The Cult of Tara

APPLICATION 243
Gustav Diehl writes of the mantra in South India: "The mantras
are instruments. Partly they are without meaning and often they
are not understood by him who reads them. They have fixed places
in the ritual and varied effects and cannot be interchanged . . .
They are all indirect means of achieving something. . . . Formulas
(mantras), syllables (bijas), hold the gods and can be directed; in
that way the performer of the rites draws into himself the divine,
whereby alone he becomes fit for worshipping." 17
Thus the mantra can be an instrument of protection, just as an
effigy can be an instrument of destruction. In Tibet the mantra is
the audible simulacrum of the divine power, and, in the coalescence
of image and object, it becomes the divine power itself, manifest
and crystallized in a sonic form.
The Gentle Lord Kongtrii rinpoch'e says that "it is in general
permissible to apply just the basic 10-syllable mantra to all Tara's
functions." But as we have already seen in chapter i, this basic
mantra may be "effectuated" in many different situations by the
insertion of the appropriate appendix, and these variations may be
used also when the mantra is "applied." Thus Kongtrii rinpoch'e
says also: 18
One may vary the mantra and the visualization slightly for
each of the different functions, but to set about these activities
requires a practitioner who has acquired the power to do so by
having performed the ritual service . . . the requisite number of
times and for the requisite length of time, and who has received
the requisite signs of success therein—or at the very least an
ordinary person who has recited the basic 10-syllable mantra
10,000,000 times.
In other words, one must first "contemplate the mantra" before
one can either "effectuate" or "apply" it. Effectuation and application
are two different processes: to effectuate the mantra is to
arouse the stream of the heart of the deity generated in front; to
apply the mantra is to direct its power either directly into an object
(like the knotted sash, above) or into a deity who is generated
within the object. Application of the mantra is called, in the ritual,
the employment of the divine power, just as the effectuation of
the mantra is the ritual evocation of the goddess: but before one
can evoke or employ this power one must first acquire it through
the contemplation of the mantra in the prior ritual service of
the deity. As it says in the Mahavairocana Tantra-P