Goddess Tārā: Silence and Secrecy on the Path to Enlightenment

The enlightened mind that perceives reality from an ultimate viewpoint transcends notions of gender, according to the Buddha’s teachings. Based upon a belief in life’s fundamental impermanence, all phenomena are viewed as devoid of permanent natures. From this perspective, dualistic conceptions of the body, including its male and female components, and the range of values associated with gendered identity, are not considered “intrinsic” to a person’s being nor are they issues of concern in the process of realization, for “it is the stream of consciousness that becomes enlightened, having fully comprehended the sense objects.”¹ Despite these philosophical ideals, socially engrained biases favoring men still persisted within the early Buddhist monastic community. With an aim to challenge these views, Goddess Tārā was promoted as one of the earliest enlightened female role models within the Buddhist tantras.²

The major canonical source for the Tārā cult’s formative period in India is the ritual compendium with the abbreviated title Tārā-mūla-kalpa (Tārā’s Basic Ritual Text), hereafter referred to as the TMK.³ The Sanskrit text, believed to have been composed in the seventh century, was translated into Tibetan in the fourteenth century by Buston, classified as a kriyātantra, and added to the Tibetan canon (bKa’ ‘gyur).⁴ Although the TMK’s Sanskrit text is no longer extant, and its lineage of teachings appears to have been broken due to its lack of commentaries, the text’s importance for scholarship remains. Analysis of the TMK’s contents reveals the strategies through which female role models were promoted within early tantric Buddhist rituals, art, and thought.

The TMK features Tārā as the central object of ritual practice and religious devotion, although her persona is promoted, in part, by adopting the epithets, iconography, and functions of enlightened male bodhisattvas and Buddhas as they have been portrayed in earlier Buddhist scriptures. This is not a particularly feminist means of promoting a female figure. Still, Tārā’s status in the text underscores her importance within Buddhist tradition: she is the first female Buddha within tantric literature. Her epithet, Bhagavatī, exclusively reserved for the most elevated among enlightened beings (tenth-stage bodhisattvas and Buddhas), underscores her enlightened status.

Tārā follows a tradition of strong female role models, beginning in the ancient Vedic period (second millennium BCE), and sustained through early Mahāyāna times (0–400 CE). Many of these goddesses were and still are worshiped for protection from danger.⁵ Others are revered as the embodiment of wisdom. For example, some of Tārā’s important functions can be traced to those of Goddess Prājñāpāramitā, the personification of wisdom realizing emptiness, as delineated in the Perfection of Wisdom scriptures (Prājñāpāramitā-sātras). Furthermore, Prājñāpāramitā and Tārā are both referred to as mothers of all Buddhas, since Buddhas are born from wisdom.⁶

Another rationale for the emergence of female role models within the Buddhist tantras springs from the nature of tantric practice: deities whom ritual participants emulated and worshipped were and still are envisioned in mother-father pairs. These pairs are depicted with differing levels of desire, from gazing, smiling, and touching to sexual embrace. Accordingly, these levels of desire correlate with a practitioner’s ability to harness desire and direct it toward the generation of a subtler and more powerful consciousness realizing the wisdom of emptiness (śunyatā).⁷ The goals of tantric practice echo the opening statement of this essay: enlightened consciousness transcends dualistic thinking, including the male-female dichotomy. Furthermore, since Buddhist teachings claim that all living beings contain the seeds of Buddhahood, and the potential for enlightenment, Buddhist enlightenment is not a distinctly feminist enterprise, although it can be construed as inclusive and supportive of feminist ideals.

A widely held yet unproven theory is that the veneration of Goddess Tārā originated from an ancient star cult that guided seafarers across dangerous waters under a dark night sky.⁸ This theory may be based, in part, upon the...