Self Arising Tara and Asura Cave - Pharping 2024

Following the main street that leads uphill through Pharping, towards the end of the village, you will reach a flight of steps leading up to a monastery complex. This is Ralo Rinpoché's monastery. If you wish, you can enter the temple to your right, which contains a beautiful statue of Guru Dorjé Drolö.
Immediately to your left, facing the temple, is a small shrine, which contains an image of Ganesh. In the rock to the right of Ganesh are two small, naturally-arisen Tara images. In 1979, Drubthob Rinpoché recognized the self-arisen Tara images and built a small and beautiful temple to protect them. Only one of the self-arisen images is clearly visible now. The other comes and goes. The shrine protecting the images also hosts statues of the twenty-one Taras and provides retreat rooms for monks focusing on Tara practice. If you wish, you can make offerings here of butter lamps or other precious substances, like milk or flowers.
ASURA CAVE
This extraordinary place, the single most sacred site connected with Guru Padmasambhava outside the land of Tibet, lies just beyond the Kathmandu Valley’s southern rim, not far from the village of Pharping.
For centuries, devotees have traveled to the two main caves here to offer homage at the site of Guru Rinpoche’s attainment of the siddhi of Mahamudra.
Asura Cave, or the Upper Cave of Yangleshö, is poised in the thick of a forest on the hill immediately behind Pharping. Guru Rinpoche began his retreat focusing on the deity Yangdak Heruka, a wrathful form of Buddha’s wisdom heart, while at the lower cave of Yangleshö. Later at the Asura Cave, he combined Yangdak Heruka with the practice of Vajrakilaya, a deity associated with the Buddha’s enlightened activity and renowned for the removal of obstacles to awakening.
Subsequently, Guru Rinpoche compiled, revised, and systematized the Vajrakilaya teachings. As the result of his exceptional scholarly efforts, the Barché Lamsel prayer praises the Mahaguru as the Pandita of Yangleshö, and invokes him as Guru Mawé Sengé, Guru Rinpoche indivisible from the Buddha of Wisdom, Manjushri.
Source : www.samyeinsti....