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The Green Tara Mantra: Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha
Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha is the most widely spoken of all Tara mantras. It is short enough to hold in a single breath and deep enough to hold a lifetime of practice. Here is what each syllable carries, and how to begin saying it.
The meaning, syllable by syllable
Om gathers the body, speech, and mind of the practitioner into one place. It is not a word so much as an opening — the sound of arriving.
Tare is Tara's own name: she who liberates, she who ferries beings across. To say Tare is to call her directly, the way a child says a mother's name.
Tuttare is understood as liberation from the eight great fears — the outer dangers and the inner ones, the fear of loss, of illness, of being unloved.
Ture is swiftness, and swift compassion is her signature. It points to healing that does not wait for you to deserve it.
Soha (also written svaha) seals the mantra. It plants what has been said, the way a hand presses a seed into soil.
How to chant the Green Tara mantra
Sit where you will not be interrupted. Let the breath find its own pace before you make any sound at all.
Picture her green form seated on a moon disc and lotus, her right hand open toward you. Then begin: Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha. Aloud is good. Under the breath is also good.
Twenty-one repetitions is traditional and takes only a few minutes. One hundred and eight is a fuller practice. Counting matters less than staying with the sound until the mind settles behind it.
When you stop, do not rush up. Sit in the quiet the mantra leaves behind — that residue is the practice ripening.
When people turn to her
For more than a thousand years travellers, mothers, the frightened, and the grieving have spoken her name at thresholds they could not cross alone.
You do not need to be Buddhist to call on Tara, and you do not need a perfect pronunciation. A sincere heart and a few quiet minutes are the whole requirement.
Speak it once, softly, and she hears.