The Cult of Tara

WORSHIP 109
In the cycles of the Father Tantras, the emblem, the seed, and the
perfected body of the symbolic being are in themselves often called
the "three rites of Diamond" which purify the practitioner's body,
speech, and mind. As Jigme ch'ochi wangpo writes: 164
By visualizing oneself as manifest in the form of the emblem, such
as a five-pointed vajra, one's mind is cleansed into the .Diamond
of Mind. By visualizing that same emblem as marked with such
syllables as HUM, one's speech is perfected as the Diamond of
Speech. By the rite of the radiating and gathering in of light and
(having served therewith the aims of oneself and others) its transformation
into the divine body, visualized as complete with all
ornaments and accoutrements, one's body is ripened into the
Diamond of Body.
Thus these three rites are a threefold table of correspondences, which
fulfills what Tenpe nyima said was the special function of the Process
of Generation: to cleanse, to perfect, and to ripen. The rites
are magical simulacra for the path of purification which leads to the
threefold Diamond of Buddhahood.
These "rites"—emblem, seed, and body—are seen too as simulacra
for the processes of birth. Not only is the yogin literally born into
his new contemplative reality after "dying" in Emptiness, but also,
by his mastery of the Process of Generation, he can control his threefold
gestation and birth in the world, and his threefold "fruition" as
a Buddha:
By the first rite, the fiarrfo-awareness enters into the mass of red
and white in the womb. By the second, the semen, blood and
mind are mixed together, and the five states of gestation (foetus
and so on) are experienced. By the third, the body assimilates
the scattered elements and is completed, and it is born outside.
When purified [by the Process of Generation], at the time of
fruition these combine as the causal conditions for the Tathagata
to arise in a Body of Transformation to take others in hand,
to dwell in the womb—the vagina—of the Diamond Lady, and to
be born forth to show his deeds.
Again, in the cycles of the Mother Tantras, the steps of creating
and empowering the senses of the symbolic being are often grouped
into a fourfold table of correspondences and called the "four realizations."
As it says in the Hevajra Tanlra [I.iii.2]:
First, Emptiness is the thought of enlightenment,
second, the seed is arisen,
in the third the body is perfected,
in the fourth the syllables are arrayed.