The Cult of Tara

WORSHIP 223
to practice enlightenment in great waves.
Thus we dedicate to the fruit of great enlightenment
the hosts of virtue of ourselves and others:
may the holy Tara ever protect us
unweakened and unerring through all our future lives!
3.13 Filling in deficiencies in the performance
The deficiencies in the performance are made up by reciting three
times the vowels and consonants, the 100-syllable mantra, and the
heart of conditioned coproduction, that the missing speech may be
filled in and the ritual itself purified and made firm. The monks
end with 108 repetitions of the mantra OM VAJRASATTVA HUM !
3.14 Praying for forbearance toward ritual errors
The monks recite the following prayer to ask the deity's forbearance
toward any mistakes in or omissions from the performance
of the ritual:
If something were not at hand, or defiled,
or if we performed or manipulated
with a mind clouded over:
may our Lord be forbearing toward it all!
If our deep contemplation were not vivid because we were under
the sway of drowsiness or distraction (defilements of thought
common to persons who are just beginners like us), if the utensils
were impure, the hosts of offerings too few, our cleanliness incomplete,
our mantras unclear, our ritual in error or confused—I pray
you noble and compassionate ones be forbearing toward "it all,
whatever faults we may have committed. I pray you, right now,
remove our obscurations, banish our sighs, and let us accomplish
unhindered our functions and magical attainments.
3.2 The process of gathering in and sealing the ritual
3.21 The process of gathering in or praying to depart
The ritual is now drawing to its conclusion, and the invited deities
are dismissed. The Process of Perfection is here inapplicable, for its
yogic processes and "gathering in and arirsing" in the body of Innate
Union can be visualized only in self-generation. But the practitioners
may here imbibe the deity's empowerment through the process of
gathering in—a designation parallel to "Process of Perfection"—and
visualize that the knowledge being dissolves into their foreheads by
the recitation of OM AH HUM! Similarly they may here establish
the deity in the basis upon the altar, visualizing the dissolution of