The Cult of Tara

120 MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
overcome and expel the antithesis between subject and object
and lead to nondiscriminative knowledge. Then there is the
moment of "immediate succession" where the "highest event in
the world" is transformed into the supramundane state of the
first of the ten basic stages of the Bodhisattva.
3) This "first stage," called "the joyful," is, like the remaining
ones, associated with the particular Perfection that is held to
characterize it. This is equivalent to the "Path of Vision" where
the Bodhisattva for the first time truly "sees" the Four Noble
Truths: he sees suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path
to its cessation, and it is this path that he next proceeds to
develop.
4) The remaining basic stages are traversed in order. It has taken
the Bodhisattva one incalculable eon to reach the first stage and
it will take another to reach beyond the seventh; for upon the
eighth stage he is no longer liable to reversal since he is bound, in
only one more eon, for Buddhahood. These nine remaining basic
stages are thus equivalent to the "Path of Development," which
culminates in the Diamond-like Contemplation, wherein the
Bodhisattva fulfills the Perfections of Meditation and Wisdom and
destroys all the residues of defilement in the moment before he
achieves enlightenment.
5) Finally, in the moment of "instantaneous realization," the
Bodhisattva reaches the Stage of a Buddha, the "Path beyond
Learning."
This Bodhisattva Path, and the most important events upon it,
are outlined in the accompanying table.
Now suppose, says Tsongk'apa, that someone accumulates the
karma that is the cause of his taking birth in a womb, and then dies
and reaches the intermediate state of the bardo. As a fcarrfo-awareness
he enters into a mother's womb and stays there until he is born
outside, and then he himself takes a wife and begets sons and
daughters. Now suppose too that he who has done all these things
"makes them into religious objects" and contemplates the Process
of Generation in accord with hem.
First he will visualize the field of hosts and accumulate the stocks,
which is like accumulating the karma that causes him to be born in
this world. Here the acts, such as the "intentional" and "actual"
thoughts of enlightenment, are in common with the Vehicle of the
Perfections: and this may also be correlated with the Bodhisattva's
Path of Accumulation, as it says in Abhayakaragupta's Clusters of
Tradition: