[THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF THIS THÖDOL BY THE OFFICIANT]
Now for the explaining of the Thödol itself:
If thou canst gather together a grand offering, offer it in worship of the Trinity. If such cannot be done, then arrange whatever can be gathered together as objects on which thou canst concentrate thy thoughts and mentally create as illimitable an offering as possible and worship.
Then the ‘Path of Good Wishes Invoking the Aid of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas’[1] should be recited seven times or thrice.
After that, the ‘Path of Good Wishes Giving Protection from Fear in the Bardo’,[1] and the ‘Path of Good Wishes for Safe Delivery from the Dangerous Pitfalls of the Bardo’,[1] together with the ‘Root Words of the Bardo’,[1] are to be read distinctly and with the proper intonation.[2]
Then this Great Thödol is to be read either seven times or thrice,[3] according to the occasion. [First cometh] the setting-face-to-face [to the symptoms of death] as they occur during the moments of death; [second] the application of the great vivid reminder, the setting-face-to-face to Reality while in the
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 See the Appendix, pp. 197-208, where each of these chief Bardo prayers (or ‘Paths of Good Wishes’) is translated.
- ↑ Cf. the two following passages, the first from The Book of the Craft of Dying, chap. VI, in Bodleian MS. 423 (circa fifteenth century), Comper’s ed. (p. 39), the second from The Craft to Know Well to Die (fifteenth century), chap, IV, Comper’s ed. (p. 74):
‘Last of all, it is to be known that the prayers that follow may be conveniently said upon a sick man that laboureth to his end. And if it is a religious person, then when the covent [i.e. convent] is gathered together with smiting of the table, as the manner is, then shall be said first the litany, with the psalms and orisons that he used therewith. Afterward, if he live yet, let some man that is about him say the orisons that follow hereafter, as the time and opportunity will suffer. And they may be often rehearsed again to excite the devotion of the sick man—if he have reason and understanding with him.’
‘And if the sick man or woman may, nor can not, say the orisons and prayers beforesaid, some of the assistants [i. e. bystanders} ought to say them before him with a loud voice, in changing the words there as they ought to be changed.’ - ↑ Cf. the following from The Craft to Know Well to Die, chap. 1V, Comper’s ed. (p. 73): ‘After all these things he [the person dying] ought to say three times, if he may, these words that follow.’
