a sadly corrupt form in their books—a fact which suggests that the Tibetans feel little appreciation of the supposed sound- value of Mantras. But whether their theory on this subject is the same in all respects as that of the Hindus I cannot say.! The Hindu theory, which I have elsewhere endeavoured to elucidate (cf. Garland of Letters), is still on several points obscure; the subject being perhaps the most difficult of any in Hinduism. Even though Tibetan Buddhism may have Mantra-Sadhané, the presentment of it is likely to differ as much as does the general substance of these two Faiths. About the fifteenth day, passage is made into the Third Bardo, in which the deceased, if not previously liberated, seeks ‘Rebirth’. His past life has now become dim. That of the future is indicated by certain premonitory signs which represent the first movements of desire towards fulfilment. The ‘ soul-complex’ takes on the colour of the Zoka in which it is destined to be born. If the deceased’s Karma leads him to Hell, thither he goes after the Judgement, in a subtle body which cannot be injured or destroyed, but in which he may suffer atrocious pain. Or he may go to the Heaven-world or other Zoka, to return at length and in all cases (for neither punishment nor reward are eternal) to earth, whereon only can new Karma be made. Such return takes place after expiation of his sins in Hell, or the expiration of the term of enjoyment in Heaven which his Karma has gained for him. If, however, the lot of the deceased is immediate rebirth on earth, he sees visions of mating men and women. He, at this final stage towards the awakening to earth-life, now knows that he has not a gross
1 Just as the Tibetans took over Zantricism from India, so, as the well-known Tibetan Biography of Jetstin Milarepa (Tibet’s most famous Yogt and Saint), for example, makes clear, they appear also to have derived various systems of Yoga from India, including Laya or Kuudalint Yoga. While it is undoubtedly true that many Mantras likewise derived from India have grown hopelessly corrupt in the Tibetan language itself, the practice of Laya or Kundalint Yoga by Tibetans seems to have been kept fairly pure, largely through oral trans- mission from guru to guru vather than through written records, except for Tibetanized terminologies and methods of application. Certain Tibetan treatises on Yoga which the editor possesses, both in the original and in English transla- tion, suggest this, -W. Y. E-W.
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body of flesh and blood. He urgently desires to have one, in order that he may again enjoy physical life on the earth- world.
The Freudian psycho-analyst will find herein a remarkable passage supporting his doctrine of the aversion of the son for the father. The passage says that, if the deceased is to be born as a male, the fecling of its being a male comes upon the knower, and a feeling of intense aversion for the father and attraction for the mother is begotten, and vice versa as regards birth as a female. This is, however, an old Buddhist doctrine found elsewhere. Pro- fessor De la Vallée Poussin cites the following passage: ‘L’esprit troublé par désir d’amour, il va au lieu de sa destingée. Méme trés éloigné, il voit, par Poeil né de la force de l’acte, le lieu de sa naissance; voyant la son pere et sa mere unis, il concgoit désir pour la mére quand il est mile, désir pour le pére quand il est femelle, et, inversement, haine’ (Bouddhisme: Etudes et Matériaux, Abhidharmakosha, iii. 15, p. 25). The work cited also contains other interesting details concerning the embryo. (Sce, too, the same author's La Théorie de douze causes.)
At length the deceased passes out of the Bardo dream- world into a womb of flesh and blood, issuing thence once more into the waking state of carth-experience. This is what in English is called Re-incarnation, or Re-birth in the flesh. The Sanskrit term is Sangsdra, that is, ‘rising and rising again’ (Punarutpatti) in the worlds of birth and death. Nothing is permanent, but all is transitory. In life, the ‘soul-complex’ is never for two consecutive moments the same, but is, like the body, in constant change. ‘There is thus a serics (Sazténa) of successive, and, in one sense, different states, which are in themselves but momentary. There is still a unifying bond in that each momentary state is a present transformation representative of all those which are past, as it will be the generator of all future transformations potentially involved in it.
This process is not interrupted by death. Change continucs in the Skandhas (or constituents of the organism) other than
CONTINUITY OF TRANSFORMATION xi
the gross body which has been cast off and which undergoes changes of itsown. But there is this difference: the after-death change is merely the result of the action of accumulated past Karma and does not, as in earthly life, create new Karma, for which a physical body is necessary. (Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity are in agreement in holding that man’s destiny is decided on Earth, though the last differs from the first two, as explained above, on the question whether there is more than one life on Earth.) There is no breach (Uchchheda) of consciousness, but a continuity of transformation. The Death-Consciousness is the starting-point, followed by the other states of consciousness already described. Karma at length generates a fully-formed desire or mental action. This last is followed by the consciousness taking up its abode in a suitable matrix, whence it is born again as a Birth- Consciousness. What is so born is not altogether different from what has gone before, because it is the present trans- formation of it; and has no other independent existence. There are thus successive births of (to use Professor de la Vallée Poussin’s term) a ‘fluid soul-complex’, because the series of psychic states continues at intervals of time to enter the physical womb of living beings. It has been said by the authority cited (Way to Nirvana, p. 85) that the birth-consciousness of a new celestial or infernal being makes for itself and by itself, out of unorganized matter, the body it is to inhabit. Therefore the birth of such beings will follow immediately after the death of the being which is to be reborn as an infernal or celestial being. But the case is said to be different, as a rule, where there is to be ‘reincarnation’, that is ‘rebirth’ in the flesh. Conception and birth then presuppose physical circumstances that may not be realized at the moment of the death of the being to be ‘re-incarnated’. In these cases and others it is alleged that the dying consciousness cannot be continued at once into the birth-consciousness of a new being. The Professor says that this difficulty is solved by those Schools which, maintaining the intermediary existence (Antardbhava), hold that the dying consciousness is continued into a short-lived
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being called Gandharva, which lasts for seven days, or seven times seven days (cf. the forty-nine days of the Bardo). This Gandharva creates, with the help of the conceptional elements, an embryo as soon as it can find opportunity. This doctrine, if it has been rightly understood, is apparently another and cruder version of the Bardo doctrine. There cannot, in any philosophic view of the doctrine of Karma, be any ‘hold up’ of what is a continuous life-process. Such process does not consist of independent sections waiting upon one another. And so a ‘soul-complex’ cannot be ready to reincarnate before the circumstances are fit for it. The law which deter- mines that a being shall incarnate is the same as that which provides the means and conditions by, and under, which the incarnation is to take place. Nor is the body of the infernal or celestial being gross mattcr. This is clear from the present Tet.
Dr. Evans-Wentz raises again the debated question of the transmigration of human ‘souls’ into sub-human bodies, a process which this Text, exoterically viewed, seems to assume, and which is, as he points out, the general Hindu and Buddhist belief. It seems to be an irrational, though it may be a popular, belicf that a human ‘soul’ can per- manently inhabit a sub-human body as its own. For the body cannot exist in such disagreement with its occupant. The right doctrine appears to be that, as man has evolved through the lowest forms of being (Hinduism speaks of 8,400,000 graded kinds of births culminating in man),' so by misconduct and neglect to use the opportunity of manhood there can, equally, be a descent along the ‘downward path’ to the same low forms of being from which humanity has, with difficulty, emerged. The Sanskrit term Durlabham, meaning ‘difficult to get’, refers to this difficulty of securing human birth. But such descent involves (as Dr. Evans-Wentz says) the loss of the human nature and the enormous lengths of time of a creation epoch.
If the series (Santana) of conscious states are determined
1 As plants, aquatic animals, reptiles, birds, quadrupeds, simian forms, and man. See Brihad Vishnu Purana.
WORKINGS OF KARMA xliii
by the past Karma, it may be asked how that liberty of choice exists which the whole Text assumes by its injunctions to the deceased to do this or to avoid that. No doubt even in one individual there are diverse tendencies (Sangskara). But the question still remains. If the Karma ready to ripen determines the action, then advice to the accused is useless. If the ‘soul’ is free to choose, there is no determination by Karma. Hinduism holds that, notwithstanding the influence of Karma, the Atma is essentially free. Here the answer appears to be twofold. Apart from what is next stated, the instructions given may, by their suggestions, call up that one of several latent tendencies which tends towards the action counselled. Further, this system allows that one ‘soul’ can help another. And so there are prayers for, and application of merits to, the deceased, just as we find in Hinduism the Pretashradddha, in Catholicism the Reguiem Mass, and in Islam the Moslem’s Fatiza. In this and other matters one mind can, it is alleged, influence another otherwise than through the ordinary sense channels whether before or after death. There is also a tendency to overlook collective Karma and its effects. An individual is not only affected by his own Karma, but by that of the community to which he belongs. A wider question arises as to the meaning of the Re-incarnation Doctrine itself, but this is not the place to discuss it.
There are many other points of interest in this remarkable Book, but I must now stop and let the reader discover them for himself. I would like, however, to add a word as to the manner of its making. The Text has been fortunate in finding as its editor Dr. Evans-Wentz, whose knowledge of, and sympathy with, his subject has enabled him to give us a very comprehensible account of it. He, in his turn, was fortunate in his teacher, the translator, the late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup (Tib. Zla-va-bsam-hgrub), who, when I first met him, was Chief Interpreter on the staff of His Excellency Lonchen Satra, the Tibetan Plenipotentiary to the Government of India. He was also attached to the Political Staff of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the latter’s visit to India. At the time of
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his premature and greatly regretted death Lama Kazi Dawa- Samdup was Lecturer in Tibetan to the University of Calcutta. These, and the other appointments which the translator held, and to which Dr. Evans-Wentz has referred, sufficiently establish his high competency both in Tibetan and English. He had also, I may add, some knowledge of Sanskrit, which I found of much use in discussing with him the meaning of terms used in Tibetan-Buddhist doctrine and ritual. I can, then, speak personally of his attainments, for I saw a good deal of him when he was preparing for me a translation of the Tibetan Shrichakrasambhara Tantra, which I have published as the seventh volume of the series of Tanirik Texts (Luzac & Co.). I can, likewise, from my own knowledge, associate myself with what Dr. Evans-Wentz has said as to this remarkable man. May their joint work have the success it deserves, and so encourage Dr. Evans- Wentz to publish some at least of the other Texts which he tells me he has in store. JOHN WOODROFFE.
Oxrorp, October 3, 1925.
ik ODpUCTION+
‘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 Thodol
AS a contribution to the science of death and of the existence after death, and of rebirth, The Tibetan Book of the Dead,