The Cult of Tara

WORSHIP
"field of hosts," the assembly of the deities and lamas of the Dragon
Kajii, whom he visualized in the sky before him and to whom he
prostrated himself 100,000 times in the course of his basic training.
Next he "cleansed away his obscurations" by visualizing Vajrasattva
above his head and reciting the 100-syllable mantra 100,000 times.
He "offered the mandala" 100,000 times to the lineage of his gurus.
And finally he "made their empowerment enter into him" through
his prayers and "yoga [union] with the gurus" another 100,000
times. After each of these four visualizations he absorbed into himself
the particular "field" he was visualizing. 63
THE MORAL BASIS OF CONTEMPLATIVE TRAINING
If he worked steadily at this program, a monk might finish it within
three or four months; if he really attempted to form the visualizations,
rather than mechanically going through the gestures and
automatically reciting the mantras and prayers, he would by the end
of that period have established a firm foundation for all his future
contemplations. But perhaps even more important than just simple
practice in visualization—the young monk would get plenty of practice
in that during the ritual service that came next—was the conscious
inculcation of certain basic and quite characteristically
Buddhist attitudes with which the monk would approach his future
rituals and the power, the "magical attainments," he would gain
through them. This is the reason Tsongk'apa, for example, places
so much emphasis in the following discussion on the necessity for
these purificatory practices, including the common preliminaries: 64
This process of purification is absolutely essential in the path
common to both the Vehicle of the Perfections and the Vehicle
of the Mantra. This is stated in the following verse, which Lama
Ngogpa (who held the lineage of exposition of the Tantras from
the holy Marpa) quoted from the Hevajra Tantra [II.viii.10j:
"First are given the rules of public confession . . . and then one is
taught metaphysics." Both types of the Great Vehicle hold that
the disciple should first be taught the "ordinary studies," and this
appears to be the implication of the Tantra also. The holy Mila
said: "If led with the teachings of liberation through the narrow
pass between life and death, one first begins by going for refuge
and awakening the 'intentional' and 'actual' thoughts of enlightenment.
Led by a deep ravine which presages destruction,
yoked yaks fall together into the abyss." This means that whenever
a disciple does not k«ep the vows he has taken, both he and
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