Skillful Methods of Mother Tara

Gradually the TAM sinks into the heart and the heart also becomes small, small, small until it disappears and you slip into shunyata, nothingness. From the tantric viewpoint, the right way to sleep is very important. If you go to sleep with an obsessed mind, the whole night becomes negative. According to the psychological explanation of Buddhism, daytime reality and nighttime reality are the same. You think that daytime is real but nighttime is only a dream; this is not true. Karmically they are both real. And in Tantrayana, sleeping with skillful method becomes the path to enlightenment. If, from the moment we fall asleep until we awaken, we sleep with shunyata meditation, it becomes wisdom. Then if, as you start to wake in the morning, you hear some sounds—birds singing or someone banging around—visualize Tara’s mantra, OM TARÉ TUTTARÉ TURÉ SOHA, in your inner space and recite it until you’re completely awake.

According to tantra, what you project is what you see, and that is reality for you. What you don’t see, what you don’t project, is not reality for you. That’s why you imagine that any living being you see is the divine wisdom Mother Tara. Every sound you hear, even airplane noise, is her mantra. And whatever thoughts come, whether positive or negative, imagine them as divine wisdom Mother Tara’s wisdom. If you imagine in this way—recognizing the qualities of Mother Tara’s body, her divine speech and her nondual wisdom—you will have no problems. There is no way delusions can arise.