TARA: The Liberating Power of the Female Buddha by Rachael Wooten, Ph.D.
Sunday April 16, 2023
Good Sunday afternoon my Beloved Reader,
Firstly, I am delighted to welcome new readers here to The Rising of the Divine Feminine Substack! I’m always curious where readers may have discovered my writing (please do feel free to write in the comments) and am also eternally grateful to other readers and writers who recommend my work, perhaps on Substack’s new Notes feature, or anywhere else. Thank you and welcome!
May you find the writing here engaging and thought provoking in a way that perhaps may inspire an evolution of consciousness. And may your evolution of consciousness lead to the alleviation of suffering.
The topics I love to investigate and write into, often involve power. Perhaps so much of the suffering in the world exists because of the abuse of power that has transpired within the patriarchal and hierarchical systems that have dominated our cultures for thousands of years (Anne Baring, Ph.D. writes extensively about this here.) I also agree with the revered Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh when he wrote that the one true, right use of power is: to alleviate suffering in oneself and others.
And part of this cessation of suffering in this day and age involves the honoring of the Divine Feminine as we finally transition out of domination by the patriarchy—which also includes becoming conscious of our own Inner Patriarchs that, as women, we had to cultivate to survive and thrive within our patriarchal systems. Even as far back as 20 years ago, the author, poet, analytical psychologist and women's movement figure Marion Woodman wrote in Coming Home to Myself: Daily Reflections for a Woman's Body and Soul: (extra spacing is by me)
One thing has been distilled in my consciousness. By whatever name we call the two magnets that create this balance of energies in our bodies and in our planet—
Masculine/Feminine,
Shiva/Shakti,
Yang/Yin,
Spirit/Soul,
Transcendence/Immanence,
Doing/Being,
we are now responsible for making space for the healing of body, soul, and spirit. [I would also add healing of mind and emotions to this list!]
We are being directed in the evolutionary process by divine guides through our dreams, our symptoms, our planet. New values are emerging—feminine values and masculine values that are free of patriarchal abuse. A totally new harmonic lies ahead in the new millennium.
~
I have endless gratitude for the privilege of having studied world religions for two years in a local interfaith seminary program, which I write about in my BOOK: The Rising of the Divine Feminine and the Buddhist Monks Across the Road: A Memoir. And much of what we studied has helped to ease my own suffering, by healing and transforming my own deepest wounds.
One spiritual principle that has served to alleviate some of my own suffering around the patriarchal conditioning towards perfectionism: like the Lotus flower, we blossom because of, not in spite of our “muck.” Or as Thich Nhat Hanh writes, No Mud, No Lotus.
More recently, one of the tools I have been using to further help transform the suffering inherent in some day-to-day challenges, is Dr. Sarah Wooten’s book TARA: The Liberating Power of the Female Buddha and her matching deck of 22 cards, each representing one of the 22 iterations of Tara. (In full transparency, I do not know Dr. Wooten, nor am I receiving any kind of affiliation revenue. I just love her book and cards and have endless enthusiasm about the wisdom she shares.)
You may read about Dr. Wooten’s background and qualifications here (where you may also purchase the deck of Tara cards), but the truth of my own experience is that the perennial wisdom she shares in this book is enormously helpful in my day-to-day life. Sometimes when I sit in spiritual practice, before I pull a card from the Tara deck, I ask a question in the form of, “What do I need to know and do in relation to …” or “Please show me what I need to know help navigate …” Or I simply bring my awareness to an issue in my life I’m grappling with before drawing a card. Every single time, the wisdom revealed in the chapter about the card I drew, has been of great benefit to me.
An openness to the perennial wisdom that is available in ALL faith traditions is one of the things I particularly love about interfaith. The following quote from the self-professed Holy Rascal, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, beautifully encapsulates the idea of interfaith:
To me, religions are like languages: no language is true or false; all languages are of human origin; each language reflects and shapes the civilization that speaks it; there are things you can say in one language that you cannot say or say as well in another; and the more languages you learn, the more nuanced your understanding of life becomes. Judaism is my mother tongue, yet in matters of the spirit I strive to be multi-lingual. In the end, however, the deepest language of the soul is silence.
Yes, all religions are languages, and spiritual principles are the content of what is being discussed in any of those languages. No language is right or wrong. There may be a yearning for spirituality, but with no religious identity.
To many, religion is an identity. To many, Our way is the right way or alternatively, Our way is the only way. Interfaith also appeals because of its intention to create harmony among religions. As the Dalai Lama said:
When there is peace among religions, there will be peace in the world.
And as Thich Nhat Hanh has also said:
There is a revolution that needs to happen and it starts from inside each one of us. We need to wake up and fall in love with the earth. Our personal and collective happiness and survival depends on it.
This is what I love so much about spiritual inner work: when I truly own all of my “muck,” every inch of my darkest inner realms—and I also protect myself from what may be others’ unconscious muck—I’m more able to maintain my equanimity, and less likely to cause another to suffer, or to suffer at the hand of another.
To me, this is true freedom and liberation.
And I was recently reminded:
Whatever inner work we do, we also do for the collective. ✨🌟💖🙏🕊️