BUDDHISM IN THE TIBETAN CULTURAL AREA 293texts. Here the emphasis was less on mastering the controversies that had built
up around the texts over the centuries in the pursuit of the correct "object of
negation" than on gaining familiarity with the basic ideas they contained.
Upon completion of this course, the monk took a three-year training course
in ritual techniques: mudras, chanting, the making of offerings, the use of rit-
ual musical instruments, ritual dancing, and the painting of mat;t-<;lalas. The
painting of mat;t<;lalas was particularly important, for it aided the monk in the
process of visualization so central to the practice of Tantric ritual.
Once this course had been completed, the monk was encouraged to begin
his retreat, for only on retreat could he devote himself full-time to the mastery
of the ritual, and only when he had completed the retreat could he be consid-
ered a lama. The training here would begin with an initiation-given by a
lama, who in the course of the ceremony identified himself with the central
deity of the ritual-authorizing the trainee to attempt the ritual. Without this
authorization, a trainee who attempted the ritual would be considered a tres-
passer and would not be safe from having the ritual power backfire on him.
Prior to the initiation, the trainee would have to take certain vows, in addi-
tion to his monastic and bodhisattva vows, which would include injunctions
against speaking ill of one's lama, speaking ill of women, divulging secret doc-
trines to the uninitiated, being friendly with evil people, or dwelling among
Hi:nayanists.
Once the initiation was granted, the trainee would further prepare and
purity himself for the ritual with the four common and uncommon prelimi-
naries. The common preliminaries, so called because they were common to
all Mahayana practitioners, were a reflection on the difficulty of attaining a
human birth, on death and impermanence, on the principle of karma, and on
the horrors of rebirih in sarp.sara. The uncommon preliminaries, specific only
to Tantra, consisted of a series of purification rites accompanied by visualiza-
tions. The trainee visualized the field of hosts-the assembled deities and lamas
of his lineage-and prostrated to them one hundred thousand times. He then
visualized the primary deity of his ritual and recited the deity's one hundred-
syllable mantra one hundred thousand times. He offered the mat;t<;lala one hun-
dred thousand times to his lama lineage (Strong EB, sec. 7.5.3), and finally,
through prayer and yoga, made their empowerment enter into himself one
hundred thousand times. At the conclusion of each stage, he absorbed the
mat;t<;lala into himself. This process completed, he was prepared to take on the
central ritual.
Tantric deities have both a personal and an impersonal aspect, and thus the
basic pattern of the central ritual consisted of an offering, to arouse the deity's
heart, and an evocation, in which one used the deity's mantra to coerce the
impersonal power set in motion by the deity's original vow or pledge to be-
come a deity or to protect Buddhism. The deities who were the focus of these
rituals fell into three classes, called the Three Basic Ones, which for Tibetan
Buddhism superseded the Triple Gem in immediate importance. The three
classes were members of one's lama lineage (including one's personal lama);