regarded as of the voidness of nothingness, but as being the intellect itself, unobstructed, shining, thrilling, and blissful, is the very consciousness,[1] the All-good Buddha.[2]
Thine own consciousness, not formed into anything, in reality void, and the intellect, shining and blissful,—these two,—are inseparable. The union of them is the Dharma-Kāya state of Perfect Enlightenment.[3]
Thine own consciousness, shining, void, and inseparable from the Great Body of Radiance, hath no birth, nor death, and is the Immutable Light—Buddha Amitābha.[4]
Knowing this is sufficient. Recognizing the voidness of thine own intellect to be Buddhahood, and looking upon it as being thine own consciousness, is to keep thyself in the [state of the] divine mind[5] of the Buddha.[6]
- ↑ 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 as 'intellect'; or else, to suit the context, rig-pa as 'consciousness' and shes-rig as 'consciousness of phenomena', which is 'intellect'.
- ↑ Text: Kun-tu-bzang-po: Skt. Samanta ('All' or 'Universal' or 'Complete') Bhadra ('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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ As the Buddha-Samanta-Bhadra state is the state of the All-Good, so the Buddha-Amitābha state is the state of the Boundless Light; and, as the text implies, both are, in the last analysis, the same state, merely regarded from two viewpoints, In the first, is emphasized the mind of the All-Good, in the second, the enlightening Bodhi power, symbolized as Buddha Amitābha (the personification of the Wisdom faculty), Source of Life and Light.
- ↑ Text: dgongs-pa (pron. gong-pa): 'thoughts' or 'mind', and, being in the honorific form, 'divine mind'.
- ↑ Realization of the Non-Sangsāra, which is the Voidness, the Unbecome, the
