Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/118

68 20. That it is the Ending of Sorrow;

21. That it is Reality.

He who realized Nirvāṇa, the Buddha Gautama Himself, has spoken of it to His own disciples thus:

‘There is, disciples, a Realm devoid of earth and water, fire and air. It is not endless space, nor infinite thought, nor nothingness, neither ideas nor non-ideas. Not this world nor that is it. I call it neither a coming nor a departing, nor a standing still, nor death, nor birth; it is without a basis, progress, or a stay; it is the ending of sorrow.

‘For that which clingeth to another thing there is a fall; but unto that which clingeth not no fall can come. Where no fall cometh, there is rest, and where rest is, there is no keen desire. Where keen desire is not, naught cometh or goeth; and where naught cometh or goeth there is no death, no birth. Where there is neither death nor birth, there neither is this world nor that, nor in between—it is the ending of sorrow.

‘There is, disciples, an Unbecome, Unborn, Unmade, Unformed; if there were not this Unbecome, Unborn, Unmade, Unformed, there would be no way out for that which is become, born, made, and formed; but since there is an Unbecome, Unborn, Unmade, Unformed, there is escape for that which is become, born, made, and formed.’

Our manuscript copy of the Bardo Thödol was procured by the editor early in the year 1919 from a young lāma of the Kargyutpa Sect of the Red Hat School attached to the Bhutia Basti Monastery, Darjeeling, who said that it had been handed down in his family for several generations. The manuscript is unlike any other seen by the translator or editor, in that it is illustrated by paintings in colour painted on the folios of the text. All other similarly illustrated Tibetan manuscripts seen by us have had the illustrations made on separate pieces of manuscript paper or else of cotton cloth, pasted to the folios. When procured, the