Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/29

underlying the Bardo Thödol, which are referred to on pages 133 to 134 of our translation.^[1]

 

Emblems

1. The Indian Wheel of the Law (Dharma-Chakra) .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .

on back of book

From designs sculptured on the Sanchi Topes, dating from about 500 B.C. to 100 A. D.

2. The Lāmaic Crossed Dorje .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .

on front cover of book

Symbolical of equilibrium, immutability, and almighty power. (Cf. pp. 63, 116¹.)

3. The Tibetan Wheel of the Law (Ch’os-’k’or-bskor) .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .

facing p. 119

The Eight-Spoked Wheel (cf. p. 106), on a lotus throne and enhaloed by Flames of Wisdom, is representative of the Thousand-Spoked Wheel of the Good Law of the Buddha, symbol of the symmetry and completeness of the Sacred Law of the Dharma, or Scriptures. The design at the centre, called in Tibetan rgyan-’k’yil, composed of three whirling segments, symbolizes—as does the svastika at the centre of the Indian Wheel of the Law—the Sangsāra, or ceaseless change or ‘becoming’.

4. The Dorje, the Lāmaic Sceptre .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .

facing p. 137

A type of the Thunderbolt of Indra, the Indian Jupiter, used in most lāmaic rituals (cf. pp. 10, 108², 137–8, 142–5), symbolical of dominion over sangsāric (or worldly) existence.

1. It should be noted that each of the dead possesses a body suited to the paradise realm or hell-world in which karma brings about birth; and that when any of the after-human-death states of existence ends there is again a death process and a casting off of a body (cf. pp. 155–8, and Book II passim). The Bardo is the intermediate state whence one may be reborn in this world in a human body, or in the ghost-world in a ghost body, or in one of the paradise realms, such as the deva-loka, in a god body, or in the asura-loka in an asura body, or in one of the hells in a body capable of enduring suffering and incapable of dying there until the purgation is complete. Following death in a hell, or in any other of the after-human-death states, the normal process is to be reborn on earth as a human being. The True Goal, as the Bardo Thödol repeatedly explains, is beyond all states of embodiment, beyond all hells, worlds, and heavens, beyond the Sangsāra, beyond Nature; it is called Nirvāṇa (Tib. Myang-hdas). See Addenda, V, pp. 224–32.