Akong Rinpoche:

TARA ROKPA THERAPY - the significance of the name

This text is a lightly edited version of Rinpoche's talk at the "Haus der Kulturen der Welt" in Berlin on 15 August 1996. Transcription and editing: Rudolf Jarosewitsch.


I would like to talk about the meaning of the name "Tara Rokpa Therapy", to give a little interpretation of the name. There are three parts to the name: Tara, Rokpa and Therapy or training or technique. Tara is a Sanskrit word which in Tibetan is called Dolma. Dolma means to free something, to be free or the method of freeing. Rokpa is a Tibetan word and means to help, help oneself or help from giving to other people in the sense of usefulness. Training or therapy, you know better than me, they are English words. You can see, it has three languages put together, Sanskrit, Tibetan and European.

The Tibetan way of looking has a focus on pureness of tradition, it's something very pure, not made up by you. All translations of text from India to Tibetan start with the meaning kept in Sanskrit. In the beginning of a book, the condensed meaning is always in Sanskrit. This symbolizes that it is not something that you made up, but you are following the wisdom of somebody who has achieved it.

In this way, Tara is a mother aspect. This is not in the ordinary sense of our mother, somebody giving milk and doing house work, but in a sense of the spaceness and infinity of the mother aspect. Something which is able to digest anything that is happening. No matter how naughty the children are, if you are the mother you are able to give kindness and give care, because of the bond between yourself and the child. In the sense of beyond limit of how much you are able to take care, you are able to give up your own problems for your child, you are able to give up in a sense of spaceness.
Those who are familiar with Tara practice, in the Buddhist way, or the meaning of the Tara or mother aspect, will know Tara is presented in many different ways, but especially in 21 different aspects. Out of the 21 aspects 8 are mainly an outer protection, like fire, earth quake, snake bites, animal problems. The rest is more how to protect and understand what is happening in your mind, the psychological aspect. When you look at all 21 different aspects, this is not only the physical protection or not only the mind protection, but you can apply this to all your life, to be taken care of and to understand.

Rokpa sense is help (not a cup of tea kind of idea). The sense of help is to give co-ordination (harmony), you become helpful, you are no longer useless. The most helpful is that you are always co-ordinated whatever is happening, co-ordination with your friends, within yourself, with the environment. Because our problem is that we don't co-ordinate, we don't listen to things, we don't understand the motions or expressions that people present to us. We don't take the time to think or want to understand. It is mostly based on co-ordination, how to understand and how to overcome all these difficulties which is rising within ourselves or outside.

Training or therapy is not to be arrogant: "other people don't know anything, but I am better". Training is mainly understanding. How to understand is to analyse oneself, looking into positive things, negative things which are in our self, looking at situations that are happening in the environment, what is happening between oneself and others. Training has to do with maturity, with recognizing, not pick a new idea and put it into our brain. But all the ideas and techniques we have already inherited and are within ourselves, but we don't realise this. What we are doing is learning how to recognise this. Training means more understanding by recognizing. We need to read to study books. But each book has not got the alphabet. We learn the ABC only one time. The letters of the alphabet are rewritten again and again, it doesn't matter how many millions of books, they are the same characters, there is no new character, 26 characters repeated and printed many many billions of time. ABC is always the same thing. But to recognize that and understand is the education. People say, I wrote a new book. But you don't write a new book, all you do is repeat 26 letters in a different way. So nobody writes a new thing except that. With this understanding, therapy or training is how to simplify our life, not to complicate it. How to digest all the things that are happening to ourselves and outside of ourselves, to understand and to be given time to develop patience.

The foundation for all this is that you need compassion. This therapy is: everything bases on compassion. Compassion to oneself, not just to other people. We need it badly, to understand, to forgive and to have compassion for oneself. We also need to have compassion for our friends, and for our enemies. Because enemy or friend, and one's own problem, is all misunderstanding and confusion, which is everything created without any reason. So compassion is the main therapy which can enable us to overcome all our difficulties whatever they are.

The condensed conclusion is: The mother aspect, to take care of one's own child and be able to give up everything. This giving of everything one had is not part of punishment, but due to compassion one had to the own child. The mother is able to give so much time and give everything one has to the child, because one has great understanding and compassion. Giving you the name of the Tara Rokpa training includes all that is meant to be contained, it summarizes all my ideas, the whole basis of Buddhist principles.
What we try to achieve is limitless space, so that the mind becomes like space. All the things that are happening in the mind, like happy, unhappy, sad, enjoyment are like different buildings in the space. It doesn't matter how many buildings are happening, still there is space, this space can never be filled. If you imagine that your mind is like space, then you are able to digest all your problems without any difficulties.
This is the conclusion of what we hope to achieve by understanding Tara Rokpa Therapy or training, that you become like space, and then you can build anything you want to build, the space can never be too small.

I think that's all.