White Copper Green Tara Heart Mantra Open Ring

The Green Tara mantra is short, ten syllables: om tare tuttare ture soha. Few enough to go round once, which is why it is often engraved around the outside of a ring. There are several Tibetan transliterations and the spacing differs, so the same line may sit wider or narrower on two rings. This one follows the common arrangement, characters of even width, neither cramped nor loose. The characters are cut intaglio, so they feel slightly recessed under the finger without catching.

An open ring has one unavoidable problem: the mantra must break where the ring opens. Some feel that a broken mantra is not complete, but in practical terms a continuous line of text cannot cross a gap that moves. What can be done is to put the break at the end of the phrase, so that the cut falls after soha and what is read is still a whole sentence. That is how this one is handled, with a little space left at either side of the gap.

Green Tara is the first of the twenty-one Taras, green in body, right foot stepped forward, meaning that she rises at any moment. Her speciality is speed: rescue does not wait for the next day, and that is where she differs from the other Taras. In thangkas she grants with one hand and holds a utpala flower in the other, the stem curving up to her ear, and all three together are how she is identified. The ring takes only the mantra, not the figure, because a face that small cannot hold her likeness. The mantra cut into the finger, turned once and read once, is how many people wear a ring like this.

White copper is moderate in hardness, and the opening will bend a few times; do not bend it repeatedly, because the metal fatigues and by the tenth bend it begins to loosen. Either hand will do, index or middle finger both suit, and on the thumb it looks clumsy. Turn the opening towards the palm and the text outward, so that what people see is the mantra and not the gap. If the size is far off, do not fix it by bending; bend it too far and it will not close again. The two ends of the opening are turned in slightly, so that once on it does not easily catch a cuff.

Wipe off soap and hand cream rather than letting them sit in the characters, which darken over time. Take it off to wash your hair; hair caught in the opening will pull it out of shape. It makes a good gift, since the meaning is not heavy and it does not draw attention day to day. Do not pick at the characters with a needle; the metal is soft and every pick leaves a pit. Store it flat, with nothing heavy on top, or the opening will distort. A slip of paper in the box giving the pronunciation of the mantra is worth including; most people who receive it will want to know how it is said.