The Cult of Tara

122
MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
Next, the contemplation of Emptiness is like death, because when
one decides that the "aggregates"—the foundation of clinging to
"I" and "mine"—are essenceless, their "appearances" are nullified,
and it is like giving up one's worn-out aggregates at the moment
of death. And this too may be correlated with the Bodhisattva's
Path of Preparation, as Abhayakaragupta says:
The stage of "practicing with conviction" is like the state where
the path of death first becomes visible, because it is inherently a
preparatory "aid to penetration." After this, at the end of the
preparatory state (like the after-death bardo when one's being in
the world is cut off), one is in the state of "immediate succession"
to the "joyful" stage, as naturally as one instant passes on from
the dissolution of the end of the preceding one.
Thus the "highest event in the world," says Tsongk'apa, becomes
the "immediate succession" to the first of the ten Bodhisattva
stages, just as the bardo is preparatory to the state of being in the
womb. As it says in the Adornment of the Sutras of the Great Vehicle: 1
* 1
Then without hindrance
one quickly touches meditation.
Next the practitioner visualizes the generation of the deity, which
is like entering into the womb from the bardo and growing therein
as an embryo. This too may be correlated with the Bodhisattva's
growth through the ten stages, his Paths of Vision and Development,
as Abhayakaragupta says:
After that, as the state of being in the womb follows upon the
dissolution of the form (whatever it was) which one had in the
state of bardo, the state of the ten Bodhisattva stages is to be
touched after the dissolution of "immediate succession," because
[ up to this point ] the Bodhisattvas are still possessed of obscuration.
Here, says Tsongk'apa, there are two possibilities: the practitioner
may "enter the womb" either with or whitout "melting." Just as a
gandharva enters the womb wihtout melting, the seed syllable that
radiates light has "the nature of the bardo-being," placed between
two orbs that are semen and blood, the latter "like a sun arisen from
many monthly periods of women." Thus, where a text says that a
sun is generated from the consonants (as in the ritual of Cakrasamvara,
above), "the intention is to consider it a 'red moon'"; the
entry between these two "moons" of the "syllable symbolizing bardo"
is like a ftardo-being entering within the mixed semen and
blood of its parents.