regarded as in any wise in disagreement with canonical, or exoteric, Buddhism, but as being related to it as higher mathematics are to lower mathematics, or as being the apex of the pyramid of the whole of Buddhism.
In short, the evidence adducible gives much substantial support to the claim of the lāmas, to whom we refer, that there is—as the Bardo Thödol appears to suggest—an unrecorded body of orally transmitted Buddhistic teachings complementary to canonical Buddhism.[1]
III. The Esoteric Significance of the Forty-Nine Days of the Bardo
Turning now to our text itself, we find that structurally it is founded upon the symbolical number Forty-nine, the square of the sacred number Seven; for, according to occult teachings common to Northern Buddhism and to that Higher Hinduism which the Hindu-born Bodhisattva Who became the Buddha Gautama, the Reformer of the Lower Hinduism and the Codifier of the Secret Lore, never repudiated, there are seven worlds or seven degrees of Māyā[2] within the Sangsāra,[3] constituted as seven globes of a planetary chain. On each globe there are seven rounds of evolution, making the forty-nine (seven times seven) stations of active existence. As in the
- ↑ It is probably unnecessary for the editor to remind his friends who profess the Theravāda Buddhism of the Southern School that, in preparing this Introduction, his aim has necessarily been to present Buddhism chiefly from the standpoint of the Northern Buddhism of the Kargyutpa Sect (see page 79), by which the Bardo Thödol is accepted as a sacred book and to which the translator belonged. Although the Southern Buddhist may not agree with the Bardo Thödol teachings in their entirety, he will, nevertheless, be very apt to find them, in most essentials, based upon doctrines common to all Schools and Sects of Buddhism; and he may even find those of them with which he disagrees interesting and possibly provocative of a reconsideration of certain of his own antagonistic beliefs.
- ↑ Māyā, the Sanskrit equivalent of the Tibetan Gyūma (Sgyūma), means a magical or illusory show, with direct reference to the phenomena of Nature. In a higher sense, in Brāhmanism, it refers to the Shakti of Brāhman (the Supreme Spirit, the Ain Soph of Judaism).
- ↑ The Sanskrit term Sangsāra (or Saṁsāra), Tibetan Khorva (Hkhorva), refers to the phenomenal universe itself, its antithesis being Nirvāṇa (Tib. Myang-hdas), which is beyond phenomena (cf. pp. 67–8).
