force] is as long as the inspiration is still present, or about the time required for eating a meal.[1]
Then the manner of the application [of the instructions] is:
When the breathing is about to cease, it is best if the Transference hath been applied efficiently; if [the application] hath been inefficient, then [address the deceased] thus:
O nobly-born (so and so by name), the time hath now come for thee to seek the Path [in reality]. Thy breathing is about to cease. Thy guru hath set thee face to face before with the Clear Light; and now thou art about to experience it in its Reality in the Bardo state, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like unto a transparent vacuum without circumference or centre. At this moment, know thou thyself; and abide in that state. I, too, at this time, am setting thee face to face.
Having read this, repeat it many times in the ear of the person dying, even before the expiration hath ceased, so as to impress it on the mind [of the dying one].
If the expiration is about to cease, turn the dying one over on the right side, which posture is called the ‘Lying Posture of a Lion’. The throbbing of the arteries [on the right and left side of the throat] is to be pressed.
If the person dying be disposed to sleep, or if the sleeping state advances, that should be arrested, and the arteries pressed gently but firmly.[2] Thereby the vital-force will not be able to return from the median-nerve[3] and will be sure to pass out
- ↑ When this text first took form the reckoning of time was, apparently, yet primitive, mechanical time-keeping appliances being unknown, A similar condition still prevails in many parts of Tibet, where the period of a meal-time is frequently mentioned in old religious books—a period of from twenty minutes to half an hour in duration.
- ↑ The dying person should die fully awake and keenly conscious of the process of death; hence the pressing of the arteries. (Cf. p. xxix.)
- ↑ ‘Skt. of text: dhutih (pron. dutī), meaning “median-nerve”’, but lit. ‘ trijunction’’, V.S. Apte’s Sanscrit-English Dictionary (Poona, 1890) gives dhūti as the only similar word, defined as “shaking” or “moving”, which, if applied to our text, may refer to the vibratory motion of the psychic force traversing the median-nerve as its channel.’—Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup.
‘Duti may also mean “throwing away’’, or “throwing out”’, with reference
