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

The son had no option, and he married; two sons and one daughter being born to him.

In the year 1906 the Maharaja 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 Lama 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 Lama’s ripe scholarship, there are his English-Tibetan Dictionary, published by the University of Calcutta in 1919, and his edition of the Shrichakrasambhara hip TRANSLATING AND EDITING 81

Tantra, with English translation and Tibetan text, published by Sir John Woodroffe (pseudonym, Arthur Avalon) as volume ii of Zantrik Texts, London, 1919. In addition to these, and a few small works published by the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, the Lama left behind him many important translations out of the Tibetan, as yet unpublished, some with the editor, others with Sir E. Denison Ross and with Major W. L. Campbell.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 Thodol to the English-speaking peoples of the world.

3069 M

‘The Dharma-Kaya of thine own mind thou shalt see; and seeing That, thou shalt have seen the All—The Vision Infinite, the Round of Death and Birth and the State of Freedom.’—Milarepa.

Jetstin Kahbum, xii (Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s Translation. )

[BOre kK 1}

(Eee a7 LBARDO MAND THE
CHONYID BARDO|\

HERBIN LIETH THE SETTING-PACE-TO-FPACE HO. THE REALITY “IN THE “INTERMEDIATE SPATE: THE GREAT DELIVERANCE BY HEAR- ING WHILE ON THE AFTER-DEATH PLANE, FROM ‘THE PROFOUND DOCTRINE OF THE EMAN- CIPATING OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS BY MEDITAo1GON UPON THE PEACEFUL AND WRATHFUL WEITIES’*

1 Text: ZAB-CHOS ZHI-KHRO DGONGS-PA RANG-GROL LAS BAR-DOHI THOS-GROL CHEN-MO CHOS-NYID BAR-DOHI NGO- SPROD BZHUGS-SO (pronounced: ZAB-CHO SHI-HTO GONG-PA RANG-DOL LAY BAR-DOI THO-DOL CHEN-MO CHO-NYID BAR- DOI NGO-TOD ZHU-SO).

DEATH’S MESSENGERS

*Atx they who thoughtless are, nor heed,
What time Death’s messengers appear,
Must long the pangs of suffering feel
In some base body habiting.

But all those good and holy men,
What time they see Death’s messengers,
Behave not thoughtless, but give heed
To what the Noble Doctrine says;
And in attachment frighted see

But all those good and holy men,
What time they see Death’s messengers,
Behave not thoughtless, but give heed
To what the Noble Doctrine says;
And in attachment frighted see

Of birth and death the fertile source,
And from attachment free themselves,
Thus birth and death extinguishing.
Secure and happy ones are they,
Released from all this fleeting show;
Exempted from all sin and fear,

All misery have they overcome.’

Anguttara-Nikaya, iii. 35° (Warren's Translation),

BOOK 1] INFKODUCTORY SECTIONS 85

[THE OBEISANCES]

To the Divine Body of Truth,! the Incomprehensible, Boundless Light ;

To the Divine Body of Perfect Endowment,? Who are the Lotus and the Peaceful and the Wrathful Deities ; 3

To the Lotus-born Incarnation, Padma Sambhava,* Who is the Protector of all sentient beings ;

To the Gurus, the Three Bodies,’ obeisance.

[THE INTRODUCTION]

This Great Doctrine of Liberation by Hearing, which conferreth spiritual freedom on devotees of ordinary wit while in the Intermediate State, hath three divisions: the preliminaries, the subject-matter, and the conclusion.

At first, the preliminaries, Te Guide Series,’ for emancipating beings, should be mastered by practice.

[THE TRANSFERENCE OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS-PRINCIPLE7™]

By The Guide, the highest intellects ought most certainly to be liberated ; but should they not be liberated, then while

1,2 See pp. 10-15.

5 ‘These Deities are in ourselves. They are not something apart from us. We are one with all that is, in every state of sentient existence, from the lowest worlds of suffering to the highest states of bliss and Perfect Fnlightenment. In this esoteric sense, the Lotus Order of Deities represent the deified principles of the vocal functions in ourselves; the Peaceful represent the deified principles of the heart or functions of feeling; the Wrathful represent, in the same way, the functions of our mentality—such as thinking or reasoning, and imagination or memory—centred in the brain.—-Lama Kazi Dawa Samdup. See p. 1311.

4 Padma Sambhava (Tib, Pédma Jungné), i.e. ‘The Lotus-Born’, referring to birth under pure, or holy, conditions, commonly called by the Tibetans Guru Rin-po-ch’e (‘The Precious Guru’), or simply Guru (the Sanskrit for ‘Teacher’), is regarded by his followers as an incarnation of the essence of the Buddha Shakya Muni in its Tantric, or deeply esoteric, aspect.

5 See pp. Io-15.

6 ‘ The Guide Series’ refers to various treatises offering practical guidance to devotees on the Bodhi Path through the human world and thence through Bardo, the After-Death State, and onward to rebirth or else to Nirvana.

7 The Text contains merely the Tibetan word Hpho (pron. Pho), meaning

86 TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD [BooK!

in the Intermediate State of the Moments of Death they should practise the Transference, which giveth automatic liberation by one’s merely remembering it.

in the Intermediate State of the Moments of Death they should practise the Transference, which giveth automatic liberation by one’s merely remembering it.

7 The Text contains merely the Tibetan word Hpho (pron. Pho), meaning

86 TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD [BooK!

Devotees of ordinary wit ought most certainly to be freed thereby; but should they not be freed, then, while in the Intermediate State [during the experiencing] of Reality, they should persevere in the listening to this Great Doctrine of Liberation by Hearing.

Accordingly, the devotee should at first examine the symptoms of death as they gradually appear [in his dying body], following Self-Liberation [by Observing the| Characteristics [of the| Symptoms of Death.’ Then, when all the symptoms of death are complete [he should] apply the Transference, which conferreth liberation by mercly remembering [the process ].’

‘transference’ (of the sum-total, or aggregate, of karmic propensities, composing, or bound up with, personality and consciousness). The use of the term ‘soul’ being objectionable, since Buddhism, as a whole, denies the existence of a permanent, unchanging personal-consciousness entity such as the Semitic Faiths and animistic creeds in general understand thereby, the translator has avoided using it. But wherever any similar or equivalent term occurs herein it should be taken to imply something akin to ‘consciousness-principle’ or ‘compound of consciousness’ as implied by the Tibetan Hpho, or else as synonymous with the term ‘life-flux’ as used chiefly by Southern Buddhists.

1 A Tibetan work of the Bardo cycle, commonly used by /a4mas as supplementary to the Bardo Thédol (see part 9 of Note 1, p. 71). It treats of the symptoms of death in particular, scientifically and in very great detail. The late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup had planned its translation into English.