O nobly-born, listen undistractedly. Not having been able
the Lardo above, thou hast come wandering thus far. Now, on the Eighth Day, the blood-drinking Wrathful Deities will come to shine. Act so as to recognize them without being distracted.
a Divine Incarnation, to work for the uplifting of mankind. If recognition be delayed till the Sidpa Bardo, and the Nirmdna-Kaya be attained, that is but a partial awakening, not an unclouded realization of Reality, the Szdpa Bardo being a much lower plane than the Chényid Bardo; but even then there will be won the great boon of spiritually enlightened birth on one of the higher planes— deva-loka, asura-loka, or the human-loka—and, upon being born anew in the human world, the devotee will take up, in virtue of acquired propensities gained in the previous earth-life, the study of the mystic mantraydna doctrines and yogic practices from the point where it was broken off by death—this being the continuity of karma,
* Text: Btags-grol (pron. Tah-dol), a small Tibetan work, consisting wholly of mantras, used as an accompaniment to the Bardo Thédol. If the deceased dies knowing the Tahdol mantras, they, being powerful talismans, give him safe passage through the Bardo and a happy rebirth. Very often a copy of the Tahdol (or perhaps merely some of its mantras copied on small strips of paper and wound together in a tiny roll) is tied to the corpse and burned or buried with it—just as a copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead was ordinarily interred with a mummy.
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