Heart mantra (Teyata Om)

This mantra opens the album 'El Camino Dorado', just as it opens our own hearts to deeper listening. The song is a combination of two mantras: the Heart Sutra (Teyata Om, Gate Gate) and Om Tare Tutare (Green Tara mantra).
The Heart mantra opens heart connections and so much more. There is a deep, mystical wisdom in this prayer. It was once written in Vedic Sanskrit and takes away all suffering when you recite it 108 times. This song helps us to be generous, patient, conscientious, diligent, focused and wise. With this mantra you honor your inner light that helps you cross the border from suffering to liberation, from suffering and from duality to
unity.
The mantra guides us beyond the misleading perception of the Self as something separate, and helps us realize that we are perfect, connected to all life and that we are at home in the universe. The message of this mantra is that infinity is here and now. Emptiness is all all-encompassing. This is the great liberation, because the ideas of the mind we live in keep us trapped in our self self-created illusions. When we can clean ourselves of our own limiting ideas, we can live in the pure dimension of emptiness, completely free and beyond limitation. This mantra makes us feel that everything and everyone is connected.
The key word is BODHI, a feminine noun in the vocative, which means awakening. PARAGATE means 'gone to the further shore'. The word PARA means the bank of a river opposite which one is currently standing. PARASAMGATE means gone completely to the other further shore. The prefix SAM has an intensive meaning: complete, thorough, total. SVAHA or SWAAHA is an inflexible particle from Vedic Sanskrit. It is said to be the
name of the wife of Agni, the god of fire. It is used at the end of a recitation that accompanies a burnt offering made at a Vedic sacrifice (rather as "amen" is used at the end of a prayer in the Christian liturgy). It cannot be translated literally.
The second part of the mantra (Om Tare Tutare) is a prayer to the goddess Tara, who represents mercy andcompassion. She is the divine mother and universal feminine energy. She is able to guide you to enlightenment. In Buddhism, Tara is a feminine manifestation of enlightening wisdom. There are 21 different forms, all called Tara in all colors of rainbows, each with their own specific meaning. In some cultures, including Ti-
betan, green is considered the color that encompasses all other colors. This is the mantra of the Green Tara, the mother of the Buddhas. She helps us to overcome our fears, takes away suffering and brings happiness.  We often sang these mantras with our first Maestra Ema'a Drolma Mata. For this album we gave it our own timbre and melody, as a gentle blessing and opening to listening to the rest of the album.