Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/38

xxxii volume of Tantrik Texts (p. xxi et seq.) and here summarize and explain.

All is either Sangsāra or Nirvāṇa. The first is finite experience in the ‘Six Worlds’ or Loka—a word which means ‘that which is experienced’ (Lokyante). The second, or Nirvāṇa, is, negatively speaking, release from such experience, that is from the worlds of Birth and Death and their pains. The Void cannot even be strictly called Nirvāṇa, for this is a term relative to the world, and the Void is beyond all relations. Positively, and concomitantly with such release, it is the Perfect Experience which is Buddhahood, which, again, from the cognitive aspect, is Consciousness unobscured by the darkness of Unconsciousness, that is to say, Consciousness freed of all limitation. From the emotional aspect, it is pure Bliss unaffected by sorrow; and from the volitional aspect, it is freedom of action and almighty power (Amogha-Siddhi). Perfect Experience is an eternal or, more strictly speaking, a timeless state. Imperfect Experience is also eternal in the sense that the series of universes in which it is undergone is infinite. The religious, that is practical, problem is then how from the lesser experience to pass into that which is complete, called by the Upanishads ‘the Whole’ or Pūrna. This is done by the removal of obscuration. At base, the two are one—the Void, uncreated, independent, uncompounded, and beyond mind and speech, If this were not so, Liberation would not be possible. Man is in fact liberated, but does not know it. When he realizes it, he is freed. The great saying of the Buddhist work the Prajñā-Pāramitā runs thus: ‘Form (Rūpa) is the Void and the Void is Form.’ Realization of the Void is to be a Buddha, or ‘Knower’, and not to realize it is to be an ‘ignorant being’ in the Sangsāra. The two paths, then, are Knowledge and Ignorance. The first path leads to—and, as actual realization, is—Nirvāṇa. The second means continuance of fleshly life as man or brute, or as a denizen of the other four Lokas. Ignorance in the individual is in its cosmic aspect Māyā, which in Tibetan (sGyuma) means a magical show. In its most generic form,