The Cult of Tara

224 MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
the knowledge being therein, and commanding SUPRATISTHA
"Standing firm l"But most commonly the monks simply request the
knowledge being to depart to her natural realm with the gesture
called, appropriately, "asking to depart"—a typical Tibetan gesture,
often used to speed a parting guest (fig. 27)—and the recitation (or
singing) of the following verse, snapping their fingers and sounding
a peal of music at the mantra:
Fig. 27. The asking-todepart
gesture.
OM ! You have served the aim of all beings:
grant us the concordant magical attainments 1
Though you depart to your Buddha country,
I pray that you may return again. OM VAJRA MUH 1
Then the monks request that the "worldlings"—the various local
spirits and the beings in the six destinies—depart also to their own
place.
3.22 Sealing the ritual with an earnest wish
The assembly seals the ritual with the following earnest wish,
recited or sung:
By this virtue may all persons
accumulate their stocks of merit and knowledge;
may they attain the two holy things
that are born from merit and knowledge.
May all the Bodhisattvas
succeed in ever thinking of the aims of beings;
may the lords, thinking thereof,
grant blissful possessions to beings;