The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation : Or the Method of Realizing Nirvana through Knowing the Mind by Donald S. Lopez & Donald S. Lopez & Donald S. Lopez

Author:Donald S. Lopez & Donald S. Lopez & Donald S. Lopez [Lopez, Donald S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780195133158
Publisher: Oxford University Press

THE GOING INTO EXILE

The ministers advised that the Lotus-Born One be put to death by hanging, but the King said,’ This son is not of human origin; and, inasmuch as he may be an incarnate divinity, capital punishment cannot be inflicted upon him. Accordingly, I decree that he be exiled.’

The King summoned the Lotus-Born One and told him that the decree would come into force after three months. The Lotus-Born One explained that, as in the case of the slaying of the infant and the fly, there existed a karmic reason for the slaying of the minister’s wife and son. The minister’s son had been in that former life the courtesan’s maid-servant who had betrayed to Padma Tsalag the clandestine relationship between the courtesan and the merchant Hari; and the minister’s wife was the reincarnation of this merchant Hari. Though unrepentant, the Lotus-Born One bore no ill will towards any one.

Different parts of India, also China, Persia, and the mysterious country called Shambhala were considered as places of exile for the Prince, but the King told him that he might go wherever he liked.’ To me’, said the Prince,’ all countries are pleasant; I need only undertake religious work and every place becometh my monastery.’

Secretly, the King presented the Prince with the wish-granting gem, saying, ‘This will satisfy all thy wants’. The Prince handed it back, saying, ‘Whatever I behold is my wish-granting gem’; and when the King, in response to the Prince’s request, extended his hand opened, the Prince spat in it, and instantaneously the spittle became another wish-granting gem.

Bhāsadhara, weeping, caught the Prince by the hand and pleaded to be allowed to go with him into exile. Then she appealed to the King not to let him be exiled. Meanwhile, the Prince departed and went to a garden whence he addressed the multitude that followed him:

‘The body is impermanent; it is like the edge of a precipice.1 The breath is impermanent; it is like the cloud. The mind is impermanent; it is like the lightning. Life is impermanent; it is like the dew on the grass.’

Then the Guardian Kings of the four cardinal directions with their attendant deities appeared and prostrated themselves before the Prince and praised him. The Four ākinī2 also came with music and song; and they placed the Prince on a celestial horse and he disappeared into the heavens, in a southerly direction. At sunset he descended to earth and went to a cave where he engaged in worship and prayer for seven days, and all the Peaceful Deities3 appeared to him as in a mirror and conferred upon him transcendency over birth and death.

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