¹ Text: Rig—pa, meaning ‘consciousness’ as distinct from the knowing faculty by which it cognizes or knows itself to be. Ordinarily, rig—pa and shes—rig are synonymous ; but in an abstruse philosophical treatise, as herein, rig—pa refers to the consciousness in its purest and most spiritual (i. e. supramundane) aspect, and shes—rig to the consciousness in that grosser aspect, not purely spiritual, whereby cognizance of phenomena is present.

In this part of the Bardo Thödol the psychological analysis of consciousness or mind is particularly abstruse. Wherever the text contains the word rig—pa we have rendered it as ‘consciousness’, and the word shes—rig ‘intellect’; or else, to suit the context, rig—pa as ‘consciousness’ and shes—rig as ‘consciousness oí phenomena’, which is ‘intellect’.

² Text: Kun—tu—bzang—po : Skt. Samanta (* All’ or * Universal or ‘Complete’) B ha dra (‘Good’ or ‘Beneficent’). In this state, the experiencer and the thing experienced are inseparably one and the same, as, for example, the yellowness of gold cannot be separated from gold, nor saltness from salt. For the normal human intellect this transcendental state is beyond comprehension.

³ From the union of the two states of mind, or consciousness, implied by the two terms rig—pa and shes—rig, and symbolized by the All—Good Father and the All—Good Mother, is born the state of the Dharma—Kāya the state of Perfect Enlightenment, Buddahood. The Dharma—Kāya (Body of Truth’) symbolizes the purest and the highest state of being, a state of supramundane consciousness, devoid of all mental limitations or obscurations which arise from the contact of the primordial consciousness with matter.

⁴ As the Buddha—Samanta—Bhadra state is the state of the All—Good, so theBuddha—Amitåbha state is the state of the Boundless Light; and, as the textimplies, both are, in the last analysis, the same state, merely regarded fromtwo viewpoints. In the first, is emphasized the mind of the All—Good, in thesecond, the enlightening Bodhi power, symbolized as Buddha Amitäbha (thepersonification of the Wisdom faculty), Source of Life and Light

⁵ Text: dgongs—pa (pron. gong—pa) : ‘thoughts’ or ‘mind’, and, being in thehonorific form, ‘divine mind’.

⁶ Realization of the JHon—Sangsära, which is the Voidness, the Unbecome, the Unborn, the Unmade, the Unformed, implies Buddhahood, Perfect Enlightenment—the state of the Divine Mind of the Buddha. Compare the following passage, from The Diamond [or Immutable] Sutra, with its Chinese commentary (trans, by W. Gemmell, London, 191a, pp. 17—18): * Every form or quality of phenomena is transient and illusive. When the mind realizes that the phenomena of life are not real phenomena, the Lord Buddha may then be clearly perceived/—(Chinese Annotation : ‘The spiritual Buddha must be realized within the mind, otherwise there can be no true perception of the Lord Buddha)