Red Tara: The Female Buddha of Power and Magnetism

by Rachael Stevens

Tara is one of the most celebrated goddesses in the Buddhist world, representing enlightened activity in the form of the divine feminine. She protects, nurtures, and helps practitioners on the path to enlightenment. Manifesting in many forms and in many colors to help beings, Tara’s red form represents her powers of magnetization, subjugation, and the transformation of desire into enlightened activity. She is considered to be particularly powerful in times of plague and disharmony.

This comprehensive overview focuses on the origins, forms, and practices of Tara, providing the reader with insightful information and inspirations relating to the goddess. Its second part focuses on Red Tara, a powerful and liberating form of Tara that is particularly important to connect with in a time of crisis. These chapters cover various forms of Red Tara found throughout the Tibetan Buddhist world, the particular qualities she represents, and how through prayers and meditation we can embody her principles and truly benefit beings.

Genres: Buddhism, Spirituality

249 pages, Paperback

Published November 29, 2022

About the author

Dr. Rachael Stevens, Ph.D. (Oxford University) is vice principal at The Jataka International School, a Buddhist-inspired elementary school in Northern Thailand.

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know who this book is for, and I don't think the author does either. It reads like the author needed an "original research subject" for an academic thesis (Stephens does appear to be Dr. Stephens now), and then managed to turn that thesis into a monograph. Good way to get a degree, but not always productive of a book that is actually useful to a mass audience, even for sufficiently small values of "mass." I’m mildly surprised the publisher was convinced, and would bet that it did not occur by virtue of the manuscript.

What we have here lands as an attempt at a "thorough" examination of a specific subset of forms of a specific Tibetan tantric deity, eponymously the red variant(s) of the Indo-Tibetan "savioress" Tārā. Several problems with this project become immediately apparent. First, because the author is an admitted practitioner of a specific lineage of Red Tara, the typical challenges of the emic/etic distinction are pervasive. Second, even without the benefit of formal academic support, this reviewer has wider experience of the field of Tibetan tantra than appears evident from this work, wherein any number of endnotes lament limited access to texts and scholar-lamas—a situation which renders thoroughness moot from the outset, as if it were ever anything other than laughable to imagine that one could be "thorough" about an ever-expanding-and-contracting collection of competing traditions spanning at least 1,200 years in which most scholars are already well aware from numerous text catalogues just how many texts, and indeed whole lineages, have been lost or broken over that time.

Thus, instead of thorough, what we actually get is rather scattershot, emphasizing the Nyingma and Sakya schools. A more or less standard background of Tara is provided, drawing significantly from Western sources that have already covered the topic in better detail, such as Passionate Enlightenment and The Cult of Tara . A fairly decent, if somewhat speculative, analysis of the conflation of Red Tara with Kurukelle follows, while also addressing several of the other red Padma-family yidam deities, along with some discussion of the more widespread and variegated "Twenty-One Taras" practices and what of their history she was able to find. (As best I can tell, she does not appear to be aware of Tara's Enlightened Activity: An Oral Commentary on the Twenty-One Praises to Tara , or else didn't find it relevant enough to mention—or I completely missed the citation.) The remainder focuses almost exclusively on the specific lineage of Apong Terton, as promulgated by Chagdud Khadro & Chagdud Tulku, which inspired the author's interest to begin with.

The several appendices that close out the volume are probably the most academically useful content outside of the author's own lineage, providing translations of some texts that apparently are not overly protected by vows of concealment:
• The Sādhana of Subjugating Tārā
• Cundā Tārā
• The Stages of the Clear Visualization of the Glorious Uḍḍiyāna Tārā
• The Stages [of Practice] of Uḍḍiyāna Tārā
• The Sādhana of Red Tārā: A Translation from the Early Sakyapa Lineage
• The Panchen Lama's Sakyapa Red Tārā

So I suppose, for the most part, if you're a practitioner of the Chagdud lineage of Red Tara and want to get more background than is already provided in the commentary, but not enough to make diving into the other larger and deeper books I've linked above seem worthwhile, this might be for you. Ditto if you are a Tara or dakini completist. Otherwise, it seems safe to give this a miss.

[Padma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am grateful to Rachel Stevens for publishing her study of Red Tara, having learned the practice from Chagdud Tulku, Rinpoche, while he still lived. I don't necessarily follow her insistence that Red Tara practice is particularly materialistic, as it seems to me that Red Tara's magnetism invites us to transfer our materialistic desires directly to her, Goddess or Bodhisattva, achieving an essentially alchemical transformation in the mind of the practitioner (lead being materialism, gold being Tara). Other than that, my one complaint is that Stevens did not include a Glossary, which would have been so helpful for someone like me who has fallen off his practice and wanted to refresh and dust-off his knowledge; and particularly helpful for those new to Tara-worship and to Red Tara, in particular. It strongly succeeded in reminding me of the intrinsic value of Red Tara practice, and successfully illuminated the relationship between Red Tara and her wrathful aspect, as Kurukulla, which I had never examined so thoroughly on my own.

[Sesho Maru · Rating 1 out of 5]

What an awful book. Pages and pages of name dropping and summaries with very little substance. If you are interested in this deity skip this book at all costs.

[Andrew Ceyton · Rating 3 out of 5]

quite scholarly, worth it

[Anjalica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it.