Green Tara — the swift saviouress, the “Mother of all the Buddhas” — is the most beloved and active form of the great goddess Tara in Tibetan Buddhism: the embodiment of enlightened compassion in action, who springs to the aid of all who call upon her, the protectress against fear and danger and the bestower of swift help. Where [white-tara] is serene and healing, Green Tara is dynamic and immediate.
The Swift One Who Saves
Green Tara, like all forms of Tara, was born (the tradition tells) from the tears of compassion of the bodhisattva [avalokiteshvara], the embodiment of his active mercy reaching out to a suffering world. She is depicted as a beautiful young goddess, green of colour (the green of activity and accomplishment), seated with one leg extended, ready to spring up at an instant to rush to the aid of any being in distress. This posture of readiness is her essence: she is compassion that does not wait, the saviouress who comes swiftly the moment she is called.
The Deliverer from the Eight Fears
Green Tara is invoked above all as the protectress who delivers her devotees from danger and fear — classically the “eight great fears”: lions, elephants, fire, snakes, robbers, imprisonment, floods, and demons (and their inner equivalents: pride, delusion, anger, envy, wrong views, avarice, attachment, and doubt). To call upon Green Tara with her mantra, “Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha,” is to summon her swift protection against every peril, outer and inner. She is the great refuge in danger, the divine mother who shields her children from all harm.
The Mother of the Buddhas
Green Tara is among the most universally beloved deities of Tibetan Buddhism, prayed to daily by countless practitioners, her mantra one of the most recited in the Himalayan world. She is honoured as the “Mother of all the Buddhas” — the feminine wisdom from which enlightenment is born — and as a fully enlightened buddha in female form, who (legend says) vowed always to be reborn as a woman to demonstrate that the female form is no obstacle to awakening. In Green Tara, Tibetan Buddhism gave form to compassion in swift action — the green saviouress ever poised to spring to the aid of all who suffer, the deliverer from every fear, the beloved Mother of the Buddhas who comes the instant she is called.