The Cult of Tara

202 MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
This homage may be abridged, the text adds, by reciting only the
mantra that empowers it and repeating just the last verse seven
times (this verse is the first stanza of AtlsVs famous Hymn to Tara,
discussed above); but in that event the same abbreviated homage
must be performed in the next two offering rituals as well. The
homage must, in other words, be the same before each presentation.
2.2221.2 General offerings
The general offerings for Tara have already been set out and
empowered during the ritual preparations (1.3), but here their
strength must be regenerated by the recitation of the "clouds of
offerings" mantras and their gestures from ARGHAM to SABDA
( . . . PUJA-MEGHA-SAMUDRA-SPHARANA-SAMAYE HUM !);
while ringing their bells for the peaceful music with which the
mantra series ends, the monks add beneath the crash and roar:
OM NAMO BHAGAVATE VAJRA-SARA-PRAMARDANAYA
TATHAGATAYA ARHATE SAMYAKSAMBUDDHAYA TAD-
YATHA VAJRE VAJRE MAHA-VAJRE MAHA TEJO-VAJRE
MAH A-BODH I-MANDOPASAMKRAM AN E SARVA-KARMA-
VARANA-VISODHANE SVAHA!
"OM Homage to the Blessed One, Crushing with Diamond Nature,
the Tathagata, Worthy One, fully enlightened ! That is:
diamond, diamond, great diamond! Great blazing diamond,
aproaching the terrace of great enlightenment, cleansing all
obscurations of karma SVAHA !"
And as this power "descends," the monks visualize that the "clouds
of offerings radiate like circles of ornaments of the all-beneficent
space-vast treasury" and are offered up to the Blessed Lady visualized
before them, "whose essence is the Three Jewels who dwell
pervading all of space," as they join their palms in reverence and
recite (or sing) the following verse:
I emanate light that arrays the oblations,
masses of oblations, canopies of oblations;
and having spread out the various oblations
I offer it up to the great-souled Conquerors.
And then, with the appropriate gesture, they recite the following
mantra:
OM ARYA-TARA-GURU-BUDDHA-BODHISATTVA-SAPARI-
VAREBHYO VAJRA-ARGHAM PRATlCCHA PUJA-ME-
GHA-SAMUDRA-SPHARANA-SAMAYE AH HUM 1