Come join us for 24 hour Tara Chanting. Tara chanting helps to overcome obstacles in our lives and to help us create virtuous potentials for future good fortune. Each session is about 4o minutes long, and are done every four hours. If you like, you can bring blankets and a sleeping bag and sleep at the center during the evening sessions.
Everyone is invited to come to one or as many sessions as you like. Sessions begin at 7:00 am, Tuesday, December 31. Subsequent sessions are at 11:00am, 3:00pm, 3:00am, 7:00am (New Years Day)
No experience is necessary for any of these sessions.
Buddha of Compassion Prayers, 11:15pm – 12:00am
At 11:15 pm – 12:00am, we will be doing Avalokiteshvara Prayers followed by New Year’s Eve celebration. Please bring some snacks to share and we will supply the Martinelli’s sparkling cider.
Liberation from Sorrow
Tara is a female Buddha, a manifestation of the ultimate wisdom of all the Buddhas. Each of the Twenty-one Taras is a manifestation of the principal Tara, Green Tara. Tara is also known as the `Mother of the Conquerors’.
Tara is our common mother, our Holy Mother. When we are young we turn to our worldly mother for help. She protects us from immediate dangers, provides us with all our temporal needs, and guides and encourages us in our learning and personal development. In the same way, during our spiritual growth we need to turn to our Holy Mother, Tara, for refuge. She protects us from all internal and external dangers, she provides us with all the necessary conditions for our spiritual training, and she guides us and inspires us with her blessings as we progress along the spiritual path.
`Tara’ means `Rescuer’. She is so called because she rescues us from the eight outer fears (the fears of lions, elephants, fire, snakes, thieves, water, bondage, and evil spirits), and from the eight inner fears (the fears of pride, ignorance, anger, jealousy, wrong views, attachment, miserliness, and deluded doubts). Temporarily Tara saves us from the dangers of rebirth in the three lower realms, and ultimately she saves us from the dangers of samsara and solitary peace.
If we rely upon Mother Tara sincerely and with strong faith she will protect us from all obstacles and fulfil all our wishes. Since she is a wisdom Buddha, and since she is a manifestation of the completely purified wind element, Tara is able to help us very quickly. If we recite the twenty-one verses of praise we shall receive inconceivable benefits. These praises are very powerful because they are Sutra, the actual words of Buddha. It is good to recite them as often as we can.