TANTRIC BUDDHISM (INCLUDING CHINA AND JAPAN)whose interests are solely this-worldly. In Chos-skyid's case, mundane, although
not unreasonable, family interests appear so dominant, that her husband cruelly
denies her dying wishes and hence what she feels are her last-ditch chances at
salvation. Another 'das-log, Byang-chub-sengge, whose case we shall examine
in some detail below, has a somewhat similar case in structure but not in
content. As a monk, he is free of family dependencies, but experiences a differ-
ent kind of failure. He doubts the veridicality of a vision of A valokite8vara, and
this, he says, brings on his "sickness." Tibetans maintain that meditation is not
an exercise to be lightly regarded. Generally one must lay a scholastic ground-
work before one engages in meditative practices. Since it is the sine qua non of
monkhood to be a successful practitioner of the meditative arts, failure therein is
often said to cause despair and even mental disorder of a psychotic type.^21
In the vision of the death process that follows, the 'das-log encounters many
of the various phenomena that are duly reported in the Bardo literature, as well
as in many clinical and mystic visions from all over the world. In most of the
biographies, the various lights and colors, sounds and shapes encountered
receive some degree of elaboration. Byang-chub-sengge, for instance, delivers a
lengthy discursus on the entire process (X A: 16-36), while others, e.g., G1ing-
bza' 'Chos-skyid (III A: 309-11), recollect a lama's teachings on death and
dying and feel somewhat comforted for the moment:2^2
I had a vision that I was going below the ground and I felt scared; it
was as though many people were holding me down from above. After
that I felt as though I were being moved to and fro in a great ocean, and
I felt the misery of the cold waves on my body. The whole earth was
filled with fire, and I suffered as if my body were being scorched in a
great burning roar. After that there appeared red, white and yellow
paths, something like dusk, great roaring sounds. Then suddenly, there
was the bliss of remembering nothing. Then one moment I felt as
though I'd arrived in a crackling butter lamp; just then there appeared
over my head many rays being expelled from the midst of a five-
colored light. At the tip of each ray were several beings with human
bodies and heads of different forms. Their eyes gaped like the sun and
the moon, and they carried in their hands many different kinds of
weapons. There came forth the roar of a thousand dragons, saying "Ha,
ha! Hiim, hiim! Kill! Strike!" I had an inconceivable fear. A lama had
instructed me before saying, "All lights are your own light, all rays
your own ray, all forms your own form, all sounds your own sound.
They are the glow of your own mind." As soon as I thought this, the
omens disappeared.The next section of the biographies provides us with what I believe to be the
most fruitful materials for analysis. Here we see the now freed soul tom between
lingering attachments of a social '1ature which initially kept it chained to its