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The Tibetan Book of the Dead or the After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane
English translation by Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup. Compiled and Edited by W. Y. Evans- Wentz
Herein lieth the setting-face-to-face to the reality in the intermediate state: the great deliverance by hearing while on the after-death plane, from 'The Profound Doctrine of the Emancipating of the Consciousness by Meditation Upon the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities' 1
Death’s Messengers
‘All they who thoughtless are, nor heed,
What time death’s messengers appear,
Must long the pangs of suffering feel
In some base body habiting.
But all those good and holy men,
What time they see death’s messengers,
Behave not thoughtless, but give heed
To what the noble doctrine says;
And in attachment frighted see
Of birth and death the fertile source,
And from attachment free themselves,
Thus birth and death extinguishing.
Secure and happy ones are they,
Released from all this fleeting show;
Exempted from all sin and fear,
All misery have they overcome.’
Anguttara—Nikāya, iii (Warren’s Translation)
[The Obeisances]
To the Divine Body of Truth, the Incomprehensible, Bound-less Light;
To the Divine Body of Perfect Endowment, Who are the Lotus and the Peaceful and the Wrathful Deities;2
To the Lotus-born Incarnation, Padma Sambhava,3 Who is the Protector of all sentient beings;
To the Gurus, the Three Bodies, obeisance.
Footnotes
1. Text: zab—chös zhi—khro dgongs—pa rang—gröl las bar—dohi thös—grol chen—mo chös—nyid bar—dohi ngo—spröd bzhugs—so (pronounced: zab—chö shi—hto gong—pa rang—döl lay bar—doi thö—dol chen—mo chönyid bar—doi ngo—töd zhu—so).
2. These Deities are in ourselves. They are not something apart from us. We are one with all that is, in every state of sentient existence, from the lowest worlds of suffering to the highest states of bliss and Perfect Enlightenment. In this esoteric sense, the Lotus Order of Deities represent the deified principles of the vocal functions in ourselves; the Peaceful represent the deified principles of the heart or functions of feeling; the Wrathful represent, in the same way, the functions of our mentality—such as thinking or reasoning, and imagination or memory—centred in the brain—Lāma Kazi Dawa Samdup
3. Padma Sambhava (Tib. Padma Jungne), i.e. ’The Lotus—Born referring to birth under pure, or holy, conditions, commonly called by the Tibetans Guru Rinpoch’e (‘The Precious Guru’), or simply Guru (the Sanskrit for ‘Teacher’), is regarded by his followers as an incarnation of the essence of the Buddha Shakya Muni in its Tantric, or deeply esoteric, aspect.
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