THE SNOW LION NEWSLETTER

Tara Temple at Tara Mandala Retreat Center


Artistic Rendering of Design for Tara Temple

In the early 1970's when Tsultrim Allione was still a nun living in Nepal and India she envisioned a Western retreat center devoted to deep practice and retreat. Twenty years later she found her way to the 600 acres of pristine wilderness in the San Juan mountains of southwest Colorado that now embrace Tara Mandala Retreat Center. It is a peaceful, spacious place to cultivate wisdom and compassion through traditional Buddhist teachings and a variety of innate wisdom traditions. The center offers short- and long-term programs as well as cabins for solitary retreats.

For most of its thirteen years Tara Mandala has been a rustic center with retreatants living in tents with an outdoor kitchen and showers. The stupa, begun in 1994, was consecrated in 1999 by Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche and is filled with relics from Sakyamuni Buddha, Nyala Pema Duddul, Guru Rinpoche, the Karmapas, Longchenpa, Jigme Lingpa, Leskyi Wangmo, Ayu Khandro and many other tertons and other realized beings.

During a year-long solitary retreat in 2001, on the night of a full moon in the month of the Buddha's birth and enlightenment, Tsultrim Allione had a pre-dawn dream about a temple to be built on the land. She woke from this dream into a meditation in which Vimalamitra, a master in the Dzogchen lineage who attained the indestructible form of the rainbow body, appeared in a rainbow sphere and transmitted the design of a three-story temple. That morning Tsultrim made the first sketch of the temple.

This year Tara Mandala will break ground for the temple, which will stand overlooking the mountains in a circle of small hills beneath Ekajati peak. This peak stands alone at the center of the land, and serves as the symbolic center of Tara Mandala. Dedicated to Tara and the sacred feminine within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the temple will be a three leveled, eight-sided mandala, symbolizing the three kayas.

The ground floor will be the main teaching hall, symbolizing the enlightened body or Nirmanakaya, the physical dimension of enlightenment that can be perceived by ordinary beings and manifests to be of benefit to them. The space will contain large statues of the twenty one Taras, female Buddhas of compassion.

For more information on Tara Mandala, its programs, or how to become involved in the temple building, please visit www.taramandala.org or email info@taramandala.org.