Tara Pujas for the Success of the Center

You may have heard that Kopan Monastery has been doing monthly Tara Pujas for the success of the Guhyasamaja Center and it’s members and supporters. For those of you who don’t know about Tara or about the Tara Puja, here is an excerpt from our website:

“Tara is the female Buddha of compassion. Tibetans view her like an Enlightened mother, always ready to come to the aid of beings in need. Doing Tara practice helps us to awaken our own potential for Enlightened compassion. During the Tara puja itself, while chanting prayers, we do meditations and visualization practices to create extensive good karma together, creating causes to be able to generate inner realizations and also to be able to benefit others extensively. For beginners, it can be challenging to do the meditations and visualizations while chanting the prayers that make up the Tara puja, but such group practices are actually a very powerful way of creating karma together for success and transformation. “

According to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching, Tara the Liberator, the following are benefits of doing the Tara practice:

“Tara is quick to grant success in obtaining the ultimate happiness of enlightenment. You receive much good merit, or cause of happiness; it prevents a suffering rebirth in your next life; you receive initiation from millions of buddhas; and you achieve enlightenment. Besides these, however, Tara practice has many other benefits. Reciting the Twenty-one Taras’ prayer with devotion, at dawn or dusk—or remembering Tara, singing praises and reciting mantras at any time of the day or night—protects you from fear and dangers, and fulfill all your wishes. If you pray to Tara, Tara is particularly quick to grant help.

There are also many temporal benefits from Tara practice, either reciting the Tara mantra or the Twenty-one Taras’ prayer. Tara can solve many problems in your life: liberate you from untimely death; help you recover from disease; bring you success in business; help you to find a job; bring you wealth. When you have a really serious problem, such as a life-threatening disease, if you rely upon Tara, very commonly you will be freed from that problem; you will recover from that disease. If you eat poison, if you rely upon Tara, the poison will not harm you. By doing Tara prayers and mantras, couples with difficulty having a child can have a child—and whichever they want, a son or a daughter. These are very common experiences. Through Tara practice, you can obtain any happiness of this life that you wish.”

For more information about this practice, please consult the following resources:

• Praise to the Twenty-One Taras (prayer booklet): http://www.fpmt.org/prayers/21tarasltrrdr.pdf
• The Amitabha Buddhist Center’s introduction to the Tara Puja: http://www.fpmtabc.org/buddhist-practice-1-2-4.php
• Text from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching, Tara the Liberator: http://www.lamayeshe.com/lamazopa/tara.shtml
• Kopan Monastery’s definition of a Puja:  http://www.kopan-monastery.com/pujas.html