The Cult of Tara

FOREWORD
fronted in earnest—have led us to believe. Magic and ritual as
defined in the Tibetan Buddhist sources complement each other.
They do not contrast in the way most of us have assumed. In
particular, they are not opposed to each other in the manner of a
psychological attitude of reverential submissiveness ("religion") versus
the will to manipulate the sacred for one's own ends ("magic").
In Tibetan tradition, it would be meaningless to speak of an individual's
control over anything empirical or mental, if such control
did not depend on something else. This "something else" is the
perfection of a being far beyond random individual wishes. Such
a being is either a Buddha, who is free from the endless chain of
finite existences, or a Bodhisattva, who is perfect in every way, is
"almost a Buddha," yet chooses to relate to the world out of compassion.
Such a being is Tara, the great Goddess. Whatever
reality is seen or "made up," whatever is done religiously or magically,
and, ultimately, what is done, whether with good or evil intentions,
can be realized only when it is directed toward the pure
goal manifest in those beings. Stephan Beyer records the story
concerning the king Langdarma, who had to be killed by a type
of magic that seems "black" indeed. Yet the act was necessary in
order to prevent the king from accumulating still more evil deserts
than he had already. This little episode is a vivid instance of
Beyer's ability to select data that illuminate religious structures and
at the same time nullify extraneous assumptions. (Obviously, the
story makes a very different point from the ideal of Calvin's democracy
that might come to the mind of a Western intellectual looking
for reasons to justify a rebellion. . . .) Elsewhere in the manuscript
there is an eloquent example where a "ritual of subjugation"
(magic, obviously!) has in its later stages a sort of meditation or
prayer in whose expression the practitioner becomes, in all important
ways, like a Buddha himself; hence the concrete object
of subjugation seems itself lifted up and spiritually transformed in
the process. The magic while being performed—the devotees in
full awareness of its magic character—turns into universal bliss.
The subtlest, hardly fathomable Buddhist lore—that of skill in
means (upayakau£alya)—becomes manifest, tangible in the ritual.
The image of the goddess Tara, the focus of this work, is of great
importance to our understanding of Tibetan religion. Tara is the
principal superhuman being in Tibet who might be called divine
vii