Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/175

This page needs to be proofread.

From the heart of Vajra-Sattva, the white light-path of the Mirror-like Wisdom, white and transparent, glorious and dazzling, glorious and terrifying, made more glorious with orbs surrounded by smaller orbs of transparent and radiant light upon it, each like an inverted mirror, will come to shine.

From the heart of Ratna-Sambhava, the yellow light-path of the Wisdom of Equality, [glorified] with yellow orbs [of radiance], each like an inverted gold cup, surrounded by smaller orbs, and these with yet smaller orbs, will come to shine.

From the heart of Amitābha, the transparent, bright red light-path of the Discriminating Wisdom, upon which are orbs, like inverted coral cups, emitting rays of Wisdom, extremely bright and dazzling, each glorified with five [satellite] orbs of the same nature,-leaving neither the centre nor the borders [of the red light-path] unglorified with orbs and smaller satellite orbs, will come to shine.

These will come to shine against thy heart simultaneously.[1]

O nobly-born, all those are the radiances of thine own intellectual faculties come to shine. They have not come from any other place. Be not attracted towards them; be not weak; be not terrified; but abide in the mood of non-thought-formation.[2] In that state all the forms and radiances will merge into thyself, and Buddhahood will be obtained.

The green light-path of the Wisdom of Perfected Actions will not shine upon thee, because the Wisdom-faculty of thine intellect hath not been perfectly developed.

O nobly-born, those are called the Lights of the Four

  1. Each of these mystical radiances symbolizes the particular Bodhic, or Wisdom, quality of the Buddha whence it shines. In the Tibetan of our text there is here such fervency in the poetical description of the light-paths that the translator, in order to render something of the beauty of the original language, essayed several renderings, of which the actual rendering is the outcome.
  2. 'The mood of non-thought-formation' is attained in samādhi-yoga. This state, regarded as the primordial state of Mind, is illustrated by the following figure: So long as a man afloat on a river passively submits to the current, he is carried along smoothly; but if he attempts to grasp an object fixed in the water the tranquillity of his motion is broken. Similarly, thought-formation arrests the natural flow of the mind.