Customer Reviews

Om Tara: Mantras From Tibet

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This cd contains only the mantra "Om Tara Tutare ture swaha" first slow and rythmic then slightly more lively and then ecstatic. It is a good cd for doing healing work to. I bought this CD on Amazon for a friend who had lost her Green Tara Tankha. She had purchased her tankha auspiciously in India and lost it during a move. We loved the three variations of mood presented on this CD and low an behold if her tankha did not appear a few months later in plain view in her closet.

This is not what it is made out to be. It is not from Tibet. For one thing, you can recognize the American accents of the singers, and for another, they are not even using the Tibetan name for Tara - Drolma. This is just some people who know three chords, got a flute player, and wrote a simple jingle that sounds like an old fuzzy-feeling around-the-campfire jingle for kids, and had a go of it.

I am reminded of how, back in the late sixties, my girlfriend, Shelly, went off to San Francisco and I was told that she had joined the Hari Krishna's. A buddy of mine remembered how it was when "Baba Gee" (as in "Gee whiz!") first came to town and his followers shlepped him around Golden Gate Park in a sedan chair! Yes, but let me take you back to Shelly, and how I found her there on Haight Street handing out rice balls from a paper plate, dressed in her sapphron robes, and how she took me over to their temple a couple of blocks away. And there were two guys in *their* sapphron robes discussing the fine points of what was supposed to pass for Hindu mysticism in these affected East Indian accents! Yes, when they achieved enlightenment, they suddenly began talking like those guys who do the telemarketing from India these days - you know the ones?

Well, to get to the point, that is what this music reminds me of. Did you know that you can get CD's of REAL Tibetan monks and nuns singing REAL mantras and such? It sure sounds a lot different than this thing, I am here to tell you! This is the same chord progression as that big hit among the Saphron robe wearing people we all knew and loved back in the waning days of the glory that was Haight-Ashbury - "Hari Krishna". Like a cheesy chord progression, things come full circle. Is that profound? Or what?!

When I heard this recording, it touched me so profoundly that I had tears in my eyes - I was melting inside and out. I found it powerful, purifying and extremely uplifting. It is definitely one of my favorite CDs.