The Tibetan Book of the Dead/Introduction
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, called, in its own language, Bardo Thödol (‘Liberation by Hearing on the After-Death Plane’),[2] is, among the sacred books of the world, unique. As an epitomized exposition of the cardinal doctrines of the Mahāyāna School of Buddhism, it is of very great importance, religiously, philosophically, and historically. As a treatise based essentially upon the Occult Sciences of the Yoga Philosophy, which were fundamental in the curriculum of the great Buddhist University of Nālanda, the Oxford of ancient India, it is, perhaps, one of the most remarkable works the West has ever received from the East. As a mystic manual for guidance through the Otherworld of many illusions and realms, whose frontiers are death and birth, it resembles The Egyptian Book of the Dead sufficiently to suggest some ultimate cultural relationship between the two; although we only know with certainty that the germ of the teachings, as herein made accessible to English readers, has been preserved for us by a long succession of saints and seers of the God-protected Land of the Snowy Ranges, Tibet.
II. The Symbolism
The Bardo Thödol is unique in that it purports to treat rationally of the whole cycle of sangsāric (i.e. phenomenal) existence intervening between death and birth;—the ancient doctrine of karma, or consequences (taught by Emerson as compensation), and of rebirth being accepted as the most essential laws of nature affecting human life. Often, however, its teaching appears to be quite the antithesis of rational, because much of it is recorded in an occult cipher. Dr. L. A. Waddell has declared, after careful research, that ‘the lāmas have the keys to unlock the meaning of much of Buddha’s doctrine which has been almost inaccessible to Europeans.’[3]
Some of the more learned lāmas, including the late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup, have believed that since very early times there has been a secret international symbol-code in common use among the initiates, which affords a key to the meaning of such occult doctrines as are still jealously guarded by religious fraternities in India, as in Tibet, and in China, Mongolia, and Japan.
In like manner, Occidental occultists have contended that the hieroglyphical writings of ancient Egypt and of Mexico seem to have been, in some degree, a popularized or exoteric outgrowth of a secret language. They argue, too, that a symbol-code was sometimes used by Plato and other Greek philosophers, in relation to Pythagorean and Orphic lore; that throughout the Celtic world the Druids conveyed all their esoteric teachings symbolically; that the use of parables, as in the sermons of Jesus and of the Buddha, and of other Great Teachers, illustrates the same tendency; and that through works like Aesop’s Fables, and the miracle and mystery plays of medieval Europe, many of the old Oriental symbols have been introduced into the modern literatures of the West.[4] Be this as it may, it is certain that none of the great systems of ancient thought, nor even vernacular literatures, have always found the ordinary work-a-day language of the world adequate to express transcendental doctrines or even to bring out the full significance of moral maxims.
The lamb, the dragon (or serpent), the dove above the altar, the triangle enclosing the all-seeing eye (common to Freemasonry as well), the sacred fish-symbol, the ever-burning fire, or the image of the risen sun upon the receptacle for the consecrated wafer in the Roman Mass, the architectural symbols and the orientation of church and cathedral, the cross itself, and even the colours and designs of the robes of priest and bishop and pope, are a few of the silent witnesses of the survival in the modern Christian churches of the symbolism of paganism. But the key to the interpretation of the inner significance of almost all such Christianized symbols was unconsciously thrown away: uninitiated ecclesiastics, gathered together in heresy-seeking councils, having regarded that primitive Christianity, so deeply involved in symbolism, called Gnosticism, as ‘Oriental imagery gone mad’, repudiated it as being ‘heretical’, whereas from its own point of view it was merely esoteric.
Similarly, Northern Buddhism, to which symbolism is so vital, has been condemned by Buddhists of the Southern School for claiming to be the custodian of an esoteric doctrine, for the most part orally transmitted by recognized initiates, generation by generation, direct from the Buddha—as well as for teaching (as, for example, in the Saddharma-Paṇḍarīka) recorded doctrines not in agreement with doctrines contained in the Ti-Pitaka (Skt. Tri-Pitaka), the Pali Canon. And yet, though the Southern Buddhist commonly assumes that there cannot be any but a literal interpretation of the Buddha’s teachings, the Pali Scriptures contain many parables and metaphorical expressions, some of which the lāmas regard as symbolical and confirmatory of their own esoteric tradition, and to which they thus claim to hold—perhaps not without good reason—the initiate’s key.
The lāmas grant that the Ti-Pitaka (‘Three Pitakas, or Baskets’ [of the Law]) are, as the Southern Buddhist holds, the recorded Word (or Doctrine) of the Ancients, the Theravāda; but they claim that the Pitakas do not contain all the Word, that the Pitakas lack much of the Buddha’s yogīc teachings, and that it is chiefly these teachings which, in many instances, have been handed down esoterically to the present day. ‘Esoteric Buddhism’, as it has come to be called—rightly or wrongly—seems to depend in large measure upon ‘ear-whispered’ doctrines of this character, conveyed according to long-established and inviolable rule, from guru to shiṣḥya, by word of mouth alone.
The Pali Canon records that the Buddha held no doctrine secretly ‘in a closed fist’ (cf. Mahā Parinibbāṇa Sūttanta, Dīgha Nikāya II), that is to say, withheld no essential doctrine from the members of the Saṅgha (Priesthood), just as no guru nowadays withholds a doctrine necessary for the spiritual enlightenment of his initiated or accepted disciples. This, however, is far from implying that all such teachings were intended to be set down in writing for the uninitiated and worldly multitude, or that they ever were so recorded in any of the Canons. The Buddha Himself wrote down nothing of His teachings, and His disciples who after His death compiled the Buddhist Scriptures may not have recorded therein all that their Master taught them. If they did not, and there are, therefore, as the lāmas contend, certain unwritten teachings of the Buddha which have never been taught to those who were not of the Saṅgha, then there is, undoubtedly, an extra-canonical, or esoteric, Buddhism. An esoteric Buddhism thus conceived is not, however, to be regarded as in any wise in disagreement with canonical, or exoteric, Buddhism, but as being related to it as higher mathematics are to lower mathematics, or as being the apex of the pyramid of the whole of Buddhism.
In short, the evidence adducible gives much substantial support to the claim of the lāmas, to whom we refer, that there is—as the Bardo Thödol appears to suggest—an unrecorded body of orally transmitted Buddhistic teachings complementary to canonical Buddhism.[5]
III. The Esoteric Significance of the Forty-Nine Days of the Bardo
Turning now to our text itself, we find that structurally it is founded upon the symbolical number Forty-nine, the square of the sacred number Seven; for, according to occult teachings common to Northern Buddhism and to that Higher Hinduism which the Hindu-born Bodhisattva Who became the Buddha Gautama, the Reformer of the Lower Hinduism and the Codifier of the Secret Lore, never repudiated, there are seven worlds or seven degrees of Māyā[6] within the Sangsāra,[7] constituted as seven globes of a planetary chain. On each globe there are seven rounds of evolution, making the forty-nine (seven times seven) stations of active existence. As in the embryonic state in the human species the foetus passes through every form of organic structure from the amoeba to man, the highest mammal, so in the after-death state, the embryonic state of the psychic world, the Knower or principle of consciousness, anterior to its re-emergence in gross matter, analogously experiences purely psychic conditions. In other words, in both these interdependent embryonic processes—the one physical, the other psychical—the evolutionary and the involutionary attainments, corresponding to the forty-nine stations of existence, are passed through.
Similarly, the forty-nine days of the Bardo may also be symbolical of the Forty and Nine Powers of the Mystery of the Seven Vowels. In Hindu mythology, whence much of the Bardo symbolism originated, these Vowels were the Mystery of the Seven Fires and their forty-nine subdivisional fires or aspects. They are also represented by the Svastika signs upon the crowns of the seven heads of the Serpent of Eternity of the Northern Buddhist Mysteries, originating in ancient India. In Hermetic writings they are the seven zones of after-death, or Bardo, experiences, each symbolizing the eruption in the Intermediate State of a particular seven-fold element of the complex principle of consciousness, thus giving the consciousness-principle forty-nine aspects, or fires, or fields of manifestation[8].
The number seven has long been a sacred number among Aryan and other races. Its use in the Revelation of John illustrates this, as does the conception of the seventh day being regarded as holy. In Nature, the number seven governs the periodicity and phenomena of life, as, for example, in the series of chemical elements, in the physics of sound and colour, and it is upon the number forty-nine, or seven times seven, that the Bardo Thödol is thus scientifically based.
IV. The Esoteric Significance of the Five Elements
Likewise, in a very striking manner, the esoteric teachings concerning the Five Elements, as symbolically expounded in the Bardo Thödol, parallel, for the most part, certain of the teachings of Western Science, as the following interpretation, based upon that made by the translator himself, indicates:
In the First Round of our Planet, one element alone—Fire—was evolved. In the fire-mist, which, in accordance with the karmic law governing the Sangsāra, or cosmos, assumed a rotary motion and became a blazing globular body of undifferentiated primeval forces, all the other elements lay in embryo. Life first manifested itself clothed in robes of fire; and man, if we conceive him as then existing, was incarnate—as the Salamanders of medieval occultism were believed to be—in a body of fire. In the Second Round, as the Element Fire assumed definite form, the Element Air separated from it and enwrapped the embryonic Planet as a shell covers an egg. The body of man, and of all organic creatures, thereupon became a compound of fire and air. In the Third Round, as the Planet, bathed in the Element Air and fanned by it, abated its fiery nature, the Element Water came forth from the vaporous air. In the Fourth Round, in which the Planet still is, air and water neutralized the activities of their Parent Fire; and the Fire, bringing forth the Element Earth, became encrusted with it. Esoterically, the same teachings are said to be conveyed by the old Hindu myth of the churning of the Sea of Milk, which was the Fire-Mist, whence came, like butter, the solid earth. Upon the earth, so formed, the gods are credited with having fed; or, in other words, they, hankering after existence in gross physical bodies, became incarnated on this Planet and so became the Divine Progenitors of the human race.
In the Bardo, on the first four days these Four Elements manifest themselves, or dawn upon the deceased, in their primordial form, although not in their true occult order.[9] The Fifth Element, Ether, in its primal form, symbolized as ‘the green light-path of the Wisdom of Perfected Actions’, does not dawn, for, as the text explains, the Wisdom (or Bodhic) Faculty of the consciousness of the deceased has not been perfectly developed.
The Ether Element, like the aggregate of matter (symbolical of the fire-mist), is personified in Vairochana, He Who in Shapes makes visible all things. The psychical attribute of the Ether Element is—to render the lāmaic conception in the language of the psychology of the West—that of the subconsciousness; and the subconsciousness, as a transcendental consciousness higher than the normal consciousness in mankind, and as yet normally undeveloped, is—as the vehicle for the manifestation of the Bodhic Faculty—believed to be destined to become the active consciousness of the humanity of the Fifth Round. The memory-records of all past experiences throughout the many states of sangsāric existence being latent in the subconsciousness, as the Buddha’s own teachings imply (see pp. 40–41), the Fifth Round races in whom it becomes active will thus be able to recall all their past existences. In place of faith or mere belief, Man will then possess Knowledge, will come to know himself in the sense implied by the Mysteries of ancient Greece; he will realize the unreality of sangsāric existence, attaining Enlightenment and Emancipation from the Sangsāra, from all the Elements ; and this will come as a normal process of human evolution. It is, however, the aim in all schools of Indian and Tibetan Yoga alike—as in the Bardo Thödol—to outstrip this tedious process of normal evolution and win Freedom even now.
In the body of man as he is—in our present Fourth Round—there are four kingdoms of living creatures: (1) those of the Element Fire, (2) those of the Element Air, (3) those of the Element Water, and (4) those of the Element Earth. Over this collective life of innumerable myriads of lives man is king. If he be a Great King, filled with the transcendent consciousness of the triumphant Yogī (or Saint), to him the countless multitude of his elemental subjects severally reveal themselves in their true nature and place in his hand the Sceptre (symbolized by the Tibetan dorje, or thunderbolt) of Universal Dominion over Matter. Then, indeed, is he Lord of Nature, becoming in his turn Ruler by Divine Right, a Chakravartin, or Universal Emperor, God and Creator.[10]
V. The Wisdom Teachings
Also involved in symbolical language there are, as fundamental occult doctrines of the Bardo Thödol, what the translator called The Wisdom Teachings; and these—which are essential Mahāyāna doctrines—may be outlined as follows:
The Voidness.—In all Tibetan systems of yoga, realization of the Voidness (Tib. Stong-pa-ñid—pron. Tong-pa-ñid: Skt. Shūnyatā) is the one great aim; for to realize it is to attain the unconditioned Dharma-Kāya, or ‘Divine Body of Truth’ (Tib. Chos-sku—pron. Chö-Ku), the primordial state of uncreatedness, of the supramundane Bodhic All-Consciousness—Buddhahood. Realization of the Voidness (Pali, Suññata) is the aim of Theravādists too.
The Three Bodies.—The Dharma-Kāya is the highest of the Three Bodies (Tib. Sku-gsum—pron. Kū-sum: Skt. Tri-Kāya) of the Buddha and of all Buddhas and beings who have Perfect Enlightenment. The other two bodies are the Sambhoga-Kāya or ‘Divine Body of Perfect Endowment’ (Tib. Longs-spyod-rzogs-sku—pron. Long-chöd-zo-ku) and the Nirmāṇa-Kāya or ‘Divine Body of Incarnation’ (Tib. Sprul-pahi-sku—pron. Tül- pai-ku).
The Dharma-Kāya is symbolized—for all human word-concepts are inadequate to describe the Qualityless—as an infinite ocean, calm and without a wave, whence arise mist-clouds and rainbow, which symbolize the Sambhoga-Kāya; and the clouds, enhaloed in the glory of the rainbow, condensing and falling as rain, symbolize the Nirmāṇa-Kāya.[11]
The Dharma-Kāya is the primordial, formless Bohdi, which is true experience freed from all error or inherent or accidental obscuration. In it lies the essence of the Universe, including both Sangsāra and Nirvāṇa, which, as states or conditions of the two poles of consciousness, are, in the last analysis, in the realm of the pure intellect, identical.[12]
In other words, the Dharma-Kāya (lit. ‘Law Body’) being Essential Wisdom (Bodhi) unmodified, the Sambhoga-Kāya (lit. ‘Compensation Body’, or ‘Adorned Body’) embodies, as in the Five Dhyānī Buddhas, Reflected or Modified Wisdom, and the Nirmāṇa-Kāya (lit. ‘Changeable Body’, or ‘Transformed Body’) embodies, as in the Human Buddhas, Practical or Incarnate Wisdom.[13]
The Uncreated, the Unshaped, the Unmodified is the Dharma-Kāya. The Offspring, the Modification of the Unmodified, the manifestation of all perfect attributes in one body, is the Sambhoga-Kāya: ‘The embodiment of all that is wise, merciful and loving in the Dharma-Kāya—as clouds on the surface of the heavens or a rainbow on the surface of the clouds—is said to be Sambhoga-Kāya’.[14] The condensation and differentiation of the One Body as many is the Nirmāṇa-Kāya, or the Divine Incarnations among sentient beings, that is to say, among beings immersed in the Illusion called Sangsāra, in phenomena, in worldly existence. All enlightened beings who are reborn in this or in any other world with full consciousness, as workers for the betterment of their fellow creatures, are said to be Nirmāṇa-Kāya incarnates.
With the Dharma-Kāya Tantric Buddhism associates the Primordial Buddha Samanta-Bhadra (Tib. Kün-tu-bzang-po—pron. Kün-tu-zang-po), Who is without Beginning or End, the Source of all Truth, the All-Good Father of the Lāmaistic Faith. In this same highest Buddha realm Lāmaism places Vajra-Dhāra (Tib. Rdorje-Chang—pron. Dorje-Chang), ‘The Holder of the Dorje (or Thunderbolt)’, ‘the Divine Expounder of the Mystic Doctrine called Vajra Yāna (Tib. Rdorje Theg-pa—pron. Dorje Theg-pa) or Mantra Yāna’; and also the Buddha Amitābha (Tib. Hod-dpag-med—pron. Wod-pag-med; or, as in the text, page 1131), the Buddha of Boundless Light, Who is the Source of Life Eternal. In the Sambhoga-Kāya are placed the Five Dhyānī Buddhas (or Buddhas of Meditation), the Lotus Herukas, and the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, all of whom will appear in the Bardo visions. With the Nirmāṇa-Kāya is associated Padma Sambhava, who, being the first teacher in Tibet to expound the Bardo Thödol, is the Great Guru for all devotees who follow the Bardo teachings.
The opinion commonly held by men not initiated into the higher lāmaic teachings, that Northern Buddhism recognizes in the Primordial or Ādi-Buddha a Supreme Deity, is apparently erroneous. The translator held that the Ādi-Buddha, and all deities associated with the Dharma-Kāya, are not to be regarded as personal deities, but as Personifications of primordial and universal forces, laws, or spiritual influences, which sustain—as the sun sustains the earth’s physical life—the divine nature of all sentient creatures in all worlds, and make man’s emancipation from all sangsāric existences possible:
‘In the boundless panorama of the existing and visible universe, whatever shapes appear, whatever sounds vibrate, whatever radiances illuminate, or whatever consciousnesses cognize, all are the play or manifestation of the Tri-Kāya, the Three-fold Principle of the Cause of All Causes, the Primordial Trinity. Impenetrating all, is the All-Pervading Essence of Spirit, which is Mind. It is uncreated, impersonal, self-existing, immaterial, and indestructible.’
Thus, the Tri-Kāya symbolizes the Esoteric Trinity of the higher Buddhism of the Northern School; the Exoteric Trinity being, as in the Southern School, the Buddha, the Dharma (or Scriptures), the Saṅgha (or Priesthood). Regarded in this way—the one trinitarian doctrine as esoteric, the other as exoteric—there are direct correspondences between the two Trinities. Detailed and comprehensive understanding of the Tri-Kāya Doctrine, so the lāmas teach, is the privilege of initiates, who, alone, are fitted to grasp and to realize it.
The translator himself regarded the Tri-Kāya Doctrine as having been transmitted by along and unbroken line of initiates, some Indian, some Tibetan, direct from the days of the Buddha. He considered that the Buddha, having re-discovered it, was merely its Transmitter from preceding Buddhas; that it was handed on orally, from guru to guru, and not committed to writing until comparatively recent times, when Buddhism began to decay, and there were not always sufficient living gurus to transmit it in the old way. The theory of Western scholars, that simply because a doctrine is not found recorded before a certain time it consequently did not exist previously, he—as an initiate—laughed at; and the rather strenuous efforts of Christian apologists to claim for the Tri-Kāya Doctrine a Christian origin he held, likewise, to be wholly untenable. He had been a close and sympathetic student of Christianity; and, as a young man, he had been much sought after by Christian missionaries, who looked upon him, with his remarkable learning and superior social standing, as an unusually desirable subject for conversion. He carefully examined their claims, and then rejected them, on the ground that, in his opinion, Christianity, as presented by them, is but an imperfect Buddhism, that the Aṣokan Buddhist missionaries to Asia Minor and Syria, as to Alexandria,[15] must have profoundly influenced Christianity through some such probable connecting link as the Essenes, that, if Jesus were an historical character, He, being—as the Lāma interpreted the Jesus of the New Testament clearly to be—a Bodhisattva (i.e. a Candidate for Buddhahood), was, undoubtedly, well acquainted with Buddhist ethics, and taught them, as in the Sermon on the Mount.
The Doctrine of the Three Bodies conveys the esoteric teachings concerning the Path of the Teachers, their descent from the Higher to the Lower, from the threshold of Nirvāṇa to the Sangsāra; and progression from the Lower to the Higher, from the Sangsāra to Nirvāṇa, is symbolized by the Five Dhyānī Buddhas, each personifying a universal divine attribute. Contained in the Five Dhyānī Buddhas lies the Sacred Way leading to At-one-ment in the Dharma-Kāya, to Buddhahood, to Perfect Enlightenment, to Nirvāṇa—which is spiritual emancipation through Desirelessness.
The Five Wisdoms.—As the All-Pervading Voidness, the Dharma-Kāya is the shape (which is shapelessness) of the Body of Truth; the Thatness constituting it is the Dharma-Dhātu (Tib. Chös-kyi-dvyings—pron. Chö-kyi-ing), the Seed or Potentiality of Truth; and this dawns on the First Day of the Bardo as the glorious blue light of the Dhyānī Buddha Vairochana, the Manifester, ‘He Who in Shapes Makes Visible’ [the universe of matter]. The Dharma-Dhātu is symbolized as the Aggregate of Matter. From the Aggregate of Matter arise the creatures of this world, as of all worlds, in which animal stupidity is the dominant characteristic; and the mārā (or illusion of shape) constitutes in all realms of the Sangsāra—as in the human kingdom where manas (or mind) begins to operate—the Bondage, emancipation from which is Nirvāṇa. When in man, made as perfect as human life can make him, the stupidity of his animal nature and the illusion of shape, or personality, are transmuted into Right Knowledge, into Divine Wisdom, there shines forth in his consciousness the All-Pervading Wisdom of the Dharma-Dhātu, or the Wisdom born of the Voidness, which is all-pervading.
As the Aggregate of Matter, dawning in the Bardo of the First Day, produces physical bodies, so the Water-Element, dawning on the Second Day, produces the life-stream, the blood; Anger is the obscuring passion, consciousness is the aggregate, and these, when transmuted, become the Mirror-like Wisdom, personified in Vajra-Sattva (the Sambhoga-Kāya reflex of the Dhyānī Buddha Akṣḥobhya), the ‘Triumphant One of Divine Heroic Mind’.
The Earth-Element of the Third Day, producing the chief solid constituents of the human form, and of all physical forms, gives rise to the passion of Egoism, and the aggregate is Touch; and these, when divinely transmuted, become the Wisdom of Equality, personified in Ratna-Sambhava, the ‘Gem-born One’, the Beautifier.
The Fire-Element of the Fourth Day, producing the animal-heat of embodied human and animal beings, gives rise to the passion of Attachment, or Lust, and the Aggregate of Feelings. Herein the transmutation gives birth to the All-Discriminating Wisdom, which enables the devotee to know each thing separately, yet all things as one; personified in the Dhyānī Buddha Amitābha, ‘He of Boundless Light’, the Illuminator, or Enlightener.
The Element Air, of the Fifth Day, produces the breath of life. Its quality, or passions, in man is Envy, or Jealousy. Its aggregate is Volition. The transmutation is into the All-Performing Wisdom, which gives perseverance and unerring action in things spiritual, personified in Amogha-Siddhi, the ‘Almighty Conqueror’, the Giver of Divine Power.
As explained above, in Section IV, the last Element, Ether, which produces the mind, or Knower, and the desire-body of the dwellers in the Intermediate State, does not dawn for the deceased, because—as the text tells us—the Wisdom Faculty of the Consciousness, that is to say, the supramundane Buddha (or Bodhic) consciousness, has not been developed in the ordinary humanity. To it is related—as in our text—Vajra-Sattva and the Mirror-like Wisdom and the Aggregate of Bodhic Wisdom, Vajra-Sattva being then synonymous, esoterically, with Samanta-Bhadra (who, in turn, is often personified in Vairochana, the Chief of the Five Dhyānī Buddhas), the Ādi-Buddha, the Primordial, the Unborn, Unshaped, Unmodified Dharma-Kāya.
When the perfection of the Divine Body-Aggregate is attained by man, it becomes the unchanging, immutable Vajra-Sattva. When the perfection of the Divine Speech-Principle is attained, with it comes the power of divine speech, symbolized by Amitābha. The perfection of the Divine Thought-Principle brings divine infallibility, symbolized by Vairochana. The perfection of the Divine Qualities of Goodness and Beauty is the realization of Ratna-Sambhava, their producer. With the perfection of Divine Actions comes the realization of Amogha-Siddhi, the Omnipotent Conqueror.
To one after another of these divine attributes, or principles, innate in every human being, the deceased is introduced, as though in a symbolic drama of initiation, to test him and discover whether or not any part of his divine (or bodhic) nature has been developed. Full development in all the bodhic powers of the Five Dhyānī Buddhas, who are the personifications of them, leads to Liberation, to Buddhahood. Partial development leads to birth in one of the happier states: deva-loka, the world of the devas or gods; asura-loka, the world of the asuras or titans; nara-loka, the world of mankind.
After the Fifth Day the Bardo visions become less and less divine; the deceased sinks deeper and deeper into the morass of sangsāric hallucinations; the radiances of the higher nature fade into the lights of the lower nature. Then—the after-death dream ending as the Intermediate State exhausts itself for the percipient, the thought-forms of his mental-content all having shown themselves to him like ghostly spectres in a nightmare—he passes on from the Intermediate State into the equally illusionary state called waking, or living, either in the human world or in one of the many mansions of existence, by being born there. And thus revolves the Wheel of Life, until the one who is bound on it breaks his own bonds through Enlightenment, and there comes, as the Buddha proclaims, the Ending of Sorrow.
In Sections I to V, above, the more prominent occult teachings underlying the Bardo Thödol have been briefly expounded. In Sections VI to XII, which are to follow, the chief Bardo rites and ceremonies, the Bardo psychology, and other of the Bardo doctrines will be explained and interpreted. The last Sections, XIII to XV, will be devoted to a consideration of our manuscript, its history, the origin of the Bardo Thödol texts, and our translating and editing.
In addition to these fifteen sections, there are, as Addenda (see pp. 211–41), six complementary sections, addressed chiefly to the student, who, more than the ordinary reader, will be interested in certain of the more abstruse doctrines and problems which arise from a careful study of the translation and its annotations.
VI. The Death Ceremonies
When the death-symptoms, as described in the first sections of our text, are completed, a white cloth is thrown over the face of the corpse; and no person then touches the corpse, in order that the culminating process of death, which ends only upon the complete separation of the Bardo body from its earth-plane counterpart, shall not be interfered with. It is commonly held that normally the process takes from three and one-half to four days, unless assisted by a priest called the hpho-bo (pron. pho-o) or ‘extractor of the consciousness-principle’; and that, even if the priest be successful in the extracting, the deceased ordinarily does not wake up to the fact of being separated from the human body until the said period of time has expired.
The hpho-bo, upon his arrival, takes a seat on a mat or chair at the head of the corpse; he dismisses all lament-making relatives from the death-chamber and orders its doors and windows to be closed, so as to secure the silence necessary for the right performance of the hpho-bo service. This consists of a mystic chant containing directions for the spirit of the deceased to find its way to the Western Paradise of Amitabha, and thus escape—if karma permits—the undesirable Intermediate State. After commanding the spirit to quit the body and its attachment to living relatives and goods, the lāma examines the crown of the head of the corpse at the line of the sagittal suture, where the two parietal bones articulate, called the ‘Aperture of Brahma’ (Skt. Brāhma-randhra), to determine if the spirit has departed thence, as it should have done; and, if the scalp be not bald, he pulls out a few of the hairs directly over the aperture. If through accident or otherwise there be no corpse, the lāma mentally concentrates upon the deceased, and, visualizing the body of the deceased, imagines it to be present; and, calling the spirit of the deceased, performs the ceremony, which usually lasts about one hour.
Meanwhile, the tsi-pa, or astrologer-lāma, has been engaged to cast a death-horoscope, based upon the moment of death of the deceased, to determine what persons may approach and touch the corpse, the proper method of disposing of the corpse, the time and manner of the funeral, and the sort of rites to be performed for the benefit of the departed. Then the corpse is tied up in a sitting posture, much the same as that in which mummies and skeletons have been found in ancient graves or tombs in various parts of the world, and sometimes called the embryonic posture, symbolical of being born out of this life into the life beyond death. The corpse, so postured, is then placed in one of the corners of the death-chamber which has not been assigned to the household daemon.
Relatives and friends, having been notified of the death, gather together at the house of the deceased; and there they are fed and lodged until the corpse is disposed of. If doubt exists concerning the complete separation of the consciousness-principle (or spirit) of the deceased from the body, there is not likely to be any disposal of the corpse until three and one-half to four days after the time of the death. So long as the entertaining of the mourners continues—usually for not less than two, but more often for three days—the spirit of the deceased is offered a part of all food, both solid and liquid, of each meal. This food is placed in a bowl in front of the corpse; and then, after the spirit of the deceased has extracted from the food thus offered the subtle invisible essences, the food is thrown away. After the corpse has been removed from the house for final disposal, an effigy of the deceased is put in the corner of the room which the corpse had occupied; and before this effigy food continues thus to be offered until the forty-nine days of the Bardo have expired.
Whilst the funeral rites—including the reading of the Bardo Thödol—are being performed, in the house of the deceased or at the place of death, other lāmas chant by relays, all day and night, the service for assisting the spirit of the deceased to reach the Western Paradise of Amitābha. In Tibetan, this service (which the hpho-bo also chants) is called De-wa-chan-kyi-mon-lam. If the family be well-to-do, another service of like nature may be performed at the temple wherein the deceased used to worship, by all of the monks of the temple assembled.
After the funeral, the lāmas who read the Bardo Thödol return to the house of death once a week until the forty-ninth day of the Intermediate State has ended. It is not uncommon, however, for them to intermit one day of the first week and of each of the succeeding periods in order to shorten the service, so that they return after six, five, four, three, two, and one day respectively, thereby concluding the reading in about three weeks.
From the First to the Fourteenth Day, as the arrangement of Book One of our text suggests, the Chönyid Bardo is to be read and re-read, and from the Fifteenth Day onwards the Sidpa Bardo. In poorer families the rites may cease after the Fourteenth Day; for families in better circumstances it is usual in Sikkim to continue the rites at least until the expiration of the twenty-one-day period and sometimes during the whole period of the Forty-nine Days of the Bardo. On the first day of the funeral rites, if the deceased were a man of wealth or position, as many as one hundred lāmas may assist; at the funeral of a poor man only one or two lāmas are likely to be present. After the Fourteenth Day, as a rule for all alike, only one lāma is retained to complete the reading.
The effigy of the body of the deceased is made by dressing a stool, block of wood, or other suitable object in the clothes of the deceased; and where the face should be there is inserted a printed paper called the mtshan-spyang or spyang-pu (pronounced chang-ku), of which the following reproduction of a specimen is typical:[16]
The Efficy of the Dead Person
(1. Mirror. 2. Conch. 3. Lyre. 4. Vase with flowers. 5. Holy Cake.)
Having begun my Tibetan researches fresh from three years of research in the ancient funeral lore of the Nile Valley, I realized as soon as I gained knowledge of the Tibetan funeral rites—which are very largely pre-Buddhistic—that the effigy of the dead, as now used in Tibet and Sikkim, is so definitely akin to the effigy of the deceased called ‘the statue of the Osiris (or deceased one)’, as used in the funeral rites of ancient Egypt, as to suggest a common origin. Furthermore, the spyang-pu taken by itself alone, as the head-piece for the effigy, has its Egyptian parallel in the images made for the Ka or spirit. These sometimes were merely heads, complete in themselves, to replace or duplicate the head of the mummy and to furnish additional assistance to the Ka when seeking—as the Knower in the Bardo seeks—a body to rest in, or that which our text calls a prop for the body (see p. 182). And even as to ‘the statue of the Osiris’ the ancient priests of Egypt read their Book of the Dead, so to the Tibetan effigy the lāmas now read the Bardo Thödol—both treatises alike being nothing more than guide-books for the traveller in the realm beyond death.
Again, the preliminary rituals of the Egyptian funeral were designed to confer upon the deceased the magic power of rising up in the ghost-body or Ka possessed of all sense faculties, the service having consisted of ‘the opening of the mouth and eyes’ and the restoration of the use of all other parts of the body. Likewise, the lāmas’ aim, at the outset, is to restore complete consciousness to the deceased after the swoon-state immediately following death, and to accustom him to the unfamiliar environment of the Otherworld, assuming that he be, like the multitude, one of the unenlightened, and thus incapable of immediate emancipation.
In conformity with our own view, that that part of the Tibetan funeral rites directly concerned with the effigy and the spyang-pu has come down to our day as a survival from pre-Buddhist, probably very ancient, times, Dr. L. A. Waddell writes of it as follows: ‘This is essentially a Bön rite, and is referred to as such in the histories of Guru Padma Sambhava, as being practised by the Bön [i.e. the religion prevalent in Tibet before the advent of Buddhism, and, in its transcendentalism, much like Taoism], and as having incurred the displeasure of the Guru Padma Sambhava, the founder of Lāmaism.’
Of the spyang-pu itself, Dr. Waddell adds: ‘Its inscription [as in our copy above] usually runs:
‘I, the world-departing One, … (and here is inserted the name of the deceased), adore and take refuge in my lāma-confessor, and all the deities, both mild [translated by us as “peaceful”] and wrathful;[17] and [may] “the Great Pitier”[18] forgive my accumulated sins and impurities of former lives, and show me the way to another good world!’[19]
At the left shoulder of the central figure of the spyang-pu, as in our copy, and sometimes down the middle in other copies, are inscribed phonetic symbols referring to the six worlds of sangsāric existence, translated as follows:
- S = sura, or god, referring to the deva-world;
- A = asura, or titan, referring to the asura-world;
- Na = nara, or man, referring to the human-world;
- Tri = trisan, or brute animal, referring to the brute-world;
- Pre = preta, or unhappy ghost, referring to the preta-world;
- and Hung (from hunu, meaning ‘fallen’) = hell, referring to the hell-world.[20]
At the termination of the funeral rites the spyang-pu or face-paper is ceremoniously burned in the flame of a butter-lamp, and the spirit of the deceased given a final farewell. By the colour of the flame and the way in which the flame acts the after-death fate which the deceased has met with is determined.
The ashes of the cremated spyang-pu are collected in a plate, and then, upon being mixed with clay, are made into miniature stupas called sa-tschha, usually in moulds leaving impressions either of symbolical ornamentation or of sacred letters. One is kept for the family altar in the home of the deceased, and the rest are deposited in a sheltered place at a cross-roads or on a hill-top, usually under a projecting ledge of rock, or in a cave if there happens to be a cave.
With the burning of the paper, the rest of the effigy of the deceased is taken apart, the clothes going to the lāmas, who carry them off and sell them to the first purchaser, keeping the proceeds as part of their fee. When one year has elapsed after the death, a feast in honour of the deceased is usually given and the service of the Medical Buddhas is performed.[21] Thereafter, a widow of the deceased is free to remarry.[22]
Connected with the Tibetan funeral itself there is much interesting ritual. Thus, when the officiating lāma is preparing to assist at the removal of the corpse from the house, he presents a ‘scarf of honour’ to the corpse and, addressing the corpse as the deceased, advises it to partake freely of the food offered, warns it that it is dead and that its ghost must not haunt the place or trouble living relatives, saying in conclusion, ‘Remember the name of thy spiritual lāma-teacher, which is … [so and so], and by his aid take the right path—the white one. Come this way!’[23]
Then, as the lāma begins to lead the funeral procession, he takes hold of one end of the long scarf, the other end having been tied to the corpse, and begins to chant a liturgy to the accompaniment of a miniature hand-drum (having loose-hanging knotted cords attached, which, striking the drum as it is twirled by the hand of the lāma, cause it to sound) and of a trumpet made of a human thigh-bone. When there are a number of priests, the chief priest, going before the rest, rings a handbell (as the Breton priest does in a Breton peasant funeral procession), and the other priests assist with the chanting and the music, one blowing at intervals the sacred conch-shell, another clashing brass cymbals, and perhaps another twirling the small drum, or blowing the thigh-bone trumpet. From time to time the chief lāma looks back to invite the spirit to accompany the body and to assure it that the route is in the right direction. After the corpse-bearers come the main body of mourners, some bearing refreshments (to be in part cast on the funeral-pyre for the benefit of the deceased and in part partaken of by the priests and mourners), and last of all the weeping and wailing relatives. Such priestly guiding of the deceased’s spirit is for the laity alone, for the spirits of deceased lāmas, having been trained in the doctrines of the Bardo Thödol, know the right path and need no guidance.
In Tibet itself all known religious methods of disposing of a corpse are in vogue; but, owing to lack of fuel for purposes of cremation, ordinarily the corpse, after having been carried to a hill-top or rocky eminence, is chopped to pieces and, much after the Parsee custom in Persia and Bombay, given to the birds and beasts of prey. If the corpse be that of a nobleman, whose family can well afford a funeral pyre, it may be cremated. In some remote districts earth burial is customary; and it is commonly employed everywhere when death has been caused by a very contagious and dangerous disease, like small-pox for example. Otherwise, Tibetans generally object to earth burial, for they believe that when a corpse is interred the spirit of the deceased, upon seeing it, attempts to re-enter it, and that if the attempt be successful a vampire results, whereas cremation, or other methods of quickly dissipating the elements of the dead body, prevent vampirism. Sometimes, too, as among the Hindus, corpses are cast into rivers or other bodies of water. In the case of the Dalai Lāma and the Tashi Lāma, and of some very great man or saint, embalming is practised; and the corpse, in a way somewhat resembling the ancient Egyptian embalming process, is packed in a box of marsh salt, usually for about three months, or until the salt has absorbed all the watery parts of the corpse. Then, after the corpse is well cured, it is coated with a cement-like substance made of clay, pulverized sandal-wood, spices, and drugs. This adheres and hardens; and all the sunken or shrivelled parts of the body, such as the eyes, cheeks, and stomach, having been rounded out by it to their natural proportions, a very Egyptian-like mummy is produced. Finally, when thoroughly dried and then covered with a paint made of dissolved gold, the mummy is set up like an image in a sort of Tibetan Westminster Abbey.
At Shigatze, the seat of the Tashi Lāma, there are five such funereal temples. With their double roofs, resplendent with gold, they resemble the palaces or royal shrines of China. In size and embellishment they differ, in accordance with the rank and wealth of the mummies occupying them, some being inlaid with gold, some with silver.[24] Before these enshrined mummies prayer is offered up, incense burnt, and elaborate rituals are performed, as in the ancestral cults of the Chinese and Japanese.
The four Northern Buddhist methods of disposing of a corpse correspond to those mentioned in various of the sacred books of the Hindus: a human body is said to consist of four elements,—earth, water, air, and fire,—and it should be returned to these elements as quickly as possible. Cremation is considered the best method to adopt. Earth-burial, as among Christians also, is the returning of the body to the element Earth; water-burial is the returning of the body to the element Water, air-burial, to the element Air—the birds which devour the corpse being the denizens of the air; and fire-burial, or cremation, the returning of the body to the element Fire.
When air-burial is adopted in Tibet, even the bones of the corpse, after the birds have stripped them of flesh, are disposed of by being hammered to bits in small cavities in the rocks of the funereal hill, then mixed with flour and formed into a dough and given to the birds to devour.[25] The Tibetan air-burial is thus more thorough than that of the Parsees, who allow the bones of their dead to remain in the air and slowly decompose.
In a Tibetan funeral of the ordinary sort, neither a coffin nor any corpse-receptacle is used. The corpse after being laid upon its back on a sheet or piece of cloth spread over a framework, commonly made of a light material like wicker affixed to two poles, is covered with a pure white cloth. Two men, inserting their heads between the projecting ends of the two poles, act as pall-bearers. In Sikkim, however, the corpse is carried thus sitting, in the embryonic posture described above.
Both in Sikkim and in Tibet every funeral is conducted in strict accordance with the directions which have been given by the astrologer who cast the death-horoscope, indicating who shall touch or handle the corpse, who shall carry it, and the form of the burial. The astrologer also declares what kind of evil spirit caused the death, for in popular belief—as also among the Celtic peoples of Europe—no death is natural, but is always owing to interference by one of the innumerable death-demons. The astrologer announces, too, what ceremonies are necessary to exorcize the death-demon from the house of death, what special rituals need to be read for the benefit of the spirit of the deceased, the precautions necessary to secure for the deceased a good rebirth, and the country and sort of family in which the rebirth will occur.
In Sikkim, on the space of ground levelled for the funeral-pyre, a mystic diagram, symbolical of the Happy Realm of Sukhavati, or the Red Western Realm of Happiness (see text, p. 113), is outlined with flour and divided into compartments, the central space (upon which the funeral-pyre is built) being dedicated to the Dhyānī Buddha Amitābha. At the beginning of the cremation ceremonies the chief lāma visualizes the funeral-pyre as being the maṇḍala of Amitābha, and the fire as being Amitābha, who, as in our text (see p. 113), personifies the element Fire. Then the corpse itself, when laid upon the pyre, is visualized as the maṇḍala of Amitābha and its heart as the dwelling-place of Amitābha. As the fire begins to grow in volume, sweet-smelling oils and spices and sandal-wood and incense-sticks are cast into it in sacrifice, as in the Hindu ritual of Homa, or sacrifice to fire. Finally, as the cremation ceremonies end, the priests and the mourners visualize the spirit of the departed as being purged of all karmic obscurations by the fire which is Amitābha, the Incomprehensible Light.
Such, in brief, is the mysticism underlying the beautiful rites performed for the dead at the place of cremation in Sikkim.
In all other forms of burial, throughout Tibet or territories under Tibetan influence, a parallel or corresponding funeral service, based on the same symbolical rituals, is performed, with variations according to sect and province.
VII. The Bardo[26] or After-Death State
From the moment of death and for three and one-half or sometimes four days afterwards, the Knower, or principle of consciousness, in the case of the ordinary person deceased, is believed to be thus in a sleep or trance-state, unaware, as a rule, that it has been separated from the human-plane body. This period is the First Bardo, called the Chikhai Bardo (Tib. Hchi-khahi Bar-do), or ‘Transitional State of the Moment of Death’, wherein dawns the Clear Light, first in primordial purity, then the percipient, being unable to recognize it, that is to say, to hold on to and remain in the transcendental state of the unmodified mind concomitant with it, perceives it karmically obscured, which is its secondary aspect. When the First Bardo ends, the Knower, awakening to the fact that death has occurred, begins to experience the Second Bardo, called the Chönyid Bardo (Tib. Chös-nyid Bar-do), or ‘Transitional State of [the Experiencing or Glimpsing of] Reality’; and this merges into the Third Bardo, called the Sidpa (or Sidpai) Bardo (Tib. Srid-pahi Bar-do), or ‘Transitional State of [or while seeking] Rebirth’, which ends when the principle of consciousness has taken rebirth in the human or some other world, or in one of the paradise realms.
As explained in Section III, above, the passing from one Bardo to another is analogous to the process of birth; the Knower wakes up out of one swoon or trance state and then another, until the Third Bardo ends. On his awakening in the Second Bardo, there dawn upon him in symbolic visions, one by one, the hallucinations created by the karmic reflexes of actions done by him in the earth-plane body. What he has thought and what he has done become objective: thought-forms, having been consciously visualized and allowed to take root and grow and blossom and produce, now pass in a solemn and mighty panorama, as the consciousness-content of his personality.[27]
In the Second Bardo, the deceased is, unless otherwise enlightened, more or less under the delusion that although he is deceased he still possesses a body like the body of flesh and blood. When he comes to realize that really he has no such body, he begins to develop an overmastering desire to possess one; and, seeking for one, the karmic predilection for sangsāric existence naturally becoming all-determining, he enters into the Third Bardo of seeking Rebirth, and eventually, with his rebirth in this or some other world, the after-death state comes to an end.
For the commonalty, this is the normal process; but for those very exceptional minds, possessed of great yogīc knowledge and enlightenment, only the more spiritual stages of the Bardo of the first few days will be experienced; the most enlightened of yogīs may escape all of the Bardo, passing into a paradise realm, or else reincarnating in this world as soon as the human body has been discarded, maintaining all the while unbroken continuity of consciousness.[28] As men think, so are they, both here and hereafter, thoughts being things, the parents of all actions, good and bad alike; and, as the sowing has been, so will the harvest be.
If escape from the Intermediate State is not achieved, through rebirth into some other state—that of Hell being possible for the very exceptional evil-doer, though not for the ordinary person, who expiates normal moral delinquencies upon being reborn as a human being—within the symbolic period of Forty-nine Days, a period whose actual duration is determined by karma, the deceased remains subject to all the karmic illusions of the Bardo, blissful or miserable as the case may be, and progress is impossible. Apart from liberation by gaining Nirvāṇa after death—thus cutting asunder for ever the karmic bonds of worldly or sangsāric existence in an illusionary body of propensities—the only hope for the ordinary person of reaching Buddhahood lies in being reborn as a human being; for birth in any other than the human world causes delay for one desirous of reaching the Final Goal.
VIII. The Psychology of the Bardo Visions
Definite psychological significance attaches to each of the deities appearing in the Bardo Thödol; but, in order to grasp it, the student must bear in mind that—as suggested above—the apparitional visions seen by the deceased in the Intermediate State are not visions of reality, but nothing more than the hallucinatory embodiments of the thought-forms born of the mental-content of the percipient; or, in other words, they are the intellectual impulses which have assumed personified form in the after-death dream-state.
Accordingly, the Peaceful Deities (Tib. Z’i-wa) are the personified forms of the sublimest human sentiments, which proceed from the psychic heart-centre. As such, they are represented as the first to dawn, because, psychologically speaking, the heart-born impulses precede the brain-born impulses. They come in peaceful aspect to control and to influence the deceased whose connexion with the human world has just been severed; the deceased has left relatives and friends behind, works unaccomplished, desires unsatisfied, and, in most cases, he possesses a strong yearning to recover the lost opportunity afforded by human embodiment for spiritual enlightenment. But, in all his impulses and yearnings, karma is all-masterful; and, unless it be his karmic lot to gain liberation in the first stages, he wanders downwards into the stages wherein the heart-impulses give way to brain-impulses.
Whereas the Peaceful Deities are the personifications of the feelings, the Wrathful Deities (Tib. T’o-wo) are the personifications of the reasonings and proceed from the psychic brain-centre. Yet, just as impulses arising in the heart-centre may transform themselves into the reasonings of the brain-centre, so the Wrathful Deities are the Peaceful Deities in a changed aspect.
As the intellect comes into activity, after the sublime heart-born impulses subside, the deceased begins to realize more and more the state in which he is; and with the supernormal faculties of the Bardo-body which he begins to make use of—in much the same manner as an infant new-born in the human world begins to employ the human plane sense-faculties—he is enabled to think how he may win this or that state of existence. Karma is, however, still his master, and defines his limitations. As on the human plane the sentimental impulses are most active in youth and often lost in mature life, wherein reason commonly takes the place of them, so on the after-death plane, called the Bardo, the first experiences are happier than the later experiences.
From another aspect, the chief deities themselves are the embodiments of universal divine forces, with which the deceased is inseparably related, for through him, as being the microcosm of the macrocosm, penetrate all impulses and forces, good and bad alike. Samanta-Bhadra, the All-Good, thus personifies Reality, the Primordial Clear Light of the Unborn, Unshaped Dharma-Kāya (cf. p. 95). Vairochana is the Originator of all phenomena, the Cause of all Causes. As the Universal Father, Vairochana manifests or spreads forth as seed, or semen, all things; his shakti, the Mother of Great Space, is the Universal Womb into which the seed falls and evolves as the world-systems. Vajra-Sattva symbolizes Immutability. Ratna-Sambhava is the Beautifier, the Source of all Beauty in the Universe. Amitābha is Infinite Compassion and Love Divine, the Christos. Amogha-Siddhi is the personification of Almighty Power or Omnipotence. And the minor deities, heroes, ḍākinīs (or ‘fairies’), goddesses, lords of death, rākṣḥasas, demons, spirits, and all others, correspond to definite human thoughts, passions, and impulses, high and low, human and sub-human and superhuman, in karmic form, as they take shape from the seeds of thought forming the percipient’s consciousness-content (cf. p. 219).
As the Bardo Thödol text makes very clear by repeated assertions, none of all these deities or spiritual beings has any real individual existence any more than have human beings: ‘It is quite sufficient for thee [i.e. the deceased percipient] to know that these apparitions are [the reflections of] thine own thought-forms’ (p. 104). They are merely the consciousness-content visualized, by karmic agency, as apparitional appearances in the Intermediate State—airy nothings woven into dreams.
The complete recognition of this psychology by the deceased sets him free into Reality. Therefore is it that the Bardo Thödol, as the name implies, is The Great Doctrine of Liberation by Hearing and by Seeing.
The deceased human being becomes the sole spectator of a marvellous panorama of hallucinatory visions; each seed of thought in his consciousness-content karmically revives; and he, like a wonder-struck child watching moving pictures cast upon a screen, looks on, unaware, unless previously an adept in yoga, of the non-reality of what he sees dawn and set.
At first, the happy and glorious visions born of the seeds of the impulses and aspirations of the higher or divine nature awe the uninitiated; then, as they merge into the visions born of the corresponding mental elements of the lower or animal nature, they terrify him, and he wishes to flee from them; but, alas, as the text explains, they are inseparable from himself, and to whatsoever place he may wish to flee they will follow him.
It is not necessary to suppose that all the dead in the Intermediate State experience the same phenomena, any more than all the living do in the human world, or in dreams. The Bardo Thödol is merely typical and suggestive of all after-death experiences. It merely describes in detail what is assumed will be the Bardo visualizations of the consciousness-content of the ordinary devotee of the Red Hat School of Padma Sambhava. As a man is taught, so he believes. Thoughts being things, they may be planted like seeds in the mind of the child and completely dominate his mental content. Given the favourable soil of the will to believe, whether the seed-thoughts be sound or unsound, whether they be of pure superstition or of realizable truth, they take root and flourish, and make the man what he is mentally.
Accordingly, for a Buddhist of some other School, as for a Hindu, or a Moslem, or a Christian, the Bardo experiences would be appropriately different: the Buddhist’s or the Hindu’s thought-forms, as in a dream state, would give rise to corresponding visions of the deities of the Buddhist or Hindu pantheon; a Moslem’s, to visions of the Moslem Paradise; a Christian’s, to visions of the Christian Heaven, or an American Indian’s to visions of the Happy Hunting Ground. And, similarly, the materialist will experience after-death visions as negative and as empty and as deityless as any he ever dreamt while in the human body. Rationally considered, each person’s after-death experiences, as the Bardo Thödol teaching implies, are entirely dependent upon his or her own mental content. In other words, as explained above, the after-death state is very much like a dream state, and its dreams are the children of the mentality of the dreamer. This psychology scientifically explains why devout Christians, for example, have had—if we are to accept the testimony of Christian saints and seers—visions (in a trance or dream state, or in the after-death state) of God the Father seated on a throne in the New Jerusalem, and of the Son at His side, and of all the Biblical scenery and attributes of Heaven, or of the Virgin and Saints and Archangels, or of Purgatory and Hell.
In other words, the Bardo Thödol seems to be based upon verifiable data of human physiological and psychological experiences; and it views the problem of the after-death state as being purely a psycho-physical problem; and is, therefore, in the main, scientific. It asserts repeatedly that what the percipient on the Bardo plane sees is due entirely to his own mental-content; that there are no visions of gods or of demons, of heavens or of hells, other than those born of the hallucinatory karmic thought-forms constituting his personality, which is an impermanent product arising from the thirst for existence and from the will to live and to believe.
From day to day the Bardo visions change, concomitant with the eruption of the thought-forms of the percipient, until their karmic driving force exhausts itself; or, in other words, the thought-forms, born of habitual propensities, being mental records comparable as has already been suggested to records on a cinema-film, their reel running to its end, the after-death state ends, and the Dreamer, emerging from the womb, begins to experience anew the phenomena of the human world.
The Bible of the Christians, like the Koran of the Moslems, never seems to consider that the spiritual experiences in the form of hallucinatory visions by prophet or devotee, reported therein, may, in the last analysis, not be real. But the Bardo Thödol is so sweeping in its assertions that it leaves its reader with the clear-cut impression that every vision, without any exception whatsoever, in which spiritual beings, gods or demons, or paradises or places of torment and purgation play a part, in a Bardo or any Bardo-like dream or ecstasy, is purely illusionary, being based upon sangsāric phenomena.
The whole aim of the Bardo Thödol teaching, as otherwise stated elsewhere, is to cause the Dreamer to awaken into Reality, freed from all the obscurations of karmic or sangsāric illusions, in a supramundane or Nirvāṇic state, beyond all phenomenal paradises, heavens, hells, purgatories, or worlds of embodiment. In this way, then, it is purely Buddhistic and unlike any non-Buddhist book in the world, secular or religious.
IX. The Judgement
The Judgement Scene as described in our text and that described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead seem so much alike in essentials as to suggest that common origin, at present unknown, to which we have already made reference. In the Tibetan version, Dharma-Rāja (Tib. Shinje-chho-gyal) King of the Dead (commonly known to Theravādists as Yama-Rāja), the Buddhist and Hindu Pluto, as a Judge of the Dead, corresponds to Osiris in the Egyptian version. In both versions alike there is the symbolical weighing: before Dharma-Rāja there are placed on one side of the balance black pebbles and on the other side white pebbles, symbolizing evil and good deeds; and similarly, before Osiris, the heart and the feather (or else in place of the feather an image of the Goddess of Truth which it symbolizes) are weighed one against the other, the heart representing the conduct or conscience of the deceased and the feather righteousness or truth.
In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the deceased, addressing his heart, says: ‘Raise not thyself in evidence against me. Be not mine adversary before the Divine Circle; let there be no fall of the scale against me in the presence of the great god, Lord of Amenta.’ In the Egyptian Judgement Scene it is the ape-headed (less commonly the ibis-headed) Thoth, god of wisdom, who supervises the weighing; in the Tibetan Judgement Scene it is the monkey-headed Shinje; and in both scenes there is the jury of deities looking on, some animal- headed, some human-headed.[29] In the Egyptian version there is a monstrous creature waiting to devour the deceased should the deceased be condemned, whilst in the Tibetan version devils wait to conduct the evil-doer to the hell-world of purgation; and the record-board which Thoth is sometimes depicted as holding corresponds to the Mirror of Karma held by Dharma-Rāja or, as in some versions, by one of the divine jury. Furthermore, in both Books of the Dead, the deceased when first addressing the Judge pleads that he has done no evil. Before Osiris, this plea seems to be accepted in all the texts now known; before Dharma-Rāja it is subject to the test of the Mirror of Karma, and this seems to be distinctly an Indian and Buddhist addition to the hypothetical prehistoric version, whence arose the Egyptian and the Tibetan versions, the Egyptian being the less affected.
Plato, too, in recording the other-world adventures of Er, in the tenth book of the Republic, describes a similar Judgement, in which there are judges and karmic record-boards (affixed to the souls judged) and paths—one for the good, leading to Heaven, one for the evil, leading to Hell—and demons waiting to take the condemned souls to the place of punishment, quite as in the Bardo Thödol (see p. 49).[30]
The purgatorial lore now Christianized and associated with St. Patrick in the originally pagan St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Ireland, the whole cycle of Otherworld and Rebirth legends of the Celtic peoples connected with their Fairy-Faith, and similar Proserpine lore recorded in the Sacred Books of mankind the world over, as well as the Semitic doctrines of heaven and hell and judgement, and of resurrection as the Christianized corruption of a pre-Christian and Jewish rebirth doctrine, as also the passage in Plato, all testify to beliefs universal among mankind, probably far older than the oldest of ancient records from Babylon or from Egypt.[31]
The painting of the Tibetan Judgement Scene as reproduced herein (see opposite p. 166) was made, in strict accord with monastic tradition, in Gangtok, Sikkim, during the year 1919, by Lharipa-Pempa-Tendup-La, a Tibetan artist then sojourning there. An early prototype of it was, until quite recently, preserved as one of the old frescoes contained within the pictorial Wheel of Life of the Tashiding temple-picture in Sikkim, which Dr. L. A. Waddell has described as follows: ‘The judgement is in every case meted out by the impartial Shinje-chho-gyal or “Religious King of the Dead” [Dharma-Rāja], a form of Yama, the Hindu god of the dead, who holds a mirror in which the naked soul is reflected, while his servant Shinje weighs out in scales the good as opposed to the bad deeds; the former being represented by white pebbles, and the latter by black.’[32] And Dr. Waddell has traced back the origin of the picture to a similar Wheel of Life, commonly, though incorrectly, known as ‘the Zodiac’ in the verandah of the Ajaṇṭā Cave No. XVII, India. (See p. 56.) This, then, establishes the antiquity of the Judgement Scene, of which our text contains one version.
Throughout the canonical and apocryphal literature of Northern Buddhism other versions are numerous. In the Pali canon of Southern Buddhism there are parallel versions, for example in the Devadūta Vagga of the Anguttara Nikāya, and in the Devadūta Sūttam of the Majjhima Nikāya. The latter version may be summarized as follows: The Exalted One, the Buddha, while sojourning at the Jetavana Monastery, addresses the monks assembled therein concerning the after-death state of existence. Like a man of clear vision, sitting between two houses, each with six doors, He beholds all who come and go; the one house symbolizing the Bardo or state of disembodied existence, the other the embodied state of existence, and the twelve doors the six entrances and the six exits of the six lokas. Then, after explaining the manner in which karma governs all states of existence, the Buddha describes how the evil-doer is brought before the King of Death and questioned about the Five Messengers of Death.
The first messenger is symbolized by a new-born babe lying on its back; and the message is that even for it, as for all living creatures, old age and death are inevitable. The second messenger comes in the guise of an aged person, eighty, ninety, or a hundred years of age, decrepit, crooked as the curved rafter of a gabled roof, leaning on a staff, trembling as he walks, pathetically miserable, with youth entirely gone, broken-toothed, grey-haired and nearly bald, and with wrinkled brow; and his message is that the babe but grows up and matures and decays to become a victim of Death. The third messenger, a person confined by illness, rolling in his own filth, unable to rise or to lie down without the aid of an attendant, brings the message that disease, too, is inevitable, even as death. The fourth messenger, a thief undergoing most terrible punishment, bears the message that the punishment for evil-doing in this world is as nothing compared to the punishment which karma inflicts after death. The fifth messenger, to emphasize the same message of death and the corruptibility of the body, is a corpse, swollen, discoloured, and putrid.
In each instance, King Yama asks the deceased if he had seen the messenger and receives the reply, ‘No’. Then the King explains to him who the messenger was and the meaning of the messages; and the deceased, thereby remembering, is obliged to confess that, not having done good deeds, he had not acted upon the messages, but had done evil instead, forgetting the inevitability of death. Thereupon, Yama pronounces the judgement, that since the deceased had failed to do good he must suffer the karmic consequences. Accordingly, the hell-furies take the deceased and cause him to suffer five sorts of purgatorial punishments; and, though he suffers most unbearable pains, he is, as the Bardo Thödol makes clear, incapable of dying.
In the Anguttara Nïkāya version, wherein there are but three messengers, the aged person, the man or woman overcome with disease, and the corpse, the Buddha concludes the discourse thus:
‘If men who have been warned by heavenly messengers have been indifferent as regards religion they suffer long, being born in a low condition.
‘If virtuous men have been warned by heavenly messengers in this world, they do not neglect to profess the holy doctrines. Seeing the danger of attachment, which is the cause of birth and death, they have in this life extinguished the miseries of existence by arriving at a condition free from fear, happy and free from passions and sins.’[33]
X. The Rebirth Doctrine
In examining the Rebirth Doctrine, more particularly as it presents itself in our text, two interpretations must be taken into account: the literal or exoteric interpretation, which is the popular interpretation; and the symbolical or esoteric interpretation, which is held to be correct by the initiated few, who claim not scriptural authority or belief, but knowledge. With respect to Tibet, these few are chiefly learned lāmas who are said to have made successful application of methods like those which the Buddha expounded for remembering past incarnations, and for acquiring the yogīc power of seeing what really takes place in the natural process of death and rebirth. To the devotee, seeking thus to know rather than merely to believe on the authority of priests or books, the Buddha has offered the following guidance:
‘If he desireth to be able to call to mind his various temporary states in days gone by, such as one birth, two births, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, or a hundred thousand births, his births in many an aeon of destruction, in many an aeon of renovation, in many an aeon of both destruction and renovation [so as to be able to say]: “In that place such was my name, such my family, such my caste, such my subsistence, such my experience of comfort or of pain, and such the limit of my life; and when I passed from thence I took form again in that other place, where my name was so and so, such my family, such my caste, such my subsistence, such my experience of comfort or of pain, and such my term of life; and from thence I was born here—thus I am able to call to mind my various temporary states of existence in days gone by”—in that state of self-concentration, if the mind be fixed on the acquirement of any object, that object will be attained.
‘If he desireth to see with pure and heavenly vision, surpassing that of men, beings as they pass from one state of existence and take form in others—beings base or noble, good-looking or ill-favoured, happy or miserable, according to the karma they inherit—in that state of self-concentration, if the mind be fixed on the acquirement of any object, that object will be attained’ (Lonaphala Vagga, Anguttara Nikāya).
Again in the Brāhmaṇa Vagga, Anguttara Nikāya, where the yogīc method of recovering from the content of the subconsciousness (which—in confirmation of the Buddha’s psychology—the science of the West has now proven ‘is the abode of everything that is latent’[34]) is likewise described, there is this additional passage: ‘Thus he calleth to mind the various appearances and forms of his previous births. This is the first stage of his knowledge; his ignorance [as regards prior births] hath vanished, and his knowledge [as regards prior births] hath arisen: darkness hath departed, and light hath arrived, the result due to one who liveth in meditation, subduing his passions promptly.’[35]
Nowhere, to our knowledge, are there nowadays—as there are said to have been in Buddhaghosa’s time—yogīs among Southern Buddhists who have carried this practice to a successful issue. It is only among Northern Buddhists (as among Hindus) that such yoga seems to be, according to trustworthy evidence from well-informed Tibetans and Indians, a practically applied science even until now, producing modern saints, some few of whom are believed worthy to be called perfected saints, or Arhants.
As the question, What is and is not the right interpretation of the Rebirth Doctrine? is by no means settled among the Oriental peoples who hold the Doctrine, it is necessary for us frankly to recognize the problem as highly controversial. Consequently in this Section we should try to weigh both interpretations carefully; and, if possible, arrive at a sound conclusion, in order to guide the student aright in what is the most fundamental doctrine underlying the Bardo Thödol. In doing so, it seems desirable to invoke the aid of such facts of Western Science as appear to be directly applicable.
As to the esoteric interpretation, the editor has discovered that the initiates who hold to it invariably follow the Buddha’s command as contained in the Kalama Sūtta, Anguttara Nikāya, or else the Hindu equivalent in works on Yoga, not to accept any doctrine as true until it be tested, and proven true, even though it be ‘found written in the Scriptures’; and they hold no Scriptures to be infallible, on this or any doctrine, or free from corruptions, Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, or others.
The exoteric interpretation, namely that the human stream of consciousness, that is to say, the human life-flux, not only can, but very often does take re-embodiment in sub-human creatures immediately after having been in human form, is accepted universally by Buddhists, both of the Northern and Southern Schools—as by Hindus—who, referring to Scriptures, invariably regard it as being incontrovertible. Their belief, being based on the authority of written records, and on untested theories of gurus and priests who consider the literally interpreted written records to be infallible and who are not adept in yoga, is nowadays considered to be the orthodox interpretation.
Over against the exoteric interpretation, which, without any doubt, the Bardo Thödol, if read literally, conveys, the esoteric interpretations may be stated—on the authority of the various philosophers, both Hindu and Buddhist, from whom the editor has received instruction—as follows:
The human form (but not the divine nature in man) is a direct inheritance from the sub-human kingdoms; from the lowest forms of life it has evolved, guided by an ever-growing and ever-changing life-flux, potentially consciousness, which figuratively may be called the seed of the life-force, connected with or overshadowing each sentient creature, being in its essence psychical. As such, it is the evolving principle, the principle of continuity, the principle capable of acquiring knowledge and understanding of its own nature, the principle whose normal goal is Enlightenment. And, just as the physical seed of a vegetable or animal organism—even man’s seed—is seen by the eyes to be capable of producing after its own kind only, so with that which figuratively may be called the psychical seed of the life-flux which the eyes cannot see—if of a human being it cannot incarnate in, or overshadow, or be intimately bound up with a body foreign to its evolved characteristics, either in this world, in Bardo, or in any realm or world of sangsāric existence. This is held to be a natural law governing the manifestation of life, as inviolable as the law of karma, which sets it into operation.
For a human life-flux to flow into the physical form of a dog, or fowl, or insect, or worm, is, therefore, held to be as impossible as would be—let us say—the transferring of the waters of Lake Michigan into the depression occupied by the waters of Lake Killarney, or—as the Hindu would say—as putting into the bed of the Ganges River the waters of the Indian Ocean.
Degeneration, in a highly developed flowering plant, or apple, or vegetable, or wheat, or animal, is, of course, concomitant with cultural neglect; but within this creation period—at least so far as the physical vision of science has penetrated therein—the flowering plant does not degenerate into the apple, nor into the corn, nor one species of animals into another, nor does man degenerate into anything but the savage man—never into a sub-human creature. As to the processes affecting the life-flux which the human eye cannot see, the esoteric teaching coincides with that of the ancient Greek and Egyptian mystics: ‘As below, so above’; which implies that there is one harmonious karmic law governing with unwavering and impartial justice the visible as well as the invisible operations of nature.
From this follows the corollary, which the Oriental advocates of the esoteric interpretation give out: Progression or retrogression—never an unchanging neutral state of inactivity—are the alternatives within the Sangsāra; and the one or the other, within any of the mansions of existence, cannot lead the life-flux to the threshold of that mansion—neither the sub-human to the human, nor the human to the sub-human—save step by step. And retrogression and progression alike are time-processes: ages pass ere the fire-mist becomes the solidified planet; an Enlightened One is the rare fruit of unknown myriads of embodiments; and man, the highest of the animal-beings, cannot become the lowest of the animal-beings, no matter how heinous his sins, at one bound.
Given ages of continual retrogression, the life-flux which is now human may cease to be human, the human constituents of it becoming atrophied or latent through lack of exercise, in much the same way as atrophy overcomes the activity of a bodily organ or function which is not used. Thereupon, being no longer kinetically, but merely potentially human—just as a dog or horse or elephant are potentially, but not kinetically, human—that life-flux can and ordinarily would fall back into the sub-human kingdoms, whence it may begin anew to rise upwards to the human state or continue to retrograde even below the brute world.
The late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup, the translator, has left on record his own complementary opinion, as follows: ‘The forty-nine days of the Bardo symbolize ages either of evolution or of degeneration. Intellects able to grasp Truth do not fall into the lower conditions of existence.
‘The doctrine of the transmigration of the human to the sub-human may apply solely to the lower or purely brutish constituents of the human principle of consciousness; for the Knower itself neither incarnates nor re-incarnates—it is the Spectator.
‘In the Bardo Thödol, the deceased is represented as retrograding, step by step, into lower and lower states of consciousness. Each step downwards is preceded by a swooning into unconsciousness; and possibly that which constitutes his mentality on the lower levels of the Bardo is some mental element or compound of mental elements formerly a part of his earth-plane consciousness, separated, during the swooning, from higher or more spiritually enlightened elements of that consciousness. Such a mentality ought not to be regarded as on a par with a human mentality; for it seems to be a mere faded and incoherent reflex of the human mentality of the deceased. And perhaps it is some such thing as this which incarnates in sub-human animal bodies—if anything does in a literal sense.’
This theory, coming from the translator, is unusually interesting, for he expressed it while quite unaware of its similarity to the theory held esoterically by the Egyptian priests and exoterically recorded by Herodotus, who, apparently, became their pupil in the monastic college at Heliopolis. Judging from what Herodotus and others of the ancient Greeks, and Romans as well, have written touching thereon, we arrive at the following summary: ‘The human soul was believed to remain in the after-death state during a period of three thousand years. Its human-plane body of the moment of death disintegrating, the constituents went to form the bodies of animals and plants, transmigrating from one to another during the three thousand years. At the end of that period the soul gathers together the identical particles of matter which had thus been continually transmigrating and which had constituted its former earth-plane body of the moment of death, and from them rebuilds, through habit, as a bird its nest, a new body and is reborn in it as a human being.[36] And this theory, when amended with certain necessary modifications, helps to illustrate the symbolical or esoteric interpretation of the Bardo Rebirth Doctrine.
In further illustration, applicable to the higher Hinduism as to the higher Buddhism, advocates of this interpretation point out that even before the final dissolution of the human body of the moment of death there is incessant transmigration of the bodily atoms. So long as the body is the receptacle of the consciousness-principle, it is said to renew itself completely every seven years. And even as the constituents of the physical man thus transmigrate throughout all organic and inorganic kingdoms and the mind remains unchangedly human during the brief cycle of one life-time, so, normally, it likewise remains human during the greater evolutionary cycle—i.e. until it reaches the end of all sangsāric evolution, namely, Nirvāṇic Enlightenment.
The esoteric teaching concerning this may be stated literally: That which is common to the human and to the sub-human worlds alike, namely, matter in its varied aspects as solids, liquids, and gases, eternally transmigrates. That which is specifically human and specifically sub-human remains so, in accordance with the law of nature that like attracts like and produces like, that all forces ever follow the line of least resistance, that such highly evolved mental compounds as are bound up with the complex human consciousness cannot be disintegrated instantaneously, but require due allowance of time for their degeneration and ultimate dissolution and transmigration.[37]
Accordingly, the esotericists hold it to be unscientific to believe that a human life-flux or consciousness-principle could re-incarnate in the body of a sub-human creature within forty-nine days after its extraction from the human form, as the exotericist believes who accepts literally such a rebirth doctrine as the Bardo Thödol, when viewed exoterically, or literally, presents.
The Bardo rebirth symbols themselves ought now to be considered from the standpoint of the esoteric interpretation; and to elucidate them innumerable parallels could be chosen from widely separated sources, but because of its recognized authority no parallel seems more appropriate than that contained in the tenth book of Plato’s Republic, describing certain of the Greek Heroes in the Sidpa Bardo choosing their bodies for the next incarnations:
The Bardo legend as recorded in the Republic concerns Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth, who, as Plato tells us, ‘was slain in battle, and ten days afterwards, when the bodies of the dead were taken up already in a state of corruption, his body was found unaffected by decay, and carried home to be buried. And on the twelfth day, as he was lying on the funeral pile, he returned to life and told them what he had seen in the other world. He said that when his soul left the body he went on a journey with a great company, and they came to a mysterious place at which there were two openings in the earth; they were near together, and over against them were two other openings in the heaven above. In the intermediate space there were judges seated, who commanded the just, after they had given judgement on them and had bound their sentences in front of them, to ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand; and in like manner the unjust were bidden by them to descend by the lower way on the left hand; these also bore the symbols of their deeds, but fastened to their backs.’
Having thus described the otherworld Judgement—which closely resembles the Judgement described in our text—Plato goes on to describe the souls of the Greek Heroes in their Sidpa Bardo preparing for reincarnation: ‘Most curious, he said, was the spectacle—sad and laughable and strange; for the choice of the souls was in most cases based on their own experience of a previous life. There he saw the soul which had once been Orpheus choosing the life of a swan out of enmity to the race of women, hating to be born of a woman because they had been his murderers; he beheld also the soul of Thamyras choosing the life of a nightingale; birds, on the other hand, like the swan and other musicians, wanting to be men. The soul which obtained the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion, and this was the soul of Ajax the son of Telamon, who would not be a man, remembering the injustice which was done him in the judgement about the arms. The next was Agamemnon, who took the life of an eagle, because, like Ajax, he hated human nature by reason of his sufferings. About the middle came the lot of Atalanta; she, seeing the great fame of an athlete, was unable to resist the temptation: and after her there followed the soul of Epeius the son of Panopeus passing into the nature of a woman cunning in the arts; and far away among the last who chose, the soul of the jester Thersites was putting on the form of a monkey. There came also the soul of Odysseus having yet to make a choice, and his lot happened to be the last of them all. Now the recollection of former toils had disenchanted him of ambition, and he went about for a considerable time in search of the life of a private man who had no cares; he had some difficulty in finding this, which was lying about and had been neglected by everybody else; and when he saw it he said that he would have done the same had his lot been first instead of last, and that he was delighted to have it. And not only did men pass into animals, but I must also mention that there were animals tame and wild which changed into one another and into corresponding human natures—the good into the gentle and the evil into the savage, in all sorts of combinations.’
If read superficially, this Platonic account of the rebirth process may be understood literally—even as the Bardo Thödol may be; and it is not impossible to imagine that Plato, as an initiate into the Greek Mysteries, who, like Herodotus, never refers to their esoteric teachings openly, but only in figurative and very often intentionally misleading phraseology, intended that it should be understood so by the uninitiated. Nevertheless, when the passage is examined closely, the exoteric doctrine of transmigration of the human into the sub-human, or vice versa, is evidently not the meaning underlying it. The reference to the choice made by Odysseus, as italicized by us, gives the clue to the real meaning intended. Odysseus’ choice was last; each of the heroes preceding him in choosing their lot had neglected the lot of ‘the life of a private man who had no cares’, and Odysseus chooses this lot as the best of all.
If we consider the sort of life chosen by each of the Greeks who preceded Odysseus, we find it to be definitely symbolical of the character of the chooser:
Thus, Orpheus, the founder of the Orphic Mysteries, a divine teacher sent to instruct mankind by the god of song and music, Apollo, and held by the Greeks to have been the greatest of harp-players and the most enlightened of poets and singers, very appropriately chooses ‘the life of a swan’; for since immemorial time the swan has symbolized—as it still does—song and music; and Plato’s figurative language, correctly interpreted, implies that Orpheus was to reincarnate as a great poet and musician, as was but natural. To assume—as the exotericist may—that such a being as Orpheus could be born as a swan in reality thus appears to the esotericist to be untenable.
Likewise, Thamyras, an ancient Thracian bard, renowned as a harp-player and singer, symbolically chooses the life of the sweet-singing nightingale.
Ajax, the Homeric hero, who, next to Achilles, was the bravest of the Greeks, most fittingly chooses the life of a lion; for the king of beasts is, and has been for unknown ages, the symbol denoting bravery or fearlessness, which almost all nations and races of men have recognized.
Agamemnon, the next to choose, selects the life of an eagle; for among Greek heroes he was the chief, as Zeus was among the gods of Olympus; and, he having been regarded as an incarnation of Zeus and worshipped as one of the divinities, there is assigned to him the symbol of Zeus, which is the eagle.
Atalanta, the most swift-footed of mortals and famous for her foot-races with her many suitors, very naturally is reborn as a great athlete; and, in her case, Plato uses no symbol. Nor is a symbol used in connexion with Epeius, who, noted for his cunning in constructing the wooden horse at the siege of Troy, and whose cowardice afterwards became proverbial, is seen ‘passing into the nature of a woman cunning in the arts’.
As to the jester Thersites, who puts on the form of a monkey, comment is unnecessary.
Accordingly, the expressions concerning the heroes’ hatred of being born of woman seem to be purely metaphorical and employed to carry out logically the literary use of the animal-symbols, just as the passages are concerning ‘animals tame and wild which changed into one another and into corresponding human natures—the good into the gentle and the evil into the savage, in all sorts of combinations’, and of ‘birds, on the other hand, like the swan and other musicians, wanting to be men’.
Even the ordinary soul, the first seen by Er to make choice—although neither an incarnate divinity like Orpheus or Agamemnon, nor a hero like Ajax—and though possessed of a mind obscured by animal propensities, is not assigned by Plato, as he would be by a believer in the exoteric rebirth doctrine, to birth in sub-human form. In his case, too, no animal-symbol is made use of:
‘He who had the first choice came forward and in a moment chose the greatest tyranny; his mind having been darkened by folly and sensuality, he had not thought out the whole matter before he chose, and did not at first perceive that he was fated, among other evils, to devour his own children. … Now he was one of those who came from heaven, and in a former life had dwelt in a well-ordered State, but his virtue was a matter of habit only and he had no philosophy.’
And, as the Bardo Thödol teaches, in other language, in its insistence on the need of Right Knowledge to the devotee who follows the Bodhic Path, so Plato teaches:
‘For if a man had always on his arrival in this world dedicated himself from the first to sound philosophy, and had been moderately fortunate in the number of the lot, he might, as the messenger reported, be happy here, and also his journey to another life and return to this, instead of being rough and underground, would be smooth and heavenly.’[38]
With the assistance of symbols and metaphors, Pindar, Empedocles, Pythagoras, and Socrates, like Plato and the Greek Mysteries, also taught the rebirth doctrine.
On a golden funereal tablet dug up near the site of Sybaris there is the following line of an inscription: ‘And thus I escaped from the cycle, the painful, the misery-laden.’[39] This, like known Orphic teachings, is purely Buddhistic and Hindu, and suggests that in ancient Greece the rebirth doctrine was widespread, at least among Greeks of culture who had been initiated into the Mysteries.
Symbolism similar to that used by Plato has been used by the recorders of the Buddhist Scriptures as well, as, for example, in the account of the Northern School of the birth of the Buddha Himself. This latter from the Tibetan Vinaya Pitaka or Dulva (the most trustworthy and probably oldest part of the Bkah-hgyur), III, folio 452a of the copy in the East India Office, Calcutta, runs thus:
‘Now the future Buddha was in the Tushita Heaven, and knowing that his time had come, he made the five preliminary examinations: first, of the proper family [in which to be born]; second, of the country; third, of the time; fourth, of the race; fifth, of the woman. And having decided that Mahāmāyā was the right mother, in the midnight watch he entered her womb under the appearance of an elephant. Then the queen had four dreams: first, she saw a six-tusked white elephant enter her womb; second, she moved in space above; third, she ascended a great rocky mountain; fourth, a great multitude bowed down to her.
‘The soothsayers predicted that she would bring forth a son with the thirty-two signs of the great man. “If he stay at home, he will become a universal monarch; but if he shave his hair and beard, and, putting on an orange-coloured robe, leave his home for the homeless state and renounce the world, he will become a Tāthagata, Arhant, a perfectly enlightened Buddha.”’
Again, the Jātaka,—of the Southern School,—a compilation of folk-lore, folk-belief, and popular mythology touching the Buddha and his many incarnations, which crystallized round about His personality in much the same way as the matter of the Arthurian Legend crystallized round about King Arthur, during the third century after His death[40]—attributes to Him many previous births in sub-human form; and although the esotericist would concede that in remote aeons of evolution such incarnations could possibly have been really sub-human, he would give to such of them as may have occurred in this world-period a symbolical significance, whereas the orthodox Theravādist interprets all of them literally.
In any case, a literal interpretation of the Jātaka—seeing that it is, according to the esotericist, essentially an exoteric treatise designed for the people[41]—appears to be more plausible than that of the Dulva account of the Buddha’s birth. Furthermore, since there is a parallel account in the Pali Scriptures wherein the same animal symbol, namely, the six-tusked white elephant, is employed, we have here an example of the use of symbolism, definite in purpose, common to both Northern and Southern Buddhism, which even the exotericist could not but interpret symbolically.
Similarly, as the popular interpretation appears to have fundamentally shaped the Jātaka, so it may have also affected the compilation of the Bardo Thödol; for like all treatises which have had at least a germ-origin in very ancient times and then grown up by the ordinary process of amalgamating congenial material, the Bardo Thödol, as a Doctrine of Death and Rebirth, seems to have existed at first unrecorded, like almost all sacred books now recorded in Pali, Sanskrit, or Tibetan, and was a growth of unknown centuries. Then by the time it had fully developed and been set down in writing no doubt it had lost something of its primitive purity. By its very nature and religious usage, the Bardo Thödol would have been very susceptible to the influence of the popular or exoteric view; and in our own opinion it did fall under it, in such manner as to attempt the impossible, namely, the harmonizing of the two interpretations. Nevertheless, its original esotericism is still discernible and predominant. Let us take, for example, the animal-thrones of the Five Dhyānī Buddhas as it describes them, in harmony with Northern Buddhist symbolology: the Lion-throne is associated with Vairochana, the Elephant-throne with Vajra-Sattva, the Horse-throne with Ratna-Sambhava, the Peacock-throne with Amitābha, the Harpy-throne with Amogha-Siddhi. And, in interpreting the symbols, we find them to be poetically descriptive of the peculiar attributes of each deity: the Lion symbolizes courage or might, and sovereign power; the Elephant, immutability; the Horse, sagacity and beauty of form; the Peacock, beauty and power of transmutation, because in popular belief it is credited with the power of eating poisons and transforming them into the beauty of its feathers; the Harpy, mightiness and conquest over all the elements. The deities, too, in the last analysis, are symbolical of particular Bodhic attributes of the Dharma-Kāya and of supramundane forces of Enlightenment emanating thence, upon which the devotee may depend for guidance along the Path to Buddhahood.
In attempting the esoteric interpretation of the animal symbols used in the Sidpa Bardo—and this interpretation finds its parallel in the esoteric interpretation obviously intended by the Sidpa Bardo episode in Plato, as in the Dulva account of the birth of the Buddha—we have sufficient Buddhist rebirth symbols whose esoteric interpretation is clearly known and generally accepted to guide us.
Dr. L. A. Waddell, a well-known authority on Lāmaism, in Lāmaism in Sikhim,[42] refers to the symbolism of the famous, but recently ruined, wall-painting of the Sī-pa-ī-khor-lo or ‘Circle of Existence’ in the Tashiding monastery, Sikkim, as follows: ‘This picture is one of the purest Buddhist emblems that the lāmas have preserved for us. And by its means I have been able to restore the fragment of a cycle in the verandah of Ajaṇṭā Cave No. XVII, hitherto uninterpreted, and merely known as “the Zodiac”. This picture portrays in symbolic and concrete form the three original sins and the recognized causes of rebirth (Nidānas), so as to ensure their being vividly perceived and avoided; while the evils of existence in its various forms and the tortures of the damned are intended to intimidate evil-doers.’ In it, the three original sins are depicted as a pig, a cock, and a snake, and their esoteric significance is given by Dr. Waddell thus: ‘The pig symbolizes the ignorance of stupidity; the cock, animal desire or lust; and the snake, anger.’[43] In the accompanying symbolic illustrations of the Twelve Nidānas, only the third is an animal symbol, the others being human and figurative symbols; and this is a monkey eating fruit, symbolizing entire knowledge (Tib. nam-she; Skt. Vijñāna) of good and evil fruits, through tasting every fruit or sensuous experience in the manner of a roving non-philosophically guided libertine, thus engendering consciousness.[44]
Accordingly, the animal forms and environments named in the Second Book of the Bardo Thödol (see pp. 178–9, 185) as possible forms and environments to be entered by the human consciousness-principle upon rebirth in this world may be interpreted as follows:
(1) The dog-form (like that of the cock in ‘The Wheel of Life’) symbolizes excessive sexuality or sensuality.[45] It also symbolizes, in popular Tibetan lore, jealousy. And the dog-kennel environment symbolizes abiding in, or living in, a state of sensuality.
(2) The pig symbolizes (as in ‘The Wheel of Life’) the ignorance of stupidity dominated by lust; and selfishness and uncleanliness as well. The pigsty environment symbolizes worldly existence dominated by these characteristics.
(3) The ant symbolizes (as it does amongst the nations of the West) industry, and the lust for worldly possessions; and the ant-hill environment the dwelling under the corresponding conditions of life.
(4) The insect or grub symbolizes an earthly or grovelling disposition, and its hole the dwelling in an environment dominated by such disposition (see text, p. 179).
(5) The calf, kid, lamb, horse, and fowl forms mentioned (see text, pp. 178–9) symbolize, in like manner, corresponding characteristics common to those animals and to the highest of the animal beings, man, such as almost all civilized races have associated therewith, and popularly illustrated in animal mythology like that which Aesop made the basis of his Fables. In the Old Testament the visions of the prophet Ezekiel and in the New Testament the Revelation of John show how similar animal symbolism affected even the Bible. And, in our view, should the Buddhist and Hindu exotericists re-read their own Scriptures in the light of the Science of Symbols their opposition to Esotericism would probably be given up.
Accordingly, the animal symbols in the Sidpa Bardo—despite evident corruptions of the text and of the esoteric rebirth doctrine denoted by these symbols—should rightly be taken to imply that, in accordance with its karma, a human principle of consciousness, unless winning Emancipation, will, under the normal karmic conditions of gradual progression which govern the majority of mankind, continue to be born in a human form in this creation-period, with the mental traits or characteristics symbolized by animals. Under exceptional or abnormal karmic conditions of retrogression, it may, on the other hand, during the course of ages, gradually lose its human nature and fall back into sub-human kingdoms.
As the translator explained, we need but look round us in the human world to find the bloodthirsty tiger-man, the murderer; the lustful swine-man; the deceitful fox-man; the thieving and imitating monkey-man; the grovelling worm-man; the industrious and oft-times miserly ant-man; the ephemeral—sometimes professedly aesthetic—butterfly-man; the strong ox-man; or the fearless lion-man. Human life is far richer in possibilities for the workings out of evil karma—no matter how animal-like the karma may be—than any sub-human species could possibly be. The illiterate folk-beliefs so common in Buddhist and Hindu lands, that a human murderer must inevitably be reborn as a ferocious beast of prey, or a sensualist as a pig or dog, or a miser as an ant, are, therefore, like many other popular beliefs, evidently based upon false analogies—some of which have crept into Oriental Scriptures—and upon an unduly limited view of the innumerable conditions offered by human embodiment, from the saint to the criminal, from the King-Emperor to the slum-dweller, or from the man of culture to the lowest savage.
In accordance with our findings, that higher and rational teaching concerning rebirth, which in the Bardo Thödol is, perhaps, confused because of corruptions of text, may now be summarized. If, on the Plane of Uncertainty, the influence of innate or karmic propensities of desire for the grosser sensations of sangsāric existence, such as govern life in a human body, can be dominated through the exercise of the more powerful influence of Right Knowledge, that part of the consciousness-principle capable of realizing Buddahood triumphs, and the deceased, instead of being obsessed with the frightful hallucinatory spectres of his lower or animal nature, passes the interval between human death and rebirth in one of the paradise realms instead of in the Bardo. If such a more enlightened one be very unusually developed spiritually, that is to say if he be a great yogīc saint, he may gain even the highest of the paradises and be reborn among mankind under the guiding power of the ‘Lords of Karma’, who, though still sangsāric beings, are described by the lāmas as being immeasurably higher in evolution than man. When thus directed by the ‘Guardians of the Great Law’, the earth-returning one is said to reincarnate out of compassion, to assist human kind; he comes as a Teacher, as a Divine Missionary, as a Nirmāṇa-Kāya incarnate. Normally, however, rebirth is of the lower or ordinary sort, unendowed—because of the lack of enlightenment of the one undergoing it—with consciousness of the process. Even as a child knowing not the higher mathematics cannot measure the velocity of light, so the animal-man cannot profit by the higher law governing the rebirth of the divine-man; and, drinking of the River of Forgetfulness, he enters the door of the womb and is reborn, direct from the desire-world called the Bardo. This lower rebirth, almost brutish in many instances, because controlled chiefly by animal propensities such as sub-human and human creatures have in common, differs, however, from that of brutes in virtue of the functional activity of the purely human element of the consciousness, which in all sub-human creatures is latent and not active; and for this element, even in the lowest of mankind, to become latent instead of active requires approximately as long a period of cyclic time as it does for the sub-human consciousnesss to evolve its latent human element into full human activity. The popular misunderstanding of this aspect of the higher or esoteric Doctrine of Rebirth thus appears to have assisted in no small measure to give rise to the obviously irrational belief, found almost everywhere throughout the Scriptures of both Buddhism and Hinduism, that the brute principle of consciousness in its entirety and the human principle of consciousness in its entirety are capable of alternately exchanging places with one another.
It was the late Dr. E. B. Tylor, father of the modern science of Anthropology, who after a very careful examination of the data pronounced the higher doctrine of rebirth to be the more reasonable:
‘So it may seem that the original idea of transmigration was the straightforward and reasonable one of human souls being reborn in new human bodies. … The beast is the very incarnation of familiar qualities of man; and such names as lion, bear, fox, owl, parrot, viper, worm, when we apply them as epithets to men, condense into a word some leading feature of a human life.’[46]
That this is the true interpretation is confirmed—so far as Europe is concerned—by the teachings of the Druids, the learned Brahmin-like priests of Europe’s scientific pre-Christian religion, held by the Celtic nations.[47]
In The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, in the year 1911, I suggested that the rebirth doctrine, in its straightforward, Druidic form, accords, in its essentials, with the psychological science of the West—that the subconscious mind is the storehouse of all latent memories; that these memories are not limited to one lifetime; that these memory-records, being recoverable, prove the doctrine to be based upon demonstrable facts. Since the year 1911 the whole trend of Western psychological research in the realm of the subconscious and in psycho-analysis has tended to confirm that view.
I was unaware when I wrote The Fairy-Faith that Huxley held—as he did—the theory of human reincarnation to offer the best explanation of even ordinary physiological and biological phenomena. And since the testimony of Huxley, as one of the greatest biologists, coincides with that, as above given, of the late Dr. Tylor, the foremost of modern anthropologists, and also confirms from the standpoint of our own Western Science the higher or esoteric interpretation of the Rebirth Doctrine as offered by the Occult Sciences of the East, we here record it as a fitting conclusion to this Section:
‘Everyday experience familiarizes us with the facts which are grouped under the name of heredity. Every one of us bears upon him obvious marks of his parentage, perhaps of remoter relationships. More particularly, the sum of tendencies to act in a certain way, which we call “character”, is often to be traced through a long series of progenitors and collaterals. So we may justly say that this “character”—this moral and intellectual essence of a man—does veritably pass over from one fleshly tabernacle to another, and does really transmigrate from generation to generation. In the new-born infant, the character of the stock lies latent, and the Ego is little more than a bundle of potentialities. But, very early, these become actualities; from childhood to age they manifest themselves in dullness or brightness,—weakness or strength, viciousness or uprightness; and with each feature modified by confluence with another character, if by nothing else, the character passes on to its incarnation in new bodies. The Indian philosophers called character, as thus defined, “karma”.…
‘In the theory of evolution, the tendency of a germ to develop according to a certain specific type, e.g. of the kidney-bean seed to grow into a plant having all the characters of Phaseolus vulgaris, is its “Karma”. It is the “last inheritor and the last result” of all the conditions that have affected a line of ancestry which goes back for many millions of years, to the time when life first appeared on the earth.…
‘As Prof. Rhys-Davids aptly says [in Hibbert Lectures, p. 114], the snowdrop “is a snowdrop and not an oak, and just that kind of snowdrop, because it is the outcome of the Karma of an endless series of past existences”.’[48]
XI. The Cosmography
Buddhist cosmography as understood by the lāmas, and continually referred to throughout our text, more especially in connexion with the Doctrine of Rebirth, is a very vast and complex subject; and to consider it here in any detail would involve the esoteric as well as the exoteric interpretation of an enormous mass of doctrines, more or less of Brahmanic origin, concerning the many states of sentient existence within the Sangsāra, of cosmos—some planetary as in this world, some in the many heavens and paradises, and others in the numerous states of purgation called hells. Generalizing, it may be said that when the Brahmanic and Buddhist teachings concerning cosmography are carefully examined from the standpoint of the initiated Oriental, and not from the too-oft prejudiced standpoint of the Christian philologist, it seems to suggest far-reaching knowledge, handed down from very ancient times, of astronomy, of the shape and motion of planetary bodies, and of the interpenetration of worlds and systems of worlds, some solid and visible (such as are alone known to Western Science) and some ethereal and invisible existing in what we may perhaps call a fourth dimension of space.
Esoterically explained, Mt. Meru (Tib. Ri-rab), the central mountain of Hindu and Buddhist cosmography, round which our cosmos is disposed in seven concentric circles of oceans separated by seven intervening concentric circles of golden mountains, is the universal hub, the support of all the worlds. We may possibly regard it, like the Central Sun of Western astronomy, as the gravitational centre of the known universe. Outside the seven circles of oceans and the intervening seven circles of golden mountains lies the circle of continents.
In illustration, an onion of fifteen layers may be taken to represent roughly the lāmaic conception of our universe. The core, to which the fifteen layers cohere, is Mt. Meru. Below, are the various hells; above, supported by Mt. Meru, are the heavens of the gods, the more sensuous, like the thirty-three heavens ruled by Indra, and those under the sway of Mārā, being ranged in their own regular gradation beneath the less sensuous heavens of Brāhma. As apex over all, is the final heaven, called ‘The Supreme’ (Tib. ‘Og-min). Being the last outpost of our universe, ‘Og-min, as the vestibule to Nirvāṇa, is the transitional state leading from the mundane to the supramundane; and thus there presides over it the divine influence of ‘The Best of All’ (Tib. Kuntu-zang-po: Skt. Samanta-Bhadra), the lāmaic personification of Nirvāṇa.
On a level with Indra’s realm dwell, in their own heaven-worlds, the eight Mother Goddesses (Tib. Hlāmo), all of whom appear in our text. They are the Mother Goddesses of the early Hindus, called in Sanskrit the Mātṛis.
Within Mt. Meru itself, upon which the Heavens rest, there are four realms, one above another. Of these, the three lower are inhabited by various orders of genii; and in the fourth, immediately beneath the Heavens, from which, like the fallen angels of Christian belief, they were expelled on account of their pride, dwell the ‘Ungodly Spirits’, the Asuras (Tib. Lha-ma-yin), or Titans, who, as rebels, live and die waging unending war with the gods above.
The innermost layer of the onion is the Ocean surrounding Mt. Meru. The next layer, outwardly expanding, is that of the Golden Mountains; the next beyond is another Ocean; and so on, a circle of Golden Mountains always coming after a circle of Ocean until the fifteenth layer containing the outermost Ocean, in which float the Continents and their satellites. The skin of the onion is a wall of iron enclosing the one universe.
Beyond one such universe there lies another, and so on to infinity.[49] Each universe, like a great cosmic egg, is enclosed within the iron-wall shell, which shuts in the light of the sun and moon and stars, the iron-wall shell being symbolical of the perpetual darkness separating one universe from another. All universes alike are under the domination of natural law, with which karma is commonly made synonymous; for, in the Buddhist view, there is no scientific necessity to affirm or to deny the existence of a supreme God-Creator, the Karmic Law furnishing a complete explanation of all phenomena and being of itself demonstrable.
Each universe, like our own, rests upon ‘a warp and woof’ of blue air (i.e. ether), symbolized by crossed dorjes (such as are depicted by the emblem on the cover of our book). Upon this rests ‘the body of the waters’ of the outer Ocean. Each Ocean symbolizes a stratum of air (or ether), and each of the intervening mountains a stratum of congealed air (or ether), that is to say, material substance; or, from a more occult view-point, the Oceans are the Subtle and the Mountains the Gross, the one alternating with the other as Opposites.
Like the Seven Days of the Mosaic version of Creation, the numerical dimensions which the lāmas assign to our universe are more often to be taken as suggestive or symbolical than literal. Mt. Meru, they say, towers 80,000 miles above the Central Enchanted Ocean and extends below the surface of the waters the same distance, the Central Ocean itself being also 80,000 miles deep and 80,000 miles wide. The succeeding girdle of Golden Mountains is just half that number of miles in height and width and depth, and the next Ocean, correspondingly, 40,000 miles deep and 40,000 miles wide. The consecutive circles of alternating pairs composed of Golden Mountains and an Enchanted Ocean gradually diminish as to width, depth, and height, being respectively 20,000, 10,000, 5,000, 2,500, 1,250, and 625 miles. This brings us to the Continents in the Outer Ocean of Space.
Of these Continents, the four chief ones—as described in the Second Book of our Bardo Thödol—are situated in the Four Directions. On either side of each of these Four Continents are smaller or satellite Continents, thus making the total number of Continents twelve, which, again, is a symbolical number, like the number seven of the cosmographical arrangement.
The Eastern Continent is called in Tibetan Lü-pah (Lus-hpags), or ‘Vast Body’ (Skt. Virāt-deha). Its symbolical shape is like that of a crescent moon; and, accordingly, the colour white is assigned to it, and crescentic faces are ascribed to its inhabitants, who are said to be tranquil-minded and virtuous. Its diameter is given as being 9,000 miles.
The Southern Continent is our Planet Earth, called Jambuling (Skt. Jambudvīpa), probably an onomatopoeic word—as the translator held—descriptive of the fruit of a jambu-tree falling into water, ling itself meaning ‘place’, or ‘region’. The name Jambuling would thus mean the region or continent wherein jambu-fruit fall into the water. Its symbolic shape is like that of the shoulder-blade of a sheep, that is sub-triangular, or rather pear-shaped, to which the faces of its inhabitants conform. Blue is the colour assigned to it. Riches and plenty abound in it, along with both good and evil. It is said to be the smallest of the Four Continents, being but 7,000 miles in diameter.
The Western Continent is called Balongchöd (Ba-glang-spyöd), literally meaning cow+ox+action (Skt. Godhana, or ‘Wealth of Oxen’). In shape it is like the sun, and red of colour. Its inhabitants, whose faces are round like the sun, are believed to be very powerful and to be addicted to eating cattle, as the literal meaning of its name itself may suggest. Its diameter measures 8,000 miles.
The Northern Continent is Daminyan, or Graminyan (Sgra-mi-snyan), equivalent to the Sanskrit Uttara Kuru, meaning ‘Northern Kuru [Race]’. It is of square shape and green colour. Its inhabitants have corresponding faces, square like those of horses. Trees supply all their sustenance and wants, and the Kuru, on dying, haunt the trees as tree-spirits. This is the largest of the Continents, being 10,000 miles in diameter.
Each satellite Continent resembles the Continent to which it is attached, and is one-half its size. The left Satellite of our world (Jambuling), called Ngāyabling, is, for example, the world of the Rākṣḥasas, to which Padma Sambhava, the Great Guru of Lāmaism, is believed to have gone to teach the Rākṣḥasas goodness and salvation, and to be there now as their king.[50]
Underlying this lāmaic cosmology there is, as research will show, an elaborate symbolism. Take, for instance, the description of Mt. Meru as given by Dr. Waddell: ‘Its eastern face is of silver, the south of jasper, the west of ruby, and the north of gold’[51]—which illustrates a use of ancient symbols very similar to that in the Revelation of John. The complete rational explanation of all the symbolism connected with Hindu and in turn Buddhist cosmography would be—even if it were possible for us—quite beyond the scope of an introduction. Suffice it to say that the possession of a key to such explanation is claimed by expert professors of the Occult Sciences in India and in Tibet—compared to which, in the realm of mind and matter, our Western Science is, so they maintain, but at the Threshold of the Temple of Understanding.
XII. The Fundamental Teachings Summarized
Ere passing on to the final Sections of this Introduction, touching the Manuscript itself, we may now summarize the chief teachings upon which the whole of the Bardo Thödol is based, as follows:
1. That all possible conditions, or states, or realms of sangsāric existence, heavens, hells, and worlds, are entirely dependent upon phenomena, or, in other words, are nought but phenomena;
2. That all phenomena are transitory, are illusionary, are unreal, and non-existent save in the sangsāric mind perceiving them;
3. That in reality there are no such beings anywhere as gods, or demons, or spirits, or sentient creatures—all alike being phenomena dependent upon a cause;
4. That this cause is a yearning or thirsting after sensation, after the unstable sangsāric existence;
5. That so long as this cause is not overcome by Enlightenment death follows birth and birth death, unceasingly—even as the wise Socrates believed;
6. That the after-death existence is but a continuation, under changed conditions, of the phenomena-born existence of the human world—both states alike being karmic;
7. That the nature of the existence intervening between death and rebirth in this or any other world is determined by antecedent actions;
8. That, psychologically speaking, it is a prolonged dream-like state, in what may be called the fourth dimension of space, filled with hallucinatory visions directly resultant from the mental-content of the percipient, happy and heaven-like if the karma be good, miserable and hell-like if the karma be bad;
9. That, unless Enlightenment be won, rebirth in the human world, directly from the Bardo-world or from any other world or from any paradise or hell to which karma has led, is inevitable;
10. That Enlightenment results from realizing the unreality of the sangsāra, of existence;
11. That such realizing is possible in the human world, or at the important moment of death in the human world, or during the whole of the after-death or Bardo-state, or in certain of the non-human realms;
12. That training in yoga, i.e. in control of the thinking processes so as to be able to concentrate the mind in an effort to reach Right Knowledge, is essential;
13. That such training can best be had under a human guru, or teacher;
14. That the Greatest of Gurus known to mankind in this cycle of time is Gautama the Buddha;
15. That His Doctrine is not unique, but is the same Doctrine which has been proclaimed in the human world for the gaining of Salvation, for the Deliverance from the Circle of Rebirth and Death, for the Crossing of the Ocean of Sangsāra, for the Realization of Nirvāṇa, since immemorial time, by a long and illustrious Dynasty of Buddhas, who were Gautama’s Predecessors;
16. That lesser spiritually enlightened beings, Bodhisattvas and gurus, in this world or in other worlds, though still not freed from the Net of Illusion, can, nevertheless, bestow divine grace and power upon the shiṣḥya (i.e. the chela, or disciple) who is less advanced upon the Path than themselves;
17. That the Goal is and can only be Emancipation from the Sangsāra;
18. That such Emancipation comes from the Realization of Nirvāṇa;
19. That Nirvāṇa is non-sangsāric, being beyond all paradises, heavens, hells, and worlds;
20. That it is the Ending of Sorrow;
21. That it is Reality.
He who realized Nirvāṇa, the Buddha Gautama Himself, has spoken of it to His own disciples thus:
‘There is, disciples, a Realm devoid of earth and water, fire and air. It is not endless space, nor infinite thought, nor nothingness, neither ideas nor non-ideas. Not this world nor that is it. I call it neither a coming nor a departing, nor a standing still, nor death, nor birth; it is without a basis, progress, or a stay; it is the ending of sorrow.
‘For that which clingeth to another thing there is a fall; but unto that which clingeth not no fall can come. Where no fall cometh, there is rest, and where rest is, there is no keen desire. Where keen desire is not, naught cometh or goeth; and where naught cometh or goeth there is no death, no birth. Where there is neither death nor birth, there neither is this world nor that, nor in between—it is the ending of sorrow.
‘There is, disciples, an Unbecome, Unborn, Unmade, Unformed; if there were not this Unbecome, Unborn, Unmade, Unformed, there would be no way out for that which is become, born, made, and formed; but since there is an Unbecome, Unborn, Unmade, Unformed, there is escape for that which is become, born, made, and formed.’[52]
XIII. The Manuscript
Our manuscript copy of the Bardo Thödol was procured by the editor early in the year 1919 from a young lāma of the Kargyutpa Sect of the Red Hat School attached to the Bhutia Basti Monastery, Darjeeling, who said that it had been handed down in his family for several generations. The manuscript is unlike any other seen by the translator or editor, in that it is illustrated by paintings in colour painted on the folios of the text. All other similarly illustrated Tibetan manuscripts seen by us have had the illustrations made on separate pieces of manuscript paper or else of cotton cloth, pasted to the folios. When procured, the manuscript was in a very ragged and worn condition, now remedied by each folio being inserted in a protective frame of Tibetan paper of the same sort as that upon which the manuscript is written. Fortunately, all of the illuminated folios, though faded, were in a fair state of preservation. One of the ordinary folios, folio number 111, was missing, but this has now been replaced by a faithful copy of the same passage found in a Block-Print version of the Bardo Thödol belonging to Dr. Johan Van Manen, Secretary of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, well known as a Tibetan scholar. Reference to this Block-Print version is made throughout our translation. In all essentials, and, generally, word for word, our manuscript and Dr. Van Manen’s Block-Print were found to be identical. In some spellings of proper names of deities of Sanskrit origin there are variations in the two versions, and in both books a number of clerical errors. The manuscript is far older than the modern Block-Print and seems to have been copied from an earlier manuscript.
The manuscript itself is undated, but the translator judged it to be from 150 to 200 years old. It has seen very much service, having been read many times over the dead; its ragged and worn condition is, therefore, no criterion—as it might seem to be—of its age. It is written in an excellent hand on the ordinary paper used for manuscripts among the Tibetans and Himalayan peoples, made from the pulped bark of the Hdal (pronounced Dāā), otherwise known as Daphne, a kind of laurel of which one species bears a purplish white blossom, another a yellowish white. It is usually by lāmas in a monastery that the paper is manufactured. On account of the bark of the Hdal being extremely tough, the Sikkimese used it as ropes.
The total number of folios composing the manuscript is 137, each measuring about 912 by 314 inches. Excepting the first folio and the first half of the second, the space actually occupied by the text on each measures on an average 814 by 214 inches. Most of the folios contain five lines of matter, a few contain four lines. The title-page contains two lines in a space 7 by 1 inches; the second page of the first folio along with the first page of the second folio, which give the Obeisances, consist of three lines, occupying a space 412 by 214 inches respectively, and these, like the title-page, are written in gold (now much faded) on a black background. The illustrations are on fourteen of the folios, each illustration being in the centre of the text, on one side of the folio (see Frontispiece), as follows:
On folio 18, Vairochana embraced by his skakti, the Mother of the Space of Heaven, seated upon a lion throne, the deities of the First Day;
On folio 20, Vajra-Sattva, embraced by his shakti, the Mother Māmakī, surrounded by their four accompanying deities of the Second Day;
On folio 23, Ratna-Sambhava, embraced by his skakti, the Mother Sangyay Chanma (‘She of the Buddha Eye’), surrounded by their four accompanying deities of the Third Day;
On folio 26, Amitābha, embraced by his skakti, the Mother Gökarmo (‘She of White Raiment’), surrounded by their four accompanying deities of the Fourth Day;
On folio 31, Amogha-Siddhi, embraced by his shakti, the Faithful Dölma (or Skt. Tārā), surrounded by their four accompanying deities of the Fifth Day;
On folio 35, the united maṇḍalas of the deities that dawn on the Sixth Day;
On folio 44, the maṇḍala of the Ten Knowledge-Holding Deities of the Seventh Day;
On folio 55, the Buddha Heruka and shakti of the Eighth Day;
On folio 57, the Vajra Heruka and shakti of the Ninth Day;
On folio 58, the Ratna Heruka and shakti of the Tenth Day;
On folio 59, the Padma Heruka and shakti of the Eleventh Day;
On folio 65, the Karma Heruka and shakti of the Twelfth Day;
On folio 64, the Eight Kerima and the Eight Htamenma of the Thirteenth Day; and the Four Female Door-keepers of the Fourteenth Day;
On folio 67, the maṇḍala of the animal-headed deities of the Fourteenth Day.
Each deity is depicted in conformity with the description given in the text as to colour, position, posture, mudrā, and symbols.
All of the illustrations in the manuscript thus belong to the Chönyid Bardo of the First Book. In our translation, copious annotations contain the textual name of each deity and the Sanskrit equivalent when, as in most cases, there is one.
No attempt has been made to collate our manuscript with other manuscripts of the same text, none having been available. Such manuscripts are, no doubt, numerous in Tibet, and the production of a standard or uniform text would require years of careful labour—a task remaining for scholars of the future. The only comparison of texts attempted was with Dr. Van Manen’s Block-Print, which is probably not more than about twenty to thirty years old. The translator said that, so far as he was aware, Block-Prints of the Bardo Thödol have appeared—at least in Sikkim and Darjeeling—rather recently, although probably known in Tibet itself much longer, block-type printing having been carried on for unknown centuries in China, and thence brought to Tibet, long before printing was done in Europe.[53]
Each Buddhist Sect in Tibet, according to the opinion of the translator, probably has its own version of the Bardo Thödol more or less changed in some details, but not in essentials, from our version, the version used by the reformed Gelugpa, otherwise known as the Yellow-Hat School, being the most altered, with all references to Padma Sambhava, the Founder of the Ñingmapa, the Red-Hat School of Lāmaism, as well as the names of deities peculiar to the Red-Hats, expurgated.
Major W. L. Campbell, who was the British Political Representative in Sikkim during my residence there, wrote to me, from the Residency in Gangtok, under date of the twelfth of July, 1919, concerning the various versions of the Bardo Thödol, as follows: ‘The Yellow Sect have six, the Red Sect seven, and the Kar-gyut-pas five.’
Our text being of the primitive or Red-Hat School and attributed to the Great Guru Padma Sambhava himself, who introduced Tantric Buddhism into Tibet, has been deemed by us to be substantially representative of the original version, which, on the basis of internal evidence derived from our manuscript text, was probably, at least in essentials, pre-Buddhistic.
As elsewhere noted, our manuscript is arranged as one work in two parts or books, with thirteen folios of texts of Bardo prayers as an appendix at the end. The Block-Print is arranged as two distinct books and lacks the appendix of prayers. But at the end of the first book of the Block-Print there comes a very important account of the origin of the Bardo Thödol, which is not contained in our manuscript, and this is given in translation in the following Section.
XIV. The Origin of the Bardo Thödol
Thus, from the Block-Print, and also from other Tibetan sources, we learn that the Bardo Thödol text originated, or, what is perhaps more correct, was first committed to writing in the time of Padma Sambhava, in the eighth century A.D.; was subsequently hidden away, and then, when the time came for it to be given to the world, was brought to light by Rigzin Karma Ling-pa. The Block-Print account is as follows:
‘This has been brought from the Hill of Gampodar (Tib. Gampo-dar), on the bank of the Serdan (Tib. Gser-ldan, meaning ‘Possessing Gold’ or ‘Golden’) River, by Rigzin Karma Ling-pa (Tib. Rigs-hdzin Kar-ma Gling-pa).’
Rigzin, as herein given, is a personal title, and Karma Ling-pa the name of a place in Tibet meaning ‘Karma Land’. The translator has pointed out that Rigs is an erroneous spelling of Rig; for, if Rigs were correct, the name Rigzin would mean Class-Holder (Rigs+hZin). That Rig is intended—thus making the name mean Knowledge-Holder (Rig+hdzin), a caste or class designation[54]—was confirmed by a small section of a Bardo Thödol manuscript in the possession of the translator, in which Rigzin Karma Ling-pa is otherwise called Terton (Tib. Gter-bston), or ‘Taker-Out of Treasures’. The Bardo Thödol is, therefore, one of the Tibetan Lost Books recovered by Rigzin of Karma Ling-pa, who is held to be an emanation or incarnation of Padma Sambhava, the Founder of Lāmaism.
It was in the eighth century A.D. that Lāmaism, which we may define as Tantric Buddhism, took firm root in Tibet. A century earlier, under the first king to rule over a united Tibet, King Srong-Tsan-Gampo (who died in A.D. 650), Buddhism itself entered Tibet from two sources: from Nepal, the land of the Buddha’s ancestors, through the Tibetan King’s marriage with a daughter of the royal family of Nepal; and from China, through his marriage—in the year 641—with a princess of the Chinese Imperial Family. The King had been nurtured in the old Bön faith of Tibet, which, with its primitive doctrine of rebirth, was quite capable of serving as an approach to Buddhism; and under the influence of his two Buddhist wives he accepted Buddhism, making it the state religion; but it made little headway in Tibet until a century later, when his powerful successor, Thī-Srong-Detsan, held the throne from A.D. 740 to 786, It was Thī-Srong-Detsan who invited Padma Sambhava (Tib. Pēdma Jungnē, i.e. ‘The Lotus-Born’), better known to the Tibetans as Guru Rin-po-ch’e, ‘The Precious Guru’, to come to Tibet. The famous Guru was at that time a Professor of Yoga in the great Buddhist University of Nālanda, India, and far-famed for expert knowledge of the Occult Sciences. He was a native of Udyāna or Swat, in what is now a part of Afghanistan.
The Great Guru saw the wonderful opportunity which the King’s invitation offered, and promptly accepted the call, passing through Nepal and arriving at Samye (Sam-yas), Tibet, in the year 747. It was to Samye that the King had invited him, in order to have exorcized the demons of the locality; for as soon as the walls of a monastery which the King was having erected there were raised they were overthrown by local earthquakes, which the demons opposing Buddhism were believed to have caused. When the Great Guru had driven out the demons, all the local earthquakes ceased, much to the wonder of the people; and he himself supervised the completion of the royal monastery, and established therein the first community of Tibetan Buddhist lāmas, in the year 749.
During his sojourn in Tibet at that time, and during subsequent visits, Padma Sambhava had many Tantric books translated into Tibetan out of Indian Sanskrit originals—some of which have been preserved in the monasteries of Tibet—and hidden away with appropriate mystic ceremonies in various secret places. He also endowed certain of his disciples with the yogīc power of reincarnating at the proper time, as determined by astrology, in order to take them out, along with the treasures hidden away with them and the requisites needed for properly performing the rites described in the texts. This is the generally accepted tradition; but according to another tradition the Tertons are to be regarded as various incarnations of the Great Guru himself. According to a rough estimate, the religious texts already taken out by such Tertons, from century to century, would form an encyclopædia of about sixty-five volumes of block-prints, each, on an average, consisting of about four hundred ordinary-sized folios.
Our text, the Bardo Thödol, being one of these recovered apocryphal books, should, therefore, be regarded as having been compiled (for the internal evidence suggests that it was a Tibetan compilation rather than a direct translation from some unknown Sanskrit original) during the first centuries of Lāmaism, either—as it purports to have been—in the time of Padma Sambhava or soon afterwards. Its present general use all over Tibet as a funeral ritual and its acceptance by the different sects, in varying versions, could not have been the outcome of a few generations; it testifies rather convincingly to its antiquity, bears out the pre-Buddhistic and at least partially Bön origin which we attribute to it, and suggests some validity in the claims made for the Tertons.
We are well aware of the adverse criticisms passed by European critics on the Terton tradition. There is not lacking, nevertheless, sound reason for suspecting that the European critics are not altogether right. Therefore, it seems to us that the only sound attitude to assume towards the Terton problem is to keep an open mind until sufficient data accumulate to pronounce judgement. Though the Terton claim be proven false, the fact that the Bardo Thödol is now accepted as a sacred book in Tibet and has for some considerable time been used by the lāmas for reading over the dead would, of course, not be affected; only the theory concerning the textual compilation of what, in its essentials, is apparently a prehistoric ritual would be subject to revision.
As for Padma Sambhava’s own sources, apart from such congenial traditional teachings as no doubt he incorporated in some of his Tibetan treatises, we are told, by oral tradition now current among the lāmas, that he had eight gurus in India, each representing one of the eight chief Tantric doctrines.
In a Tibetan block-print, which belonged to the translator, purporting to record the history, but much mixed with myth, of the Great Guru, entitled Orgyan-Padmas-mzad-pahi-bkah-thang-bsdüd-pa (pronounced Ugyan Padmay-zad-pai-ba-thang-dü-pa), meaning ‘The Abridged Testament made by Ugyan Padma’ (or ‘by the Lotus-Born Ugyan’—Padma Sambhava), consisting of but seventeen folios, there is recorded on the twelfth folio, sixteenth section, the following passage, confirming the historical tradition touching the origin of the Bardo Thödol text:
‘Behold! the Sixteenth Section, showing the Eight Ling-pas, the Leaders of Religion, is [thus]:
‘The Eight Incarnations of the Great Bodhisattvas are:
‘Ugyan-ling-pa, in the centre;
‘Dorje-ling-pa, in the east;
‘Rinchen-ling-pa, in the south;
‘Padma-ling-pa, in the west;
‘Karma-ling-pa, in the north;
‘Samten-ling-pa and Nyinda-ling,
‘[And] Shig-po-ling (or Terdag-ling).
‘These Eight Great Tertons shall come;
‘Mine own incarnations alone are they.’
Padma Sambhava himself is herein represented as declaring that the Tertons, or ‘Takers-out’ of the hidden books, are to be his own incarnations. According to this account, the Terton of our own book, the Bardo Thödol, is the fifth, named after the place called Karma Land, thus confirming the Block-Print of the Bardo Thödol; and Karma Land is in the northern quarter of Tibet. We have been unable to ascertain the exact time in which this Terton lived, although he is a popular figure in the traditional history of Tibet. The name Rigzin, given to him in the Block-Print first above quoted, meaning ‘Knowledge-Holder’, refers to his character as a religious devotee or lāma; Karma ling-pa, as given in both accounts, refers also to an ancient Tibetan monastery of primitive Lāmaism in the Kams Province, northern Tibet.
According to our view, the best attitude to take touching the uncertain history and origin of the Bardo Thödol is that of a critical truth-seeker who recognizes the anthropological significance of the passing of time, and of the almost inevitable reshaping of ancient teachings handed down at first orally and then, after having crystallized, being recorded in writing. As in the case of the Egyptian Bardo Thödol, popularly known as ‘The Egyptian Book of the Dead’, so in ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’, there is, no doubt, the record of the belief of innumerable generations in a state of existence after death. No one scribe could have been its author and no one generation its creator; its history as a book, if completely known, could only be the history of its compilation and recording; and the question, Whether this compilation and recording were done within comparatively recent times, or in the time of Padma Sambhava or earlier? could not fundamentally affect the ancient teachings upon which it is based.
Although it is remarkably scientific in its essentials, there is no need to consider it as being accurate in all its details; for, undoubtedly, considerable corruption has crept into the text. In its broad outlines, however, it seems to convey a sublime truth, heretofore veiled to many students of religion, a philosophy as subtle as that of Plato, and a psychical science far in advance of that, still in its infancy, which forms the study of the Society for Psychical Research. And, as such, it deserves the serious attention of the Western World, now awakening to a New Age, freed, in large measure, from the incrustations of medievalism, and eager to garner wisdom from all the Sacred Books of mankind, be they of one Faith or of another.
XV. The Translating and the Editing
Although the translating of this manuscript was done wholly in the presence of the editor in Gangtok, Sikkim, the chief credit should be given to the late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup, the translator. The Lāma himself aptly summarized the editor’s part in the work by saying that the editor was his living English dictionary. Indeed the editor could have been little more than this, for his knowledge of Tibetan was almost as nothing.
The aim of both the translator and the editor has been to keep as closely to the sense of the text as the idiomatic structures of the Tibetan and English tongues permit. Sometimes the translator, preferring to render into English the real meaning which a lāma would derive from certain more or less technically-worded phrases, has departed from a strictly literal translation.
The Tibetan of Tantric texts, such as ours, is especially difficult to turn into good English; and owing to the terseness of many passages it has been necessary to interpolate words and phrases, which are bracketed.
In years to come, it is quite probable that our rendering—as has been the case with the pioneer translations of the Bible—may be subject to revision. A strictly literal rendering of a work so abstruse in its real meanings as this, and written in symbolical language as well, if attempted by Europeans—who, finding it difficult to get out of their Western mentality, too often are Christians first and scholars second when working with non-Christian sacred texts—would, perhaps, be as misleading as some of their renderings of the ancient Sanskrit Vedas. Even to a Tibetan, unless he be a lāma and well versed in Tantricism, as the translator was, the Bardo Thödol is almost a sealed book.
His profound lāmaic training, his fervent faith in the higher yogīc teachings of The Great Perfectionist School of Guru Padma Sambhava (he being an initiate of the semi-reformed sect known as Kargyutpa, founded by the great yogīs Marpa and Milarepa), his practical knowledge of the Occult Sciences as taught to him by his late Guru in Bhutan, and his marvellous command both of English and of Tibetan, lead me to think that rarely, if ever again in this century, is there likely to arise a scholar more competent to render the Bardo Thödol than the late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup, the actual translator. To him each reader of this book owes a debt of gratitude; for herein he has, in part, opened to the peoples of the West the treasure-house, so long tightly locked, of Tibetan Literature and Northern Buddhism.
As his close disciple for many months, I hereby formally acknowledge that debt of gratitude and respect which is ever due from the disciple to the teacher.
Though the translation was completed and revised by the translator during the year 1919, whilst he was the Head Master of the Maharaja’s Bhutia Boarding School, chiefly for Sikkimese boys of good Tibetan ancestry, near Gangtok, Sikkim (formerly a part of Tibet), it is unfortunate for us that he is not now in this world to read the printer’s proofs of it as he had hoped to do.
As to the transliterations, it may rightly be objected by philologists that they are in some instances less technically exact than they might be. The editor, however, preferring to preserve the simpler transliterations according to the old-fashioned style—to which ordinary readers are more accustomed—just as the translator dictated them to him, has left them unchanged save for the correcting of a few obvious errors which had crept in.
The editor himself cannot expect, in a book of this nature, that his own interpretations of controversial problems will meet with universal acceptance; nor can he hope to have escaped all error. He trusts, however, that critics, in recognizing the pioneer character of the work, will be prepared to concede to the editor, as to the translator, such measure of indulgence as it may perhaps seem to deserve.
A brief account of the unusual career of the translator will, no doubt, be interesting to all who read this book. The late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup—the honorific term Kazi indicating his superior social standing as a member of a landholding family of Tibetan origin settled in Sikkim—was born on the seventeenth day of June, 1868.
From December of the year 1887 and until October, 1893, as a young man whose learning the British authorities of India had already recognized, he was stationed at Buxaduar, in Bhutan, as Interpreter to the British Government. (In later years he also acted as Interpreter to the Government of Tibet.) It was at Buxaduar that he first met his guru, commonly known there as The Hermit Guru Norbu (Slob-dpon-mtshams-pa-Norbu—pronounced Lob-on-tsham-pa-Norbu), a man of vast knowledge and of strict ascetical habits of life; and from him, afterwards, received the mystic initiation.
The late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup once confided to me that at that time he had made all necessary preparations, as a shiṣḥya on probation, to renounce the world completely; but his father, then an old man, called him home and requested him to perform the usual duties of an eldest son and marry, to perpetuate the family. The son had no option, and he married; two sons and one daughter being born to him.
In the year 1906 the Maharāja of Sikkim appointed him Head Master of the Gangtok School, where, in the early part of the year 1919, I first met him, through a letter of introduction from Mr. S. W. Laden La, Sardar Bahadur, Chief of Police, Darjeeling, who is a well-known Buddhist Scholar of Tibetan ancestry. About a year later, in 1920, after our work together was finished, the Lāma was appointed Lecturer in Tibetan to the University of Calcutta; but, very unfortunately, as is usual with peoples habituated to the high Himalayan regions, he lost his health completely in the tropical climate of Calcutta, and departed from this world on the twenty-second day of March, 1922.
As records of the Lāma’s ripe scholarship, there are his English-Tibetan Dictionary, published by the University of Calcutta in 1919, and his edition of the Shrīchakrasambhāra Tantra, with English translation and Tibetan text, published by Sir John Woodroffe (pseudonym, Arthur Avalon) as volume ii of Tantrik Texts, London, 1919. In addition to these, and a few small works published by the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, the Lāma left behind him many important translations out of the Tibetan, as yet unpublished, some with the editor, others with Sir E. Denison Ross and with Major W. L. Campbell.
May this book help further to perpetuate the memory of him who revered the teachings of the Great Masters of Tibetan Wisdom and bequeathed this translation of the Bardo Thödol to the English-speaking peoples of the world.
- ↑ 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 all sincere researchers into comparative religion devoid of any religious bias ought always to be to accumulate such scientific data as will some day enable future generations of mankind to discover Truth itself—that Universal Truth in which all religions and all sects of all religions may ultimately recognize the Essence of Religion and the Catholicity of Faith.
- ↑ Mr. Talbot Mundy, in his interesting Tibetan romance Om, in making reference to this title, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, has taken it to be a very free translation of Bardo Thödol. It should not, however, so be taken; it has been adopted because it seems to be the most appropriate short title for conveying to the English reader the true character of the book as a whole.
- ↑ L. A. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet or Lāmaism (London, 1895), p. 17.
- ↑ There is some sound evidence for supposing that one source of the moral philosophy underlying certain of the Aesop’s Fables (and, also, by way of comparison, of the Indian Panchatantra and Hitopadesha) may yet be shown to have been such primitive Oriental folk-tales about animals and animal symbols as scholars now think helped to shape the Jātaka Tales concerning the various births of the Buddha (cf. The Jātaka, ed. by E. B. Cowell, Cambridge, 1895–1907). Similarly, the Christian mystery plays contain symbolism so much akin to that found in mystery plays still flourishing under ecclesiastical patronage throughout Tibet and the neighbouring territories of Northern Buddhism as to point to another stream of Orientalism having come into Europe (cf. Three Tibetan Mysteries, ed. by H. I. Woolf, London, n.d.). The apparent Romanist canonization of the Buddha, under the medieval character of St. Jehoshaphat, is an additional instance of how things Eastern seem to have become things Western (cf. Baralâm and Yĕwâsĕf, ed. by E. A. W. Budge, Cambridge, 1923). Furthermore, the once very popular medieval work De Arte Moriendi (cf. The Book of the Craft of Dying, ed. by F. M. M. Comper, London, 1917), of which there are many versions and variants in Latin, English, French, and other European languages, seems to suggest a still further infiltration of Oriental ideas, concerning death and existence after death, such as underlie both the Tibetan Bardo Thödol and the Egyptian Book of the Dead; and, in order to show this, a few of the most striking passages, found in the De Arte Moriendi cycle, which parallel textually certain parts of the Bardo Thödol, have been added in foot-notes to the Bardo Thödol translation from Mr. Comper’s excellent edition in The Book of the Craft of Dying.
Buddhist and Christian Gospels (Philadelphia, 1908), a pioneer study of the remarkable parallelism which exists between the texts of the New Testament and the texts of the Buddhist Canon, by Mr. A. J. Edmunds, suggests, likewise, that one of the most promising fields of research, as yet almost virgin, lies in a study of just such correspondences between Eastern and Western thought and literature as is suggested in this note.
- ↑ It is probably unnecessary for the editor to remind his friends who profess the Theravāda Buddhism of the Southern School that, in preparing this Introduction, his aim has necessarily been to present Buddhism chiefly from the standpoint of the Northern Buddhism of the Kargyutpa Sect (see page 79), by which the Bardo Thödol is accepted as a sacred book and to which the translator belonged. Although the Southern Buddhist may not agree with the Bardo Thödol teachings in their entirety, he will, nevertheless, be very apt to find them, in most essentials, based upon doctrines common to all Schools and Sects of Buddhism; and he may even find those of them with which he disagrees interesting and possibly provocative of a reconsideration of certain of his own antagonistic beliefs.
- ↑ Māyā, the Sanskrit equivalent of the Tibetan Gyūma (Sgyūma), means a magical or illusory show, with direct reference to the phenomena of Nature. In a higher sense, in Brāhmanism, it refers to the Shakti of Brāhman (the Supreme Spirit, the Ain Soph of Judaism).
- ↑ The Sanskrit term Sangsāra (or Saṁsāra), Tibetan Khorva (Hkhorva), refers to the phenomenal universe itself, its antithesis being Nirvāṇa (Tib. Myang-hdas), which is beyond phenomena (cf. pp. 67–8).
- ↑ As regards the esoteric meaning of the Forty-nine Days of the Bardo, compare H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (London, 1888), i. 238, 411; ii. 617, 627–8. The late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup was of opinion that, despite the adverse criticisms directed against H. P. Blavatsky’s works, there is adequate internal evidence in them of their author’s intimate acquaintance with the higher lāmaistic teachings, into which she claimed to have been initiated.
- ↑ It is held, too, that whereas from the Five Dhyānī Buddhas, as in our text, emanate the five elements—ether, or aggregate of matter (Vairochana), air, or aggregate of volition (Amogha-Siddhi), fire, or aggregate of feelings (Amitābha), water, or aggregate of consciousness (Vajra-Sattva, esoterically as a reflex of Akṣḥobhya), and earth, or aggregate of touch (Ratna-Sambhava)—from the Ādi-Buddha (from whom, according to the Ādi-Buddha School, the Five Dhyānī Buddhas themselves emanate) emanates the sixth element, which is mind (manas). Vajra-Sattva, as an esoteric deity, sometimes occupies (as does Vairochana)—according to the School and ritual—the place of the Ādi-Buddha, and is then synonymous with him.
- ↑ Manu, in The Laws (xii. 10–11), says: ‘He, whose firm understanding obtains a command over his words, a command over his thoughts, and a command over his whole body, may justly be called a Triple-Commander.
‘The man who exerts this triple self-command with respect to all animated creatures, wholly subduing both lust and wrath, shall by those means attain Beatitude.’—(Cf. trans. by Sir William Jones.)
- ↑ Sj. Atal Bihari Ghosh (see our Preface, p. x) has added here the following comment: ‘The word Dharma is derived from the verb-root Dhri, meaning ‘to Support’ or ‘to Uphold’. Dharma is that which upholds or supports the Universe, as also the individual. Dharma is in mankind Right Conduct, the result of True Knowledge. Truth according to Brāhmanism is the Brāhman, is Liberation—Moksha, Nirvāṇa. Sambhoga is the Life of Enjoyment. Nirmāṇa is the Process of Building. In the Brāhmanic scheme, Dharma is the first thing needed. Then comes Artha (i.e. Wealth, or Possessions), which corresponds with Nirmāṇa. After this comes Sambhoga; and the last is Moksha, or Liberation.’
- ↑ ‘Whatever is visible and invisible, whether Sangsāra or Nirvāṇa, is at base one [that is, Shūnyalā], with two Paths [Avidyā, Ignorance, and Vidyā, Knowledge] and two ends [Sangsāra and Nirvāṇa].’ … ‘The Foundation of all is uncreated and independent, uncompounded and beyond mind and speech. Of It neither the word Nirvāṇa nor Sangsāra may be said.’—The Good Wishes of the Ādi-Buddha, 1–2 (cf. the late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s translation, Tantrik Texts, vol. vii, London, 1919). The Shūnyatā, the Void, synonymous with the Dharma-Kāya, is thus beyond all mental concepts, beyond the finite mind with all its imaginings and use of such ultimate terms of the dualistic world as Nirvāṇa and Sangsāra.
- ↑ Cf. Waddell, op. cit., pp. 127, 347.
Ashvaghosha, the great philosopher of Mahāyāna Buddhism (see pp. 225–6), has explained the Tri-Kāya Doctrine in The Awakening of Faith, translation by T. Suzuki (Chicago, 1900, pp. 99–103), as follows:
‘Because All Tathāgatas are the Dharmakāya itself, are the highest truth (paramārthasatya) itself, and have nothing to do with conditionality (samvrittisatya) and compulsory actions; whereas the seeing, hearing, &c. [i.e. the particularizing senses], of the sentient being diversify [on its own account] the activity of the Tathāgatas.
‘Now this activity [in another word, the Dharmakāya] has a twofold aspect. The first one depends on the phenomena-particularizing-consciousness, by means of which the activity is conceived by the minds of common people (prithagjana), Crāvakas, and Pratyekabuddhas. This aspect is called the Body of Transformation (Nirmāṇakāya).
‘But as the beings of this class do not know that the Body of Transformation is merely the shadow [or reflection] of their own evolving-consciousness (pravritti-vijñāna), they imagine that it comes from some external sources, and so they give it a corporeal limitation. But the Body of Transformation [or what amounts to the same thing, the Dharmakāya] has nothing to do with limitation and measurement.
‘The second aspect [of the Dharmakāya] depends on the activity-consciousness (karma-vijñāna) by means of which the activity is conceived by the minds of Bodhisattvas while passing from their first aspiration (cittotpāda) stage up to the height of Bodhisattvahood. This is called the Body of Bliss (Sambhogakāya).…
‘The Dharmakāya can manifest itself in various corporeal forms just because it is the real essence of them’ (cf. p. 2282).
- ↑ Cf. A. Avalon, Tantrik Texts, vii (London and Calcutta, 1919), pp. 36 n., 41 n.
- ↑ Cf. V. A. Smith, Early History of India (Oxford, 1914), p. 184.
- ↑ Our reproduction, made by special permission given to the editor by Dr. L, A. Waddell, is from pl. xxi, Gazetteer of Sikhim, edited by H. H. Risley (Calcutta, 1894), section on Lamaism in Sikhim by L. A. Waddell.
- ↑ ‘Of the hundred superior deities, forty-two are supposed to be mild, and fifty-eight of an angry nature.’—L. A. Waddell.
- ↑ ‘An aboriginal or Chinese deity now identified with Avalokita, with whom he has much in common.’—L. A. Waddell.
- ↑ Our translation is based upon that made by Dr. Waddell; cf. Gazetteer of Sikhim, pp. 387–8.
- ↑ Cf. Waddell, Gazetteer of Sikhim, p. 388.
- ↑ ‘In Ceylon, death-feasts are given, to the Bhikkhus, seven days, one month, and one year after the death. These feasts are given “in the name of” the dead, to whom also the merit is offered. This, under certain circumstances, helps the dead to attain higher rebirth.’—Cassius A. Pereira.
- ↑ Cf. Waddell, Gazetteer of Sikhim, pp. 391 and 383.
- ↑ Cf. Waddell, Gazetteer of Sikhim, pp. 391 and 383.
- ↑ Cf. Ekai Kawaguchi, Three Years in Tibet (Madras, 1909), p. 394.
- ↑ The men who perform this part of the burial belong to a special caste, and, being regarded as unclean, are ordinarily shunned by other Tibetans.
- ↑ Bar-do literally means ‘between (Bar) two (do)’, i.e. ‘between two [states]’—the state between death and rebirth—and, therefore, ‘Intermediate’ or ‘Transitional [State]’. The translator, in certain instances, favoured ‘Uncertain [State]’ as its English rendering. It might also be rendered as ‘Twilight [State]’.
- ↑ Some of the more learned lāmas—chiefly of the Gelugpa, or Yellow-Hat Sect—believe that the highly symbolic visions of the one hundred and ten principal deities of the Chönyid Bardo are seen only by devotees of some spiritual advancement who have studied Tantricism; and that the ordinary person when deceased will have visions more like those described in the Sidpa Bardo.
- ↑ ‘This is borne out in the Pali Ti-Pitaka, which records several instances of high deva rebirth immediately after death on the human plane.’—Cassius A. Pereira.
- ↑ Such animal-headed deities as appear in the Bardo Thödol are, for the most part, derived from the pre-Buddhistic religion of Tibet called Bön, and, therefore, probably of very great antiquity. Like their Egyptian parallels, they seem to be more or less totemistic; and, through their impersonation by masked priests, as in the Ancient Egyptian Mysteries and surviving Tibetan mystery plays, may be—as our text also suggests—symbolic of definite attributes, passions, and propensities of sangsāric, or embodied, beings—human, sub-human, and superhuman. (See p. 1401.)
- ↑ The student is here referred to Section VII of our Addenda (pp. 238–41), concerning the Christianized version of the Judgement contained in the curious medieval treatise entitled The Lamentation of the Dying Creature.
- ↑ In my Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries (Oxford, 1911), Chapter X, I have suggested how very probable it is that the purgatorial lore which centred about the cavern for mystic pagan initiations formerly existing on an island in Loch Derg, Ireland, at what is now the famous place of Catholic pilgrimage called St. Patrick’s Purgatory, gave rise to the doctrine of Purgatory in the Roman Church. The original purgatorial cavern was demolished, by order of the English Government in Ireland, to destroy, as was said, pagan superstition.
Furthermore, the subterranean places of worship and initiation, dedicated to the Sun-God Mithras, still preserved as ancient remains throughout the Southern European countries, bear such close resemblance to the original Irish Purgatory—as to other underground places of initiation in Celtic countries like New Grange in Ireland and Gavrinis in Brittany—as to indicate a common prehistoric origin, essentially religious and connected with a cult of the Bardo-world and its inhabitants.
- ↑ Cf. The Gazetteer of Sikhim, ed. by H. H. Risley, p. 269.
- ↑ Cf. translation by E. R. J. Gooneratne, Anguttara Nikāya, Eka Duka and Tika Nipāta (Galle, Ceylon, 1913), pp. 160–5.
- ↑ William James, Varieties of Religious Experiences (New York, 1902), p. 483.
- ↑ Cf. translation by E. R. J. Gooneratne, Anguttara Nikāya, Eka Duka and Tika Nipata (Galle, Ceylon, 1913), pp. 188–9, 273–4. Passages parallel to these are contained in the Kandaraka Sūttanta and Potaliya Sūttanta of the Majjhima Nikāya (see translations by Bhikkhus Narada and Mahinda in The Blessing, Colombo, Ceylon, Jan. and Feb., 1925, vol. i, nos. 1 and 2). Buddhaghosa, in his Vissudhi Magga (i.e. ‘Path of Purity’), gives in more detail similar yogic methods for recovering (from the subconsciousness) memories of past births.
- ↑ Cf. Herodotus, ii. 123; Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, iii. 843–61. In common with ancient historians and philosophers, Herodotus (ii. 171) refuses to divulge, in a literal manner, the higher or esoteric teachings of the Mysteries of Antiquity:
‘On this lake [within the sacred precinct of the temple at Sais] the Egyptians perform by night the representation of his adventures [i.e. the symbolic adventures touching the birth, life, death, and regeneration of Osiris—‘whose name’, writes Herodotus, ‘I consider it impious to divulge’], which they call Mysteries. On these matters, however, though accurately acquainted with the particulars of them, I must [as an initiate] observe a discreet silence. So, too, with regard to the Mysteries of Demeter [celebrated at Eleusis, in Greece], which the Greeks term “The Thesmophoria”, I know them [as an initiate], but I shall not mention them, except so far as may be done without impiety [or done lawfully].’
It has now been proven by archaeological and other research that the Mysteries consisted of symbolic dramatic performances open only to initiates and neophytes fit for initiation, illustrating the universally diffused esoteric teachings concerning death and resurrection (i.e. rebirth); and that the doctrine of transmigration of the human soul into animal bodies—if depicted at all—was not intended to be taken (as it has been taken by the uninitiated) literally, but symbolically as in Plato’s Republic, detailed reference to which follows herein. (Cf. Herodotus, ii. 122.)
Herodotus in the last-mentioned passage gives a symbolic account of the descent into Hades and the return to the human world of King Rhampsinitus, in whose honour the priests of Egypt therefore instituted what was probably—when rationally interpreted—a rebirth festival. The most ancient recorded parallel now known exists in the Ṛig Veda (Maṇḍala x, Sūkta 135), wherein, as Sayana in his Commentary in the Atharva Veda (xix) seems to explain, the boy mentioned is the same as the boy Nachiketas of the [Taittirīya] Brāhmaṇa, who went to the realm of Yama, the King of the Dead, in Yama-Loka, and then returned to the realm of men. That this primeval Hades legend was interpreted esoterically as teaching a rebirth doctrine is confirmed by the ancient Katha Upanishad, the story of Nachiketas being used therein as a literary vehicle to convey the highest Vedāntic teachings concerning birth, life, and death. (Cf. Katha Upanishad, ii. 5; iii. 8, 15; iv. 10–11; vi. 18.)
Preserved in an Old Javanese MS. of the fourteenth century is a very similar Hades legend in which the Yaksha Kuñjarakarṇa is commanded by the Lord Vairôchana ‘to go to Yama’s kingdom to see what is prepared for all evil-doers’. Peculiar interest attaches to this version, because it records a doctrine—akin to that referred to by the Greek and Roman writers—of thousand-year periods of transmigration into plants, animals, and defective human beings, prior to rebirth in a human body free from karmic blemishes. It mentions, too, that from Yama’s kingdom Pûrṇavijaya was recalled to human life. (Cf. The Legend of Kuñjarakarṇa, translated from the Dutch of Prof. Kern by Miss L. A. Thomas, in the Indian Antiquary, Bombay, 1903, vol. xxxii, pp. 111–27.)
- ↑ Examination of The Laws of Manu, the authority of which is unquestioned by orthodox Hindus, seems to confirm the esoteric interpretation, following the translation by Sir William Jones as revised by G. C. Haughton (in Institutes of Hindu Law or the Ordinances of Menu, London, 1825), and that by G. Bühler (in The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv, Oxford, 1886).
Manu at first sets forth the fundamental laws that ‘Action, which springs from the mind, from speech, and from the body, produces either good or evil results; by action are caused the [various] conditions of man, the highest, the middling, and the lowest’; and that ‘[A man] obtains [the results of] a good or evil mental [act] in his mind, [that of] a verbal [act] in his speech, [that of] a bodily [act] in his body’. (Bühler’s trans., xii. 3, 8.)
Manu then proceeds to expound how man is not a simple but a complex being:
‘That substance, which gives a power of motion to the body, the wise call kshētrajna [i.e. ‘the knower of the field’—Bühler’s trans.], or jīvātman, the vital spirit; and that body, which thence derives active functions, they name bhūtātman, or composed of elements:
‘Another internal spirit, called mahat, or the great soul, attends the birth of: all creatures embodied, and thence in all mortal forms is conveyed a perception either pleasing or painful.
‘These two, the vital spirit and reasonable soul, are closely united with five elements, but connected with the supreme spirit, or divine essence, which pervades all beings high and low.’ (Jones’s trans., xii. 12–14.)
From what follows, Manu apparently implies that it is this ‘vital spirit’, or animal soul, which alone is capable of transmigrating into sub-human forms, and not ‘the reasonable soul’, or super-animal principle:
‘When the vital soul has gathered the fruit of sins, which arise from a love of sensual [i.e. animal or brutish] pleasure, but must produce misery, and, when its taint has thus been removed, it approaches again those two most effulgent essences, the intellectual soul and the divine spirit:
‘They two, closely conjoined, examine without remission the virtues and vices of that sensitive [or animal] soul, according to its union with which it acquires pleasure or pain in the present and future worlds.
‘If the vital spirit had practised virtue for the most part, and vice in a small degree, it enjoys delight in celestial abodes, clothed with a body formed of pure elementary [i.e. ethereal] particles;
‘But, if it had generally been addicted to vice, and seldom attended to virtue, then shall it be deserted by those pure elements, and, having a coarser body of sensible nerves, it feels the pains to which Yama shall doom it:
‘Having endured those torments according to the sentence of Yama, and its taint being almost removed, it again reaches those five pure elements in the order of their natural distribution.’ (Jones’s trans., xii. 18–22.)
After further exposition of the science of rebirth in its esoteric or rational aspect, Manu arrives at the following summary:
‘Thus, by indulging the sensual [i.e. animal or brutish] appetites, and by neglecting the performance of duties, the basest of men, ignorant of sacred expiations, assume [in their vital spirit form, but not in their reasonable soul form] the basest forms.
‘What particular bodies the vital spirit enters in this world, and in consequence of what sins here committed, now hear at large and in order.’ (Jones’s trans., xii. 52–3.)
Manu evidently exerts himself apart from the main subject of his treatise, as the whole of The Laws suggests, to invest with legal and divine sanction the dogma that the person of a Brāhmin is peculiarly sacred and inviolable, and so gives prominence to the sin of slaying a Brāhmin by mentioning it first; then to the sin of a priest drinking spirituous liquor, and then to the sin of stealing the gold of a priest. In all such instances, as in all which follow them, the implication is, as we have above observed, that the ‘vital spirit’, or animal soul, separated from the two higher elements of man’s complex constitution, which are ‘the reasonable soul’ and ‘the divine essence’, suffers the penalty of migrating in sub-human creatures:
‘The slayer of a Brāhmen [i.e. the vital spirit, or the irrational animal soul, of a Brāhmen-slayer] must enter, according to the circumstances of the crime, the body of a dog, a boar, an ass, a camel, a bull, a goat, a sheep, a stag, a bird, a Chandāla, or a Puccasa’; and so on for other crimes (Jones’s trans., xii. 55–7).
In this connexion, it is interesting to observe a few of the correspondences between cause and effect which other of The Laws suggest. Thus, if a man steal precious things he ‘shall be born in the tribe of goldsmiths [considered to be of very low caste], or among birds called hēmacāras, or gold-makers. If a man steal grain in the husk, he shall be born a rat; if a yellow mixed metal, a gander [which is of like mixed colour]; if water, a plava, or diver. … If he steal flesh-meat, a vulture; … if oil, a blatta, or oil-drinking beetle; … if exquisite perfumes, a musk-rat’. (Jones’s trans., xii. 61–5.)
Understanding Manu in the sense which this note aims to set forth, the esotericists disallow such popular and literal interpretation of Manu’s Laws as the Brāhmins in their own Brāhmin interests promulgate—according to the esotericists—among the common people concerning the doctrines of rebirth and karma.
The student should observe that the italicized non-Sanskrit words in the passages quoted in this note from the translation by Sir William Jones mark his interpolations from commentaries on Manu, especially from the Gloss of Culluca, and that the bracketed words indicate our own interpolations. Because the italicized interpolations tend to bring out the more obscure meanings of the passages cited, preference has been given to the Jones translation, although that by Bühler, which is more literal and therefore more technical, is, in all essentials, substantially the same.
- ↑ Cf. B. Jowett, Dialogues of Plato (Oxford, 1892), iii. 336–7: Republic, x. 614–20.
- ↑ Inscr. gr. Sicil. et Ital. 641; cf. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet, p. 1092.
- ↑ Theravādists, on the contrary, believe that the Jātaka dates from the Buddha’s lifetime, and that its verses, but not its prose, are His very words.
- ↑ Here, again, in opposition to this view, the Southern Buddhists maintain that the Jātaka, in its verses, is the most transcendental part of the Sūtta Pitika, and is designed for study by Bodhisattvas rather than for the common people.
- ↑ See Gazetteer of Sikhim, ed. by H. H. Risley, p. 266.
- ↑ See Gazetteer of Sikhim, ed. by H. H. Risley, p. 267.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 268.
- ↑ Compare the following passage from the Yoga Vāshiṣḥṭha (Nirvāṇa Prekaraṇa, Sarga 28, verses 78–9): ‘Those wise Pandits, learned in the Shāstras, should be considered Jackals if they relinquish not desire and anger.’
- ↑ E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (London, 1891), ii. 17.
- ↑ Cf. Caesar, De B. G. vi. 14.5; 18. 1; Diodorus Siculus, v. 31. 4; Pomponius Mela, De Situ Orbis, iii, c. 2; Lucan, Pharsalia, i. 449–62; Barddas (Llandovery, 1862), i. 177, 189–91; and W. Y. Evans-Wentz, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries (Oxford 1911), Chaps. VII, XII.
- ↑ T. H. Huxley, Evolution and Ethics (London, 1894), pp. 61–2, 95.
The late William James, the well-known American psychologist, independently arrived at substantially the same conclusion as Huxley; for, after explaining his ‘own inability to accept either popular Christianity or scholastic theism’, he says, ‘I am ignorant of Buddhism and speak under correction, and merely in order the better to describe my general point of view; but, as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of Karma, I agree in principle with that’.—(The Varieties of Religious Experiences, pp. 521–2.)
- ↑ Could we take the lāmaic conception of a universe to be that of a world-system, and of a plurality of universes to be that of a plurality of world-systems forming a universe, we should then be able better to correlate the cosmography of Northern Buddhism (and of Brahmanism, from which it appears to have originated) with the cosmography of Western Science.
- ↑ Cf. Gazetteer of Sikhim, pp. 320–3.
- ↑ Cf. ibid., p. 322.
- ↑ Udāna, viii. 1, 4, 3; based on a translation from the original Pali by Mr. Francis J. Payne, London, England.
- ↑ These Block-Prints are usually composed of separate treatises belonging to the Bardo Thödol cycle. One of such Block-Prints—which was purchased in Gyantse, Tibet, during the year 1919, by Major W. L. Campbell, then the British Political Representative in Tibet, Bhutan, and Sikkim, and presented to the editor—contains seventeen treatises, whose Tibetan titles have been rendered, in slightly abbreviated form, by the translator, as follows:
1. ‘The Clear Directions on The Divine Bardo, called “The Great Liberation by Hearing”, from “The Profound Doctrine of the Divine Peaceful and [Wrathful] Self-Liberation”’;
2. ‘The Exposition of the Wrathful [or Active] Aspect of the Bardo’;
3. ‘The Good Wishes [or Prayers] Invoking the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas for Assistance’;
4. ‘The Root Verses of the Bardo’;
5. ‘The Prayer to Rescue [One] from the Narrow Places of the Bardo’;
6. ‘The Setting-Face-to Face of the Sidpa-Bardo’;
7. ‘The Salvation by Attaching [whereby] the Body Aggregate is Self-Liberated’—a version of the Tadhol Doctrine—(see pp. 1361, 1523, 194 of our text);
8. ‘The Prayer to Protect [One] from the Fears in the Bardo’;
9. ‘The Self-Liberating Diagnosis of the Symptoms of Death’—(cf. pp. 86, 89–97 of our text);
10. ‘The Setting-Face-to-Face called “The Naked Vision”, and the Self-Liberation [by that]’;
11. ‘The Special Teaching showing the Forms of Merit or Demerit, while in the Sidpa Bardo, called “The Self-Liberating in the Sidpa-Bardo”’;
12. ‘The Addenda [to the above, “The Special Teaching”]’;
13. ‘Prayer to the Line [of Gurus] of the Divine Self-Liberating Doctrine’;
14. ‘The Ransoming of the Dying’;
15. ‘Self-Liberation called “Absolution by Confession”’;
16. ‘The Best Wish-Granting Tadhol’—another form of the Tadhol Doctrine;
17. ‘The Ritual called “The Self-Liberation from Habitual Propensities”’.
Herein, the treatises numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 correspond—in slightly different versions—to the matter contained in our manuscript. The manuscript, moreover, contains much matter in the Appendix not contained in this Block-Print. The Block-Print itself is quite new, but the blocks from which it was printed may be quite old—how old, we have been unable to ascertain.
- ↑ Rig-hdzin, a translation into Tibetan of the Sanskrit term Vidyā-Dhara, used, as herein, of a learned person, such as a pandit, also denotes a class of supernatural beings like certain orders of fairies.