Kurukullā: Red Tārā
(Tibetan: Rikjéma རིག་བྱེད་མ་སྐྱོབ་པ།)
It is said that reciting Kurukullā's mantra 100,000 times will purify negative karma and over overcome obstacles to fulfill wishes for practitioners that call upon her by this method. She may help attract a suitable partner to practice the dharma together to benefit all sentient beingsand also influence others that have strayed or wandered away from the path. She is a ḍākinī that emanated from Amitābha Buddha. That is why she is red like Amitābha. They both belong to the same Padma or Lotus family.
Mantra in sanskrit:
Oṃ Kurukulle Hūṃ Hrīḥ Svāhā
According to the texts, Kurukullā is sixteen years old because sixteen is the ideal number that signifies perfection, four times four. Her face is beautiful and her body voluptuous and alluring, as well as being red in color, because of her magical function of enchantment and magnetism. She has a single face because she embodies non-dual wisdom beyond conventional distinctions of good and evil. She is naked because she is unconditioned by discursive thoughts. She has four arms because of the four immeasurable states of mind, namely, love, compassion, joy, and equanimity. She holds the bow and arrow entwined with flowers because she can give rise to thoughts of desire in the minds of others. In her other two hands she holds the hook that attracts and summons them into her presence and the noose by which she binds them to her will. The ornaments of human bone she wears signify the five perfections, whereas she herself embodies the sixth perfection, that of wisdom. She wears a necklace of fifty freshly severed human heads dripping blood because she vanquishes the fifty negative emotions. She is dancing because she is active and energetic, her compassionate activity manifesting in both Samsara and Nirvana. She dances, treading upon a male human corpse because she enchants and subjugates the demon of ego. She stands upon a red sun disc because her nature is hot and enflamed with passion and upon a red lotus blossom because she is a pure vision of enlightened awareness. In the practitioner’s meditation, such is the recollection of the purity (dag dran) of the vision of the goddess.
The Practice Manual of Noble Tārā Kurukullā (PDF)
