White Tara: A Soothing Practice for Difficult Times

Judith Simmer-Brown

Individual: $108
Patron: $149 The Patron rate helps us offer our generosity policy to those in need.

This five-week recorded course introduces the short daily practice of White Tara, one of the most famous bodhisattvas of compassion in Tibetan Buddhism. Emanated from the tears of the compassionate Avalokiteshvara, peaceful White Tara is said to witness the suffering of beings through her seven eyes, and she soothes their fear, calms their anguish, heals their suffering—both individual and communal—and extends their lives. This is a lineage practice particularly relied upon in times of domestic and community turmoil and disharmony, and when personal or family health is threatened.

White Tara practices have long been popular in Kagyu and Nyingma communities; this particular short practice was composed years ago by Sakyong Mipham to soothe illness, disharmony, and suffering in the Shambhala community.

The lung (reading transmission) will be provided, and the course will be comprised of practice sessions and talks on compassion practice and the tradition of White Tara.

This course is open to practitioners who have a grounding in mindfulness meditation (at least one year) and who are ready to commit to a compassion practice.

Prerequisites: One year of mindfulness practice


Teachers and Faculty

Judith Simmer-Brown, PhD, is Distinguished Professor Emeritx of Contemplative and Religious Studies at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where she has taught since 1978. A Buddhist practitioner since the early 1970s, she became a student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1974. Her teaching specialties are meditation practice, Shambhala teachings, Buddhist philosophy, tantric Buddhism, and contemplative higher education. Her book, Dakini’s Warm Breath (Shambhala, 2001), explores the feminine principle as it reveals itself in meditation practice and everyday life for women and men. She has also edited Meditation and the Classroom: Contemplative Pedagogy for Religious Studies (SUNY 2011). She and her husband, Richard, have two adult children and three grandchildren.

Individual: $108
Patron: $149 The Patron rate helps us offer our generosity policy to those in need.