Buddhist studies scholars generally agree that the worship of Tārā began growing in popularity in India during the 6th century.

According to Beyer, the enlightened feminine makes its first appearance in Mahayana Buddhism as Prajñāpāramitā Devi, the personified Perfection of Wisdom, who is also called mother of Buddhas.

With the composition of the Tārā-mūla-kalpa, the main Buddhist tantra associated with the goddess and mahāvidyā, Tārā became a very popular Vajrayana deity in north India.

Tārā worship also spread to other parts of India, as well as to Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, where depictions of the deity have been discovered by archeologists.

Independent of whether she is classified as a deity, a Buddha, or a bodhisattva, Tārā remains very popular in Tibet (and Tibetan communities in exile in Northern India), Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and is worshiped in many Buddhist communities throughout the world (though in East Asian Buddhism, Guanyin is the most popular female deity).

At this point she lets the monks know in no uncertain terms that it is only "weak minded worldlings" who see gender as a barrier to attaining enlightenment.

As a result of this, Tonyo Drupa tells her she will henceforth manifest supreme bodhi as the Goddess Tārā in many world systems to come.

Following her cultivation of bodhicitta, the bodhisattva's motivation, she looked upon the situation of those striving towards full awakening and she felt that there were too few people who attained Buddhahood as women.

In Himalayan Buddhist iconography, each color is typically associated with a specific kind of activity (for example white is pacification and red is power).

As White Tārā she expresses maternal compassion and offers healing to beings who are hurt or wounded, either mentally or psychically.

She is the source, the female aspect of the universe, which gives birth to warmth, compassion and relief from bad karma as experienced by ordinary beings in cyclic existence.

This is a common theme in her iconography and she is sometimes depicted in a specific iconographical style called "Tara who protects from the eight dangers" (Tārāṣṭaghoratāraṇī).

In one, common folk and lay practitioners continued to directly appeal to her for protection and aid in worldly affairs, often chanting prayers, dharanis, or mantras to her and doing puja (worship rites).

As John Blofeld explains in Bodhisattva of Compassion,[37] Tārā is frequently depicted as a young sixteen-year-old girlish woman.

Martin Willson's work also contains charts which show origins of her tantras in various lineages, but suffice to say that Tārā as a tantric practice quickly spread from around the 7th century CE onwards, and remains an important part of Vajrayana Buddhism to this day.

The practices themselves usually present Tārā as a tutelary deity (thug dam, yidam) which the practitioners sees as being a latent aspect of one's mind, or a manifestation in a visible form of a quality stemming from Buddha Jnana.

To some extent they seem to belong to that order of phenomena which in Jungian terms are called archetypes and are therefore the common property of the entire human race.

Different terms may be inserted into the blank here, depending on what activity is required, such as grahān (evil spirits), vighnān (hindering demons), vyādhīn (diseases), upadravān (injuries), akālamṛtyūn (untimely deaths), duḥsvapnān (bad dreams), cittākulāni (confusions), śatrūn (enemies), bhayopadravān (terrors and injuries), duṣkṛtāni (evil deeds).

[43] Thus, for example, if one wanted to pacify evil spirits, one could recite: Oṃ tāre tuttāre ture sarva grahān śāntiṃkuru svāhā.

The main source for this system is Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna’s (982–1054 CE) Sādhana of the Twenty-One Tārās (sgrol ma nyi shu rtsa gcig gi sgrub thabs).

One dissolves the created deity form and at the same time also realizes how much of what we call the "self" is a creation of the mind, and has no long term substantial inherent existence.

This also untangles knots of psychic energy which have hindered the practitioner from developing a Vajra body, which is necessary to be able to progress to more advanced practices and deeper stages of realization.

For one thing it reduces the forces of delusion in the forms of negative karma, sickness, afflictions of kleshas, and other obstacles and obscurations.

The practice then weans one away from a coarse understanding of Reality, allowing one to get in touch with inner qualities similar to those of a bodhisattva, and prepares one's inner self to embrace finer spiritual energies, which can lead to more subtle and profound realizations of the Emptiness of phenomena and self.

As for internal preparations, we should try to improve our compassion, bodhichitta, and correct view of emptiness through the practice of the stages of the path, and to receive a Tantric empowerment of Green Tara.

The main internal preparation is to generate and strengthen our faith in Arya Tara, regarding her as the synthesis of all Gurus, Yidams, and Buddhas.

[53] Earlier in the 19th century, according to a biography,[54] Nyala Pema Dündul received a Hidden Treasure, Tārā Teaching and Nyingthig (Tib.

Ravigupta, c. 7th-8th century), Candragomin and Atisha also wrote texts discussing "twenty one Tārās" and the Tārā lineages of these figures are still found in Tibetan Buddhism.

[58] In his tradition, which has been widely studied by scholars, each form of the goddess has different attributes, color and activity (such as pacifying, magnetizing, longevity, subduing enemies, etc).

Apart from her many emanations named Tārā of varying colors, other Mahayana female divinities that became associated with mother Tara include: Janguli, Parnashabari, Cunda, Kurukulla, Mahamayuri, Saraswati, Vasudhara, Usnisavijaya, and Marici.