The Cult of Tara

248 MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
The practitioner's ability to perform all the ordinary functions,
based upon the soteriological function of his primary identity with
the deity, is here symbolized by his homologization to the Buddha
himself, and his performance of all the acts of the Buddha in the
world:
He becomes Lord of the gods,
he becomes Lord of the triple world;
he is born into the family of Buddhas
and turns the wheel of the Law;
he is born,
practices austerities,
performs the practice of enlightenment,
and is conscious of his Buddhahood;
he descends from among the gods,
he creates magical transformations,
turns the wheel of the Law,
passes away into nirvana,
and departs to the burning ground
just as did the Buddha.
Thus he leaves behind his body in the triple world:
the Conqueror, in his Body of Bliss,
departs once more to his Pure Land,
yet his Body of Transformation comes again;
it is by this ritual Process of Perfection
that one is made to enter into the Dharma Body.
This, then, is the extraordinary magical attainment: enlightenment
is possible because the practitioner and the deity are one, and this
identity is possible because the practitioner and the deity—the
object and the image—"neither exist nor nonexist." And so the
text continues, expounding this metaphysical axiom of identity:
The Buddhas do not arise
nor do the Buddhas cease,
but the essence of their arising and ceasing
is all of a single taste:
it is the single form of the Dharma realm,
the abandoning of the five obscurations;
they dwell in that same essence,
their form profound and vast and great.
Since there is neither arising nor ceasing
from the beginning there is no "existence":
with no arising they do not cease...
Unarisen they arise:
that they may arise, they do not arise.
Seen from the absolute point of view