ON THE HISTORY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE 'DAS-LOGformer environment and its ultimate flight from the world of men. Buddhism is
founded on the assumption that attachment to the world, its physical forms and
abstract principles of operation, causes suffering. There is a basic irony here;
relationships between an ego and the objects in its physical and social surround-
ings may be in fact cherished and founded upon the most noble of human senti-
ments, such as love. Even Buddhism touts human existence as the highest of life
forms. But it also urges men to abandon such feelings in order to gain salvation.
In order to do so, a person must gain a new understanding of himself and his
affective states, so that ego-involved sentiment is transformed into an under-
standing of how basic psychological and somatic drives operate and how they
may be overcome. The following scene depicts the beginnings of this trans-
formation by showing the slow dawning of disillusionment with the world. An
existential despair replaces his lingering attachments to things he loves the best,
as the 'das-log is ignored by his loved ones and he sees their deceits.
Gling-bza' Chos-skyid (III, A: 311-27).Then when I looked at my own bed, there was placed there the stinking
corpse of a large pig covered with my clothes. My husband and chil-
dren and all our friends and neighbors from the village came, crying.
Some wrung their hands and wept, and simultaneously I heard the
sound of a thousand dragons roaring. Then a hail of pus and blood, the
size of eggs, fell and it hurt intolerably. As soon as they stopped crying,
the roaring and hail stopped, as well as my pain. Then my brother,
Chos-sgron, said, "What good will staying here and crying do? Since
there is no one at all to perform transference ( 'pho-ba), we have to
invite twenty-one monks, starting with a mantrist. It's best we perform
rites and prayers. Since elder sister had faith in Yogi Thugs-:rje-rin-
chen, we'll invite him and ask him to perform the wake (rgyun-bzhugs).
I'll look for four men to recite the Vajra-c-chedika." No sooner had he
said that then my husband said, "We must summon four Bon-po
lamas." Chos-mgon said, "Although sister had no faith in Bon-pos, you
do whatever you like. I'm going to invite a mantrist and the Yogi," and
he went off. My nephew Khro-bo-skyabs and my husband went off
with six loads of barley and gave them to the neighbors to make rtsam-
pa. I thought, "What are they doing? A curing ceremony? My disease
has gotten better. You don't all have to gather here" But they didn't
even toss me a glance and I felt peckish. I didn't think I'd died. The
middle boy came, bringing chaplain Thugs-:rje-rin-chen, and he went
away, after giving him the things necessary to recite the Vajra-c-
chedika. The chaplain said the refuge formula and did some rites, and I
felt a great joy.
Then in the evening about twenty teachers and Yogi Thugs-rje-rin-
chen came. I greeted the lama and asked for his blessings, but he didn't