The Cult of Tara

WORSHIP 71
brightness disappears, this is 'great drowsiness.' The defining characteristic
of drowsiness is the mental fading away, while concentrating
one-pointedly, of the Holy One whom the pratitioner is attempting
to grasp with mental vividness. . . . Distraction, on the other
hand, is a disruption, as when some pleasing image obstructs the
Calm of performing the visualization, and one is bothered by things
in the category of lust. Here too there are subtle and coarse types.
For one's attention to be diverted someplace else while concentrating
upon the object of visualization may be considered a 'subtle
distraction.' For one's attention to be diverted to the extent that
the visualization fades away is ' coarse distraction.' But not all
diversions of attention are 'distractions' in the technical sense,
because one's attention may also be diverted by hatred." 140
The ability to achieve single-minded concentration on a vividly
appearing picture is the result of long and really rather frustrating
practice. We must remember—and this point should be emphasized—that
the visualization is performed during a ritual; that is,
the .practitioner is reciting a text (which is either placed on a small
table in front of him or which he has memorized), and the visualization
takes place in time with the rhythmically chanted textual
description of the evocation. Indeed, a good percentage of any
author's corpus consists of precisely these rituals, embellished and
refined according to his own contemplative and poetic skills. The
reading of the ritual text in the assembly hall often goes at breakneck
speed, and the vast majority of monks are unable to visualize
that quickly, if indeed they are able to visualize at all. Practice in
speed and accuracy came in a monk's periods of solitary contemplation,
where the pace might be slowed sufficiently to allow concentration
on the process of forming the deity, but there was never a
break in the ritual process itself, for the solitary yogin so timed his
contemplative periods that they fitted the structure of the ritual
as a whole,
Speed and accuracy are both necessary, and both form the standard
by which is measured the progress of one's contemplative ability.
1 here are considered to be four states of ability in visualization. As
|°ng as a pratitioner is unable to visualize the deity so vividly that
appears to be manifestly there, even in just a rough way, he is clashed
as a "beginner." He becomes "one to whom a little knowledge
as fallen ' when he is able to visualize the entire mandala of deities
a
rough way and when he is able to "make it manifest in only a