In Sanskrit, Tara means something like “She who ferries across.” The best-known Tara in Tibetan Buddhism is Green Tara, who represents compassion in action, awakened action.
This is a beautiful and necessary myth. The World-man is not separate from humanity. He is the collective. The mother is not separate from the earth. She is the body. The courtship is not a story. It is the work.
What lingers with me is the distinction between doing less harm and serving life. Doing less harm is a reduction. It is a subtraction. It is the absence of damage. Serving life is a creation. It is an offering. It is the presence of love.
The gifts to Tara are not donations. They are actions. They are the moments when you choose life over comfort, beauty over convenience, service over consumption. The gifts are not measured by the world. They are measured by her.
'What lingers with me is the distinction between doing less harm and serving life. Doing less harm is a reduction. It is a subtraction. It is the absence of damage. Serving life is a creation. It is an offering. It is the presence of love.' I like that a lot
I saw some beautiful bouquets of flowers for sale last week, home grown at a lovely walled garden. I thought I would love to gift them to someone. All the people I thought of to gift them to I imagined would already have flowers or nice things in their garden. Then I thought about a building site nearby by where a lot of guys work in a rough damp mouldy portacabin. I thought no one will buy those guys flowers and they wouldn't think to buy them for themselves. So I bought the bouquet and took it to them. They were SOOO grateful. Every time I have been past this week they smile and tell me how much they are still enjoying them and the feel appreciated. So I think remember to give the God-men some beautiful gifts too and open their hearts :-)
Charles, this is so pertinent…stories are so powerful and it is great youre telling one such. One of daughters is called Tara- and what a fireball she is! Something in a name ah.
I feel the piece about man called to serve the mother..this IS my life…cant do anything else. Strive to do more..to inspire, encourage “youre awesome” and give hope…The youth so need this. We all do. So thank you brother for your work.
Wow! Earlier today I found myself remembering your Courtship of Tara piece and made a mental note to look it up to read again. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time, and here it is! A synchronicity! Thank you for saving me the time of looking it up. 😉
Beautiful Charles and so central. Tara in original Kemet tradition is E-theru, joy and beauty. The container of life (Utheru). She is Oxum, Magdalena. She is the daughter and the consort. She also is every man and woman deep quest. A great, beyond-mind feminine key to all understandings.
So lovely to have you working on this so deep mystery myth-story!
I was just sharing with a friend that a subtle message came through the other day, "fall back in love with the human experience". Great timing. Thank you.
Yes, this resonates. Aligns with something Richard Rudd shared recently about a new siddhi for the 55 Gene Key- Romance. Feels this would be true medicine for our times.
Wow ... this is timely ... Among the many rifts that could be healed, artificial divisions, besides the "left / right" thing, is that a lot of religious people, many beautiful souls, conflate earth-honoring spirituality with the "they" who is ruining the world ....
Because much of the powers that shouldn't be do things in the name of Earth, ecology, sustainability, limits to growth, care for the planet, and they're actually implementing totalitarian technocratic control ...
Then people, some, think that everything connected to honoring Gaia is part of a creepy elite cult of eugenics or something ...
Yet many want the best for humanity, and also sense something profound that is shifting now ...
It's been strange to read about familiar names and places in the investigations of researchers trying to understand who "they" are, not necessarily to obsess there, but to understand the terrain we're on ..
And people of religion are also sensing there is something darker than greedy, careless humans .. that this is spiritual ... but then there's a place where the assumption of what the enemy is could include people who .. share myths about the Earth being a living being, in trouble because of human's actions ...
(And also, many spiritual-but-not-religious progressives demonize the entire right wing and Christians ... taking turns over-judging each other and feeding stereotypes ...)
Just had a strange thought ... a conversation between Charles and Tucker Carlson?
Yes, why not a conversation between Charles and Tucker Carlson. I just heard a veryvery touching and recent one with Roger Waters (ex Pink Floyd), see/listen to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaKuo6w9TnA. There you, dear Charles, could spread your inspirations even much further and touch many more people deeply for the most beautiful new love story to become real...
What a beautiful capturing of these times... The time is NOW for those of us like-mind & hearted to come together and preserve our dear Mother Earth. May Tara guide us there.
My first thought after reading is how close it is to the guiding story of the Eleusinian Mysteries, as told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. And retold in the new editions of The Road To Eleusis, a subject I am presenting in stages, on my Substack. As the fire approached my home in California I rushed back in to save my precious Green Tara tankha. She visited me on LSD many years before, a story for another time.... You gotta get out here bro. Mysteries to share....
Yesterday when I opened the door from the deck to come into the house, I saw to my dismay that a fly preceded me. But as soon as it gained entry, it disappeared. It would be back, I knew, and I would deal with it then.
I was in my office when a movement at the window caught my eye. The fly! Closing the door behind me to impede escape, I retrieved a fly swatter from the garage and a hunk of damp toilet paper to clean up any aftermath. Cautiously I re-entered the office, shutting the door behind me. The fly was no longer where it had been, but encore was inevitable.
Minutes later it was back on the window. My eyes caught the movement; I had not heard the heavy buzzing that flies can make. I sat and watched it for a few seconds as it walked about on the glass. Every once in a while it would lift off for a second or two before returning to the window glass. It wants out, I thought. Eschewing the swatter I grabbed the paper cup with which I capture spiders to be 'rehomed' outside and a thin piece of paperboard. I captured the fly in the cup, capped it with the paperboard, took the ensemble outside, released the fly. (Treatments may vary, Bluebottles!)
At least in this case, perhaps Tara would approve.
I'm sure your service to life was acknowledged. The realisation that you had, of this being just going about it's day, and sharing the feeling or concept of going somewhere different maybe with hope of reward of gain, only to find yourself trapped, seeing where you came from, and wishing to return, but unable to due to something beyond your understanding. You chose to help ease the path and provide the being with an opportunity to try again, try again to find what they were looking for in their life.
Thanks for your thoughts, Cameron. What helped that fly the most was its quiet affect and lack of hairy buzzing, as though just ascended from a pile of steaming excrement. (Although that may be reading into it...)
I feel your struggle ❤️ and share similar frustrations and feelings of hopelessness sometimes. The only thing I can cling to is to keep doing what I feel is right for me to do, in the best way I can. Someone else's failings are not mine to enact.
We have in my town Tara Mandala, a 700-acre Buddhist retreat center on ancestral Ute and Pueblo land in the San Juan Mountains of Southwest Colorado. Founded by Lama Tsultrim Allione, it has a magnificent a three-story temple and library dedicated to the divine feminine in the Buddhist tradition. The temple houses all 21 Tara statues.
Lovely - only yesterday I mentioned in a conversation that I forgot who said that we should no longer relate to Earth as a mother, who will give endlessly, but as a lover. This post reminds me that it was you. I remember there was even a beautiful animated film around that. And I just found it again on youtube "The Courtship of Tara" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0I4J0i4IOA
Tara has been the first meditation deity I really connected with in 1983. I am not familiar with the translation you give, but know her as the "Saviouress" also called the Fearless and the Swift. She is said to be able to stop a crazed elephant in full stampede with just a gaze, without touching it.
Today's story touches me deeply, because I am in the middle of a deep wrenching process, working through the books "Hospicing Modernity" and "Outgrowing Modernity" by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. Thank you for writing the book, which I look forward to reading in print, when it has been born in due time.
This is a beautiful and necessary myth. The World-man is not separate from humanity. He is the collective. The mother is not separate from the earth. She is the body. The courtship is not a story. It is the work.
What lingers with me is the distinction between doing less harm and serving life. Doing less harm is a reduction. It is a subtraction. It is the absence of damage. Serving life is a creation. It is an offering. It is the presence of love.
The gifts to Tara are not donations. They are actions. They are the moments when you choose life over comfort, beauty over convenience, service over consumption. The gifts are not measured by the world. They are measured by her.
'What lingers with me is the distinction between doing less harm and serving life. Doing less harm is a reduction. It is a subtraction. It is the absence of damage. Serving life is a creation. It is an offering. It is the presence of love.' I like that a lot
Thank you! I am glad it resonated with you.
I saw some beautiful bouquets of flowers for sale last week, home grown at a lovely walled garden. I thought I would love to gift them to someone. All the people I thought of to gift them to I imagined would already have flowers or nice things in their garden. Then I thought about a building site nearby by where a lot of guys work in a rough damp mouldy portacabin. I thought no one will buy those guys flowers and they wouldn't think to buy them for themselves. So I bought the bouquet and took it to them. They were SOOO grateful. Every time I have been past this week they smile and tell me how much they are still enjoying them and the feel appreciated. So I think remember to give the God-men some beautiful gifts too and open their hearts :-)
A beautiful act of community and spreading the message of life. I see you act as courageous, and helping to bring light and care to others 🙏🏼❤️
Charles, this is so pertinent…stories are so powerful and it is great youre telling one such. One of daughters is called Tara- and what a fireball she is! Something in a name ah.
I feel the piece about man called to serve the mother..this IS my life…cant do anything else. Strive to do more..to inspire, encourage “youre awesome” and give hope…The youth so need this. We all do. So thank you brother for your work.
Wow! Earlier today I found myself remembering your Courtship of Tara piece and made a mental note to look it up to read again. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time, and here it is! A synchronicity! Thank you for saving me the time of looking it up. 😉
Beautiful Charles and so central. Tara in original Kemet tradition is E-theru, joy and beauty. The container of life (Utheru). She is Oxum, Magdalena. She is the daughter and the consort. She also is every man and woman deep quest. A great, beyond-mind feminine key to all understandings.
So lovely to have you working on this so deep mystery myth-story!
I was just sharing with a friend that a subtle message came through the other day, "fall back in love with the human experience". Great timing. Thank you.
So beautifully writtrn, and so expressive of what many of us feel.
Yes, this resonates. Aligns with something Richard Rudd shared recently about a new siddhi for the 55 Gene Key- Romance. Feels this would be true medicine for our times.
Wow ... this is timely ... Among the many rifts that could be healed, artificial divisions, besides the "left / right" thing, is that a lot of religious people, many beautiful souls, conflate earth-honoring spirituality with the "they" who is ruining the world ....
Because much of the powers that shouldn't be do things in the name of Earth, ecology, sustainability, limits to growth, care for the planet, and they're actually implementing totalitarian technocratic control ...
Then people, some, think that everything connected to honoring Gaia is part of a creepy elite cult of eugenics or something ...
Yet many want the best for humanity, and also sense something profound that is shifting now ...
It's been strange to read about familiar names and places in the investigations of researchers trying to understand who "they" are, not necessarily to obsess there, but to understand the terrain we're on ..
And people of religion are also sensing there is something darker than greedy, careless humans .. that this is spiritual ... but then there's a place where the assumption of what the enemy is could include people who .. share myths about the Earth being a living being, in trouble because of human's actions ...
(And also, many spiritual-but-not-religious progressives demonize the entire right wing and Christians ... taking turns over-judging each other and feeding stereotypes ...)
Just had a strange thought ... a conversation between Charles and Tucker Carlson?
Thank you for sharing this at this time ...
Yes, why not a conversation between Charles and Tucker Carlson. I just heard a veryvery touching and recent one with Roger Waters (ex Pink Floyd), see/listen to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaKuo6w9TnA. There you, dear Charles, could spread your inspirations even much further and touch many more people deeply for the most beautiful new love story to become real...
What a beautiful capturing of these times... The time is NOW for those of us like-mind & hearted to come together and preserve our dear Mother Earth. May Tara guide us there.
My first thought after reading is how close it is to the guiding story of the Eleusinian Mysteries, as told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. And retold in the new editions of The Road To Eleusis, a subject I am presenting in stages, on my Substack. As the fire approached my home in California I rushed back in to save my precious Green Tara tankha. She visited me on LSD many years before, a story for another time.... You gotta get out here bro. Mysteries to share....
Yesterday when I opened the door from the deck to come into the house, I saw to my dismay that a fly preceded me. But as soon as it gained entry, it disappeared. It would be back, I knew, and I would deal with it then.
I was in my office when a movement at the window caught my eye. The fly! Closing the door behind me to impede escape, I retrieved a fly swatter from the garage and a hunk of damp toilet paper to clean up any aftermath. Cautiously I re-entered the office, shutting the door behind me. The fly was no longer where it had been, but encore was inevitable.
Minutes later it was back on the window. My eyes caught the movement; I had not heard the heavy buzzing that flies can make. I sat and watched it for a few seconds as it walked about on the glass. Every once in a while it would lift off for a second or two before returning to the window glass. It wants out, I thought. Eschewing the swatter I grabbed the paper cup with which I capture spiders to be 'rehomed' outside and a thin piece of paperboard. I captured the fly in the cup, capped it with the paperboard, took the ensemble outside, released the fly. (Treatments may vary, Bluebottles!)
At least in this case, perhaps Tara would approve.
I'm sure your service to life was acknowledged. The realisation that you had, of this being just going about it's day, and sharing the feeling or concept of going somewhere different maybe with hope of reward of gain, only to find yourself trapped, seeing where you came from, and wishing to return, but unable to due to something beyond your understanding. You chose to help ease the path and provide the being with an opportunity to try again, try again to find what they were looking for in their life.
Thanks for your thoughts, Cameron. What helped that fly the most was its quiet affect and lack of hairy buzzing, as though just ascended from a pile of steaming excrement. (Although that may be reading into it...)
What a lovely story, I enjoyed it thank you.
But I would imagine most people reading your work are already actively paying their tributes & offering gifts.
How to engage the majority of people who still don’t gaf?
I struggle to read sthg so simple and hopeful without immediately feeling despair.
I feel your struggle ❤️ and share similar frustrations and feelings of hopelessness sometimes. The only thing I can cling to is to keep doing what I feel is right for me to do, in the best way I can. Someone else's failings are not mine to enact.
We have in my town Tara Mandala, a 700-acre Buddhist retreat center on ancestral Ute and Pueblo land in the San Juan Mountains of Southwest Colorado. Founded by Lama Tsultrim Allione, it has a magnificent a three-story temple and library dedicated to the divine feminine in the Buddhist tradition. The temple houses all 21 Tara statues.
Lovely - only yesterday I mentioned in a conversation that I forgot who said that we should no longer relate to Earth as a mother, who will give endlessly, but as a lover. This post reminds me that it was you. I remember there was even a beautiful animated film around that. And I just found it again on youtube "The Courtship of Tara" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0I4J0i4IOA
Tara has been the first meditation deity I really connected with in 1983. I am not familiar with the translation you give, but know her as the "Saviouress" also called the Fearless and the Swift. She is said to be able to stop a crazed elephant in full stampede with just a gaze, without touching it.
Today's story touches me deeply, because I am in the middle of a deep wrenching process, working through the books "Hospicing Modernity" and "Outgrowing Modernity" by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. Thank you for writing the book, which I look forward to reading in print, when it has been born in due time.
I've read this before. I wish I could tell you how I felt reading it this time, but without the world watching.
It's a good story