The Cult of Tara

26
MAGIC AND RITUAL. IN TIBET
the monastery, and some monks would return there periodically
throughout their lives. There, in constant contemplation, lived
neither more nor less than thirteen yogins (literally, in Tibetan,
those "possessed of understanding"); when one died, another monk
volunteered or was chosen from the main monastery. When a monk
became a yogin permanently, he took a vow to remain within the
limits of the hermitage for the remainder of his life (except for certain
specified ritual occasions); indeed, "limits" is the Tibetan word for
solitary contemplation. He would neither cut nor wash his hair, nor
cut his beard or fingernails, nor ever wear any garment other than
the red-fringed white cotton robes that had been the dress of the
"cotton-clad brothers" since the time of Mila repa. The hermitage
had a main temple, and the separate houses were scattered over the
top of the mountain. Other yogins lived in caves in the mountain,
but they were not supported by the monastery.
Ideally, the young monk's period of solitary contemplation would
last for three years, three months, and three days, during which
time he would be trained in the basic contemplative techniques of
the monastic rituals and given instruction in the visualizations that
were their central procedure. Before he was allowed to embark
upon any of these ritual procedures he had first to gain the power
of the god through ritual service; and before he began this service
he had first to purify himself through the preliminary practices.
To arouse his energies toward the task of contemplation which lay
ahead, therefore, he began with the four common preliminaries,
spending—ideally—one week each on four short meditations upon
(1) the difficulty of attaining human birth, (2) death and impermanence,
(3) the cause-effect pattern of karma, and (4) the horrors
of this world. These meditations are called "common" because they
are considered to be general to both branches of the Great Vehicle:
the Vehicle of the Perfections and the Vehicle of the Mantra.
Then, when the young monk was aware of the necessity for making
the utmost effort to use his precious human birth to liberate himself
from worldly attachments, he purified and empowered himself for
his future contemplations with the four uncommon preliminaries,
here beginning the first of the peculiarly Tantric visualizations whose
basic technique would be used in all his later ritual practices. These
preliminaries began with his "going for refuge," which included also
the formal acceptance of his vows as a Bodhisattva—his intentional
awakening of the thought of enlightenment—before the eyes of the