Introduction[1]
‘The phenomena of life may be likened unto a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, the glistening dew, or lightning flash; and thus they ought to be contemplated.’—The Buddha, in The Immutable Sutra.
I. The Importance of the Bardo Thödol
As a contribution to the science of death and of the existence after death, and of rebirth, The Tibetan Book of the Dead,
- ↑ This Introduction is—for the most part—based upon and suggested by explanatory notes which the late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup, the translator of the Bardo Thödol, dictated to the editor while the translation was taking shape, in Gangtok, Sikkim. The Lāma was of opinion that his English rendering of the Bardo Thödol ought not to be published without his exegetical comments on the more abstruse and figurative parts of the text. This, he thought, would not only help to justify his translation, but, moreover, would accord with the wishes of his late guru (see p. 80) with respect to all translations into a European tongue of works expository of the esoteric lore of the Great Perfectionist School into which that guru had initiated him. To this end, the translator’s exegesis, based upon that of the translator’s guru, was transmitted to the editor and recorded by the editor herein.
The editor’s task is to correlate and systematize and sometimes to expand the notes thus dictated, by incorporating such congenial matter, from widely separated sources, as in his judgement tends to make the exegesis more intelligible to the Occidental, for whom this part of the book is chiefly intended.
The translator felt, too, that, without such safeguarding as this Introduction is intended to afford, the Bardo Thödol translation would be peculiarly liable to misinterpretation and consequent misuse, more especially by those who are inclined to be, for one reason or another, inimical to Buddhistic doctrines, or to the doctrines of his particular Sect of Northern Buddhism. He also realized how such an Introduction as is here presented might itself be subject to adverse criticism, perhaps on the ground that it appears to be the outcome of a philosophical eclecticism. However this may be, the editor can do no more than state here, as he has stated in other words in the Preface, that his aim, both herein and in the closely related annotations to the text itself, has been to present the psychology and the teachings peculiar to and related to the Bardo Thödol as he has been taught them by qualified initiated exponents of them, who alone have the unquestioned right to explain them.
If it should be said by critics that the editor has expounded the Bardo Thödol doctrines from the standpoint of the Northern Buddhist who believes in them rather than from the standpoint of the Christian who perhaps would disbelieve at least some of them, the editor has no apology to offer; for he holds that there is no sound reason adducible why he should expound them in any other manner. Anthropology is concerned with things as they are; and the hope of
