Tibetan Book of the Dead

Essential Quotes

“As for the common worldly folk, what need is there to mention them! By fleeing, through fear, terror, and awe, they fall over the precipices into the unhappy worlds and suffer.”

“Therefore, this Thodol is the doctrine by which Buddhahood may be attained without meditation; the doctrine liberating by the hearing [of it] alone; the doctrine which leadeth brings of great evil karma on the Secret Path; the doctrine which produceth differentiation instantaneously [between those who are initiated into it and those who are not].”

“By so proclaiming [them], knowing them to be tutelary deities, merging [in them] in at-one-ment, Buddhahood will be obtained.”

“[They] being thine own tutelary deity, be not terrified. In reality [they are] the Father-Mother Bhagavan Ratna-Sambhava. Believe in them. Recognition [of them] and the obtaining of liberation will be simultaneous.”

“For instance, a person, upon recognizing a lion-skin [to be a lion-skin], is freed [from fear]; for though it be only a stuffed lion skin, if one do not know it to be so actually, fear ariseth, but, upon being told by some person that it is a lion-skin only, one is freed from fear.”

“Fear that not. Know them to be the thought-forms of thine own intellectual faculties.”

“If all existing phenomena shining forth as divine shapes and radiances be recognized to be the emanations of one’s own intellect, Buddhahood will be obtained at that very instant of recognition.”

“When suffering miseries of karmic propensities here, / May the blissfulness of the Clear Light dawn.”

“However heavy the evil karma may be and however weak the remaining karma may be, it is not possible that liberation will not be obtained [if one but recognize].”