The Cult of Tara

WORSHIP
the deity and his retinue of the mandala. "In all these practices,"
says Tsongk'apa, "one should increasingly gain the ability to cut
off one's ordinary ego through (1) the vivid appearance of the deity,
and (2) the ego of the deity: and for that reason it is not enough just
to concentrate on forming the deity's body, but one must also
concentrate upon making firm his ego." 108
Thus the Process of
Generation, he says, does two special things: it makes one abandon
the ordinary appearance of the "residence and its residents," and
it makes one abandon one's clinging to the ordinary ego of the
"residence and its residents"; that is, the "two mandalas"—the
dwelling and its inhabitants—are changed from the ordinary world
filled with people into a divine mansion filled with the retinue of the
deity, who is the practitioner himself: 107
This sort of contemplation—the creation of "special appearances"
as the residence and its residents, to nullify "ordinary appearances"
and clinging to "ordinary ego"—is not found in the Vehicle
of the Perfections, and it is thus a special doctrine of the Vehicle
of the Mantra alone. According to this explanation of the Process
of Generation—that it consists in the contemplation of the residence
as a divine mansion and of its residents as deities—it is
(1) by contemplating the "special appearance" of the residence
formed as a divine mansion and of its residents formed as deities
that one nullifies "ordinary appearances," and it is (2) by contemplating
with complete certainly, thinking "I am Aksobhya" or
"I am Vairocana" and so on, that one nullifies one's "ordinary
ego." ... It says in many texts that "one must clear away one's
ordinary ego": and thus the contemplation of the ego of the
mandalas of residence and residents, as an antidote to one's
"ordinary ego," is the most important thing; and the contemplation
of the "special appearance" of the residence and residents, to
nullify "ordinary appearances," is but a subsidiary of the former.
It is only when one has first turned away from one's ordinary ego,
he says, that one may exchange for it the ego of the deity. For
example, at the moment the knowledge being descends into one,
°ne casts away one's grasping of one's former essence, whatever it
may been, and thinks "I am the deity I" Now this thought is artific
, a
', a "thing of mere words," insofar as one still thinks "I am Aks-
°bhya, or Vairocana," and so on, as if one were still an ordinary
heing; it is by the gradual transformation of this artificial thought
that one finally gains the special and genuine ego of the deity. 108
sewhere, Tsongk'apa describes the actual technique of reaching
t h l s c
°mplete identification with the deity: 108
77