O nobly-born on the Fourteenth Day, the Four Female Door-Keepers, also issuing from within thine own brain, will come to shine upon thee. Again recognize. From the east
Headed Goad-Holding Goddess, bearing a scalp filled with blood in her left [hand]; from the south, the Yellow Sow- Headed Noose-Holding Goddess; from the west, the Red
Lion-Headed Iron-Chain-Holding Goddess; and from the north, the Green Serpent-Headed Bell-Holding Goddess. Thus issue the Four Female Door-Keepers also from within thine own brain and come to shine upon thee; as tutelary deities, recognize them.
O nobly-born, on the outer Circle of these thirty wrathful deities, Herukas, the twenty-eight various-headed mighty goddesses, bearing various weapons, issuing from within thine own brain, will come to shine upon thee. Fear that not. Recognize whatever shineth to be the thought-forms of thine own intellectual faculties. At this vitally important time, recollect the select teachings of the guru.
Brown Yak-Headed Rakshasa-Goddess, holding a dorje and a skull; and the Reddish-Yellow Serpent-Headed Brahma- Goddess, holding a lotus in her hand; and the Greenish- Black Leopard-Headed Great-Goddess, holding a trident in her hand; and the Blue Monkey-Headed Goddess of In- quisitiveness, holding a wheel ; and the Red Snow-Bear-Headed Virgin-Goddess, bearing a short spear in the hand; and the White Bear-Headed Indra-Goddess, holding an intestine-noose in the hand: [these], the Six Yoginis of the East, issuing from within the [eastern quarter of thine own]? brain, will come to shine upon thee ; | * fear that not.
Headed Delight-Goddess, holding a shaving-knife in the hand ; and the Red Makara-Headed Peaceful-| Goddess], holding an urn in the hand; andthe Red Scorpion-Headed Amrita-Goddess, holding a lotus in the hand; and the White Kite- Headed Moon- Goddess, | holding a dorvje in the hand; and the Dark-Green Fox-Headed Baton-Goddess, flourishing a club in the hand; and the Yellowish-Black Tiger-Headed Rakshasi, holding
Between this bar and the bar after ‘ Moon-goddess’ in the sentence following
is contained the translation of the Tibetan text of the lower folio (67%) of our Frontispiece,
Yoginis of the South, issuing from within the [southern
fear that not.
Black Vulture-Headed Eater-Goddess, holding a baton in the hand; and the Red Horse-Headed Delight-Goddess, holding a huge trunk of a corpse; and the White Eagle- Headed Mighty-Goddess, holding a club in the hand; and the Yellow Dog-Headed Rakshasi, holding a dorje in the hand and a shaving-knife and cutting [with this]; and the Red Hoopoo-Headed Desire-Goddess, holding a bow and arrow in the hand aimed; and the Green Stag-Headed Wealth-Guardian Goddess, holding an urn in the hand: [these], the Six Yoginis of the West, issuing from within
upon thee; fear that not.
Headed Wind-Goddess, waving a pennant in the hand; and the Red Ibex-Headed Woman-Goddess, holding a pointed stake in the hand ; and the Black Sow-Headed Sow-Goddess, holding a noose of fangs in the hand; and the Red Crow- Headed Thunderbolt-Goddess, holding an infant corpse in the hand; and the Greenish-Black Elephant-Headed Big-Nosed Goddess,! holding in the hand a big corpse and drinking blood from a skull; and the Blue Serpent-Headed Water-Goddess, holding in the hand a serpent noose: [these], the Six Yoginis of the North, issuing from within [the northern quarter of] thine own brain, will come to shine upon thee; fear that not.
O nobly-born, the Four Yoginis of the Door, issuing from within the brain, will come to shine upon thee: from the east, the Black Cuckoo-Headed Mystic Goddess,? holding an iron hook in the hand; from the south, the Yellow Goat-Headed Mystic Goddess, holding a noose in the hand ; from the west, the Red Lion-Headed Mystic Goddess, holding an iron chain
‘White Cuckoo-Headed Mystic Goddess’.
in the hand; and from the north, the Greenish-Black Serpent- Headed Mystic Goddess: [these], the Four Door-Keeping Yoginis, issuing from within the brain, will come to shine upon thee.
Since these Twenty-eight Mighty Goddesses emanate from
Deities, recognize them.'
O nobly-born, the Peaceful Deities emanate from the Void- ness of the Dharma-Kdaya;* recognize them. From the Radiance of the Dharma-K aya*® emanate the Wrathful Deities ; recognize them.
At this time when the Fifty-eight Blood-Drinking Deities * emanating from thine own brain come to shine upon thee, if thou knowest them to be the radiances of thine own intellect, thou wilt merge, in the state of at-one-ment, into the body of the Blood-Drinking Ones there and then, and obtain Buddhahood.
O nobly-born, by not recognizing now, and by fleeing from the deities out of fear, again sufferings will come to overpower thee. If this be not known, fear being begotten of the Blood-
one’s own thought-forms turn into illusory appearances, and one wandereth into the Sanugsara; if one be not awed and terrified, one will not wander into the Sanzgsara.
Furthermore, the bodies of the largest of the Peaceful and
heavens ; the intermediate, as big as Mt. Meru;° the smallest,
equal to eighteen bodies such as thine own body, set one upon another. Be not terrified at that; be not awed. If all existing phenomena shining forth as divine shapes and radiances be recognized to be the emanations of one’s own intellect, Buddhahood will be obtained at that very instant of recognition. The saying, ‘Buddhahood will be obtained in a moment [of time]’ is that which applieth now. Bearing this in mind, one will obtain Buddhahood by merging, in at-one-ment, into the Radiances and the Kdyas.
O nobly-born, whatever fearful and terrifying visions thou mayst see, recognize them to be thine own thought-forms.
O nobly-born, if thou recognize not, and be frightened, then all the Peaceful Deities will shine forth in the shape of Maha-Kala;1 and all the Wrathful Deities will shine
and thine own thought-forms becoming Illusions [or Maras], thou wilt wander into the Sazgsdara.
O nobly-born, if one recognize not one’s own thought- forms, however learned one may be in the Scriptures—both Sutras and Tantras—although practising religion for a kalpa, one obtaineth not Buddhahood. If one recognize one’s own thought-forms, by one important art and by one word, Buddha- hood is obtained.
If one’s thought-forms be not recognized as soon as one dieth, the shapes of Dharma-Raja, the Lord of Death, will shine forth on the Chényid Bardo. The largest of the bodies of Dharma-Raja, the Lord of Death, equalling the heavens [in vastness|; the intermediate, Mt. Meru; the smallest, eighteen times one’s own body, will come filling the world-systems. They will come having their upper teeth biting the nether lip; their eyes glassy; their hairs tied up on the top of the
board! in the hand; giving utterance from their mouth to
O nobly-born, when such thought-forms emanate, be thou not afraid, nor terrified; the body which now thou possessest
and chopped [to bits], cannot die. Because thy body is, in reality, one of voidness, thou needest not fear. The
the radiances of thine own intellect ; they are not constituted of matter; voidness cannot injure voidness. Beyond the emanations of thine own intellectual faculties, externally, the Peaceful and the Wrathful Ones, the Blood-Drinking Ones, the Various-Headed Ones, the rainbow lights, the terrifying forms of the Lord of Death, exist not in reality: of this, there is no doubt. Thus, knowing this, all the fear and terror is self-dissipated; and, merging in the state of at-one-ment, Buddhahood is obtained.
If thou recognizest in that manner, exerting thy faith and affection towards the tutelary deities and believing that they have come to receive thee amidst the ambuscades of
the Precious Trinity, exerting towards them [the Trinity] fondness and faith. Whosoever thine own tutelary deity may
* Text: khram-shing (pron. htam-shing), referring to a board—cither a flogging- board such as that on which culprits are stretched and flogged in Tibet, or else, as here, a board written over with karmic records of the deceased’slife. Khram is the name given to a scroll of records or an inventory like a rent-roll; shing alone means ‘wood’, Hence we may render the two words as ‘ wood-register’ or ‘record-board’. In the great Tibetan Arthurian-like saga called in Tibetan Ge-sar-bsgrungs (pron. Ke-sar-doong), or Kesar Saga (of unknown author, but probably dating from the eighth or ninth century a.p.), which is so much the popular saga of Tibet that many Tibetans know it by heart, a boy, thirteen years of age, who, when wishing to join in a battle, is held back by fond relatives, brushes them aside, saying, ‘The place of illness, the place of death, and the
Death’; and here the Tibetan word for register is khram.
The verification of our rendering of this passage is important because, like other passages in the Bardo Thédol, particularly the closely-related passage describing the Judgement, coming in the Second Book (pp. 165-9), it has striking correspondence with parts of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
‘[Alas!], wandering am I in the Bardo; run to my rescue ; Uphold me by thy grace, O Precious Tutelary!’
Calling upon the name of thine own guru, pray thus:
Have faith in the Blood-Drinking Deities, too, and offer up this prayer :
force of overpowering illusions, On the light-path of the abandonment of fright, fear, and awe, May the bands of the Bhagavans, the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones, lead [me]; May the bands of the Wrathful Goddesses Rich in Space
And save me from the fearful ambuscades of the Bardo, And place me in the state of the Perfectly-Enlightened Buddhas. When wandering alone, separated from dear friends, When the void forms of one’s own thoughts are shining here, May the Buddhas, exerting the force of their grace, Cause not to come the fear, awe, and terror in the Bardo. When the five bright Wisdom-Lights are shining here, May recognition come without dread and without awe ; When the divine bodies of the Peaceful and the Wrathful are shining here, May the assurance of fearlessness be obtained and the Bardo be recognized. When, by the power of evil karma, misery is being tasted, May the tutelary deities dissipate the misery ; When the natural sound of Reality is reverberating [like] a thousand thunders, May they be transmuted into the sounds of the Six Syllables.
When unprotected, karma having to be followed here,
I beseech the Gracious Compassionate [One]1 to protect me ;
When suffering miseries of karmic propensities here,
May the blissfulness of the Clear Light dawn;
May the Five Elements? not rise up as enemies;
But may I behold the realms of the Five Orders of the Enlightened Ones.’
Thus, in earnest faith and humility, offer up the prayer ; whereby all fears will vanish and Buddhahood in the Sambhaoga- Kaya will undoubtedly be won: important is this. Being un-
into Mirvana; hence its importance in the Bardo prayer. In the Tibetan work called Mani-bkah-hbum (pron. Ma-nt-kah-boom), i.e. ‘ History of the Mand (or Mantra of Chenrazee)’ this mantra is said to be ‘the essence of all happiness, prosperity, and knowledge, and the great means of liberation’ ; also it is said that the 6m closes the door of rebirth among the gods, ma, among the asuvas (or titans), ##, among mankind, pay, among sub-human creatures, mé, among pretas (or unhappy ghosts), and hang, among the inhabitants of Hell. Accord- ingly, each of the six syllables is given the colour of the light-path corresponding to the six states of existence, thus: 62, the white light-path of the deva-loka (or world of the gods); md, the green light-path of the asuva-loka (or world of the titans) ; #7, the yellow light-path of the manaka-loka (or human world) ; pay, the blue light-path of the “vryaka-loka (or brute world); mé, the red light-path of the preta-loka (or ghost world) ; and hing, the smoke-coloured or black light- path of the zaraka-loka (or Hell world).
There is an old Tibetan folk-tale concerning a religious devotee who tried to incline his irreligious mother to devotional observances and merely succeeded in habituating her to the recitation of this mantra. Her bad karma predominating over her good karma, at death she passed into the Hell-world, whereupon her son, being proficient in yoga, went to her rescue; and she, upon seeing him, was able, in virtue of having recited the mantra on earth, to recite it in Hell, and instantaneously she and all who heard it were liberated from Hell: for, as the tale at its end teaches, ‘Such is the power of the mantra’.
The origin of this mantra is traceable through ¢erton works concerning the introduction (during the eighth century) of Tantric Buddhism into Tibet. Dr. Waddell is inclined to doubt that these ¢erton works were hidden away then (i.e, in the time of Padma Sambhava) and in later centuries recovered, as the tertons (i.e. ‘takers-out’ of such lost books) claim, and suggests that their compilation dates from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century—a tentative and possibly unsound theory (cf. L. A. Waddell, Lamaism in Sikhim, in the Gaget- teer of Sikhim, ed. by H. H. Risley, Calcutta, 1894, p. 289 ; also our Introduction, Ppp. 73-7). In any case, the mantra, at least by tradition (which ordinarily is as reliable as recorded history), seems to have come into, or been originated in, Tibet contemporaneously with the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet.
However heavy the evil Zarma may be and however weak the remaining karma may be, it is not possible that libera- tion will not be obtained [if one but recognize]. If, never- theless, despite everything done in these [stages of the Bardo], recognition is still not brought about, then—there being danger ‘of one’s wandering further, into the third Bardo, called the Sidpa Bardo—the setting-face-to-face for that will be shown in detail hereinafter.