Chanting Da Bei Zhou - Great Compassion Dharani

Journey Through Enlightenment: A Visual and Insightful Guide to Buddhas and Bodhisattvas

I sent this to someone recently:

Regarding manifestation, I wrote some time before:

Soh Wei Yu

My experience with manifestation has got to do with praying to Green Tara and it has got to do with some of my personal life situations in the past which I do not want to discuss. I did not try other methods of manifestation (including new age ones like 'The Secret').

But suffice to say, I had some miraculous encounters where Green Tara's presence appeared (not visually but I could feel the presence and it spoke mentally to me) to me and informed me that my wish will be "granted" that day, and then truly it was “granted” that day after many months. Months before that, tara also communicated to me that my wish will come true, not to worry but “focus on helping others”. Without that encounter I would have no idea. At the same time there was a strange pleasant smell when I felt 'her Presence', and the last time that happened was when I did Garab Dorje guru yoga for the first time in 2012 after ChNN's transmission (and my bunk mates also smelled that pleasant thing, and by the way burning incense is not allowed in army so I have no ideas how that came about).

Maybe that may sound superstitious but after that event I was convinced there is something to this promise in this sutra:

https://read.84000.co/translation/toh438.html - Praise to Tārā with Twenty-One Verses of Homage

Excerpt: 

1.­28

Those who want children will come to have them,

Those who seek wealth will come to have that,

**Each and every wish will be fulfilled,

And obstacles, entirely vanquished, will be no more.** (emphasis by Soh)

(Update: Also, I should mention that I knew I had a close connection with Tara from 2012. When Dzogchen teacher Chogyal Namkhai Norbu was holding a 5 day Dzogchen teaching retreat in Singapore, I had a dream one day before he gave the Tara empowerment. I did not know he was giving Tara empowerment the next day, but the night before I had a very peculiar dream where many dakinis were singing the mantra of green Tara in a very unique tune I have not heard before. I woke up right after the dream. It left me an impression and I knew I must have had some kind of connection with tara).

4

• Like

• Aditya Prasad

• Soh Wei Yu Was it just the Green Tara prayer (Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha) you were reciting? I've been drawn to that one lately for some reason.

• Soh Wei Yu

• Aditya Prasad

• I did a lot of green tara mantra (Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha) over months but i think that day i was doing 21 praises to tara - https://read.84000.co/translation/toh438.html - Praise to Tārā with Twenty-One Verses of Homage

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Also, I wrote:

i've a strong affinity with guan yin since a young age and i started going to my mom's dharma center at age of 13 and since then i also received teachings from other teachers

but more recent years i started chanting dabeizhou, and also the tara mantra on a daily basisxabir Snoovatar

Guan yin has told me to be compassionate in my visions.. also the last time i saw her in a dream i entered a blissful samadhi state and guan yin pointed me to rest in my true nature and then i had instant samadhi and intense presence and blissfulness of my true nature in sleep

Tara also appeared to me before, told me my wishes will come true six months and day before it happened otherwise i wouldnt have known. And told me to focus on helping others. When she appeared there was a fragrance from another world. I was not burning any incense in my air conditioned room

......

Also, this thread is very important on how cultivating merits are absolutely crucial for any successful 'manifestation': https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2021/11/on-importance-of-merits.html



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that being said, manifestation is not the main point of dharma practice for me, liberation and awakening is far more vital and important in my path

the concerns of this life is not so important in the long run, and you may or may not believe in past lives but plenty of people in my community, and those practitioners/yogis starting from Buddha can and do recall past lives.. so liberation concerns not only the well-being of this life, let alone the material side only, but it is also liberation from cyclic existences in samsara

in the 'importance of merits' link above, i mentioned why merits is also important.. both in spiritual life and worldly life and success. my mentor, who [info redacted], attributes his success to that

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In short, the main purpose of dharma practice and awakening from the perspective of buddhism and especially mahayana buddhism is to be free from all suffering, cyclic rebirth of samsara, attain omniscience and the ability to not turn away from samsara but endlessly help sentient beings attain the same liberation and awakening

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check out this post i created using chatgpt, the descriptions and images generated explains who tara and the other buddhas and bodhisattvas and masters are:

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2023/12/journey-through-enlightenment-visual.html

i am particularly connected with avalokitesvara and green tara, who in my visions and encounters with them, they told me to be compassionate and to focus on helping others

—

Told John Tan recently,

“Just now i was searching for my airpod casing for quite some time like half an hour, searched here and there and could not find. Then i prayed to bodhisattva.. i suddenly heard an inner voice tell me with confidence like “why are you searching everywhere when its with you right there all along?” Then i tried to search my pockets again the hundredth time, cannot find. Then after half an hour later, the airpod casing dropped down from my jeans.. think dropped into my pants when i was in toilet 🤣

I hear inner voices like that sometimes that i believe is from bodhisattva when i pray sincerely

I patted my jeans also when i heard that voice but somehow didnt find it then”

John tan replied me, “U must be something wrong, why bother bodhisattva for such a matter?”

“That said, over the years, I have come to realize and believe despite my overly logical and pragmatic mind 🤣 that such "phenomena" are not uncommon in practice, it is hard to sweep all under the carpet in the name of "science" and "coincidence".”

Soh said, “Oic.. ya.. especially since my encounter with tara and the otherworldly fragrance when she “came” and previously when i receive dzogchen transmission from chnn and practice guru yoga of garab dorje for the first time also had that otherworldly fragrance, hard to deny and attribute it to coincidence. My mom also knew very well the otherworldly fragrance.. think when she chant dabeizhou last time”

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Besides me, countless others have miraculous encounters with Tara. 

For example: 

https://buddhaweekly.com/mama-buddha-tara-compassionate-action/ - Mama Buddha Tara: Compassionate Action; Stories of Green Tara the Rescuer — How She Can Help You

https://buddhaweekly.com/how-tara-buddha-saved-my-life-appearing-beside-my-hospital-bed/ - How Tara Buddha saved my life — appearing beside my hospital bed

https://garchen.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/How-Tara-Saved-Me-from-Dangers-Narratives-by-H.E.-Garchen-Rinpoche.pdf  - How Tara Saved Me from Great Dangers
Narratives by H.E. Garchen Rinpoche

Also recently, someone on Reddit shared: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/s/oatD01j3ik

I did Tara practice religiously for many many months and finally one night in a dream she revealed herself to me. She came with a retinue of dozen of monks and they gave me spiritual teachings in a dream for what seemed like a long time. They told me that tenderness was one of the highest spiritual qualities. I was also visited by Yeshe Tsogyal after a retreat where we had been doing Yeshe Tsogyal prayers. She briefly put my mind into samadhi as she merged her mind with mine, and I felt the most unfathomable bliss, peace, joy, and love I had ever felt. Then she told me: "on the path to enlightenment, there will always be obstacles, but suffering is optional"

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It should be emphasized however that tara practice goes beyond just praying to some external beings. It is important to keep in mind and receive the appropriate instructions from a qualified Vajrayana master:

Dzogchen teacher Acarya Malcolm Smith:

Tara, as a deity, is just a name for our own state. As ChNN puts it, "Tara is the state of Dzogchen."

...

When we practice deity yoga, we are realizing our own state, not the state of some other being, buddha or not.

…

There is also the fact that in kriya tantra people practice by addressing the deity as external, like Tāra, for example, for common siddhis; a kind of practice that is enjoyed by brahmins, which also depends heavily on ritual purity and so on. So, because Vajrayāna is a path of skillful means, it employs people's theistic tendencies. But this vanishes in carya tantra, where the deity is understood as a symbol of the nature of the mind and one visualizes oneself as the deity. By the time we get to HYT, this is all completely abandoned, since now we are to understand, at the time of the result, that all phenomena we experience—aggregates, sense bases, and sense elements—are the display of our own gnosis.

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But generally, if you want mundane siddhis, then you need to practice some creation stage practice, like Tara, Kilaya, Amitayus, etc. depending on one needs.

Krodha / Kyle Dixon:

You are the deity in Vajrayāna.

Mahamudra teacher Thrangu Rinpoche:

The practice of deity meditation consists fundamentally of three elements: clear appearance of the deity’s form, stable pride or confidence, that you are the deity, and recollection of purity by recalling the deeper meaning of the various aspects of the deity. It is difficult to cultivate clear appearance and the recollection of purity in post- meditation. Therefore, the principal post-meditation practice is to maintain the stable confidence that we are actually the deity. We try to maintain the confidence that the true nature of our body, speech, and mind is the body, speech, and mind of the deity being practiced. The commentaries on deity meditation commonly state, “In post-meditation, never part from the confidence of believing you are the deity.”