Bob Thurman Podcast: Buddhas Have More Fun! · Robert A.F. Thurman

A Tibet House US Menla Conversation with Chandra Easton – Ep. 333

December 20, 2023·1 hr 13 min·5 clips

How does a 1,000-year-old Buddhist goddess relate to the Me Too movement and stopping sexual violence?

The conversation begins in gratitude. Thurman frames the podcast through Tibet House US, calls it the Dalai Lama's cultural center in America, and asks listeners to support the preservation of Tibetan culture. Then the room gets more personal. He is at Menla Mountain Retreat and turns to Chandra Easton, honoring her as Acharya Chandra Easton and celebrating her recently available book, Embodying Tara. Tara is already in view. A painting of the 21 Taras sits behind him, with green Tara in the center, and he playfully calls Easton a living Tara before asking her to show the book. The pace is unhurried. They do not rush through doctrine. They linger on image, gesture, color, and the way a woodblock print can hide details that a color version brings out. One Tara is fierce and red. Easton describes the lotus shared by the Taras and the double Vajra in the boon-granting hand, while Thurman keeps returning to the beauty of the iconography. That detail opens into a sharper question. A breakdown of a name becomes a correction of how Western language can reduce mantric power to the word spell. Easton prefers science. She says Vidya Mantra carries power like a scientific formula, using E equals MC squared as a modern analogy for words with physical effect. Thurman takes up the point warmly. The exchange keeps its scholarly texture but still feels close, with technical terms staying in the room while both speakers return to harm and healing. Misuse matters here. The red Tara pacifies curses and harmful spells born from misused mantric power, then points deeper, toward the source of those intentions. Easton names that source as ego clinging, an intoxicating force behind harmful deeds. From there, Vidya Mantra reaches into modern ideologies, giving old language a clean contemporary bite.

As heard by us

A warm Tara conversation that ties Buddhist symbolism to lived meaning.

This episode follows Bob Thurman as he records with Chandra Easton at Menla Mountain Retreat in the Catskill Mountains, with the discussion moving through her book Embodying Tara and the 21 Taras.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play for a warm, wandering conversation with Chandra Easton at Menla Mountain Retreat about Embodying Tara and the living symbolism around Tara.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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