A white goddess with an eye in each palm, a single flower stem carrying three blossoms, and the reason Tibetans have painted her beside the buddha of boundless life for centuries.
White Tara is the white, peaceful form of the Buddhist goddess Tara, worshipped in Tibet above all as a deity of long life. Her Tibetan name is Drolkar, and her Sanskrit name Sitatara. Himalayan Art Resources (HAR) describes her as a longevity-bestowing emanation of Green Tara and as one of the three principal long-life deities of Tibetan Buddhism, together with Amitayus and Ushnishavijaya. She is easy to recognise once you know what to look for: white as an autumn moon, seated with both legs folded, and seven eyes, three on her face and one in each palm and on each sole.
White Tara's name: Drolkar, the white liberator
Tara in Sanskrit is usually translated "she who carries across" or "star", and the Tibetan drolma, sgrol ma, means "she who liberates". White Tara is Drolkar, sgrol dkar, the white liberator; in Sanskrit, Sitatara, from sita, white. Her long-life form has its own name. The Sakya Research Centre lists it as sgrol dkar yid bzhin 'khor lo, "White Tara, Wish-fulfilling Wheel", and in Sanskrit she is called Cintamanicakra or Cintacakra.
Colour carries meaning in Tara's iconography. Jeff Watt, HAR's director and chief curator, puts it in one line in Tricycle: "The white form of Tara represents longevity and the red form, power." Green, the most common colour, is the one he calls special for all kinds of activity.
Who is White Tara? Where she comes from
Like Green Tara, White Tara came to Tibet from India through several teachers. HAR's White Tara main page names Atisha, Bari Lotsawa and Nyen Lotsawa among the early sources, along with Marpa, Vanaratna and the Kashmiri scholar Shakya Shribhadra. HAR classes her practice in the Kriya, or action, class of tantra, and notes that it is practiced in every school of Tibetan Buddhism.
Atisha (982–1054) matters most to her popularity. He was devoted to Tara throughout his life, and his White Tara transmission is still given today; Lotsawa House publishes extracts of a White Tara empowerment in the Atisha tradition by the nineteenth-century master Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo. The same master, the Rigpa Shedra encyclopedia records, revealed a mind treasure in 1855, the Chimé Pakmé Nyingtik, "the heart essence of the sublime lady of immortality", after a vision of White Tara.
Why does White Tara have seven eyes?
Her iconographic texts give her a third eye on the forehead, an eye in the palm of each hand and an eye on the sole of each foot. HAR quotes the description by Sachen Ngagwang Kunga Lodro (1729–1783), who calls them "the seven eyes of pristine awareness". The usual reading, in teachings on her, is that she sees the suffering of beings in every direction and in every realm, with no part of her body that is not watching.
The eyes in the palms are the easiest to miss. On a painting, look at her right hand resting palm-out on her knee: there should be a small eye drawn in the open palm. On many small or hastily painted images it is left out, and then you are probably not looking at White Tara at all.
White Tara iconography: how she is drawn
Kunga Lodro's description, as HAR quotes it, is precise enough to paint from. She is white like an autumn moon, radiant like a stainless crystal, with one face and the appearance of a girl of sixteen.
- Right hand. Resting on the right knee, palm outward, in the gesture of supreme generosity, varada mudra, with the eye drawn in the palm.
- Left hand. At her heart, the thumb and forefinger holding the stem of a white utpala whose petals open beside her ear. The stem divides in three: a full flower in the middle, a flower already setting fruit on one side, a closed bud on the other. Kunga Lodro reads them as the buddhas of the past, present and future.
- Dress. Jewel ornaments, upper garments of different silks and a red silk lower garment.
- Seat. Legs folded in vajra posture on a moon disc and a lotus.
A large eighteenth-century painting at the Rubin Museum of Art, P1998.5.8, catalogued on HAR as item 658, shows the classic form. It is ground mineral pigment and raised gold on cotton, 81.3 by 64.8 centimeters. White Tara sits at the center with seven eyes, the lotus stem at her heart and her right hand in the gesture of generosity, and around her the painter set two hundred and two small emanations of Green Tara, with Amitabha above.
The Wish-fulfilling Wheel
"Wish-fulfilling Wheel" is the name of White Tara's long-life form and of the practice built around it. HAR's record for an eighteenth-century painting from eastern Tibet in the Palpung, or Situ, style (item 90401) quotes the Kagyu liturgy: "above a lotus and moon [seat] is White Tara Wish-fulfilling Wheel, like an autumn moon". In that painting she is surrounded by teachers of the Karma Kagyu lineage, with a portrait of the Thirteenth Karmapa, Dudul Dorje (1733–1797), at the middle right.
The mantra most often recited in the long-life practice is oṃ tāre tuttāre ture mama āyuḥ puṇya jñāna puṣṭiṃ kuru svāhā, which adds to Tara's root mantra a request for the increase of life, merit and wisdom. This is a practice given by a teacher within a lineage; we describe it here as the tradition does.
White Tara among the 21 Taras
The Praise in Twenty-One Homages is the most recited Tara prayer in Tibet, and over the centuries painters gave each homage its own Tara. The praise itself does not describe them, so the systems differ. HAR's White Tara page says that "a number of white forms of Tara are included in the Suryagupta and Atisha systems of the Twenty-one Taras", but these are distinct figures of the set and not the seven-eyed long-life goddess. The White Tara most people mean, and "the principal form of the deity that appears in art" in HAR's words, is the White Tara of longevity. More on the twenty-one, and on the systems of Suryagupta and Atisha, is in our Green Tara and the 21 Taras.
White Tara and the Three Long-Life Deities
In Tibet White Tara is rarely alone for long. She is one of the tse lha nam sum, the three deities of long life, with the red buddha Amitayus, who holds a vase of the nectar of immortality, and the three-faced goddess Ushnishavijaya, who sits inside a stupa. HAR notes that the grouping was made in Tibet rather than India. In paintings Amitayus usually takes the center with the two goddesses below him, but White Tara can take the center herself; at the Rubin, an eighteenth-century Gelug painting, F1996.32.5, places her in the middle and moves the other two to the top. We wrote about the three, and about that painting, in The Three Long-Life Deities.
Long-life practice in Tibet is not only for oneself. Students commission paintings and do practices for the long life of their teachers, and the dedication on the Rubin's White Tara asks for an end to untimely death. These are the tradition's own purposes. We describe them; we do not claim that a painting of White Tara lengthens anyone's life or heals anyone.
White Tara vs Green Tara
They are the two best-known Taras and are often painted together. The Metropolitan Museum's White Tara and Green Tara, from Guge in western Tibet, 1450 to 1500 (accession 2012.460), seats them side by side on lotus thrones rising from pools in a mountain landscape.
| White Tara (Drolkar) | Green Tara (Drolma) | |
|---|---|---|
| Colour | White, "like an autumn moon" | Green, the colour of Amoghasiddhi |
| Posture | Both legs folded in vajra posture | Right leg extended, as if about to rise |
| Eyes | Seven: forehead, palms and soles | Two |
| Flower | One white utpala stem with bud, flower and fruit | Blue utpala, often painted as two |
| Emphasis | Long life; one of the three long-life deities | Swift help against the eight fears |
| Princess | Often linked to Wencheng of China | Often linked to Bhrikuti |
On that last row the tradition is not fixed. Tibetan accounts tie the two Taras to the two foreign wives of the seventh-century king Songtsen Gampo, usually with the Chinese princess Wencheng as White Tara; the Met's entry for 2012.460 assigns them the other way round.
How to recognise White Tara
Three checks are enough. Is she white? Are both her legs folded, with neither foot reaching down? And are there eyes in her palms and on her soles? If all three are yes, it is White Tara. A white figure with one leg extended is usually a white form of Green Tara or a figure from a set of twenty-one; a white goddess with three faces and eight arms in a stupa is Ushnishavijaya; and a white bodhisattva with four arms holding a crystal rosary is Chenrezig, Avalokiteshvara. Our guide to what a thangka is explains how painters keep these figures distinct with fixed proportions.
Where to hang a White Tara thangka
The ordinary courtesies apply, and they are in How to Hang a Thangka: high rather than low, never on the floor, not in a bathroom, and somewhere clean and quiet where the image can be looked at rather than walked past. In a shrine the Buddha takes the center; Tara sits beside him.
Our Tara thangkas
We should say it plainly: we do not currently make a single thangka of White Tara. Our Tara thangkas are of Green Tara, in three compositions. The Green Tara thangka on a red ground; a Green Tara thangka on a night-blue ground with peonies; and Green Tara with the Five Buddhas and Protectors, a full composition with the Five Buddhas above and Palden Lhamo, Six-Armed Mahakala and Vaishravana below. The other goddesses we make, Kurukulla, Marici and Palden Lhamo among them, are in the Tara and goddess thangka collection.
Each is our own drawing, kept to traditional iconometric proportions and printed on heavy card. It is not hand-painted and not mineral pigment. Elderly lay Buddhists who practice at a temple finish each piece by hand there: they set glass crystals one by one and trace the outlines in gold glitter, which is not gilding. Each piece takes about two days. The frame is 55 by 71 centimeters around an image of 40.2 by 56.2 centimeters, with a silk brocade frame-within-a-frame, a wood frame and an acrylic front. Part of every order goes to that temple, so every thangka is also an offering.
White Tara questions
Who is White Tara?
The white, peaceful form of Tara, called Drolkar in Tibetan and Sitatara in Sanskrit. HAR describes her as a longevity emanation of Green Tara and one of the three principal long-life deities of Tibetan Buddhism.
What does White Tara represent?
Long life above all, and with it compassion that sees in every direction. Jeff Watt sums up the colour code simply: the white form of Tara represents longevity.
Why does White Tara have seven eyes?
Her texts give her eyes on the forehead, palms and soles, which Sachen Kunga Lodro calls the seven eyes of pristine awareness: a goddess who sees the suffering of beings everywhere.
What is the difference between White Tara and Green Tara?
White Tara is white, seated with both legs folded, with seven eyes and a single stem of three blossoms, and is practiced mainly for long life. Green Tara is green, with her right leg extended, holding a blue utpala, and is invoked for swift help.
What is the White Tara mantra?
Tara's root mantra is om tare tuttare ture svaha. The long-life form adds a request in the middle: om tare tuttare ture mama ayuh punya jnana pushtim kuru svaha.
Is White Tara one of the 21 Taras?
Some of the twenty-one in the Suryagupta and Atisha systems are white, but the seven-eyed long-life White Tara is usually treated as her own deity, not one of the set.
May you have the time you need, and someone watching over it.
Green Tara Thangka · Green Tara on Night Blue · Green Tara with the Five Buddhas · Tara & Goddess Thangkas
More from the Journal: What Is a Thangka? · How to Hang a Thangka · The Three Long-Life Deities
More thangka deities: Green Tara · Amitabha Buddha · Kurukulla · Marici