Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/89

Rh for evil-doing in this world is as nothing compared to the punishment which karma inflicts after death. The fifth messenger, to emphasize the same message of death and the corruptibility of the body, is a corpse, swollen, discoloured, and putrid.

In each instance, King Yama asks the deceased if he had seen the messenger and receives the reply, ‘No’. Then the King explains to him who the messenger was and the meaning of the messages; and the deceased, thereby remembering, is obliged to confess that, not having done good deeds, he had not acted upon the messages, but had done evil instead, forgetting the inevitability of death. Thereupon, Yama pronounces the judgement, that since the deceased had failed to do good he must suffer the karmic consequences. Accordingly, the hell-furies take the deceased and cause him to suffer five sorts of purgatorial punishments; and, though he suffers most unbearable pains, he is, as the Bardo Thödol makes clear, incapable of dying.

In the Anguttara Nïkāya version, wherein there are but three messengers, the aged person, the man or woman overcome with disease, and the corpse, the Buddha concludes the discourse thus:

‘If men who have been warned by heavenly messengers have been indifferent as regards religion they suffer long, being born in a low condition.

‘If virtuous men have been warned by heavenly messengers in this world, they do not neglect to profess the holy doctrines. Seeing the danger of attachment, which is the cause of birth and death, they have in this life extinguished the miseries of existence by arriving at a condition free from fear, happy and free from passions and sins.’

In examining the Rebirth Doctrine, more particularly as it presents itself in our text, two interpretations must be taken into account: the literal or exoteric interpretation,