The Cult of Tara

126 MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
Having grasped the perfected fruit [of his karma = the body], he
is born that he may experience all sense objects, for he experiences
the objects of all his senses. Then the Body of Transformation
in the state of radiating the deities is like the state of begetting
sons, and so on.
This too may be correlated with the Bodhisattva's Path beyond
Learning, and Abhayakaragupta quotes the Tantra of Mystic
Union:*
Thus in the sense of being preparatory
the ten months are the ten stages:
they both fall under the rubric of ten stages of beings.
The purport, says Tsongk'apa, is that from entering into the womb
until being born outside is correlated with the ten Bodhisattva
stages; so those intermediate stages must be classified as the Paths
of Vision and Development, and being born as the Path beyond
Learning.
Tsongk'apa concludes this lengthy analysis with a summary of
its main points, which gives a concise resume of the magical symbolism
outlined above: 185
In the Process of Generation, it is necessary to recognize the
"thing to be purified" and the "purifier": the method of this
recognition is the contemplation of birth, death and bardo just as
they are: so here we must discuss in addition the actual way in
which one "takes birth."
Here, the one who takes birth is the contemplating pratitioner.
In what sort of a body does he take birth? He takes birth in the
body of the chief Father-Mother, the resultant Bearer of the
Vajra. Where does he take birth? Upon the central throne of
the divine mansion, in an actual bardo arisen from a crossed vajra.
By accumulating what sort of karma does he take birth ? By his
"stocks"—visualizing the special field, making homage and offerings,
awakening his thought of enlightenment, taking his vows and
so on.
Now it is not proper that he take the "special body" of the
deity in that manner without first abandoning his ordinary "aggregates,"
so he takes it after having nullified his "ordinary appearance"
and "ordinary ego" with Emptiness.
But in the trackless interval between giving up his former
"ordinary aggregates" until he gains the later "special body" of
the deity, he is not born in the divine body: so it is here (after
contemplating Emptiness and before perfecting the resultant
Bearer of the Vajra) that he must do the yogas of "reposing in
Pure Sound" and so on [that is, the contemplation of the "syllable