Skillful Grace: Tara Practice for Our Times

by Tulku Urgyen, Trulshik Adeu, Marcia Binder Schmidt (Translator)

Tara is an inspirational figure oembodying the most compelling and vital qualities of the feminine: beauty, grace, and the ability to nurture, care for, and protect. Tara is a true warrior, vanquishing fear and ignorance, both externally and internally; she is the earliest known Buddhist feminist.

For instructions on how to do Tara practice, there is no book superior to this, covering everything from beginning to end. Skillful Grace contains teachings on general topics of Dharma practice as well as the innermost view and meditation of Vajrayana, the unexcelled Tibetan Buddhist vehicle that facilitates enlightenment in one lifetime. There are practices of Tara and her retinue that dispell the various fears, consort practice and all the details on development and completion stages both with and without conceptual attributes. Nothing is left out. It is utterly complete with treasure and pith instructions from Tulku Urgyen and Adeu Rinpoche, adeptly arranged by the translator/author team of Erik Pema Kunsang and Marcia Binder Schmidt.

Skillful Grace includes all the preliminaries of Tara practice, as well as its main part and the subsequent yogas. The book is rounded out with a foreword by Tara Bennett Goleman, author of the best selling book Emotional Alchemy , in depth introduction by Marcia Schmidt, and appendixes.

Genres: Buddhism

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 2007

About the author

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche ((Tibetan: སྤྲུལ་སྐུ་ཨོ་རྒྱན་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་, Wylie: Sprul-sku O-rgyan Rin-po-che, where "Rinpoche" is an honorific meaning "Precious One," not a surname) was a Tibetan Buddhist Lama of the Kagyü and Nyingma schools, and a teacher of Dzogchen. He is most widely known in the West through the works of Erik Pema Kunsang and Marcia Binder Schmidt.

Reviews

[Mark Bourdon · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a Tara practitioner, Skillful Grace was a wonderful addition to my practice. I don’t recommend this as your first book to read about Tara and Tara practice, but definitely a valuable text for someone who wants further Tara practice insights. 🙏🏻

[Padma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skillful Grace provides instructions on furthering an already established Tara practice. I do wish the book provided a glossary, for much of the terminology is suitable only for those who've already received the Tara empowerments, or those deeply familiar with Vajrayana Buddhism.

[Nick York]

I read this mainly as a supplementation to my main practice. It is not a book you can pick and suddenly practice, but it is a good tool for those who do: notably Tara's Triple Excellence. It is clearly written and simple to read and understand. If you have an interest in Tara practice I highly suggest this book and dharmasun.org whose Tara's Triple Excellence is this book in web form and far more elaborate.