The Cult of Tara

WORSHIP 111
Perhaps the most important of these tables for the generation of
the symbolic being is not found in the rituals of Tara at all, being
used only in the highest rituals of the monastic cult, for the high
patron deities and the protecting "Lord of knowledge." Here are
what are called the "five realizations," and our understanding of the
Process of Generation would be incomplete without some account
of them; the magical correspondences worked out by generations of
scholars for these five realizations reverberate even in the simpler
rituals of Tara. We must remember, whenever we talk of Tibetan
scholasticism, that the dry account book of correspondences is the
result of a basically religious search, an attempt to extend the
yogin's power to its ultimate bounds, and the yogin who generates
the goddess brings to the evocation all the magical analogies of his
contemplative career.
"The five realizations," saysTsongk'apa, "are five awakenings: the
awakening (1) in Suchness, (2) in the moon, (3) in the seed, (4) in the
emblem, and (5) in the perfected body." 166
We may look at an example
of this mode of generating the symbolic being as given in a
ritual of Guhyasamaja: 16
'
1) OM §UNYATA-J5JANA-VAJRA-SVABHAVATMAKO 'HAM 1
2) Above the central throne is a sun disk arisen from HUM, in the
middle of which is a moon disk arisen from OM; and above that
is a red eight-petaled lotus arisen from AH, in whose center are
the three syllables OM AH HUM, stacked one atop the other. All
those mix together and become one complete and perfect moon
disk; light radiates forth therefrom, gathers together the entire
animate and inanimate world, and dissolves back into the moon.
OM DHARMA-DHATU-SVABHAVATMAKO 'HAM 1 The basis
of all animate and inanimate events is nothing but the mind
riding upon the winds; that appears as a moon; that is 11
3) Above the moon is a white OM, a red AH, and a blue HUM.
sprung from the moon like bubbles appearing from water: light
radiates forth therefrom, invites the measureless five families and
their retinue, and all dissolve back into the syllables.
4) They immediately transform into a white five-pointed vajra,
marked in the middle with OM AH HUM VAJRA-SVABHA-
VATMAKO 'HAM!
5) The vajra and its syllables transform into the Lord.