The Cult of Tara

194
MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
and by the purity of our intentions and practice,
may every single type of being
(in the triple world, in the five classes, in the four wombs,
in the Realm of Form, in the Realm without Form,
in the Stage of Neither Conception nor Nonconception),
may they quickly leave behind the suffering
of the level of vulgar mental constructs,
may they gain the true and certain understanding
of nirvana, the bliss of the Noble Path,
may all who have attained the Noble Path
gain the most excellent qualities of all the Realms,
may they be immersed in the pure Bliss
of the highest perfect enlightenment!
2.212 Prayers
The above benediction concludes the offerings made to the general
guests, and the monks proceed to reap the reward of its merit by
praying to the assembled hosts. The prayers our author gives in his
ritual text are intended for the universal benefit of all beings, but in
the course of the ritual there are often added as well any special
requests to the deity which may have been made by the sponsor,
by one of the monks, or by a member of the lay community. Very
often, a lay person who could not afford to sponsor an entire ritual
by himself will take advantage of another's patronage (or of the
regular and unsponsored monastic rituals) by approaching the
head monk before the ceremony or during one of its breaks, clutching
perhaps a single rupee in a ceremonial scarf, to ask him to include
a special prayer or an earnest wish in his behalf.
At the beginning of this portion of the. ritual, the monks first
recite the "vowels and consonants," the "heart of conditioned coproduction,"
and the 100-syllable mantra of Vajrasattva; thus they
are themselves purified, the preceeding ritual is made firm, and their
speech is empowered for the prayer that follows. Then, filling their
hands with flowers, they raise them up as they join their palms; one
of these flowers is thrown in the air at the end of each stanza of the
following prayer (where it says "I pray . . . ," the last Tibetan word
of each stanza):
All the hosts who dwell in the ten directions, who come in the
three times, the gurus, the high patron deities, the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas,
disciples, solitary Buddhas, dakas, yoginis, dakinis,
protectors of the Law: whether we be in a human body, whether
we be embodied or disembodied, I pray you think of all of us!