Tutors: Choden

Dates: Wednesday 20th May- Sunday 24th May 2026

Price: £420.00, payable in five monthly instalments of £84.00.

Times: The retreat will run from 8.00am-18.00pm each day and finish at 13.00pm on Sunday 24th May 2026

Booking: Please click the Book Here button

Location: Online via Zoom

Choden will lead an experiential retreat exploring how to apply the teachings and practices of Green Tara to your meditation practice and daily life.

Green Tara was widely practiced in Tibet and recently it has captured the imagination of contemporary culture.  She is a swift acting deity who transforms fear and anxiety into a wakeful and proactive energy. She embodies a range of different qualities: a fierce protectress who intercedes at the time of threat and danger, a loving mother who nurtures and embraces us with compassion and source of transformation expressed through her 21 manifestations.

The origin of Tara is the princess Wisdom Moon who many aeons ago vowed to attain enlightenment in a female body and rebelled against the patriarchal values of her time when it was believed that only monks could attain enlightenment. She became known as the mother of all the Buddhas and is a symbol of feminine spiritual prowess.

During the retreat we will explore the following themes:

Bodhicitta. Tara is like a midwife who facilitates the birth of the awakening heart of compassion which lies dormant in each one of us. She frees us from the knot of tight self-centredness and opens our heart to the richness and beauty of life in all its manifestations.

Deity Principle. She is a deity practice in the tantric tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. The Tibetan for deity is ‘yidam’, or mind link. She links us to our deeper potential of wisdom and compassion. She acts as an intermediary helping us make the transition from our limited egocentric experience to wide-open compassionate awareness.

Mandala. Tara draws us into her mandala – or sacred space of transformation –  and works on our psyche by getting under the skin of our blocks and afflictions transforming them into vitality and wisdom. She initiates an alchemical process of transformation, which is the hallmark of tantra.

Ritual and Visualisation. The practice sets up a boundaried ritual space which provides a safe context for deep inner work. We are then invited to use the power of imagination to feel into the vastness of our being and its many qualities with Tara as our guide.

Mantra. We will explore how mantras work by creating an energetic resonance within the body and mind. Together with visualisation, they help us tune into our deeper nature as a dynamic field of loving awareness. This has a healing effect on mind and body, and it also opens our eyes to the nondual nature of experience in which we sense directly our inseparable and intimate connection with all life.

4 Enlightened Activities. These are pacifying, enriching, magnetising and wrathful. They describe how the process of transformation occurs once we are drawn into the sacred space of Tara’s mandala.

21 Aspects of Tara. Abiding at the centre of her mandala, Tara is surrounded by her 21 manifestations. Each of them are linked to one of the 4 enlightened activities. They work on different issues and afflictions within the psyche and invoke balancing qualities. For example:

White Tara is pacifying and soothes disturbance and agitation bringing forth balance and stability.

Yellow Golden Tara is enriching and restores feelings of depletion and burnout bringing forth vitality and an appreciation of abundance.

Red Tara is magnetising and counteracts feelings of powerlessness and frustration by engendering inner strength and agency.

Green Tara is the central deity and is semi-wrathful. She transforms debilitating fear and anxiety into a courageous, wakeful and ‘can do’ energy.

Black Tara is wrathful and protects us when we feel under siege from harmful, destructive forces. She is like a ‘shadow eating’ energy that gets under the skin of negativity and transforms ‘dark energy’ into a source of vitality whilst helping to create strong boundaries externally.

The heart of the retreat will be working with the transforming power of the 21 aspects of Tara. Each day we will work on different afflictions and invoke different qualities.  This will involve the recitation of the mantra of Tara, visualising coloured lights transforming our afflictions and awakening wisdom energies. We will then be invited to rest in the space of open awareness.

There will be teachings, guided practices, periods of silence and an opportunity for sharing and inquiry.

For those who are practicing secular compassion, this will be a helpful backdrop to the practice of compassionate imagery which we do on the Mindfulness Association Compassion module. It offers a deeper context for understanding and applying compassionate imagery.

Note: for those people who want to practice the Green Tara Sadhana, as done in centres like Samye Ling, they will need to have Taken Refuge and received the Green Tara empowerment. This retreat serves to provide a context of understanding for people wanting to practice Tara in the traditional way, or it stands in its own right as a modern adaption of the practice.