The Cult of Tara

MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
I beseech you to accept this with compassion, for the sake of
living beings; and, having accepted it, I pray you grant me empowerment.
GURU IDAM MANDALAKAM NIRYATAYAMI! "Guru, I
offer up this mandala !"
The practitioner visualizes all these offerings; he offers up all the
virtues, good qualities, and compassionate actions of himself and
all beings, whether past, present, or future. He offers up everything
that he himself likes or enjoys: food, clothing, palaces, soft beds
and warm boots, turquoise knives and coral necklaces, even his own
body for the service of the god or guru:
Tilopa said: "If you want instruction, make a mandala." But
Naropa had no grain, so he made the mandala out of sand; and he
sought everywhere, but could find no water for sprinkling. Tilopa
asked: "Has your body no blood?" Naropa let the blood gush
from his arteries; and he looked everywhere, but could find no
flowers. Tilopa chided him: "Have you no limbs? Cut off your
head and put it in the middle of the mandala. Take your arms
and legs and arrange them arround it." Naropa did so, and he
offered this mandala to his guru, fainting from loss of blood. When
he regained consciousness, Tilopa asked him: "Naropa, are you
happy?" And Naropa replied:
Happiness is to offer my guru
this mandala of my own flesh and blood. 225
THE FOUR MANDALA OFFERING TO TARA
All the elements discussed so far—the visualizations, the mantras
and the hand gestures, the offerings, praises, and prayers—are the
building blocks from which a ritual is constructed. A Tibetan rit­
ual is built up on a standard pattern, a set dramatic form; elements
may be left out or expanded upon, but the basic structure remains
the same. Authors have composed general rituals for a number of
purposes, leaving out the name of the deity and his mantra, to
allow the individual practitioner to fill these in with his own favorite
deity, or with the deity whose basic function most closely matches
the particular purpose to which the generalized ritual will be put.
It is around these formal structures set out for him that the author
of a ritual weaves his own pattern of verse, creating something new
on a pattern as fixed as a sonnet; it is upon this written ritual that