A group of about 15 people just finished a 17-day White Tara residential retreat here yesterday. During that time, our morning duty shift started earlier than usual, while it was still dark out. Much of the day we were given to whispering, while retreatants were practicing in the main gonpa. What they were doing is mostly saying this mantra over and over again: Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha.
White Tara is associated with long life. Each retreatant said 108,000 mantras, so we must have had more than a 1.5 million mantras filling up the house here these last two weeks, tiny, coherent sounds in the ultimately subtle shape of Tara, health and long-life. It’s been a long two weeks. With retreatants living here in the center, it’s as if the office never closes. I don’t think these long days are what they mean by long-life!