The Cult of Tara

WORSHIP 23
were made to maintain the monastery in its ritual function as the
protector of the country. A pilgrimage to the most holy of persons
would have been incomplete without having obtained his services
as a ritual expert, and a traveling lama was expected by monks and
lay people alike to perform rituals and bestow initiations for the
welfare of every community he visited. The life of a resident lama,
especially in a small community, was often a succession of demands
for the cure of disease, the prevention of hail, or the expulsion of
evil spirits; all these functions were the ritual manipulation within
his person of the power of the deities to whose service he had particularly
devoted himself, the signs of whose favor he had received,
and whose true nature he understood.
Thus, aside from the large monthly and annual monastic rituals,
the monastery functioned further as a service organization in the
performance of rituals sponsored by individuals or groups in the lay
community. The monks, and especially the high lamas, had become
ritual experts through their long professional training in ritual techniques,
and even the most basic attitudes of worship toward the
deities were focused through the monastery. This functional relationship
between lay and monastic communities was furthered by
the fact that the proper application of magic in Tibetan society was
conditioned by the necessity of professional training and a long
course of contemplative preparation, and even destructive magic
was sanctioned if it furthered religious ends. But the lama was more
than merely a Buddhist shaman; he was also involved, ideally, in
his own quest for enlightenment and the spiritual preparation for
his own death. It was this personal search that rendered him capable
in the first place of performing his service function for others.
1UTUAUZATION
A young child in the lay community went through a process of socialization
during which he absorbed his basic attitudes to life just
as he would absorb the steps of his folk dances or the tunes of his
native songs, by the imitation of his elders and the reward of thenapproval,
and by the often quite vocal pressure of his peers. Analogously,
a young monk went through a process of "ritualization"'
m his monastic environment, although this process was more formally
structured and had more coherently formulated ends. His
first three years in the monastery were spent in learning how to read