The Cult of Tara: Magic and Ritual in Tibet

579 Pages·1978·20.68 MB·English

by  Stephan Beyer

,
Fig. 1. White Tara. From a wood-block print by Roger Williams.

Magic and Ritual
in Tibet
The Cult of Tara
STEPHAN BEYER
•
MOTILAL BANARSIDASS PUBLISHERS
PRIVATE LIMITED • DELHI
First Indian Edition: Delhi, 1988
Reprint: Delhi, 1996, 2001
© 1973 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
ISBN: 81-208-0489-9
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Foreword
T HE real history of man is the history of religion." The truth of
the famous dictum of Max Miiller, the father of the History
M of Religions, is nowhere so obvious as in Tibet. Western stu
dents have observed that religion and magic pervade not only the
forms of Tibetan art, politics, and society, but also every detail of
ordinary human existence. And what is the all-pervading religion
of Tibet? The Buddhism of that country has been described to us,
of course, but that does not mean the question has been answered.
The unique importance of Stephan Beyer's work is that it presents
the vital material ignored or slighted by others: the living ritual
of Tibetan Buddhists. The reader is made a witness to cultic
proceedings through which the author guides him carefully. He does
not force one to accept easy explanations nor does he direct one's
attention only to aspects that can be counted on to please. He
leads one step by step, without omitting anything, through entire
rituals, and interprets whenever necessary without being unduly ob
trusive. Oftentimes, as in the case of the many hymns to the god
dess Tara, the superb translations speak directly to the reader, and
it is indeed as if the reader himself were present at the ritual.
If any blame attaches to this book, it is that it presents itself
too modestly. It is, in fact, the first major work on the core of
Tibetan life. I do not want to imply that all the most meaningful
things in Tibetan culture or religion have been overlooked by
others. The author begins his work with a discussion of great
Western scholars who have studied Tibet before him. Few students,
however, have been able or willing to deal extensively with the
cultic procedures of Tibetan Buddhism. Instead they have focused
on other subjects, such as the sublime paintings and sculptures of
Tibet, the philosophical texts, the biographies of saints. These
subjects are no doubt important, but their treatment has too
often left the general impression of Tibetan religion as a collection
of primitive customs and odd superstitions.
vi FOREWORD
Tibet has retained an aura of mystery and fascination for travelers;
and, as it happens, scholars have been slow in demystifying Tibetan
religion. While most Asian traditions have become almost the
exclusive domains of learned specialists, who sometimes seem to
make it their chief concern to dampen loose enthusiasms, the history
of Tibetology, in contrast, is rich in romantic details. In 1820,
Alexander Csoma of Koros set out from Hungary in quest of the
original homeland of the Hungarians. In the end, his journey—
for the most part by foot—brought him to Tibet, and this wanderer
became one of the founders of Tibetology. Our own century has
seen the travelogue of Alexandra David-Neel, the fearless lady
who journeyed across Tibet from one marvelous adventure to an
other. In spite of great political changes in our age, it is not impos
sible that Tibet will continue to appeal to travelers. Nevertheless,
the romantic zeal that has accompanied the study of Tibet has not
succeeded in unveiling Tibetan religion.
Tibet, indeed, may present one of the last great religious tradi
tions to be interpreted. The word "last" should not sound fatalistic.
I mean only that Tibet is a latecomer on the horizon of our religio-
historical understanding. Perhaps we may say: Tibetan religion
gives us an extraordinary opportunity for a genuine understanding
of religious data. The peculiar place of Tibet in the history of
Western scholarship may even be a novel chance for an under
standing of man, for in our approaches to various religious tradi
tions we have to face the fact that our understanding of man must
strive to be unified if it is to be anything at all.
The search for a unity in our understanding of religious man is
not an idle dream. The stimulus for such a search comes from the
religious data themselves. For indeed, every religious tradition has
a center, and no serious interpretation is possible if that center is
ignored. Stephan Beyer has rendered us a great service by pointing
to what can truly be regarded as central in Tibetan Buddhism:
ritual forms, especially those in the worship of Tara.
Beyer shows Tibetan religious ritual and magic in their mutual
relationship as set forth in the Tibetan documents themselves,
and not by relying on familiar biases concerning magic and religion.
The ritual forms of religion and the practice of magic are very dif
ferent from what the reader might imagine beforehand. They are
different also from what most experts—often victims themselves
of biases that made Tibetan religion "harmless" before it was con-
FOREWORD vii
fronted in earnest—have led us to believe. Magic and ritual as
defined in the Tibetan Buddhist sources complement each other.
They do not contrast in the way most of us have assumed. In
particular, they are not opposed to each other in the manner of a
psychological attitude of reverential submissiveness ("religion") ver
sus the will to manipulate the sacred for one's own ends ("magic").
In Tibetan tradition, it would be meaningless to speak of an in
dividual's control over anything empirical or mental, if such control
did not depend on something else. This "something else" is the
perfection of a being far beyond random individual wishes. Such
a being is either a Buddha, who is free from the endless chain of
finite existences, or a Bodhisattva, who is perfect in every way, is
"almost a Buddha," yet chooses to relate to the world out of com
passion. Such a being is Tara, the great Goddess. Whatever
reality is seen or "made up," whatever is done religiously or magical
ly, and, ultimately, what is done, whether with good or evil in
tentions, can be realized only when it is directed toward the pure
goal manifest in those beings. Stephan Beyer records the story
concerning the king Langdarma, who had to be killed by a type
of magic that seems "black" indeed. Yet the act was necessary in
order to prevent the king from accumulating still more evil deserts
than he had already. This little episode is a vivid instance of
Beyer's ability to select data that illuminate religious structures and
at the same time nullify extraneous assumptions. (Obviously, the
story makes a very different point from the ideal of Calvin's demo
cracy that might come to the mind of a Western intellectual looking
for reasons to justify a rebellion. . . .) Elsewhere in the manuscript
there is an eloquent example where a "ritual of subjugation"
(magic, obviously!) has in its later stages a sort of meditation or
prayer in whose expression the practitioner becomes, in all im
portant ways, like a Buddha himself; hence the concrete object
of subjugation seems itself lifted up and spiritually transformed in
the process. The magic while being performed—the devotees in
full awareness of its magic character—turns into universal bliss.
The subtlest, hardly fathomable Buddhist lore—that of skill in
means (upayakau£alya)—becomes manifest, tangible in the ri
tual.
The image of the goddess Tara, the focus of this work, is of great
importance to our understanding of Tibetan religion. Tara is the
principal superhuman being in Tibet who might be called divine
viii FOREWORD
without further qualification. She is prayed to by millions; her
help in all adversity is divine.
How may a person be sure that his need is observed by a higher
power? A real fear in Tibet's Mahayana Buddhism was that the
most qualified more-than-human powers might pass into nirvana
and thus disappear from the world in which need was felt. These
more-than-human beings are the Bodhisattvas, the beings who are
able to become Buddhas, yet are still present in the world. With
Tara, the fear that she would pass beyond this world did not seem
to exist. It does not help much to search for "causes" to explain
this trust in Tara and her eternity. It would be misleading to
think, for instance, of the widely held Indian tradition that only a
male birth can be a last birth. Such rationalizations are too thin,
especially if the cause for the formation of a deity is the issue. The
help provided by Tara was real. She was real, she was divine.
Tara was, had always been, and still is the almighty support of her
devotees who address her. In fact, she is mightier than Buddhas
and Bodhisattvas. The author convinces us that "Tara in all her
forms transcended any monopoly" (p. 15 ). And we hear that in a
hymn she is addressed as ". . . mother who gives birth to all the
Buddhas of the three times" (p. 215 ). To understand something
of her cult is to understand something of the mainstay of Tibetan
culture and religion.
Certainly, no study of magic can be undertaken from now on that
does not take the present study into full account. A serious be
ginning has here been made on a deep understanding of Tibetan
religion, and the general history of religions will profit by it. Locat
ing the vital center of a religious tradition prepares the ground for
a unified, structured, meaningful understanding of all religious
phenomena. Obviously, this is no task that can be completed over
night. Rather, we are encouraged on the road we travel and we are
surer of our direction. The time is past in which historians of
religions might think themselves capable of writing complete his
tories of the religion of all mankind. The framework of ideas for
such undertakings turned out to need more generous dimensions
than even the most far-seeing minds could envision. Many his
torians of religions in the last couple of decades have reacted by
addressing themselves to the safer studies of specific religions,
ignoring the demands of a general history of religions. Ultimately,
such modesty provides no solutions. It seems to me that the right