Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/65

Rh Buddhist ethics, and taught them, as in the Sermon on the Mount.

The Doctrine of the Three Bodies conveys the esoteric teachings concerning the Path of the Teachers, their descent from the Higher to the Lower, from the threshold of Nirvāṇa to the Sangsāra; and progression from the Lower to the Higher, from the Sangsāra to Nirvāṇa, is symbolized by the Five Dhyānī Buddhas, each personifying a universal divine attribute. Contained in the Five Dhyānī Buddhas lies the Sacred Way leading to At-one-ment in the Dharma-Kāya, to Buddhahood, to Perfect Enlightenment, to Nirvāṇa—which is spiritual emancipation through Desirelessness.

The Five Wisdoms.—As the All-Pervading Voidness, the Dharma-Kāya is the shape (which is shapelessness) of the Body of Truth; the Thatness constituting it is the Dharma-Dhātu (Tib. Chös-kyi-dvyings—pron. Chö-kyi-ing), the Seed or Potentiality of Truth; and this dawns on the First Day of the Bardo as the glorious blue light of the Dhyānī Buddha Vairochana, the Manifester, ‘He Who in Shapes Makes Visible’ [the universe of matter]. The Dharma-Dhātu is symbolized as the Aggregate of Matter. From the Aggregate of Matter arise the creatures of this world, as of all worlds, in which animal stupidity is the dominant characteristic; and the mārā (or illusion of shape) constitutes in all realms of the Sangsāra—as in the human kingdom where manas (or mind) begins to operate—the Bondage, emancipation from which is Nirvāṇa. When in man, made as perfect as human life can make him, the stupidity of his animal nature and the illusion of shape, or personality, are transmuted into Right Knowledge, into Divine Wisdom, there shines forth in his consciousness the All-Pervading Wisdom of the Dharma-Dhātu, or the Wisdom born of the Voidness, which is all-pervading.

As the Aggregate of Matter, dawning in the Bardo of the First Day, produces physical bodies, so the Water-Element, dawning on the Second Day, produces the life-stream, the blood; Anger is the obscuring passion, consciousness is the aggregate, and these, when transmuted, become the Mirror-like Wisdom, personified in Vajra-Sattva (the Sambhoga-Kāya