What Does it Mean to ‘Heal the Inner Divide?’
Black Tara. Sheesh, I love her. She has always struck me as utterly complete. Not complete in the sense of being “done” or “over with,” but complete in the sense that she is whole, perfectly integrating all parts of her cosmic nature. Indeed, Black Tara represents a total unification of extremes such that there can be no extremes. We see this in countless ways. Her third eye, for example, is the eye of inner knowing. It is the eye that penetrates worldly life to see the nature of reality as unconditioned wisdom that is beyond increase and decrease, that can neither be created nor destroyed by the comings and goings of the material realm. Yet at the same time, Tara is no renunciant. Her right foot eagerly extends into the world, letting us know that the unconditioned is the ultimate nature of conditioned existence, infused within it for the sake of helping others. We see this seeming paradox again when we compare Black Tara’s skin and clothes. Though her complexion is dark like the non-referential boundlessness of the sacred feminine (nowhere and nothing in particular); Tara’s ultimate nature is not simply a spacious void. Rather, she is also knowing and awake, vividly illuminated by her adornments. Tara’s being, therefore, represents the inseparability of these two truths: though the ultimate nature of all reality is essence-less, totally free from any concreteness, it is simultaneously aware and cognizant; and though there is awareness as far as perception can ascertain, there is no fixed knower or perceiver to be found.
The integration continues when we consider Tara’s extremities. Her four left arms are balanced by the four on her right, with each side holding an emblem of either wisdom or compassion. For example, her top left (feminine) hand holds a skull cup containing the amrita nectar of emptiness (that is, the total openness and non-concreteness of reality.) This emptiness or wisdom-aspect of the enlightened mind is balanced by Tara’s top right (masculine) hand, which yields a vajra, the symbol of indestructible skillful means that strategically maneuvers to be of benefit to others. But just in case we mistakenly conclude that left is divided from right, or that wisdom is divided from compassion, we find a trident in the crook of Tara’s elbow - the symbol of her male consort. He is held within her, representing the inextricability and union of wisdom and compassion, of feminine and masculine forces.
Beyond the extremes of one bias or another, Tara is therefore wisdom in the world, nowhere and yet knowable, essence-less awareness, unconfined compassion, feminine and masculine energies in union. It would be tempting to look at her fantastical display and assume that Tara is some lofty or abstract ideal. And yet, in the Indian and Tibetan Buddhist contexts from which she comes, Tara is none other than a depiction of our own enlightened minds. She is therefore here: an enlightened force in the world if only we had the patience and audacity to recognize and realize her.
And so Tara points to our capacity to be truly integrated: healed from the split of being “this” versus “that;” healed from being some limited permanent “self” separate from “others;” healed from the ignorance of unquestioned biases that trick us into rigid ways of thinking and being. Tara represents the total welcoming of all our inherent, ever-arising, ever-changing multi-dimensionality. But more than that - Tara is not only what arises and shifts within us - she is the awake space wherein our multidimensionality manifests. In other words, we are just as much what arises as we are the spacious wakefulness that holds and co-constitutes the birth and death of all things. To know Tara in our bones is to know we are Buddha: wholly awake, wholly complete, wholly healed.
How do we come to know Tara for ourselves? We must first heal the inner divide: healing the places where we perceive a split (even if, ultimately, there isn’t one). The first step, then, is seeing our conditioned biases - our distortions. We all have them. Some of these are existential: deeply ingrained biases about the very nature of beingness within this phenomenal world (for example, a bias of perceiving dualistically, or seeing one’s being as somehow separate from the cosmos.) Some of these are cultural: socially conditioned biases about who or what belongs and who doesn’t. And still other biases are personal: calcifying over time based on our own unique upbringing, trauma, and karma. One by one, we commit to recognizing them, investigating them, and enveloping them within our loving awareness. In a moment of experiencing the true nature of our biases, the illusion of the divide is automatically lifted. In that moment, we are Tara: whole, innately belonging to all that is, and paradoxically simultaneously holding all that is.
This is the union of extremes, known as “the Middle Way” in Buddhist terms. The Middle Way is not the center point between two extremes. Rather, it is the place where extremes collapse, where we see that there were never any extremes to begin with. It is the place where delusion folds into awake knowing; where knowing comes to know itself; where matter and space mingle. Holding our biases in loving awareness long enough will inevitably lead us to the place where they self-liberate.
But it’s not easy. Some distortions and biases we hold, we’d rather not see. It could be painful and implicating. Still others we muster the willingness to see, and yet find them too frightening or energetic to behold. Our mind recoils, our body flinches. It’s true: Black Tara doesn’t care much for comfort. She is compassionate, but this doesn’t mean she feels any need to assure us through ease or pleasure along the the road to liberation. Liberation from biases often means going to the places we are most terrified of, whether inner or outer. Kindness is in the wrathfulness: in the daring to keep going.
And so, this is a blog where I will offer reflections that might support us in healing the illusory inner divide. Some posts will endeavor to help us see biases that, for far too long, have fallen below the radar of awareness unquestioned and unobserved. Some might help us to cultivate sides of ourselves that have long felt abandoned, caste in the shadow of the opposite extreme. Other posts might offer words of encouragement, to help us hold and be patient with difficult patterns that keep resurfacing, despite our efforts. Still other posts might describe some pitfalls, places where we may be at risk of subconsciously replacing one rigid bias for another. All along the way, I am practicing alongside of you: struggling and questioning, wondering and wanting, faltering and re-committing. I learn from you, my friends and family, and am always humbled by your shining examples. I write about what you show me. But, when I am truly lost - I look to Black Tara. I take a breath. I feel. I try to find the limits of myself. And when I can’t - I get back to work.
