Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines: Or Seven Books of Wisdom of the Great Path, According to the Late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English Rendering by W. Y. Evans-Wentz & R. R. Marett & Donald S. Lopez

Author:W. Y. Evans-Wentz & R. R. Marett & Donald S. Lopez
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2000-09-28T03:00:00+00:00

X. THE PERFORMANCE OF THE MYSTERY-PLAY1

The Mystery-Play, in slightly differing versions, is nowadays annually celebrated by all sects of Lāmas, either, as is more common and in keeping with pre-Buddhistic usage, at the end of the year, or, by many of the Ñingma Orders, on St. Padma Sambhava’s birthday, in the early summer, as in Ladāk. When performed at the end of the year, it forms a very important part of the ceremony known as ‘the sacrificial body of the dead year’.

The performance is held in the temple courtyard. The notification of the commencement of the Play is given by a loud bugle-like sounding of a human thigh-bone trumpet, precisely as in the opening of the Chöd Rite. The lāmaic orchestra strikes up a weird wailing sort of air, accompanied by a low chant on the part of the musicians, and then there appear a number of black-mitred priests, representative of the pre-Buddhistic Bon Faith. They make the mystic Bon sign of ‘The Three’, and dance to slow, solemn music. After their exit, hosts of demons enter. As these move round in their ritual dance, the officiating Lāmas make propitiatory offerings to them and to all the beings of the Six States of sangsāric existence. There appear next, group after group, representatives of the demoniacal beings of the invisible realms, many of them animal-headed, very similar to those described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The Lāmas appease and exorcize one group after another until St. Padma Sambhava himself appears, whereupon all the demons make obeisance to him and disappear, in symbol of the triumph of Buddhism over the indigenous Shamanism of the Bönpas.

Similarity with the Chöd Rite, as a sacrificial exorcism, also appears in the service chanted by the priest who personifies St. Padma Sambhava. Being wholly a demon-expelling rite, in which are invoked the officiant’s tutelary deity and the tutelary deity’s spiritual attendants, comparable to the Goddess of the All-Fulfilling Wisdom and the ākinīs of the Chöd Rite, the service is entitled ‘The Expelling Oblation of the Hidden Fierce Ones’. Through the aid of these ‘Fierce Ones’, as through the aid of the Goddess of the All-Fulfilling Wisdom and the ākinīs in the Chöd Rite, the exorcizing or dominating of the demon hosts is accomplished. The invisible demons to be exorcized are made to enter into an effigy of a sacrificial victim, after which the officiant chants the following exorcism for keeping them at bay:

‘HŪ! Through the blessing of the blood-drinking Fierce One, may the injuring demons and evil spirits be kept at bay. I pierce their hearts with this hook; I bind their hands with this snare of rope; I bind their bodies with this powerful chain ; I keep them down with the tinkling bell. Now, O! blood-drinking Wrathful One [Chief of the Fierce Ones], take thy sublime seat upon them.’

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