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Who Is Green Tara? The Swift Mother of Liberation
Green Tara is enlightenment in its swiftest, most tender form. In Tibet she is called Drolma — She Who Liberates. She is not an archetype or a metaphor for something within you. She is a living presence, and she is famously quick to answer.
Wisdom Moon and her vow
Countless ages ago, in the time of the Buddha called Drum-Sound, she was a princess named Yeshe Dawa — Wisdom Moon. For ten million years she made offerings and ripened her mind until awakening stood near.
The monks of that age urged her to pray for rebirth as a man, because that was how it had always been done. She refused. Here there is no man, there is no woman, she told them — only fools see male and female, and their seeing is empty.
Then she made her vow: since so many strive for liberation in a man's body and so few in a woman's, she would serve beings in a woman's form until samsara itself was empty.
Why she is called the Swift One
In her images her right foot extends from the lotus seat, not in repose but in readiness. She is forever about to step into the world.
That posture is the teaching. She does not wait for you to become worthy of help. She is already moving toward you as you turn toward her.
Her twenty-one emanations
Tara appears in twenty-one forms, each a different face of her care: peaceful, protective, and fierce when fierceness is what love requires.
Most beloved are Green Tara, who dissolves fear and clears the path, and White Tara, whose light brings healing and long life.
How to begin a practice with her
Begin small and repeat it often. Sit, settle the breath, invite her, and recite her mantra — Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha — until the mind grows still.
Many people also work with a card each morning: draw one, read what it asks, and carry that single question through the day.
She asks nothing more than that you turn toward her.