No.2 Emanation of Taras – Loter Yangchenma (2/21)

Photo Credit: Alan Kozlowski

Praises to the Twenty-One Tara is a traditional prayer in Tibetan Buddhism to the female Bodhisattva Tara. (Tibetan called Drolma) also known as Arya Tara or Jetsun Dolma. The prayer is found in all four traditions of Tibetan Buddhism.  Each of the twenty-one emanations of Tara has her own name, and a specific mantra with which she is associated, offering protection from various types of fears, harm, and calamities.

Tara has Twenty-One ultimate emanations according to the mantra of the Buddha Samantabhadra called “Twenty-One Praises of Tara”. Twenty-One Tara with 21 specific colors serves with a specific function. There are different styles and designs of tangka paintings that represent the Twenty-One manifestations of Tara based on distinct lineages and practices, in which forms, colors, ritual objects and even names or functions can vary.

Homage To The No. 2 Taras - Loter Yangchenma 

OM TARE TUTTARE TURE PRAJNA HRIM HRIM SVAHA

Melodious One, the Treasure of Intelligence

Loter Yangchenma is peaceful and white in color. She unlocks the treasures of music, art, wisdom, and the four types of knowledge: meaning, phenomena, definitive words, and courageous eloquence. Upon her utpala flower is a clear mirror marked with the syllable HRIM, which radiates light. Her face glows with the white light of one hundred autumn full moons.

Loter means “knowledge giver” and Yangchenma means “melodious, one who possesses melodies” or “source of melodies”. So she is called Drolma Loter Yangchenma: Melodious Liberator, Source of Wisdom. In Sanskrit, she is called both Sarasvati and Vajrasarasvati.

Om jetsunma pakma drolma la chaktsal lo

Om Homage to the noble lady Tara

Chaktsal tonke dawa kuntu

Homage to you whose countenance

Gangwa gya ni tsekpe shyalma

Resembles a hundred full autumnal moons

Karma tongtrak tsokpa nam kyi

Smiling and glowing with brilliant light

Rabtu chewe O rab barma

Like the radiance of a thousand stars

The “Lady with a shining face like an array of hundred autumn full moons,” means her face is a hundred times fairer and more beautiful than the moon. Her right hand holds a mirror, which is like a full moon engraved with an HRIM syllable. 

The “perfect spacious constellation of a thousand stars,” refers to the field of her wisdom, which is abundantly spacious, and vast, like the countless, resplendent rays of the full moon. This light clears the darkness of the ignorance of practitioners, which is the cause of dullness, disease and possession by evils. 

It opens the door to the treasury of knowledge and illuminating the light of the four specific perfect understandings. These are the perfect understanding of the Dharma (teachings) the perfect understanding of the definitive meaning, perfect confidence (in the doctrine) and the perfect knowledge of the Victorious Ones, (brilliance).

According to a tantra, the inner meaning is “to serve the mother of the sphere” which means emptiness or the nature of mind. In order to look at our innate self, the face of the ultimate Vajravarahi, we must accumulate merit and purify our mind-streams, so that they are like an “array of a hundred pure white moons.”

Because of these practices, the door to her blessing will be opened by our true inclination. In that way, we can see ultimate luminosity and ignite our dynamic wisdom.

Loter Yangchenma, she has one face, two arms and two legs. She sits in the dismounting posture. Her right hand is in the mudra of supreme charity. Her left hand, in the Three Jewels mudra, holds an utpala flower blooming at her ear. 

On its pistil is a clear ritual mirror (melong) marked with the syllable HRIM, radiating light. She opens the treasure of wisdom, the blazing display of supreme knowledge of all the Victorious Ones and their sons. 

This wisdom of the four analytical knowledges instantly and completely dispels the darkness of stupidity and ignorance of all sentient beings. Thus, meditate on Vajra Sarasvati and recite the mantra.

Prayer of the Benefits

Whoever is endowed with devotion for the goddess and recites this with supreme faith, remembering it at dawn upon waking and in the evenings, will be granted all fearlessness, will perfectly pacify all negativities, and will eliminate all unfortunate migrations.

The multitudes of conquerors will quickly grant initiation: Thus, endowed with this greatness, one will eventually reach the state of a Buddha. If affected by the most terrible poison, whether ingested, drunk, or from a living being, just by remembering will one be thoroughly cleansed.

If this prayer is recited two, three, or seven times, It will pacify all the sufferings of torments caused by spirits, fevers, and poisons, and by other beings as well. If you wish for a child, you will get a child; if you wish for wealth, you will receive wealth. All your wishes will be fulfilled and all obstacles pacified.

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Aspiration For Bodhichitta

For those in whom the precious Bodhichitta has not arisen

May it arise and not decrease

But increase further and further.

Dedication of Merit

By this merit may we obtain omniscience then.

Having defeated the enemies wrong-doings.

May we liberate migratory from the ocean of existence.

With its stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death.

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