that in movies, but irl, women are not as horny as men. There is no need to defile something to not be tempted by it.
Both this nun and the author of the book “In praise of Tara” stated that women back then had less right and almost no autonomy and that’s why it was close to impossible for them to achieve enlightenment. I can say that it still hard for women to follow this path. I’ve heard a story a few months ago, about a woman who was practicing Tibetan Buddhism and went to the monastery in Switzerland to become a nun and they turned her away because she was a mother. I am sure if the father went, they would have accepted him without an issue. Also, the two women who said this story referred to this woman who wanted to be a nun as “deranged” and “weird” and agreed with the monks’ decision. I am sad to see women putting other women down especially when they are clearly in need of support. It’s not the first time I hear things like this. It feels that we have lived so long in this individualistic, male dominated society, that compassion is lost even on women.
Thank you for reading though this. No disrespect was intended to the Buddhist practice, but I believe adjustments need to be made now that we know better. 🙏
*there might be some bleah feeling though haha
The joy of creating 