The Tibetan Book of the Dead · Reading 61 of 170

The Dawning of the Wrathful Deities, from the Eighth to the Fourteenth Day

Introduction

Reading 1 of 7

Now the manner of the dawning of the Wrathful Deities is to be shown.

In the above Bardo of the Peaceful [Deities] there were seven stages of ambuscade. The setting-face-to-face at each stage should have [caused the deceased] to recognize either at one or another [stage] and to have been liberated.

Multitudes will be liberated by that recognition; [and] although multitudes obtain liberation in that manner, the number of sentient beings being great, evil karma powerful, obscurations dense, propensities of too long standing, the Wheel of Ignorance and Illusion becometh neither exhausted nor accelerated. Although [all be] set face-to-face in such detail, there is a vast preponderance of those who wander downwards unliberated.

Therefore, after the cessation [of the dawning] of the Peaceful and the Knowledge-Holding Deities, who come to welcome one, the fifty-eight flame-enhaloed, wrathful, blood-drinking deities come to dawn, who are only the former Peaceful Deities in changed aspect — according to the place [or psychic-centre of the Bardo-body of the deceased whence they proceed]; nevertheless, they will not resemble them.