Basket of tormas 

Object location: Living room

The round basket sitting on top of the bookshelves contains a number of White Tārā tormas. These tormas (ritual offerings) made of clay are from the White Tārā initiation that Dhardo Rinpoche gave Sangharakshita in India in late 1963 before his initial visit back to the West. 

Dhardo Rimpoche, too, was concerned that I was free to move forward. He was concerned, in particular, that I should not be held back by any threat to my life-force. Thus he had given me, not long before, the abhiṣeka of White Tārā, the female Bodhisattva of Longevity, and with his help I had started making an English version of the text of the relevant sādhana. I wanted to complete a first draft of this version before leaving for England, and the Rimpoche and I spent many hours working on the project together. We worked in the evening, in the Rimpoche’s quarters in the Old Bhutan Palace, and sometimes it seemed that there were three of us in the room, and that White Tārā was looking down on our labours with a smile.

In the Sign of the Golden Wheel, The Complete Works of Sangharakshita, vol. 22, p.562