The Tibetan Book of the Dead — ed. W. Y. Evans-Wentz

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 Thddol 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 hisp. 53 journey to another life and return to this, instead of being rough and underground, would be smooth and heavenly.’!

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.’ ? 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 Vizaya Pitaka or Dulva (the most trustworthy and probably oldest part of the Bkah-hgyur), III, folio 452° of the copy in the East India Office, Calcutta, runs thus :

This latter from the Tibetan Vizaya
Pitaka or Dulva (the most trustworthy and probably oldest
part of the Bkah-hgyur), III, folio 452° 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 Mahamaya 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 orangecoloured robe, leave his home for the homeless state and

1 Cf, B. Jowett, Dialogues of Plato (Oxford, 1892), iii. 336-7: Republic, x. 614-20. 3 Inscr. gr. Sictl. et Ital. 641; cf. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet, p. 109°.

B4 INTRODUCTION

renounce the world, he will become a Tathagata, Arhant, a perfectly enlightened Buddha.”’

Again, the ¥a¢aka,—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 \—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 Theravadist interprets all of them literally.

In any case, a literal interpretation of the fataka—seeing that it is, according to the esotericist, essentially an exoteric treatise designed for the people 7—appears to be more plausible than that of the Du/va 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 ¥ataka, so it may have also affected the compilation of the Bardo Thédol; for like all treatises which have had at lIcast a germ-origin in very ancient times and then grown up by the ordinary process of amalgamating congenial material, the Bardo Thédol, 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

1 Theravadists, on the contrary, believe that the Ja/aka dates from the Buddhia’s lifetime, and that its verses, but not its prose, are His very words.

2 Here, again, in opposition to this view, the Southern Buddhists maintain that the Jdtaka, in its verses, is the most transcendental part of the Sita Pitika, and is designed for study by Bodhisattvas rather than for the common people.

p. 55

no doubt it had lost something of its primitive purity. By its very nature and religious usage, the Bardo Thidol 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 Dhyani 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 Horsethrone with Ratna-Sambhava, the Peacock-throne with Amitabha, 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-Kaya 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 Szdpa Bardo—and this interpretation finds its parallel in the esoteric interpretation obviously intended by the Szdpa 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.