The Visions That Rise at the Moment of Death
It is like a person who, at the moment of death, beholds the marks of the intermediate state: one who has carried out evil karma sees hell, the animal realm, and the hungry ghosts, undergoing every torment there; or sees Yama, king of the dead, bearing weapons, seizing him and dragging him away; or sees a mountain of blades, or a forest of swords; or sees sharp leaves cutting sentient beings apart; or sees sentient beings boiled and cooked in a cauldron; or hears every kind of sorrowful, suffering sound. One who has cultivated goodness, at the moment of death, beholds instead every heavenly palace entire; or sees heavenly maidens, adorned in every way, at play and delighting in every pleasure. Seeing wondrous, excellent things such as these, he is unaware of it himself; dying here, he is born there, perceiving only the inconceivable realm of his own karma. Sudhana was likewise: within the tower, he beheld the bodhisattvas' own inconceivable realm of supreme karma.
Hell's Torments, the Heavens' Delights, and Karma's Own Unseen Realm
譬如有人當命終時，見中陰相；所謂：行惡業者，見於地獄、畜生、餓鬼，受諸楚毒；或見閻羅王持諸兵仗，囚執將去；或見刀山；或見劍樹；或見利葉割截眾生；或見鑊湯鬻治眾生；或聞種種悲苦音聲。若修善者，當命終時，悉見一切諸天宮殿；或見天女，種種莊嚴，遊戲快樂。見如是等諸妙勝事而不自覺；死此生彼，但見不可思議行業境界。善財童子亦復如是，於樓觀內，見諸菩薩不可思議勝業境界。
It is like a person who, at the moment of death, beholds the marks of the intermediate state: one who has carried out evil karma sees hell, the animal realm, and the hungry ghosts, undergoing every kind of bitter torment there; or sees Yama, king of the dead, bearing weapons, seizing and imprisoning him, dragging him away; or sees a mountain of blades; or sees a forest of swords; or sees sharp leaves cutting sentient beings to pieces; or sees sentient beings boiled and cooked in a cauldron; or hears every kind of sorrowful, suffering sound. One who has cultivated goodness, at the moment of death, beholds instead every heavenly palace entire; or sees heavenly maidens, adorned in every way, at play and delighting in every pleasure. Seeing wondrous, excellent things such as these, he is unaware of it himself; dying here, he is born there, perceiving only the inconceivable realm of his own karma. Sudhana the youth was likewise: within the tower, he beheld the bodhisattvas' own inconceivable realm of supreme karma.
"The intermediate state" (中陰, antarābhava, the transitional condition traditionally held to occur between death and the next rebirth) is invoked here not for its own doctrinal content but as a structural parallel to Sudhana's own situation: in both cases, a person perceives an entire realm of vivid, consequential imagery that governs what comes next, without any ordinary sensory mediation and without full awareness of the mechanism producing it. Fazang reads the deliberate pairing of hell's torments and heaven's delights as covering the full range of possible karmic outcome before the simile's real point: that both alike are "perceived" rather than journeyed to, exactly as Sudhana's own vision of the bodhisattvas' realm arises through perception granted by Maitreya's spiritual power rather than through any actual movement from where he stands.
Part 400 Complete
The four-hundredth part of this collection is now complete, with the bardo-vision simile given in full. Part 401 continues the simile-sequence with a person possessed by a spirit, able to answer any question put to him — and with the strange dilation of time experienced by one who enters a nāga's own palace.
Continue to Part 401 →