[The Manuscript concludes with the following seven verses by the /ama or scribe who compiled it, but he—faithful to the old /amaic teaching that the human personality should be self-abased and the Scriptures alone exalted before the gaze of sentient creatures—has not recorded his name:]
Through the perfectly pure intention of mine
In the making of this, through the root of the merits thereof,
Let the radiant glory of auspiciousness come to illuminate the world ;?
Let this Book be auspicious ; ®
Let virtue and goodness be perfected in every way.
[Here endeth the Manuscript of the Bardo Thodol.|
suggesting that the scribe possessed at least a limited knowledge of Sanskrit.
‘Fill up, Punna, the orb of holy life, E’en as on fifteenth day the full-orb’d moon. Fill full the perfect knowledge of the Path, And scatter all the gloom of ignorance.’— Punna, a Bhikkhuni. Psalms of the Early Buddhists,
1iii (Mrs. Rhys Davids’ Translation).
iD EN DA
These Addenda consist of seven sections, complementary to our Introduction and Commentary, concerning (1) Yoga, (2) Tantricism, (3) Mantras, or Words of Power, (4) the Guru and Skzshya (or Chela) and Initiations, (5) Reality, (6) Northern and Southern Buddhism and Christianity, and (7) the Medieval Christian Judgement.
B-YOGA
The word Yoga (frequently appearing in our annotations to the Bardo Thédol text), derived from the Sanskrit root yz, meaning ‘to join’, closely allied with the English verb ¢o yoke, implies a joining or yoking of the lower human nature to the higher or divine nature in such manner as to allow the higher to direct the lower; and this condition—essential to the successful application of the Bardo doctrines—is to be brought about by control of the mental process. So long as the field of the mind is occupied by such thought-forms and thought- processes as arise from the false concept, universally dominat- ing mankind, that phenomena and phenomenal appearances are real, a state of mental obscuration called ignorance, which prevents true knowledge, exists. It is only when all obscuring and erroneous concepts are totally inhibited and the field of the mind is swept clean of them that the primor- dial or unmodified condition of mind, which is ever devoid of these thought-formations and thought-processes arising from ignorance, is realizable ; and, in its realization, there dawns I]lu- mination, symbolized in the Bardo Thodol as the Primal Clear Light of the Dharma-K aya.
A mirror covered with a thick deposit of dust, or a crystal vase filled with muddied water, symbolize the mind of the normal human being darkened with the nescience arising from
yoga may be regardedas a system of applied psychology far more highly developed than any known to Western Science.
heresies and false knowledge. Yoga is a scientific method of removing the dust from the mirror and the earthy particles from the water. It is only when the mind is thus made clear and limpid that it can reflect the Light of Reality and man can come to know himself. Jaya, or Illusion, is the Veil of Isis hiding from man the Unsullied and Unsulliable Reality ; the piercing of this Veil and the seeing of that which it hides is accomplished through methods as definite and certain in psychical results as those employed in a European or American chemical laboratory are in physical results. As gold can be separated from impurities by methods of chemistry, so can Truth be divorced from Error by methods of Yaga.
Like the root teachings of Buddhism, the root teachings of the Bardo Thidol are incapable of being practically applied without Right Knowledge; Right Knowledge to be at all effective in a devotee’s life should not depend merely upon belief or theory, but upon realization; and realization of Right Knowledge is impossible without such mind control as Yoga implies. That this is so, the canonical scriptures of all schools of Buddhism confirm.!
It is not our purpose to discuss here the intricacies of the various aspects and schools of Yoga; for, though technical terms and some of the purely philosophical or theoretical parts of the Hindu, Buddhist, and other systems of the science of mind-control often differ widely, we are convinced, after much research carried on while living among yogis of various schools, that the goal for all yogis is, in the last analysis of esotericism, identical, namely, emancipation from the thraldom of sangsaric, or phenomenal, existence, the Hindus calling it Mukti and the Buddhists Virvana.?
Intellectual understanding of much of the Bardo Thidol is,
* The editor possesses a number of very important translations, by the late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup, of Tibetan treatises on Yoga, one of them having originated in ancient India. If there should be encouragement to publish them,
the editor hopes then to put’on record in more detail the results of his own researches in Yoga,
YOGA 213
therefore, obviously dependent upon at least some elementary explanation of Yoga, such as we have herein given. The Clear Light, so often referred to in our text—to take but one of the outstanding yogic doctrines—is best interpreted from - the standpoint of the devotee of Yoga, though for all mankind alike it dawns at the all-determining moment of death. As such, the Clear Light symbolizes the visual condition in which one finds oneself at the moment of death and afterwards in the Intermediate State. If the vision be unclouded by karmic propensities, which are the source of all phenomena and appari- tional appearances in the Bardo, the deceased sees Reality as the Primordial Clear Light, and, if he so wills, can renounce the Sangsa@ra and pass into Nirvana, beyond the Circle of Death and Rebirth.
Such clarity of spiritual insight is, of course, extremely ‘rare, being the fruit of innumerable lifetimes of right living ; nevertheless, the aim of the Bardo Thidol teachings is to attempt to place every one, when dying or deceased, in the Path leading to its realization. Unless, through the practice of mental-concentration, complete control over the thinking process be achieved, so as to arrive at Right Knowledge ere death, in virtue of having experienced Illumination (i.e. recog- nition of the Clear Light in an ecstatic condition while still in the human body), the /aémas maintain that comprehension of the nature of the Clear Light is quite impossible for the unilluminated.