Self-liberating Realization of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities Tibetans credit the teachings of the Bardo Thodrol to the tantric master Padmasambhava, who spent only a brief period in Tibet in the late eighth century but left an indelible mark on its religious tradition. It is believed that the original manuscript of the book was concealed, together with hundreds of other texts, by Padmasambhava’s disciples. Thought of as sacred treasures (terma), they were to be prophetically
Fig. 2
discovered in later times by certain individuals
mongolian manuscript of the book of the dead
predestined to do so by their good karma. One of them was the treasure revealer (terton) Karma Lingpa (Fig. 1), the son of an accomplished tantric practitioner. In the second half of the fourteenth century, at the age of fifteen, he unearthed on Mount Gampodar, in southern Tibet, a cache of manuscripts containing the tantric teachings of the “Self-liberating Realization of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities” (Shitro Gongpa Rangdrol). Included was a set of instructions to be put into practice during the transitionary states (bardo) of dying, death, and rebirth, which are crucial periods when the possibility for spiritual liberation is heightened. 3 These instructions were standardized at the end of the seventeenth century by the yogi Rigdzin Nyima Dragpa and became the core of the Bardo Thodrol, which served as the basis for the first Western-language edition of the Tibetan Book of the Dead 4 (Fig. 2).
Mongolia; 19th century Natural pigments and ink on paper; 7 x 25 in. Rubin Museum of Art C2004.37.3 (HAR 66013, 66043) Although it stemmed originally from the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, the Bardo Thodrol was soon adopted by all other schools in Tibet and was also spread widely in Mongolia by the Gelugpas. These finely illustrated pages of a Mongolian translation of the text show Buddha Vairochana in union with his consort, Dhatvishvari, the first peaceful deities to appear during the Transitionary State of Absolute Reality; and three of the four female ogresses that preside over the cardinal directions.