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Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna
Read China Galland's posts on the Penguin Blog
With this book, China Galland brought increased attention to the spiritual traditions of the Black Madonna and other cross-cultural expressions of the feminine divine. The popularity of recent works by authors like Sue Monk Kidd and Kathleen Norris have only increased readers’ fascination. Now with a new introduction by the author, Longing for Darkness explores Galland’s spellbinding and deeply personal journey from New Mexico through Nepal, India, Switzerland, France, the former Yugoslavia, and Poland—places where such figures as Tara, the female Buddha of the Tibetan tradition, and the Black Madonna are venerated today.
With this book, China Galland brought increased attention to the spiritual traditions of the Black Madonna and other cross-cultural expressions of the feminine divine. The popularity of recent works by authors like Sue Monk Kidd and Kathleen Norris have only increased readers’ fascination. Now with a new introduction by the author, Longing for Darkness explores Galland’s spellbinding and deeply personal journey from New Mexico through Nepal, India, Switzerland, France, the former Yugoslavia, and Poland—places where such figures as Tara, the female Buddha of the Tibetan tradition, and the Black Madonna are venerated today.
432 pages, Paperback
Published June 5, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
February 8, 2015
Easily one of the best ten books I have ever read, quite possibly in the top five. The author understands the Interspiritual journey without naming it, and I related so very deeply to her attraction to Tara and Mary, her restlessness and her searching, and the fact that her spiritual hunger drives her as mine drives me. I thoroughly enjoyed her accounts of her travel and pilgrimage, and more importantly her honesty about her interior journey. I have only been to a couple of the physical places she traveled to, but I have been to almost all of her spiritual destinations. This book touched my heart and my soul, I did not want it to end. Highly recommended!
July 28, 2021
I found this book absolutely gripping. China Galland's inner journey and outer pilgrimages are woven together with history and philosophical explorations of womanhood, motherhood and spirituality. I was struck by how often Galland's journeys take her to places of political upheaval and suffering. As she writes, “Then I realize that if I am going to write about darkness, all the permutations of darkness will come up. I was naive to imagine that I could look only at a redeeming darkness, the darkness of divinity, the darkness of the Madonna, the darkness of Tara, or the darkness that is associate with the earth, with rest, with fertility. Of course, I say that I am longing for darkness and this is what I get, another kind of darkness: racism, the secret police, Auschwitz, my own endless fears. Beauty doesn’t come without the beast. I can expect no less.”
September 3, 2008
A wonderful spiritual memoir of the author's pilgrimage to the Black Madonnas. Lovely.
June 14, 2024
A COMING TOGETHER OF BUDDHIST & CHRISTIAN IDEAS
Author China Galland wrote in the ‘Acknowledgements’ of this 1990 book, “I have attempted always to provide the reader with information that is reliable, but many of the matters touched upon herein are subject to interpretation and various opinions Many have spent whole lifetimes devoted to a single aspect of any one of the subjects touched upon in this book. My intent is to provide a first-hand account of a long and complicated journey, and the vision that has grown from that experience.”
She recalls, “one day at [San Francisco Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm] someone told me about a female Buddha in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Her name was Tara. Despite the traditional Buddhist belief that a person could only reach enlightenment in a man’s body, thousands and thousands of aeons ago, in time before time, this Tara has taken a vow to be enlightened only in a woman’s body, and she had kept her vow. Hearing this fragment of Tara’s story was electrifying. I was jolted out of the ongoing background frustration of being a woman trying to practice in traditional, organized religions. Women could not become priests in the Catholic Church… there was the discomforting tradition within Buddhism in general that women could not reach enlightenment. This tradition was downplayed as Buddhism came to the West, yet the belief had had its effect, no matter what was said now. There were only a handful of women teachers in the entire country at the time.” (Pg. 21)
She explains, “Scattered throughout the European continent there are hundreds of dark or black Madonnas: in Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, as well as other countries. But the Madonna at Einsiedeln [in Switzerland] intrigued me for two reasons: first, the sense that she is related, however remotely, to the peaceful Kali that I had seen in Varanasi; and secondly, the fact that she is painted coal black. This is not a Madonna that blackened because of smoke or was carved out of a wood that darkened over the centuries. She strikes me as one of the clearest examples of an unequivocally black deity venerated by a white population, and this fascinated me. Clearly this is not a matter of ethnicity; Switzerland is unremittingly caucasian.” (Pg. 134-135)
She observes, “To say that one is ‘longing for darkness’ is to say that one longs for transformation, for a darkness that brings balance, wholeness, integration, wisdom, insight, I now realize. For so long I didn’t know what I meant when I said that, when I felt it---a longing for darkness. I remember standing in front of that statue of Kali at Varansai and thinking of this Madonna at Einsiedeln. Now I find not only the Madonna but the beginning of words to name that longing and desire.” (Pg. 152)
She notes, “There were several fires over the centuries over the course of the centuries, but according to legend, each time, the Holy Chapel of the Virgin was spared. For some, this served to explain why she was black… There is obvious merit in the explanation of smoke making the Madonnas black, I have seen it for myself in observing the restoration work that goes on in the basilica at Einsiedeln. But while candle smoke can be a factor---as can be paint, pigments used in centuries past, or the aging of wood—why haven’t all the statues and crucifixes in the churches with Black Madonnas become black? Only the Madonna has been left to darken.” (Pg. 154-155)
She recounts how the Madonna had been hidden when the French invaded Einsiedeln in 1798, and “When the chest containing her was opened nearly a year later, the statue was found to have been damaged, perhaps from moisture. Fuetscher, the restorer… tried to refurbish the Madonna to her previous dark state, [but] he took the liberty of adding blue to the eyes and a little red to the cheeks and lips. The result was that people questioned the authenticity of the statue. In the end, Fuetscher had to paint over … and make both Mother and Child completely black… The restoration of the Madonna’s darkness was an eruption of the nonrational element necessary for meaning in human life. The basic psychic need for balance, paradox, complexity, and color finds its balance and expression in the blackness of the Madonna.” (Pg. 155-156)
She records how in 1988 she visited Dallas, where “There is a famous shrine and pilgrimage site to a Black Madonna in South Texas… just north of Mexico… San Juan, Texas… is the home of the Madonna de los Lagos, famed as a healer and miracleworker. Called ‘morenita,’ the little dark one, she is a brown Madonna, not black, I find out, through some refuse this distinction and continue to call her black. Most simply refer to her as ‘Our Lady.’ I go to see for myself…” (Pg. 249)
She continues, “The research I’d done on this Madonna during the months preceding the trip surprised me. I’d been able to glean little about this particular Madonna herself. I thought she might be another form of the Virgin of Guadalupe, but I was wrong. The Madonna at San Juan… is a replica of the ‘Madonna de San Juan de los Lagos in Jalisco, Mexico. Though not well known internationally as Guadalupe, she is famous within Mexico and within the Hispanic community in the United States… I could gather little more information than this. Even the bookstore at the shrine did not have a published history to send at the time.” (Pg. 251-252)
She recounts, “The large modern shrine is full of people coming and going… ‘Morenita,’ the little dark one. She has long black hair that flows over her satin robes, Spanish-style. She stands alone, without the Christ Child, on a crescent moon, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, ‘La Purisima,’ Mary Most Pure, as the Immaculate Conception is also called in Mexico. In 1519 the Spaniard Cortés placed a statue of the Immaculate Conception at what had been the site of the Mayan moon goddess when he landed at Cozumel. Many of the Mexican Madonnas are the Immaculate Conception, characteristically portrayed standing on a crescent moon, linking her both with the woman in the Book of the Apocalypse and the moon goddess of pre-Columbian Mexico.” (Pg. 259)
In Poland, she comments, “Drawn from the Byzantine Church, where the icon is an expression of the deity itself, Mary at Jasna Gora is the ‘Theotokos,’ Mother of God. Out of the Byzantine Church came the great Hagia Sophia… the Church of Holy Wisdom, the apex of Byzantine architecture. Holy Wisdom is also associated with Isis. Sophia, Wisdom, also an early name for the Mother, was the Holy Spirit to the early Jewish Christians.” (Pg. 335) She continues, “Ephesus was at the end of the Silk Road to China and the caravan route from India to the West through the Parthian Empire… The lines between East and West… cracked. There was dynamic interchange between Alexandria and India in the ancient world. Could Tara and Mary’s streams have crossed?... Astar or Astarte was one of the sources of Mary… Could she prove to be a common source?” (Pg. 235-236)
She goes on, “Great Mother worship flourished throughout Old Europe, 7000-3500 B.C. … anthropologist Marija Gimbutas tells me, ‘The Black Madonna is a goddess of Old Europe, the Earth Mother.’ Black meant fertility, and white meant death in this pre-Indoeuropean culture… No matter where I look, Mary has an earlier, non-Christian source given her a depth and richness beyond any of the jeweled adornments she wears in the Church. It is deeply satisfying to find all these streams in her, like the sweetness of water after great thirst.” (Pg. 337-338)
She concludes, “This is a great conceptual error that many Westerners make. ‘Emptiness’ refers to the radical insight of the Buddha … [that] there is no individually existing, independently arising, separate self. All that is, is in constant flux… This is darkness to the thinking mind, to the ego that grasps and holds that there is such a thing as ‘mine.’ … This is not ordinary reality. This is the black of starless midnight… that comes before the pre-dawn of enlightenment… a state of translucence or transparency that is beyond dark and light. This is a radiant black. Thus emptiness can be said to be dark or black to us. This is the womb of enlightenment. This is Wisdom. This is the Mother of All the Buddhas, this is Tara.” (Pg. 342)
This book will be of great interest to those studying the Black Madonna, as well as the Buddhist Tara (and even “New Age” ideas).
Author China Galland wrote in the ‘Acknowledgements’ of this 1990 book, “I have attempted always to provide the reader with information that is reliable, but many of the matters touched upon herein are subject to interpretation and various opinions Many have spent whole lifetimes devoted to a single aspect of any one of the subjects touched upon in this book. My intent is to provide a first-hand account of a long and complicated journey, and the vision that has grown from that experience.”
She recalls, “one day at [San Francisco Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm] someone told me about a female Buddha in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Her name was Tara. Despite the traditional Buddhist belief that a person could only reach enlightenment in a man’s body, thousands and thousands of aeons ago, in time before time, this Tara has taken a vow to be enlightened only in a woman’s body, and she had kept her vow. Hearing this fragment of Tara’s story was electrifying. I was jolted out of the ongoing background frustration of being a woman trying to practice in traditional, organized religions. Women could not become priests in the Catholic Church… there was the discomforting tradition within Buddhism in general that women could not reach enlightenment. This tradition was downplayed as Buddhism came to the West, yet the belief had had its effect, no matter what was said now. There were only a handful of women teachers in the entire country at the time.” (Pg. 21)
She explains, “Scattered throughout the European continent there are hundreds of dark or black Madonnas: in Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, as well as other countries. But the Madonna at Einsiedeln [in Switzerland] intrigued me for two reasons: first, the sense that she is related, however remotely, to the peaceful Kali that I had seen in Varanasi; and secondly, the fact that she is painted coal black. This is not a Madonna that blackened because of smoke or was carved out of a wood that darkened over the centuries. She strikes me as one of the clearest examples of an unequivocally black deity venerated by a white population, and this fascinated me. Clearly this is not a matter of ethnicity; Switzerland is unremittingly caucasian.” (Pg. 134-135)
She observes, “To say that one is ‘longing for darkness’ is to say that one longs for transformation, for a darkness that brings balance, wholeness, integration, wisdom, insight, I now realize. For so long I didn’t know what I meant when I said that, when I felt it---a longing for darkness. I remember standing in front of that statue of Kali at Varansai and thinking of this Madonna at Einsiedeln. Now I find not only the Madonna but the beginning of words to name that longing and desire.” (Pg. 152)
She notes, “There were several fires over the centuries over the course of the centuries, but according to legend, each time, the Holy Chapel of the Virgin was spared. For some, this served to explain why she was black… There is obvious merit in the explanation of smoke making the Madonnas black, I have seen it for myself in observing the restoration work that goes on in the basilica at Einsiedeln. But while candle smoke can be a factor---as can be paint, pigments used in centuries past, or the aging of wood—why haven’t all the statues and crucifixes in the churches with Black Madonnas become black? Only the Madonna has been left to darken.” (Pg. 154-155)
She recounts how the Madonna had been hidden when the French invaded Einsiedeln in 1798, and “When the chest containing her was opened nearly a year later, the statue was found to have been damaged, perhaps from moisture. Fuetscher, the restorer… tried to refurbish the Madonna to her previous dark state, [but] he took the liberty of adding blue to the eyes and a little red to the cheeks and lips. The result was that people questioned the authenticity of the statue. In the end, Fuetscher had to paint over … and make both Mother and Child completely black… The restoration of the Madonna’s darkness was an eruption of the nonrational element necessary for meaning in human life. The basic psychic need for balance, paradox, complexity, and color finds its balance and expression in the blackness of the Madonna.” (Pg. 155-156)
She records how in 1988 she visited Dallas, where “There is a famous shrine and pilgrimage site to a Black Madonna in South Texas… just north of Mexico… San Juan, Texas… is the home of the Madonna de los Lagos, famed as a healer and miracleworker. Called ‘morenita,’ the little dark one, she is a brown Madonna, not black, I find out, through some refuse this distinction and continue to call her black. Most simply refer to her as ‘Our Lady.’ I go to see for myself…” (Pg. 249)
She continues, “The research I’d done on this Madonna during the months preceding the trip surprised me. I’d been able to glean little about this particular Madonna herself. I thought she might be another form of the Virgin of Guadalupe, but I was wrong. The Madonna at San Juan… is a replica of the ‘Madonna de San Juan de los Lagos in Jalisco, Mexico. Though not well known internationally as Guadalupe, she is famous within Mexico and within the Hispanic community in the United States… I could gather little more information than this. Even the bookstore at the shrine did not have a published history to send at the time.” (Pg. 251-252)
She recounts, “The large modern shrine is full of people coming and going… ‘Morenita,’ the little dark one. She has long black hair that flows over her satin robes, Spanish-style. She stands alone, without the Christ Child, on a crescent moon, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, ‘La Purisima,’ Mary Most Pure, as the Immaculate Conception is also called in Mexico. In 1519 the Spaniard Cortés placed a statue of the Immaculate Conception at what had been the site of the Mayan moon goddess when he landed at Cozumel. Many of the Mexican Madonnas are the Immaculate Conception, characteristically portrayed standing on a crescent moon, linking her both with the woman in the Book of the Apocalypse and the moon goddess of pre-Columbian Mexico.” (Pg. 259)
In Poland, she comments, “Drawn from the Byzantine Church, where the icon is an expression of the deity itself, Mary at Jasna Gora is the ‘Theotokos,’ Mother of God. Out of the Byzantine Church came the great Hagia Sophia… the Church of Holy Wisdom, the apex of Byzantine architecture. Holy Wisdom is also associated with Isis. Sophia, Wisdom, also an early name for the Mother, was the Holy Spirit to the early Jewish Christians.” (Pg. 335) She continues, “Ephesus was at the end of the Silk Road to China and the caravan route from India to the West through the Parthian Empire… The lines between East and West… cracked. There was dynamic interchange between Alexandria and India in the ancient world. Could Tara and Mary’s streams have crossed?... Astar or Astarte was one of the sources of Mary… Could she prove to be a common source?” (Pg. 235-236)
She goes on, “Great Mother worship flourished throughout Old Europe, 7000-3500 B.C. … anthropologist Marija Gimbutas tells me, ‘The Black Madonna is a goddess of Old Europe, the Earth Mother.’ Black meant fertility, and white meant death in this pre-Indoeuropean culture… No matter where I look, Mary has an earlier, non-Christian source given her a depth and richness beyond any of the jeweled adornments she wears in the Church. It is deeply satisfying to find all these streams in her, like the sweetness of water after great thirst.” (Pg. 337-338)
She concludes, “This is a great conceptual error that many Westerners make. ‘Emptiness’ refers to the radical insight of the Buddha … [that] there is no individually existing, independently arising, separate self. All that is, is in constant flux… This is darkness to the thinking mind, to the ego that grasps and holds that there is such a thing as ‘mine.’ … This is not ordinary reality. This is the black of starless midnight… that comes before the pre-dawn of enlightenment… a state of translucence or transparency that is beyond dark and light. This is a radiant black. Thus emptiness can be said to be dark or black to us. This is the womb of enlightenment. This is Wisdom. This is the Mother of All the Buddhas, this is Tara.” (Pg. 342)
This book will be of great interest to those studying the Black Madonna, as well as the Buddhist Tara (and even “New Age” ideas).
March 24, 2022
Interesting, not the dark delicious female read I was looking for.
August 23, 2024
Published 1990, not 2007. Galland is writing a story here, not an academic text. So smooth to read, and you can't separate the Black Madonna from life anyhow.
Weaving stories from Nepal, Tibet, Poland, Texas. Travel requires focus and such adaptability and openness. "Go. See what happens." The kindness of translators. The militaries are everywhere in this book . I didn't think I'd be thinking about Ordinary Men here, men being forced to dig their own graves and shot, or The Great Terror, from stories of Guatemala and El Salvador...
--
"I had come [to Nepal] to find the Buddha Tara, but instead I found the goddesses Durga and Kali. Kali, sprung from Durga, Kali the death-dealer and life-giver, the end and beginning of time. She was a deity of such proportions as I had heard only God the Father in Christianity described. The fact that Kali is dark and female turned my Catholic upbringing inside out. She is naked, "sky-clad," because she has stripped away illusion; some say, to her nothing is hidden. Some say she is black because black is the color in which all distinctions are dissolved, others say she is black because she is eternal night."
""This happened to me before, nine months ago, this same paralysis. Listen to me. I was taken to the hospital, shot full of valium, and it didn't work. That's why it's back. I told everyone then, the doctors, my brother who was there, that this wasn't a medical problem, that it was something else, this is not about the pain in my neck, this is not about muscle spasms. I begged them not to take me to the hospital, but no one listened." [...]
I have lost my body. I can't find my body. It is a terrifying experience to suddenly become completely paralyzed, and yet the terror passes quickly now, like a cloud-shadow moving fast overhead on a sunny, windswept day, it is gone, and I see into the heart of this mountain. [...]
I try to tell Dr. Banskota what I am hearing as he holds my hand, but the words that come out cannot match the clarity of what I hear. I speak in nonsense. I tell Dr. Banskota as he is holding my hand that I am seeing into the heart of the world, that in the heart of the world there are no accidents. The heart of the world broke my leg, stopped me, is holding me down, makes me lie still like this because I couldn't stop myself. I know that this is good. I begin to sing."
Emily Dickinson:
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
Fever as an altered state of consciousness, with a properly set heart & will, is pure magic.
"Our choice is to be in love or to be in fear. But to choose to be in love means to have a mountain inside of you, means to have the heart of the world inside you, means you will feel another's suffering inside your own body and you will weep. You will have no protection from the
world's pain because you will know it as your own. [...] You will forget that you know this, again and again. Do not be afraid. The body remembers, it never forgets. It is your own knowing that you hide from and do not know."
"No matter how sick I still was with dysentery, it was clear that something that had always been with me was gone. Some particular kind of fear, fear that I didn't know I had, fear that had weighed me down, been a heavy wooden yoke across the back of my neck, was no longer there."
And that's just chapter one.
--
"There is a story underneath this story, behind it, next to it, everywhere around it but on the page.
I was an alcoholic. I was also addicted to prescription drugs at one point. Nothing in my life was to make sense until I acknowledged this fact and began a recovery. I began that process within four
months after my return from Nepal, in February 1981."
"No alcohol or drugs—absolute abstinence—was the foundation of getting sober, but being able to stay that way, to recover, was another story. It wasn't about not. drinking or using, it was about turning my psyche inside out, shaking loose all the broken parts, and throwing out what had gone bad or didn't work. Addiction steals souls. Mine had almost been lost.
There is a direct relationship between addiction and spirituality. Some now describe addiction as a spiritual emergency."
"My ability to stay sober would depend on my spiritual condition. I had a daily reprieve, that was all. [...] The search for Tara took on a new dimension. It became more than a passionate interest and a longing, finding her became a matter of life and death."
"I had an elaborate system of checks and balances worked out mentally. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it did not. What became apparent was that I could not rely on my ability to stop at the limit I had given myself. This inability to rely upon myself was inexplicable, self-defeating in my continued attempts to do so, and utterly degrading and humiliating whenever I failed again. [...]
that experience repeated, with no predictability, beat me into the ground. [...]
I would always walk into the inn full of good intentions. But when I walked out again was no longer in my control."
"[Jung] wrote later that he thought it no accident that in Latin, "we use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as the most depraving poison." Spiritus. That was the answer."
Spirit: a pharmakon.
"The great pre-Christian center of worship of the Great Mother [Ephesus] became the center of worship for Mary the Mother of God, the Theotokos."
"Meister Eckhart, the abbess Hildegarde of Bingen, Mechtild of Magdeburg, and Julian of Norwich all spoke of the Motherhood of God."
"Longing for darkness was also a longing for the womb of God. The Buddhists call it emptiness. It is the female principle. One could also say this womb, this emptiness, is the Buddha Tara in her many forms."
The wrathful side of Tara, the Black Madonna, the peaceful side of Kali -- yes, the connection is easily drawn. Their lesser known forms that bridge the gap between them.
""But this much I know, O Mother, that to take refuge in thee is to destroy all my miseries.""
"Yet as I continued to sit [in zazen], Christ began to appear in my meditation, then Mary. I didn't like this. I didn't like this at all. I wanted them to go away. I was done with them, I thought, I had left the Church."
"[aspects of Tibetan teachings] must be received orally, by direct transmission, from a fully qualified teacher. A good deal of harm can and has been done by not being aware of this method of transmitting the teachings. The teaching can only be transmitted through experience and actual practice.
These ancient ceremonial teachings give detailed maps of the human psyche or mind. Printed texts of rituals are like the rutters or portolan charts kept by ship's pilots in the days before there were reliable maps of the world: they can only be used by someone who has already been there him- or herself, at least once."
"[Story of] Juglio, who decided one day to walk home to Spain from Kathmandu. Juglio began walking with no money, only a toothbrush, a diary, and a pen. He made it. [...]
I imagine that I need so much, must have so many things first, before I can set out. The story of Juglio cuts through that, reminds me that I need very little outwardly; but inwardly, I need a ferocity of intention."
"[Tsultrim Allione] mentioned the Tibetan delog, a person who unwittingly gets catapulted onto the spiritual path. They begin by accident, "involuntarily,' usually because of a serious illness. [...]
The return from the underworld, as well as the knowledge of the descent, was used to help the living, a motif akin to shamanistic experience, as well as recovery from addiction. [...]
I was ashamed to have been an alcoholic mother. The mention of delog stories helped create a healthier perspective on the illness. Like a diabetic, I might not be responsible for having it, but I am responsible for treating it."
Christ teaches the same.. But if your heart's closed/ stone, it can't come through.
"Then I was out the door walking to the car as if in a dream. How much my children had forgiven me. How little I had forgiven myself. [...] I felt uprooted, cried, and longed to turn back. Who is leaving? Who will return? The same person never comes back."
"Maybe I need to remember that there were always obstacles for pilgrims."
"The mourners sang and walked along with everyone else—people on their way to work or market, school—not separate from everyday life. A sense of relief washed over me. What goes on in life, even death, is obvious in India, not hidden."
"Isolated for centuries, called the "Roof of the World" at an average altitude of twelve thousand to thirteen thousand feet, Tibet lies strategically between India and China. Its story is one of the least understood international tragedies of our time."
Closed hearts.. Desacralization, of people and even of objects (of the soul bestowed upon them), leads to tragedy..
"In 1949, Tibet's fate had been thrust into the hands of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, then sixteen years old."
"Inside Tibet, it's like the problem of the South African people: first and foremost, in their own country Tibetans are treated like slaves, they are second-class citizens. In South Africa, the problem
is black and white, you can see it clearly. But with Tibet, it's not black and white, everyone just looks Asian to the rest of the world, so they can't see what has happened to us," Drolma said [...]
"[the outside world is] in such a state of confusion, so noisy, how can they hear us when we talk about Tibet?""
""There is also a legend about Tara rescuing from the Eight Fears: ocean waves, lions, poisonous snakes, fires, thieves, imprisonment, and other dangers. But most importantly, she rescues us from what these dangers symbolize—our internal enemies—the fires of anger, the lion of pride, the snake of envy, the chains of avarice, and so forth."
The eight evil thoughts. 7 & 8 both sacred.
Green Tara: remover of obstacles. & Our Lady, Undoer of Knots.
"It is a fantastic cosmos that one enters in Tibetan practice, the description of it forming a kind of literary astronomy."
People yearn for magic, for wonder, for enchantment, for soul.
"Visualization not only helps us gain control of the mind, but the very act of doing it serves to purify the mind of defilements and obscurations as well, "the water of the mind runs through the cleansing filter of the image.""
Totally accurate for the rosary & for meditating on the Sacred Heart of Christ and the Virgin Mary.
"'The worship, the worshipper and the worshipped, those three are not separate.'"
The Speaker, the Spoken and the Breath. Love.
"Breathe. I have only a daily reprieve from addiction, I am not cured. Breathe. One should not be surprised nor complain about the work required to develop spiritually. It isn't easy! Effort is required, difficulties to be expected and tolerated. Breathe. Being discouraged is not useful. How fortunate I am to have come this far! [...] Breathe, pay attention to what's in front of you, what's being offered."
""Mental attitude is very important. It allows you to face even tragedy. Training our minds is very useful. This life is full of contradictions and problems. How will we meet our problems? [...] Altruism is the key to happiness. [...] Tolerance is the key to compassion, and for this we need enemies to give us the opportunity to practice tolerance."
""When the world is destroyed there will only be two places that will be safe. One is a temple in Ujjain, southern India, and the other a tunnel underneath the Wawel Castle chapel in Krakow, Poland. I've never been able to find out anymore. Isn't that a curious tale? [...]
You must study the history of Poland. It is heartbreaking, but you must learn it."
"When I ask him about the miraculous healing powers that this Madonna [of Einsiedeln] reportedly has, he assures me that the greatest miracles that take place here are those inside the human heart."
"Meinrad's story follows the pattern of the stories of many, whether the desert fathers, the Buddha, or Christ: the retreat into the wilderness, temptation and torment by demons, and, if one survived, consolation from God. The wilderness, be it desert or forest, becomes the crucible in which the transformation takes place."
"To say that one is "longing for darkness" is to say that one longs for transformation, for a darkness that brings balance, wholeness, integration, wisdom, insight, I now realize."
"The world that we see, called the "luminous world," is now believed to be only a fraction of what
exists. Ninety percent of the universe is apparently made up of dark matter, about which we know very little."
"Now the blackness took on another dimension. People demanded that she and the Christ Child be completely black."
"Called "the Star of the Sea" and "Queen of Heaven," Isis, like the Black Madonnas, was renowned as a miracle worker and healer."
"I long to liberate Mary from the Catholic Church. We all need her."
How about asking Her whether she's 'trapped'... If we all need her, let's be humble enough to come to her, she whose soul proclaims the glory of the Lord. That's the kinda the point.
"I go to look for Mary and cannot find her without the stream of stories that carried her from one part of the world to another. Seldom have I had a more vivid sense of all the different strands that make up what we call Christianity than in my visit to this ancient church."
"Truth makes a place where a seed of friendship is planted."
"An icon in the Byzantine tradition is much more than a likeness or representation of the saint or deity honored. The icon is considered a vessel that conveys the sanctity of the saint depicted. Veneration by the faithful is believed to create an actual contact with the saint."
"I begin shooting again, I cannot take enough pictures of the Black Madonna. I am hungry for her, want to devour her, incorporate her. My eyes are teeth and I am chewing up her image, ingesting her, making her part of my being. I want to receive her as a wafer in communion, I want to swallow her, whole. Can a photograph be a wafer? If you take a picture of something sacred, is the image of the sacred image sacred?"
"The Polish humor is black, dry, and sharp. "Life is brutal [and full of traps]" is a favorite phrase, always delivered with a hearty laugh and enormous smile."
"I am anxious whenever this happens, no matter how innocent the question. I am uncomfortable
writing in my own journal. I try to devise abbreviations and codes for words rather than writing out whole sentences. But within minutes even I find it hard to understand what I just wrote. My respect for writers who persist under authoritarian regimes grows. [All survivors of DV too..] [...]
Being told that I am automatically suspect because I am a foreigner leaves a residue of suspicion in me every time I am asked a question. The only clue I have as to whether or not someone might be the secret police or an informant is the fact that they will question me.
I am so careful that it's exhausting."
"The more I sing, the friendlier people are to me. [...] I have no context, no clues, no indication as to where the boundaries are in this situation. I pray that I can complete this walk. Just walking is
so hard, so very, very difficult. [...] Walking these distances at the pace we keep is in itself a rigorous spiritual practice. [...] Only singing takes the pain away."
YES.
"Either way, it is a feat of no small measure to accomplish the most basic tasks under these circumstances."
"When I see what other people have to work with, whether it's their shoes or physical condition, and the effort they are making, my own blisters become very small. [...] For most people in the world, life is hard. We forget. I had no context at first, but after days of walking I am discovering that if I just make the initial effort in the morning to start, then I don't want to stop. The hardest
part is putting my shoes back on in the morning; that hurts. But after the first few kilometers, the pain becomes like a background noise and is, in truth, bearable."
YES.
"The lack of forgiveness creates an underlying intolerance, a thin, hard rind around my heart. Unable to forgive myself, I can hardly forgive anyone else. [...] The self-righteous anger that I derive from cultivating such a position, whether justified or not, is poisonous. I have to rid myself of it and to take full responsibility for my life. I do not want to do this, I do not know how to do this."
"The energy continues to build as we walk deeper and deeper into the countryside. A kind of cleansing and toughening up is taking place, rather than a wearing down. We have more energy after the days of walking rather than less."
"With each step down I am a little less afraid and I speak louder.
"Blessed art Thou amongst women."
I am walking into a state of trust.
"And blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus."
My voice grows calm and stronger still, and soon I am no longer afraid, but happy. Exposed and vulnerable, paradoxically this is precisely where safety lies. The rain comes down harder."
"The Buddhas and bodhisattvas are always throwing flowers in our path, showering us with flowers. So we too should scatter flowers. [...]
She is looking at you with loving kindness, she is pouring out her compassion to you, she will come the instant you think of her, call out her name, no matter who you are, where you are, or how unbelieving you have been. She is the hearer of the world's cries, she is the boat that carries us across the river of the sufferings of this world"
Just as Mary is the boat, the door, the gate, the ladder.
"I came close to missing the late afternoon flight by making wrong turns, I was so disturbed by Brenda's story [...]. Though I kept checking [the map] I could not orient myself east, west,
north, or south. My sense of direction had temporarily evaporated."
"The Black Madonna is cosmic red."
"[Poland has] a war between the authorities and the life of the spirit."
""One must simply step into another world altogether and refuse to be afraid, regardless of threats. It is the only way out.""
""Mary's appearance may be explained like this. When children want something, they go to their mother. When children are in trouble, their mother goes to them. She is our Mother, she is concerned for us. The world is in trouble. She brings a message of love and of hope. She asks for peace and reconciliation. We must pray and listen to her.""
"Prayer, fasting, and reconciliation are traditional spiritual practices widely used throughout the world, not limited by belief."
"root of the word black meant gleaming"
Weaving stories from Nepal, Tibet, Poland, Texas. Travel requires focus and such adaptability and openness. "Go. See what happens." The kindness of translators. The militaries are everywhere in this book . I didn't think I'd be thinking about Ordinary Men here, men being forced to dig their own graves and shot, or The Great Terror, from stories of Guatemala and El Salvador...
--
"I had come [to Nepal] to find the Buddha Tara, but instead I found the goddesses Durga and Kali. Kali, sprung from Durga, Kali the death-dealer and life-giver, the end and beginning of time. She was a deity of such proportions as I had heard only God the Father in Christianity described. The fact that Kali is dark and female turned my Catholic upbringing inside out. She is naked, "sky-clad," because she has stripped away illusion; some say, to her nothing is hidden. Some say she is black because black is the color in which all distinctions are dissolved, others say she is black because she is eternal night."
""This happened to me before, nine months ago, this same paralysis. Listen to me. I was taken to the hospital, shot full of valium, and it didn't work. That's why it's back. I told everyone then, the doctors, my brother who was there, that this wasn't a medical problem, that it was something else, this is not about the pain in my neck, this is not about muscle spasms. I begged them not to take me to the hospital, but no one listened." [...]
I have lost my body. I can't find my body. It is a terrifying experience to suddenly become completely paralyzed, and yet the terror passes quickly now, like a cloud-shadow moving fast overhead on a sunny, windswept day, it is gone, and I see into the heart of this mountain. [...]
I try to tell Dr. Banskota what I am hearing as he holds my hand, but the words that come out cannot match the clarity of what I hear. I speak in nonsense. I tell Dr. Banskota as he is holding my hand that I am seeing into the heart of the world, that in the heart of the world there are no accidents. The heart of the world broke my leg, stopped me, is holding me down, makes me lie still like this because I couldn't stop myself. I know that this is good. I begin to sing."
Emily Dickinson:
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
Fever as an altered state of consciousness, with a properly set heart & will, is pure magic.
"Our choice is to be in love or to be in fear. But to choose to be in love means to have a mountain inside of you, means to have the heart of the world inside you, means you will feel another's suffering inside your own body and you will weep. You will have no protection from the
world's pain because you will know it as your own. [...] You will forget that you know this, again and again. Do not be afraid. The body remembers, it never forgets. It is your own knowing that you hide from and do not know."
"No matter how sick I still was with dysentery, it was clear that something that had always been with me was gone. Some particular kind of fear, fear that I didn't know I had, fear that had weighed me down, been a heavy wooden yoke across the back of my neck, was no longer there."
And that's just chapter one.
--
"There is a story underneath this story, behind it, next to it, everywhere around it but on the page.
I was an alcoholic. I was also addicted to prescription drugs at one point. Nothing in my life was to make sense until I acknowledged this fact and began a recovery. I began that process within four
months after my return from Nepal, in February 1981."
"No alcohol or drugs—absolute abstinence—was the foundation of getting sober, but being able to stay that way, to recover, was another story. It wasn't about not. drinking or using, it was about turning my psyche inside out, shaking loose all the broken parts, and throwing out what had gone bad or didn't work. Addiction steals souls. Mine had almost been lost.
There is a direct relationship between addiction and spirituality. Some now describe addiction as a spiritual emergency."
"My ability to stay sober would depend on my spiritual condition. I had a daily reprieve, that was all. [...] The search for Tara took on a new dimension. It became more than a passionate interest and a longing, finding her became a matter of life and death."
"I had an elaborate system of checks and balances worked out mentally. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it did not. What became apparent was that I could not rely on my ability to stop at the limit I had given myself. This inability to rely upon myself was inexplicable, self-defeating in my continued attempts to do so, and utterly degrading and humiliating whenever I failed again. [...]
that experience repeated, with no predictability, beat me into the ground. [...]
I would always walk into the inn full of good intentions. But when I walked out again was no longer in my control."
"[Jung] wrote later that he thought it no accident that in Latin, "we use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as the most depraving poison." Spiritus. That was the answer."
Spirit: a pharmakon.
"The great pre-Christian center of worship of the Great Mother [Ephesus] became the center of worship for Mary the Mother of God, the Theotokos."
"Meister Eckhart, the abbess Hildegarde of Bingen, Mechtild of Magdeburg, and Julian of Norwich all spoke of the Motherhood of God."
"Longing for darkness was also a longing for the womb of God. The Buddhists call it emptiness. It is the female principle. One could also say this womb, this emptiness, is the Buddha Tara in her many forms."
The wrathful side of Tara, the Black Madonna, the peaceful side of Kali -- yes, the connection is easily drawn. Their lesser known forms that bridge the gap between them.
""But this much I know, O Mother, that to take refuge in thee is to destroy all my miseries.""
"Yet as I continued to sit [in zazen], Christ began to appear in my meditation, then Mary. I didn't like this. I didn't like this at all. I wanted them to go away. I was done with them, I thought, I had left the Church."
"[aspects of Tibetan teachings] must be received orally, by direct transmission, from a fully qualified teacher. A good deal of harm can and has been done by not being aware of this method of transmitting the teachings. The teaching can only be transmitted through experience and actual practice.
These ancient ceremonial teachings give detailed maps of the human psyche or mind. Printed texts of rituals are like the rutters or portolan charts kept by ship's pilots in the days before there were reliable maps of the world: they can only be used by someone who has already been there him- or herself, at least once."
"[Story of] Juglio, who decided one day to walk home to Spain from Kathmandu. Juglio began walking with no money, only a toothbrush, a diary, and a pen. He made it. [...]
I imagine that I need so much, must have so many things first, before I can set out. The story of Juglio cuts through that, reminds me that I need very little outwardly; but inwardly, I need a ferocity of intention."
"[Tsultrim Allione] mentioned the Tibetan delog, a person who unwittingly gets catapulted onto the spiritual path. They begin by accident, "involuntarily,' usually because of a serious illness. [...]
The return from the underworld, as well as the knowledge of the descent, was used to help the living, a motif akin to shamanistic experience, as well as recovery from addiction. [...]
I was ashamed to have been an alcoholic mother. The mention of delog stories helped create a healthier perspective on the illness. Like a diabetic, I might not be responsible for having it, but I am responsible for treating it."
Christ teaches the same.. But if your heart's closed/ stone, it can't come through.
"Then I was out the door walking to the car as if in a dream. How much my children had forgiven me. How little I had forgiven myself. [...] I felt uprooted, cried, and longed to turn back. Who is leaving? Who will return? The same person never comes back."
"Maybe I need to remember that there were always obstacles for pilgrims."
"The mourners sang and walked along with everyone else—people on their way to work or market, school—not separate from everyday life. A sense of relief washed over me. What goes on in life, even death, is obvious in India, not hidden."
"Isolated for centuries, called the "Roof of the World" at an average altitude of twelve thousand to thirteen thousand feet, Tibet lies strategically between India and China. Its story is one of the least understood international tragedies of our time."
Closed hearts.. Desacralization, of people and even of objects (of the soul bestowed upon them), leads to tragedy..
"In 1949, Tibet's fate had been thrust into the hands of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, then sixteen years old."
"Inside Tibet, it's like the problem of the South African people: first and foremost, in their own country Tibetans are treated like slaves, they are second-class citizens. In South Africa, the problem
is black and white, you can see it clearly. But with Tibet, it's not black and white, everyone just looks Asian to the rest of the world, so they can't see what has happened to us," Drolma said [...]
"[the outside world is] in such a state of confusion, so noisy, how can they hear us when we talk about Tibet?""
""There is also a legend about Tara rescuing from the Eight Fears: ocean waves, lions, poisonous snakes, fires, thieves, imprisonment, and other dangers. But most importantly, she rescues us from what these dangers symbolize—our internal enemies—the fires of anger, the lion of pride, the snake of envy, the chains of avarice, and so forth."
The eight evil thoughts. 7 & 8 both sacred.
Green Tara: remover of obstacles. & Our Lady, Undoer of Knots.
"It is a fantastic cosmos that one enters in Tibetan practice, the description of it forming a kind of literary astronomy."
People yearn for magic, for wonder, for enchantment, for soul.
"Visualization not only helps us gain control of the mind, but the very act of doing it serves to purify the mind of defilements and obscurations as well, "the water of the mind runs through the cleansing filter of the image.""
Totally accurate for the rosary & for meditating on the Sacred Heart of Christ and the Virgin Mary.
"'The worship, the worshipper and the worshipped, those three are not separate.'"
The Speaker, the Spoken and the Breath. Love.
"Breathe. I have only a daily reprieve from addiction, I am not cured. Breathe. One should not be surprised nor complain about the work required to develop spiritually. It isn't easy! Effort is required, difficulties to be expected and tolerated. Breathe. Being discouraged is not useful. How fortunate I am to have come this far! [...] Breathe, pay attention to what's in front of you, what's being offered."
""Mental attitude is very important. It allows you to face even tragedy. Training our minds is very useful. This life is full of contradictions and problems. How will we meet our problems? [...] Altruism is the key to happiness. [...] Tolerance is the key to compassion, and for this we need enemies to give us the opportunity to practice tolerance."
""When the world is destroyed there will only be two places that will be safe. One is a temple in Ujjain, southern India, and the other a tunnel underneath the Wawel Castle chapel in Krakow, Poland. I've never been able to find out anymore. Isn't that a curious tale? [...]
You must study the history of Poland. It is heartbreaking, but you must learn it."
"When I ask him about the miraculous healing powers that this Madonna [of Einsiedeln] reportedly has, he assures me that the greatest miracles that take place here are those inside the human heart."
"Meinrad's story follows the pattern of the stories of many, whether the desert fathers, the Buddha, or Christ: the retreat into the wilderness, temptation and torment by demons, and, if one survived, consolation from God. The wilderness, be it desert or forest, becomes the crucible in which the transformation takes place."
"To say that one is "longing for darkness" is to say that one longs for transformation, for a darkness that brings balance, wholeness, integration, wisdom, insight, I now realize."
"The world that we see, called the "luminous world," is now believed to be only a fraction of what
exists. Ninety percent of the universe is apparently made up of dark matter, about which we know very little."
"Now the blackness took on another dimension. People demanded that she and the Christ Child be completely black."
"Called "the Star of the Sea" and "Queen of Heaven," Isis, like the Black Madonnas, was renowned as a miracle worker and healer."
"I long to liberate Mary from the Catholic Church. We all need her."
How about asking Her whether she's 'trapped'... If we all need her, let's be humble enough to come to her, she whose soul proclaims the glory of the Lord. That's the kinda the point.
"I go to look for Mary and cannot find her without the stream of stories that carried her from one part of the world to another. Seldom have I had a more vivid sense of all the different strands that make up what we call Christianity than in my visit to this ancient church."
"Truth makes a place where a seed of friendship is planted."
"An icon in the Byzantine tradition is much more than a likeness or representation of the saint or deity honored. The icon is considered a vessel that conveys the sanctity of the saint depicted. Veneration by the faithful is believed to create an actual contact with the saint."
"I begin shooting again, I cannot take enough pictures of the Black Madonna. I am hungry for her, want to devour her, incorporate her. My eyes are teeth and I am chewing up her image, ingesting her, making her part of my being. I want to receive her as a wafer in communion, I want to swallow her, whole. Can a photograph be a wafer? If you take a picture of something sacred, is the image of the sacred image sacred?"
"The Polish humor is black, dry, and sharp. "Life is brutal [and full of traps]" is a favorite phrase, always delivered with a hearty laugh and enormous smile."
"I am anxious whenever this happens, no matter how innocent the question. I am uncomfortable
writing in my own journal. I try to devise abbreviations and codes for words rather than writing out whole sentences. But within minutes even I find it hard to understand what I just wrote. My respect for writers who persist under authoritarian regimes grows. [All survivors of DV too..] [...]
Being told that I am automatically suspect because I am a foreigner leaves a residue of suspicion in me every time I am asked a question. The only clue I have as to whether or not someone might be the secret police or an informant is the fact that they will question me.
I am so careful that it's exhausting."
"The more I sing, the friendlier people are to me. [...] I have no context, no clues, no indication as to where the boundaries are in this situation. I pray that I can complete this walk. Just walking is
so hard, so very, very difficult. [...] Walking these distances at the pace we keep is in itself a rigorous spiritual practice. [...] Only singing takes the pain away."
YES.
"Either way, it is a feat of no small measure to accomplish the most basic tasks under these circumstances."
"When I see what other people have to work with, whether it's their shoes or physical condition, and the effort they are making, my own blisters become very small. [...] For most people in the world, life is hard. We forget. I had no context at first, but after days of walking I am discovering that if I just make the initial effort in the morning to start, then I don't want to stop. The hardest
part is putting my shoes back on in the morning; that hurts. But after the first few kilometers, the pain becomes like a background noise and is, in truth, bearable."
YES.
"The lack of forgiveness creates an underlying intolerance, a thin, hard rind around my heart. Unable to forgive myself, I can hardly forgive anyone else. [...] The self-righteous anger that I derive from cultivating such a position, whether justified or not, is poisonous. I have to rid myself of it and to take full responsibility for my life. I do not want to do this, I do not know how to do this."
"The energy continues to build as we walk deeper and deeper into the countryside. A kind of cleansing and toughening up is taking place, rather than a wearing down. We have more energy after the days of walking rather than less."
"With each step down I am a little less afraid and I speak louder.
"Blessed art Thou amongst women."
I am walking into a state of trust.
"And blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus."
My voice grows calm and stronger still, and soon I am no longer afraid, but happy. Exposed and vulnerable, paradoxically this is precisely where safety lies. The rain comes down harder."
"The Buddhas and bodhisattvas are always throwing flowers in our path, showering us with flowers. So we too should scatter flowers. [...]
She is looking at you with loving kindness, she is pouring out her compassion to you, she will come the instant you think of her, call out her name, no matter who you are, where you are, or how unbelieving you have been. She is the hearer of the world's cries, she is the boat that carries us across the river of the sufferings of this world"
Just as Mary is the boat, the door, the gate, the ladder.
"I came close to missing the late afternoon flight by making wrong turns, I was so disturbed by Brenda's story [...]. Though I kept checking [the map] I could not orient myself east, west,
north, or south. My sense of direction had temporarily evaporated."
"The Black Madonna is cosmic red."
"[Poland has] a war between the authorities and the life of the spirit."
""One must simply step into another world altogether and refuse to be afraid, regardless of threats. It is the only way out.""
""Mary's appearance may be explained like this. When children want something, they go to their mother. When children are in trouble, their mother goes to them. She is our Mother, she is concerned for us. The world is in trouble. She brings a message of love and of hope. She asks for peace and reconciliation. We must pray and listen to her.""
"Prayer, fasting, and reconciliation are traditional spiritual practices widely used throughout the world, not limited by belief."
"root of the word black meant gleaming"
December 18, 2015
"It occurred to me that there was something false about the way Mary was so often depicted as a passive sufferer. I no longer believed that. Mary is not passive. The image we've been shown has truth, but it is a limited truth...A woman rising up against authority, a woman strong and fearless, a ferocious woman, an independent woman, an heroic woman, a physically courageous woman--to have seen Mary this way would not have served the social order. I began to imagine Mary very differently...This is a Mary that we need now, a fierce Mary, a terrific Mary, a fearsome Mary, a protectress who does not allow her children to be hunted, tortured, murdered, and devoured" (p. 275).
"The witness is one who looks, who does not turn away, who does not despair or give up, who is willing to be called upon, who will speak up and testify in public, who will take an oath, who will bind themselves to the truth, 'so help me God,' to the community, for the community, for without the witness there can be no community" (p. 277).
"Standing in the auditorium doorway, it occurred to me that we, myself included, rush to aid the Tibetans in their struggle with the Chinese, not seeing that what the Chinese are doing to the Tibetans, we have already done to the Native Americans. We've killed their people, their languages, broken treaties, stolen lands, usurped them, displaced them, imprisoned them, plied them with alcohol, low-paying, unsafe jobs, very much like what the Chinese have done and continue to do to the Tibetans" (p. 329).
"When Stacey Merkt was indicted, she gave a statement that I read years ago and have never forgotten: 'We United States citizens will have no excuse. We will never be able to say, "I never saw, I never heard, I never knew"--that we set a house on fire and locked the door'" (p. 265).
"The witness is one who looks, who does not turn away, who does not despair or give up, who is willing to be called upon, who will speak up and testify in public, who will take an oath, who will bind themselves to the truth, 'so help me God,' to the community, for the community, for without the witness there can be no community" (p. 277).
"Standing in the auditorium doorway, it occurred to me that we, myself included, rush to aid the Tibetans in their struggle with the Chinese, not seeing that what the Chinese are doing to the Tibetans, we have already done to the Native Americans. We've killed their people, their languages, broken treaties, stolen lands, usurped them, displaced them, imprisoned them, plied them with alcohol, low-paying, unsafe jobs, very much like what the Chinese have done and continue to do to the Tibetans" (p. 329).
"When Stacey Merkt was indicted, she gave a statement that I read years ago and have never forgotten: 'We United States citizens will have no excuse. We will never be able to say, "I never saw, I never heard, I never knew"--that we set a house on fire and locked the door'" (p. 265).
February 27, 2014
A profound and detailed spiritual journey that took the author on travels from New Mexico through Nepal, India, Switzerland, France, the former Yugoslavia, and Poland as she searched for the feminine in the deity. She meets Tara, the female Buddha of Tibet and the Black Madonna in Poland and Mexico. She comes full circle from the authoritarian, uptight, and guilt-ridden Catholic experience back to the welcoming and healing arms of Mary, but without the necessity of re-joining the church. This is not only a spiritual journey (nor is it a funky New-Age experience) a reader can find resonance in, but a physical and academic one, as well. The author is knowledgeable about the history of religion and her pilgrimages are mindful of the culture, political climate, and history.It is painfully personal at times, but the author is careful not to mire the reader with too much of it. It's heartfelt, honest, and I have ear-marked numerous pages to return to. It's dense and sometimes I felt there were too many stories of people she met that I couldn't keep up with.This is a book I will keep next to my bed to refer to on my own journey of the spirit with the feminine in the deity and into the darkness for transformation.
December 27, 2016
I read this because Sue Monk Kid credits this work with inspiring her own writing. I was disappointed. The author just gives us tiny glimpses into her life (just enough to hint at it being interesting), then strings together a decade worth of journeying. Se tells us briefly about the facts of her end of Catholicism and beginnings of Buddhism,her failed marriages and alcoholism and having 3 kids and remarrying, but then never actually shares how those things affect her journey and the reader is confused as to how she went from a single parent with no money to going on weeks-long journeys to foreign countries. The stories are all: "and then I learned this; and then I spoke to this person; and then I went home and got remarried." She never really ties together a meaningful thread through these; there is just kind of a soft conclusion that Mary and Tara and a other black/dark goddess figures are connected.
February 21, 2008
Instead of saying all good things, I'll just skip to the things that bothered me. The author is an alcoholic (recovering) baby boomer, and you all know how I feel about baby boomers and substance abuse....However, she doesn't wallow or preach, so no harm. The real flaw in this book is that she doesn't mention except once in passing, Sophia, which I would have thought to be impossible in discussing the European Black Madonna tradition. If you're interesting in women's spirituality or the Black Madonna or the manifestations of Tara (and I know my goodread friends are not) read this book as a balanced part of your self education.
July 9, 2010
Interesting enough. When I first started reading I passed it off as another "middle-aged woman finds god in far off places" tale but it was more than that. It is a great tale of the links of faith that hold people of all religions together and a really interesting discussion of the dichotomy of light and darkness in world religions. I was pleased to see her encounter Chokyi Nyma, a Rinpoche I met and received teachings from during my time in India, so the book had some additional personal significance for me as well.
February 18, 2012
I really wanted to get into this book. The subject is one I normally am interested in... But I just couldn't get into this book. I found myself getting irritated at the narrator and eventually reading became a chore.
December 4, 2018
This reads like a personal travel journal, lightly and poorly edited for publication. The premise is interesting (the linkages between Eastern and Western depictions of dark female divine) but the insights are missing.
July 15, 2008
Pretty good searching/travelling memoir. not the best writing, and lost me midway through.
Read
June 28, 2010booooooring
November 18, 2010
Terrific combination of travel journal, archeological adventure and personal essay.
December 13, 2012
I gave up on this book.
July 13, 2025
“I imagined Mary as a fierce mother one morning in my prayers and meditation. I imagined her protecting Christ. The Mary I saw stepped in front of his tormentors. She did not stand passively as he made his way to Golgotha, at first she hurled herself at the Roman soldiers, “Stop, stop, stop!” trying to wrench their whips away from them, to remove his crown of thorns. She was fiercely protective and she was greatly outnumbered. They shoved her away and formed a phalanx around Christ.
She denounced the soldiers, she defied them. She did not faint, she was not helpless, she did not retreat, she was not polite. She was a tower of strength, she did not take her eyes off her Christ. She walked with him, outside the phalanx of soldiers. She was his most powerful witness, she suffered with him mentally and physically.
This is a Mary we have not seen in the West. This is a Mary that we need now, a fierce Mary, a terrific Mary, a fearsome Mary, a protectress who does not allow her children to be hunted, tortured, murdered, and devoured.
‘Mary, the poorest people, the most vulnerable, the weakest who suffer the most are devoted to you. Why do they pray to you?’ I asked. ‘Why don’t you protect them? Would it be worse if they did not pray to you? We need a mother who protects us, who is like a lioness defending her young, is terrible when crossed.
‘Mary, show me your face’”.
She denounced the soldiers, she defied them. She did not faint, she was not helpless, she did not retreat, she was not polite. She was a tower of strength, she did not take her eyes off her Christ. She walked with him, outside the phalanx of soldiers. She was his most powerful witness, she suffered with him mentally and physically.
This is a Mary we have not seen in the West. This is a Mary that we need now, a fierce Mary, a terrific Mary, a fearsome Mary, a protectress who does not allow her children to be hunted, tortured, murdered, and devoured.
‘Mary, the poorest people, the most vulnerable, the weakest who suffer the most are devoted to you. Why do they pray to you?’ I asked. ‘Why don’t you protect them? Would it be worse if they did not pray to you? We need a mother who protects us, who is like a lioness defending her young, is terrible when crossed.
‘Mary, show me your face’”.
March 13, 2024
Memoir of a decade of spiritual seeking to heal the Mother Wound (my phrase ) - the lack of the feminine aspect of God in faith traditions. Weaving threads of Roman Catholic roots with deep studies of Buddhism, especially Tibetan, following explorations of prehistoric and cross cultural sources of the female Buddha Tara and the Black Madonnas. This woman boldly interviewed and trained with an amazing array of people across continents! Ultimately a tale of learning one’s sovereignty, recognizing that to pit oneself against a cultural view is not the enemy. It is the ignoring of one’s own experience and seeking validation from external authorities. Brings to mind the more recent Way of the Rose by Clark Strand and Perdita Finn.
I got bogged down with the political situations she encountered in the last third and would have appreciated more insights into grounding one’s spiritual practices in movements to bring peace to one’s corner of the globe. But that would have meant a significantly longer book, I suspect! This travel memoir is a delightful read otherwise.
I got bogged down with the political situations she encountered in the last third and would have appreciated more insights into grounding one’s spiritual practices in movements to bring peace to one’s corner of the globe. But that would have meant a significantly longer book, I suspect! This travel memoir is a delightful read otherwise.
March 19, 2025
China is AMAZING!!! This was not an easy read for me at first, but it felt like a powerful book for me and helped remind me of many personal teachings in my spiritual journey. China searches all around the world and draws connections between cultures and religion that ultimately remind us of oneness. She does not shy away from talking on trauma or mental health as well as race and war and all things horrible in the world, which is nice to see a book about spirituality that does not shy away from pain.. if anything it highlights how pain can be part of enlightenment.
I love that she shares her photography throughout the book and shows us the contrast between devoting yourself to practice/ meditation/ pilgrimage, and trying to be spiritual in the world as a mum or a woman or western person trying to live spiritually (in a world that makes it so difficult). Her life is truly inspiring.
I love that she shares her photography throughout the book and shows us the contrast between devoting yourself to practice/ meditation/ pilgrimage, and trying to be spiritual in the world as a mum or a woman or western person trying to live spiritually (in a world that makes it so difficult). Her life is truly inspiring.
January 17, 2026
What’s the connection between the Buddha Tara, Kali, and the Virgin Mary (particularly icons depicting her with dark skin)? Well, I still don’t know. This book asks those questions without really answering them, but it’s also a compelling adventure memoir. The author seeks out holy sites and religious leaders from Tibet to the Rio Grande Valley, defies government authorities in the Poland of the 1980s, and recovers from alcoholism. The Indiana Jones of it all makes up for the loose threads.
July 4, 2022
This book, ultimately won me over. I put it down about half way through as it lost me a bit..picking it up several months later, I was re-hooked. Was it the book, the timing, or me? Who knows...Yet, my over-all impressions are one of great insight, courage to write of difficult things that most people struggle to face, much less share their journey about so articulately.
February 20, 2021
holds up decades later, and an intense exploration of the divine feminine
December 30, 2016
**Spoiler alert- Don't read this if you don't like spoilers. This is not a review. This is my own personal summary just to keep track of what I have read. ***
I am reading this very slowly, a couple of pages at a time. I like to look up images to go along with her descriptions, travels, places and religious artworks. She has described several journeys to India, Nepal, etc. to learn about White Tara (Green and other descriptors too). Along the way she shares what she has learned with plenty of references. She is also traveling around learning about the Black Madonnas in the world. I am learning through her writing of what she learned, again with lots of references. I am interested in the layer upon layer of myth, legends, stories behind the places and art she sees. Catholicism, Roman religion, Egyptian, Pagan, it is all there.
Almost done (12-23-16) This book has really grown on me. I admire her persistence in following her spiritual intuition. She has been to Poland and done a pilgrimage, spoken to Lech Walesa, spoken to one of the visionaries at Medjugorje. Her quest is amazing. The way so many divine female figures are linked is very interesting to me. Uncovering one legend or story leads to an earlier female god story in the same locale. I love the teachings about Buddha Tara. That she will present herself as anyone- just to give love and compassion, a relief from suffering.
Finished it, what a gift of being retired! I could read this at my leisure and let it spur me off into mini research projects of my own. The last chapters were a stream of consciousness poetry slam up to a crescendo swirling all the divine female aspects and histories. I like her metaphor of streams and rivers, it really fit. Quoting heavily from the Dalai Lama was great too. I loved her story at the end of going back and translating the taped words of the mother of a revered Buddhist teacher she interviewed. The mother answered her questions about women and mothers becoming teachers, becoming enlightened, but at the time, it was just the male who was translated. The mother actually answered her questions. She philosophically says that Buddhist teachings appear when they are needed, or when the student is ready to perceive them. My understanding and perception of Mary and Tara are deeply enriched by this book!
I am reading this very slowly, a couple of pages at a time. I like to look up images to go along with her descriptions, travels, places and religious artworks. She has described several journeys to India, Nepal, etc. to learn about White Tara (Green and other descriptors too). Along the way she shares what she has learned with plenty of references. She is also traveling around learning about the Black Madonnas in the world. I am learning through her writing of what she learned, again with lots of references. I am interested in the layer upon layer of myth, legends, stories behind the places and art she sees. Catholicism, Roman religion, Egyptian, Pagan, it is all there.
Almost done (12-23-16) This book has really grown on me. I admire her persistence in following her spiritual intuition. She has been to Poland and done a pilgrimage, spoken to Lech Walesa, spoken to one of the visionaries at Medjugorje. Her quest is amazing. The way so many divine female figures are linked is very interesting to me. Uncovering one legend or story leads to an earlier female god story in the same locale. I love the teachings about Buddha Tara. That she will present herself as anyone- just to give love and compassion, a relief from suffering.
Finished it, what a gift of being retired! I could read this at my leisure and let it spur me off into mini research projects of my own. The last chapters were a stream of consciousness poetry slam up to a crescendo swirling all the divine female aspects and histories. I like her metaphor of streams and rivers, it really fit. Quoting heavily from the Dalai Lama was great too. I loved her story at the end of going back and translating the taped words of the mother of a revered Buddhist teacher she interviewed. The mother answered her questions about women and mothers becoming teachers, becoming enlightened, but at the time, it was just the male who was translated. The mother actually answered her questions. She philosophically says that Buddhist teachings appear when they are needed, or when the student is ready to perceive them. My understanding and perception of Mary and Tara are deeply enriched by this book!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 21, 2017
All time favorite. Changed my life.
September 9, 2013
A friend lent me this book a while ago, and it went on my stack of books-to-read-and-return, which is different than the huge stacks of books to read that are in every corner of my life. BTRAR's have their extra special shelf and get handled with extra care. I have to do this because otherwise I would be stealing books right and left and leaving friends all sad. Very bad form.
She lent it to me because she is an intuitive soul (and a lovely person) who knows, though I don't go yapping about my Spiritual Path, that she and I are following somewhat similar paths. And she knew this book would fascinate me.
And it did. It is like reading a travelogue of the soul. It is a curious mix of "and then I went on this pilgrimage" and discussion of deep truths, historial references and theories, and fascinating encounters with people (the Dalai Lama, many priests, pilgrims, and random souls).
Bits of it glimmer with sheer beauty. Galland is a very good writer. I would have liked more on many things she touches on and moves past--it is not a book that will take you all the way on any path--but I liked the little signposts she has managed to leave. There is an extensive bibliography and lots of footnotes as well.
She lent it to me because she is an intuitive soul (and a lovely person) who knows, though I don't go yapping about my Spiritual Path, that she and I are following somewhat similar paths. And she knew this book would fascinate me.
And it did. It is like reading a travelogue of the soul. It is a curious mix of "and then I went on this pilgrimage" and discussion of deep truths, historial references and theories, and fascinating encounters with people (the Dalai Lama, many priests, pilgrims, and random souls).
Bits of it glimmer with sheer beauty. Galland is a very good writer. I would have liked more on many things she touches on and moves past--it is not a book that will take you all the way on any path--but I liked the little signposts she has managed to leave. There is an extensive bibliography and lots of footnotes as well.
January 8, 2013
This reads like an academic dissertation turned into a book. It's really two books - the academic, historical description of her spiritual journey (with EVERY Buddhist teacher she trained with listed along with their lineage) and her own, very personal, fascinating internal journey on the path to finding the feminine in two very male-oriented religions. I, like many, wanted to love this book and in the end, it took a lot to finish it. It has a kind of plodding, travelogue feel to it. The chapters don't flow together. And yet, there are electric moments, like her description of healing herself of past birthing trauma, through her feverish sickness in Nepal. I also feel like the reason the author had such a hard time finding the Goddess on her travels, is because she had such a hard time honoring the feminine in herself. But this is an important book and I'm so glad she shared her story with the world.
June 25, 2008
It seems like people love or hate this book- but I just liked it. Most of the people who hated it seemed to expect something from the book that it's not intended for. This is not a strictly scholarly book, nor is it about the author's family. It's about her experience, and if you have issues with a woman going on a spiritual journey and writing it in narrative form- well, you won't like it.
I learned a lot of interesting things about both Tara and the Black Madonna, even though I generally don't go seeking for associations between goddesses. I think my preference is more for the study and less for the narrative, which is why I only liked this book.
I learned a lot of interesting things about both Tara and the Black Madonna, even though I generally don't go seeking for associations between goddesses. I think my preference is more for the study and less for the narrative, which is why I only liked this book.
September 5, 2017
A meditative sojourn into the heart of the feminine power symbols of Tara and the Black Madonna. These symbols often elude because of their mystic qualities - because they must be felt to be seen. CG journeys to Nepal and India, Texas and Poland. She visits the Dalai Lama, leaders, priests, women working on the ground at the grass roots amidst poverty and strife. she experiences pilgrimages where walking hours on end, days at a time shakes loose from the brain any doubt about the self. Her journey leads her home to her own heart, not in a Joseph Campbell character arc sort of way but in a way that symbols and the wisdom transmitted within them can deepen all connections.
September 14, 2014
I re-read this book every few years. I'm not sure why it's so fascinating: a California woman sets off on a pilgrimage to follow the trail and legends of the Black Madonna and Tara from India and Nepal, to Poland and Texas, Switzerland and France, Yugoslavia and Cambridge, intertwined with her own personal journey in Buddhist communities and addiction, spirituality , and family, over a period of ten years.
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