What is the Tara Dance?

The Mandala Dance of the 21 Praises of Tara is a ritual dance offered worldwide as a prayer of peace, protection, wisdom and capability.
 

The words of the Dance are based on a Tibetan Buddhist sadhana of the Mother Goddess Tara, compiled by Orgyen Dechen Chokjur Lingpa,  a  great Tibetan treasure finder. It is said that he received the sadhana from Tara Herself.

His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and many great lamas of all the lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, have given their blessing and offered their prayers for the Dance to be shared as widely as possible.

Many of the characteristics of Tara, like protection, wisdom, and victory, are stereotypically thought of as male attributes in Western thought. By seeing these qualities as feminine, it allows for a more balanced perspective of male and female. 

This feminine voice calls for liberation within the world, rather than liberation from the world, a re-conceptualization of the sacredness of everyday activity, a call for the re-enchantment of body and speech. The Tara Mandala Dance allows both men and women to recognize the sacred in the world and to find release and benefit through the embodiment of the divine feminine. 

The ritual of the Tara Mandala Dance is a transformational process, and practitioners use this ritual to cultivate well-being in life. As a meditation, it is a practice of calming the mind, teaching practitioners the ability to mindfully observe thinking, feeling, and how the body responds to the environment and the five elements. The Dance is always taught with the meditational correspondences, though dancers come to the practice at all levels of experience.