The Cult of Tara

30 MAGIC AND RITUAL. IN TIBET
will seek only perfect enlightenment . . .")—here "real" or "actual"
in the sense that it is constituted of the "absolute truth" of Emptiness.
Similarly, under the first of the holy things are subsumed all
the acts of homage, devotion, and benevolence which go to make up
a practitioner's stock of merit, and under the second is his apprehension
of the truth which makes up his stock of knowledge; these
are often compared to two wings that lift him to enlightenment.
Thus far this is standard "Great Vehicle" Buddhism, but here these
common elements are placed within a ritual environment, a dramatic
setting that lends immediacy to what might otherwise be a mere
moral abstraction. The ritual act takes on the dimensions of the
entire Bodhisattva Path; in effect the actual evocation of the deity
from Emptiness is performed by one who is already a true Bodhisattva,
the preliminaries of the ritual being a magical simulacrum
of the path itself.
Thus every ritual begins with the psychological preparation of
the vivid visualization of the field of hosts, before whose eyes the
practitioner goes for refuge and awakens his intentional thought of
enlightenment; afterward he prays that they depart from the sky
in front of him (or he visualizes that they dissolve into his body,
depending upon the ritual), and he contemplates the "four immeasurables"
or "abodes of Brahma" to "purify his friendliness and
compassion." These are, as Tsongk'apa said, the roots of his
thought of enlightenment, which he now actualizes by the dissolution
of everything into Emptiness with the recitation of the mantra. All
this takes place before the ritual proper begins, and the deity is
thus evoked "from the realm of Emptiness" by one whose merit
and knowledge have taken him to the very brink of his own divinity.
Again, the "refuge and thought" may be expanded into the
"sevenfold office" whose canonical source is the Indian text All-
Beneficent's Vow of Conduct; 95
many editions of the Homages to the
Twenty-one Taras also include a special sevenfold office for the
goddess. The list given therein may be considered standard, though
the formula varies occasionally from ritual to ritual: 66
(1) homage,
(2) offerings, (3) confession of sins, (4) rejoicing in the merit of
others, (5) entreaty that the deity "turn the wheel of the Law,"
(6) prayer that the deity not pass away into nirvana, and (7) the dedication
of one's own merit. 67
All these elements may perhaps be made
clearer by the following table: