We all suffer from STRESS, ANXIETY, EMOTIONAL OUTBURSTS, ANGER, HATE and all the 21st century gifts with our over bloated and so called progress and developments. Everything in this world comes at a price, after all your hard work and strenuous job schedules all that you are left with in the weekends is piled up stress. At Raven Developers we take care of this piled up stress, well even we listen to chant, spiritual and meditation music from any part of the world, off course we do listen to the usual music and the mainstream artists on radios but this just stands out. We recommend to buy yourself a CD of Craig Pruess - Sacred Chants of Buddha. The best of Buddha meditation music you can ever get. Off course there are many, to name a few of the best we know and listen to are Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Christopher Franke, Neal Schon, Gandalf, John Foxx, Donna De Lory, Vangelis, Yanni, Oliver Shanti, Prem Joshua, Karnamrita, Ram Das, Krishna Das, Manish Vyas, Anoushka Shankar and phew Ill have to end the list here :)
Now something about the mantra itself. Tara is a bodhisattva embodying compassion in the female form of a young goddess. Tara, whose name means "star" or "she who ferries across," is a Bodhisattva of compassion who manifests in female form. In Tibetan, Tara is known as "Dölma" (Sgrol-ma), or "She Who Saves." In particular she represents compassion in action, since she’s in the process of stepping from her lotus throne in order to help sentient beings.
The syllable Om has no conceptual meaning, and is sound representing the entire universe, past present and future. The central part of Tara’s mantra is a loving play on her name. According to Sangharakshita, a traditional explanation of the mantra is that the variations of her name represent three progressive stages of salvation.
- Tāre represents salvation from mundane dangers and suffering. Tara is seem as a savioress who can give aid from material threats such as floods, crime, wild animals, and traffic accidents. Tara is therefore said to protect against ordinary worldly dangers.
- Tuttāre represents deliverance into the spiritual path conceived in terms of individual salvation. In traditional terms, this is the path of the Arhant, which leads to individual liberation from suffering. This is seen in Mahayana Buddhism as a kind of enlightenment in which compassion does not figure strongly. Tara therefore offers individual protection from the spiritual dangers of greed, hatred, and delusion: the three factors that cause us individual suffering.
- Lastly, ture represents the culmination of the spiritual path in terms of deliverance into the altruistic path of universal salvation - the Bodhisattva path. In the Bodhisattva path we aspire for personal enlightenment, but we also connect compassionately with the sufferings of others, and strive to liberate them at the same time as we seek enlightenment ourselves. Tara therefore delivers us from a narrow conception of the spiritual life. She saves us from the notion that spiritual progress is about narrowly liberating ourselves from our own suffering, and instead leads us to see that true spiritual progress involves having compassion for others.
By the time we have been liberated from mundane dangers, liberated from a narrow conception of the spiritual path, and led to a realization of compassion, we have effectively become Tara. In Buddhist practice the “deities” represent our own inner potential. We are all potentially Tara. We can all become Tara.
Svaha, according to Monier Monier-William’s Sanskrit Dictionary, means: "Hail!", "Hail to!" or "May a blessing rest on!" We could see this final blessing as symbolizing the recognition that we are, ultimately, Tara.
Her mantra can therefore be interpreted as something like OM! Hail to Tara (in her three roles as a savioress).
All this might lead you to a confusion! What are we doing with talking about mantras and meditation? We are suppose to write about the Web 2, PHP and CSS and XHTML and what not. That's why we are different!
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