The Uncreated, the Unshaped, the Unmodified is the Dharma-Kaya. The Offspring, the Modification of the Un- modified, the manifestation of all perfect attributes in one body, is the Sambhoga-Kaya: ‘The embodiment of all that is wise, merciful and loving in the Dharma-Kaya— as clouds on the surface of the heavens or a rainbow on the surface of the clouds—is said to be Sambhoga-Kaya’. The condensation and differentiation of the One Body as many is the Mirmana-Kdaya, or the Divine Incarnations among sentient beings, that is to say, among beings im- mersed in the Illusion called Sangsa@ra, 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 Nirmana-K aya incarnates.
With the Dharma-Kaya Tantric Buddhism associates the Primordial Buddha Samanta-Bhadra (Tib. K tin-tu-bzang-po— pron. AKvin-tu-zang-po), Who is without Beginning or End, the
has explained the 777-Kaya Doctrine in The Awakening of Faith, translation by T. Suzuki (Chicago, 1900, pp. 99-103), as follows :
‘Because All Tathagatas are the Dharmakaya itself, are the highest truth (paramarthasatya) itself, and have nothing to do with conditionality (samuritts- satya) and compulsory actions; whereas the secing, hearing, &c. [i.e. the particularizing scnses], of the sentient being diversify [on its own account] the activity of the Tathagatas.
‘Now this activity [in another word, the Dharmakdaya] 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), Cravakas, and Pratyekabuddhas. This aspect is called the Body of Transformation (Virmanakdaya).
‘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-vijndna), 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 Dharmakaya| has nothing to do with limitation and measurement.
‘The second aspect (of the Dharmahkaya] depends on the activity-consciousness (karma-vijiiana) by means of which the activity is conceived by the minds of Bodhisattvas while passing from their first aspiration (cttfotpdda) stage up to the height of Bodhisattvahood. This is called the Body of Bliss (Sambhogakdya)....
‘The Dhaymakdaya can manifest itself in various corporeal forms just because it is the real essence of them’ (cf. p. 2287).
' Cf. A. Avalon, Tantrik Texts, vii London and Calcutta, 1919), pp. 36 n., 41 n.
The Wisdom Teachings 13
Source of all Truth, the All-Good Father of the Lamaistic Faith. In this same highest Buddha realm Lamaism places Vajra-Dhara (Tib. Rdorje-Chang—pron. Dorje-Chang), ‘The Holder of the Dorje (or Thunderbolt)’ ‘the Divine Expounder of the Mystic Doctrine called Vajra Yana (Tib. Rdorje Theg-pa— pron. Dorje Theg-pa) or Mantra Yana’; and also the Buddha Amitabha (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-K aya are placed the Five Dhyani 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 Nirmdana-Kaya is associated Padma Sambhava, who, being the first teacher in Tibet to expound the Bardo Thédol, is the Great Guru for all devotees who follow the Bardo teachings.
The opinion commonly held by men not initiated into the higher /amaic teachings, that Northern Buddhism recognizes in the Primordial or Adi-Buddha a Supreme Deity, is ap- parently erroneous. The translator held that the Adi-Buddha, and all deities associated with the Dharma-K aya, 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 sazgsaric 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 7r7-Kaya, 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.’
(Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup.)
Thus, the 777-Kaya symbolizes the Esoteric Trinity of
14 Introduction
the higher Buddhism of the Northern School; the Exoteric Trinity being, as in the Southern School, the Buddha, the Dharma (or Scriptures), the Saxgha (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-K aya Doctrine, so the /amas teach, is the privilege of initiates, who, alone, are fitted to grasp and to realize it.
The translator himself regarded the 7ri-Kaya 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 com- mitted 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 Z7vi-Kaya 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 Asokan Buddhist missionaries to Asia Minor and Syria, as to Alexandria,' 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 Lama interpreted the Jesus of the Mez Testament clearly to be—a Bodhisattva (i.e. a Candidate for Buddhahood), was, undoubtedly, well acquainted with
1 Cf. V. A. Smith, Early History of India (Oxford, 1914), p. 184.
The Wisdom Teachings 15
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 Wirvaua to the Sangsara; and progression from the Lower to the Higher, from the Sangsara to Nirvana, is symbolized by the Five Dhyani Buddhas, each personifying a universal divine attribute. Contained in the Five Dhyani Buddhas lies the Sacred Way leading to At-one-ment in the Dharma- Kaya, to Buddhahood, to Perfect Enlightenment, to Vzrvana — which is spiritual emancipation through Desirelessness.
The Five Wisdoms.—As the All-Pervading Voidness, the Dharma-K aya is the shape (which is shapelessness) of the Body of Truth; the Thatness constituting it is the Dharma-Dhatu (Tib. Chos-kyt-dvyings—pron. Ché-kyi-ing), the Seed or Poten- tiality of Truth ; and this dawns on the First Day of the Bardo . as the glorious blue light of the Dhyani Buddha Vairochana, the Manifester, ‘He Who in Shapes Makes Visible’ [the universe of mattcr]. The Dharma-Dhatu 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 mara (or illusion of shape) constitutes in all realms of the Sangsadra —as in the human kingdom where manas (or mind) begins to operate—the Bondage, emancipation from which is Vzrvdua. 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-Per- vading Wisdom of the Dharma-Dhatu, 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-K aya
16 Introduction
reflex of the Dhyani Buddha Akshobhya), 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 Dhyani Buddha Amitabha, ‘ 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 un- erring 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, eso- terically, with Samanta-Bhadra (who, in turn, is often personi- ficd in Vairochana, the Chief of the Five Dhyani Buddhas), the Adi-Buddha, the Primordial, the Unborn, Unshaped, Un- modified Dharma-K aya.
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-
THE WISDOM TEACHINGS 1.
Principle is attained, with it comes the power of divine speech, symbolized by Amitabha. The perfection of the Divine Thought-Principle brings divine infallibility, symbo- lized 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 dodhic) nature has been developed. Full development in all the bodhic powers of the Five Dhyani 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; xara-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 sangsaric 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 Thodol 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
18 Introduction
to a consideration of our manuscript, its history, the origin of the Bardo Thédol 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.