The Cult of Tara

MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
to serve as a monastic college, until the present K'amtrii rinpoch'e
constructed the new college outside the walls. It contained more
than fifty medium-sized rooms, used mostly for storage, and several
large windowed workrooms where the monastery employed more
than forty people from the surrounding districts of Lhat'og, Dege,
Ch'amdo, and Nangch'en. Some monks were employed in the
printing of texts, but the workers were mostly lay people, including
a few women, who lived in a small village supplied for them on the
other side of the river; single men were allowed to stay within the
monastery after the gates closed for the night. They were silversmiths,
goldsmiths, molders of images in clay and casters of images
in bronze, painters, wood-carvers for the blocks from which the books
were printed, carpenters, and tailors—all employed in making the
ritual equipment, the costumes, the paintings, and the texts used
in monastic rituals. Everything was paid for from K'amtrii rinpoch'e's
own funds on behalf of the monastery.
Then came the afternoon tea break, and Bongpa triiku would
once again join the other monks in the evening assembly for two
hours, this time making offerings to the "protectors of the Law"
and the lesser and local spirits who had been bound by oath to its
service, reciting prayers to them and "entrusting them to their
function." After dinner he would do more private ritual contemplation
until it was time to retire.
All these rituals and ritual-oriented activities formed the thread
that bound together not only Bongpa triiku's daily tasks but also
almost every aspect of his monastic career, from the time he had
been discovered as an incarnation, through the monastic college and
his training in all phases of his ritual and communal life; these rituals
bound the monastery itself to the surrounding lay community
more effectively than any economic bonds could have done. If a
monastery engaged in trade—almost all of them did—and even if it
managed to acquire lands and riches, the ultimate aim was the
performance of ritual: the gold and silver stores of the wealthiest
monastery took the form of religious implements, and the Chinese
brocades, the paintings, and the images were ultimately in the service
of its deities. Linguistic usage did not even allow an individual
person or monastery to "buy" an image; the word for its purchase
price was "ransom fee," a rental paid on something owned by the
whole world. The voluntary lay support of a monastery was given
for the performance of ritual, and royal grants of land and villages