Then the black stones and the white were placed on the scales and weighed.  Fortunately, the white heap was much heavier than the black, so the man’s good works purified him from his sins.  The king then spoke: “You have followed the commandments of the religion, except on one day when you were still young.  Now follow the path paved with golden stones.” Joyfully, the dead man walked up the path, which led to the bridge leading the pilgrim across the river to heaven.

The next deceased awaiting his turn to be judged was not so fortunate.  He had to confess that he had killed many animals and eaten them, that he often had taken what was not given to him.  The heap of black pebbles was much bigger than the white heap, so his virtue was not strong enough to purify his sins.  The man with the deer head studied his book, the ox-head man studied his mirror of the past, the monkey head man applied his yardstick, but none of them could find enough mitigating evidence to absolve the sinner.  King Shosgyal had to condemn him to hell.  The executioners picked him up with their hooks and dragged him to the torture room.

Tibetan Libraries Hold Treasures Tibet is the oldest nation in central Asia: Its people have lived in their land of steep slopes and stony plateaus since the beginning of recorded history.  Prior to the eighteenth century, Tibet was much larger than it is today, but successive Chinese governments have carved off large tracts and set them up as separate provinces, forcibly settling Han Chinese peasants in the valleys. Since the communist Chinese troops began razing Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the 1950s, they have destroyed numerous ancient volumes.  Such irreplaceable works contained knowledge accumulated by Tibetan scholars over the last thirteen hundred years.  Some Buddhist texts in those monastic libraries were unique in that they were preserved in the Tibetan language and script rather than in Sanskrit or Pali, the original languages of the Buddhist scriptures, or in Chinese.