Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/138



Now for the explaining of the Thödol itself:

If thou canst gather together a grand offering, offer it in worship of the Trinity. If such cannot be done, then arrange whatever can be gathered together as objects on which thou canst concentrate thy thoughts and mentally create as illimitable an offering as possible and worship.

Then the ‘Path of Good Wishes Invoking the Aid of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas’ should be recited seven times or thrice.

After that, the ‘Path of Good Wishes Giving Protection from Fear in the Bardo’, and the ‘Path of Good Wishes for Safe Delivery from the Dangerous Pitfalls of the Bardo’, together with the ‘Root Words of the Bardo’, are to be read distinctly and with the proper intonation.

Then this Great Thödol is to be read either seven times or thrice, according to the occasion. [First cometh] the setting-face-to-face [to the symptoms of death] as they occur during the moments of death; [second] the application of the great vivid reminder, the setting-face-to-face to Reality while in the