TANTRIC BUDDHISM (INCLUDING CHINA AND JAPAN)off by the wind. What should I do?" and I ran off. Thinking I should go
to the monastery, I went off, and following on the road behind me a
dog came barking. A girl on the roof of a house said, "Rotten mutt!
A ghost has made you bark." I thought, "She seems to have called me
a ghost." I said to her, "Show me a god which isn't a ghost!" but
she said nothing and went back inside. Then, thinking I had to go to
the monastery, I arrived there. In my room there was a corpse. I
was very frightened. Its arms and legs were stretched out and it faced
downwards. Before it were two frightening hunting dogs. I took fright
and said, "Om mal)i padme hum." Then I went and looked; it was tied
with its feet behind its head. I was very much afraid of it. Then, as
soon as I had thought, "It seems I've died," I arrived before a great
mountain.Typical of these scenes are elements which allegorize dominant Buddhist
values involving the consequences of attachment and which play upon the
dominant media of human happiness and social values. Three "obligatory"
events occur in all of the 'das-log biographies.
First, the "soul" undergoes an autoscopic experience, seeing its own corpse of
which it is frightened. Invariably, one's own body appears in distorted, usually
animal, shape, a dog, a pig, a snake, etc., which causes the 'das-log to feel nau-
seated and loathing. To make matters worse, the 'das-log may see its own rela-
tives offer food to this sickening carcass, while he himself is tormented by
hunger and thirst, which remains unrelieved except for the efforts of the monks.
Here is a comment on the value of the body: rotting animality; and on bodily
states in general: loathsome and sickening. This view of the corporeal is
expressed in many Buddhist texts which recommend a day in the graveyard as a
lesson in the consequences of bodily attachment (see, e.g., Bond 1980). This
motif also stands in contrast to the states of bodily beauty promised as a gw;a of
Avalokitesvara worship.^23
Second, the soul, not yet fully realizing it is "dead," now sees its relatives
crying over the corpse. This results in its being painfully stricken by a "hail of
pus and blood," a rather obvious concretization of the concept that sentimental
attachments ultimately cause suffering. But why pus and blood? The salience of
these substances is never explained in the biographies, yet present in every one
of them. The following is a chain of associations, which elaborates upon differ-
ent levels of understanding. The first proposition is that tears become pus and
blood. Generally speaking, a clear limpid liquid becomes viscous colored
liquids, which then undergo secondary transformations to solids. Further associ-
ations are to be found in statements saying that the 'das-log was stricken so hard
that his flesh and bone were cut, thus completing the substantivation, i.e., pus =
white = bone, blood = red = flesh. From general Tibetan associations we may
derive bone from father from white liquid (pus/semen); and flesh from mother
from red liquid (blood/menstrual blood). On the other hand, clear limpid liquids