In the Lower World, at the bottom of the painting, typical punish- ments in various Hells are depicted, none of which, however, are everlasting. On the left, in the upper corner, where two sinners are immersed in a glacial region, the Eight Cold Hells are suggested. Near the edge of the painting, on the opposite side, a sinner amidst flames suggests the Eight Hot Hells. The commission of any of the ten impious acts, deliberately and from selfish motives, leads to pur- gation in the Cold Hells; any of the same acts done through anger lead to purgation in the Hot Hells.
Just below the Cold Hells is the Hell of the ‘Spiked Tree’ or ‘ Hill of Spikes’ (Tib. Shal-ma-i), in which an evil-doer has been quartered and affixed to the spikes. Beside it, in charge of a hell-fury, is ‘The Doorless Iron House’ (Tib. Lehags-khang-sgo-med). Next to this there are four /amas held under the mountainous weight of an enormous Tibetan sacred book; they are being punished thus for having in their earth-life hurried through and skipped passages when reading religious texts. The triangle, in which an evil-doer is fixed, symbolizes the terrible Avitchi Hell, wherein one guilty of a heinous sin, such as using sorcery to destroy enemies or deliberate failure to fulfil Tantric vows, endures punishment for ages which are almost immeasurable. Close to the triangle, a hell-fury is pouring spoonfuls of molten metal into a woman condemned for prostitution. The person ‘next to her, bowed under the weight of a heavy rock tied to his back, is being punished in that manner for having killed small living creatures like vermin or other insects. The sinner whom a hell-fury is holding stretched out on a floor of spiked iron while another hell-fury is preparing to hack him to pieces (cf. p. 166) has been found guilty of another of the ten impious acts. So also has been the woman who is about to be sawn in two lengthwise ; her sin has been murder. As in Dante’s Jnferno, other evil-doers, incapable, as our text explains, of succumbing to the process (cf. p. 166), are being cooked in the iron cauldron at the lower right-hand corner. Three hell-furies (one brown, one yellow, one blue in the original) are to be seen holding by the end of nooses and leading and dragging along (cf. p. 166) to appropriate punishments three of the dead who have just been cast into Hell.
At the top of the picture, in the centre, on an enhaloed lotus and lunar throne, with the moon (white) at his right and the sun (gold) at his left, presiding over all, is Dorje Chang (blue), the Divine Guru of the Red-Hat School ot Padma Sambhava; for he is held to be the Ever-living and Spiritual Source whence continue to emanate, as in the days of the Buddha Shakya Muni, all the Esoteric Doctrines
ILLUSTRATIONS xxiii
underlying the Bardo Thédol, which are referred to on pages 133 to 134 of our translation.
Ems Lens
1. THE INDIAN WHEEL OF THE LAW (Dharma-Chakra) on back of book
From designs sculptured on the Sanchi Topes, dating from about 500 B.C. to 100 A. D.
2. THE LAMAICCROSSED DORJE ._._ on front cover of book
Symbolical of equilibrium, immutability, and almighty power. (Cf. pp. 63, 1161.)
3. THE TIBETAN WHEEL OF THE LAW (Ch’os-’k’or-bskor) sacing p. 119 The Eight-Spoked Wheel (cf. p. 106), on a lotus throne and enhaloed by Flames of Wisdom, is representative of the Thousand- Spoked Wheel of the Good Law of the Buddha, symbol of the symmetry and completeness of the Sacred Law of the Dharma, or Scriptures. The design at the centre, called in Tibetan rgyan-’k’yil, composed of three whirling segments, symbolizes—as does the svastika at the centre of the Indian Wheel of the Law—the Sangsara, or ceaseless change or ‘becoming’.
4. THE DORJE, THE LAMAIC SCEPTRE . . facing p. 137
A type of the Thunderbolt of Indra, the Indian Jupiter, used in most /amaic rituals (cf. pp. 10, 108%, 137-8, 142-5), symbolical of dominion over sangsaric (or worldly) existence.
1 It should be noted that each of the dead possesses a body suited to the paradise realm or hell-world in which karma brings about birth ; and that when any of the after-human-death states of existence ends there is again a death process and a casting off of a body (cf. pp. 155-8, and Book II passim). The Bardo is the intermediate state whence one may be reborn in this world in a human body, or in the ghost-world in a ghost body, or in one of the paradise realms, such as the deva-loka, in a god body, or in the asura-loka in an asura body, or in one of the hells in a body capable of enduring suffering and incapable of dying there until the purgation is complete. Following death in a hell, or in any other of the after-human-death states, the normal process is to be reborn on earth as a human being. The True Goal, as the Bardo Thédol repeatedly explains, is beyond all states of embodiment, beyond all hells, worlds, and heavens, beyond the Sangsdra, beyond Nature; it is called Nirvana (Tib. Myang-hdas), See Addenda, V, pp. 224-32.
XXiv EMBLEMS 5. THE MANTRA OF CHENRAZEE (Avalokiteshvara) facing p. 167 In Ranja or Lantsa Indian characters of about the seventh century A.D. Lantsa characters, slightly modified, are used in Tibetan manu- scripts, commonly on title-pages. In Tibetan characters the sacred 9. a NO Mantra is WANA % which means literally: ‘Om! The Jewel in
the Lotus! Him!’ (Cf. pp. 134’, 149', 206.)
PORE WO KD BY SIR JOHN WooDROFFE
The Science of Death!
‘Strive after the Good before thou art in danger, before pain masters thee and thy mind loses its keenness,’—Kularnava Tantra, I. 27.
THE thought of death suggests two questions. The first is: ‘How may one avoid death, except when death is desired as in “ Death-at-will” (/chchhamrityu)?’ The avoidance of death is the aim when Hazhayoga is used to prolong present life in the flesh. This is not, in the Western sense, a ‘ yea- saying’ to ‘life’, but, for the time being, to a particular form of life. Dr. Evans-Wentz tells us that according to popular Tibetan belief no death is natural. This is the notion of most, if not of all, primitive peoples. Moreover, physiology also questions whether there is any ‘natural death’, in the sense of death through mere age without lesion or malady. This Text, however, in the language of the renouncer of fleshly life the world over, tells the nobly-born that Death comes to all, that human kind are not to cling to life on earth with its ceaseless wandering in the Worlds of birth and death (Sangsara). Rather should they implore the aid of the Divine Mother for a safe passing through the fearful state following the body’s dissolution, and that they may at length attain all- perfect Buddhahood.
The second question then is: ‘ How to accept Death and die?’ It is with this that we are now concerned. Here the technique of dying makes Death the entrance to good future lives, at first out of, and then again in, the flesh, unless and until liberation (Vzrvaza) from the wandering (Saxgséra) is attained.
1 As to the title of this Foreword, ‘The Science of Death’, see Thanatology, by Dr. Roswell Parks, in The Journal of the American Medical Association April 27, 1912.
Xxvi FOREWORD
This Book, which is of extraordinary interest, both as regards Text and Introduction, deals with the period (longer or shorter according to the circumstances) which, commenc- ing immediately after death, ends with ‘rebirth’. In the Buddhists’ view, Life consists of a series of successive states of consciousness. The first state is the Birth-Consciousness ; the last is the consciousness existing at the moment of death, or the Death-Consciousness. The interval between the two states of Consciousness, during which the transformation from the ‘old’ to a ‘new’ being is effected, is called the Bardo or intermediate state (Antarabhava), divided into three stages, called the Chikhat, Choinyid, and Sidpa Bardo respectively.
This Manual, common in various versions throughout Tibet, is one of a class amongst which Dr. Evans-Wentz includes the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a guide for the use of the Ka or so-called ‘Double’, the De Arte Moriendit and other similar medieval treatises on the craft of dying, to which may be added the Orphic Manual called The Descent into Hades (cf. ‘He descended into Hell’) and other like guide-books for the use of the dead, the Pretakhanda of the Hindu Garuda Purana, Swedenborg’s De Coelo et de Inferno, Rusca’s De Inferno, and several other eschatological works both ancient and modern. Thus, the Garuda Purana deals with the rites used over the dying, the death-moment, the funeral cere- monies, the building up, by means of the Pretashraddha rite, of a new body for the Pre¢a or deceased in lieu of that destroyed by fire, the Judgement, and thereafter (ch. V) the various states through which the deceased passes until he is reborn again on earth.
Both the original text and Dr. Evans-Wentz’s Introduction form a very valuable contribution to the Science of Death from the standpoint of the Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism of the so-called ‘Tantrik’ type. The book is welcome not merely in virtue of its particular subject-matter, but because the ritual works of any religion enable us more fully to com- prehend the philosophy and psychology of the system to which they belong.
The Text has three characteristics. It is, firstly, a work on
REINCARNATION v. RESURRECTION xxvii
the Art of Dying ; for Death, as well as Life, is an Art, though both are often enough muddled through. There is a Bengali saying, ‘Of what use are Fafa and Tapas (two forms of devotion) if one knoweth not how to die?’ Secondly, it is a manual of religious therapcutic for the last moments, and a psychurgy exorcising, instructing, consoling, and fortifying by the rites of the dying, him who is about to pass on to another life. Thirdly, it describes the experiences of the deceased during the intermediate period, and instructs him in regard thereto. It is thus also a Traveller’s Guide to Other Worlds.
The doctrine of ‘Reincarnation’ on the one hand and of ‘Resurrection’ on the other is the chief difference between the four leading Religions—Brahmanism, Buddhism, Chris- tianity, and Islam. Christianity, in its orthodox form, rejects the most ancient and widespread belief of the Kziklos genesedn, or Sangsara, or ‘Reincarnation’, and admits one universe only—this, the first and last—and two lives, one here in the natural body and one hereafter in the body of Resurrection.
It has been succinctly said that as Metempsychosis makes the same soul, so Resurrection makes the same body serve for more than one Life. But the latter doctrine limits man’s lives to two in number, of which the first or present determines for ever the character of the second or future.
Brahmanism and Buddhism would accept the doctrine that ‘as a tree falls so shall it lie’, but they deny that it so lies for ever. To the adherents of these two kindred beliefs this present universe is not the first and last. It is but one of an infinite series, without absolute beginning or end, though each universe of the serics appears and disappears. They also teach a series of successive existences therein until morality, devotion, and knowledge produce that high form of detach- ment which is the cause of Liberation from the cycle of birth and death called ‘The Wandering’ (or Sangsara). Freedom is the attainment of the Supreme State called the Void, Nirvana, and by other names. They deny that there is only one universe, with one life for each of its human units, and then a division of men for all eternity into those who are saved in Heaven or are in Limbo and those who are lost in
xXviii FOREWORD
Hell. Whilst they agree in holding that there is a suitable body for enjoyment or suffering in Heaven and Hell, it is not a resurrected body, for the fleshly body on death is dissolved for ever.