Philosophy and Religion / The Tibetan Book of the Dead

The Tibetan Book of the Dead or the After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane

English translation by Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup. Compiled and Edited by W. Y. Evans- Wentz

[The Introduction]

This Great Doctrine of Liberation by Hearing, which conferreth spiritual freedom on devotees of ordinary wit while in the Intermediate State, hath three divisions: the preliminaries, the subject-matter, and the conclusion.

At first, the preliminaries, The Guide Series,¹ for emancipating beings, should be mastered by practice.

[The Transference of the Consciousness-Principle²

By The Guide, the highest intellects ought most certainly to be liberated; but should they not be liberated, then while in the Intermediate State of the Moments of Death they should practice the Transference, which giveth automatic liberation by one's merely remembering it.

Devotees of ordinary wit ought most certainly to be freed thereby; but should they not be freed, then, while in the Intermediate State [during the experiencing] of Reality, they should persevere in the listening to this Great Doctrine of Liberation by Hearing.

Accordingly, the devotee should at first examine the symptoms of death as they gradually appear [in his dying body], following Self-Liberation [by Observing the] Characteristics [of the] Symptoms of Death .³ Then, when all the symptoms of death are complete [he should] apply the Transference, which conferreth liberation by merely remembering [the process]. ⁴

[The Reading of this Thödol]

If the Transference hath been effectually employed, there is no need to read this Thödol; but if the Transference hath not been effectually employed, then this Thödol is to be read, correctly and distinctly, near the dead body.

If there be no corpse, then the bed or the seat to which the deceased had been accustomed should be occupied [by the reader], who ought to expound the power of the Truth. Then, summoning the spirit [of the deceased], imagine it to be present there listening, and read.⁵ During this time no relative or fond mate should be allowed to weep or to wail, as such is not good [for the deceased]; so restrain them. ⁶
If the body be present, just when the expiration hath ceased, either a lāma [who hath been as a guru to the deceased], or a brother in the Faith whom the deceased trusted, or a friend for whom the deceased had great affection, putting the lips close to the ear [of the body] without actually touching it,⁷ should read this Great Thödol.

[The Practical Application of this Thödol by the Officiant]

Now for the explaining of the Thödol itself:

If thou canst gather together a grand offering, offer it in worship of the Trinity. If such cannot be done, then arrange whatever can be gathered together as objects on which thou canst concentrate thy thoughts and mentally create as illimitable an offering as possible and worship.

Then the 'Path of Good Wishes Invoking the Aid of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas'⁸ should be recited seven times or thrice.

After that, the Path of Good Wishes Giving Protection from Fear in the Bardo', and the Path of Good Wishes for Safe Delivery from the Dangerous Pitfalls of the Bardo', it together with the 'Root Words of the Bardo', are to be read distinctly and with the proper intonation.⁹

Then this Great Thödol is to be read either seven times or thrice,¹⁰ according to the occasion. [First cometh] the setting-face-to-face [to the symptoms of death] as they occur during the moments of death; [second] the application of the great vivid reminder, the setting-face-to-face to Reality while in the Intermediate State; and third, the methods of closing the doors of the womb while in the Intermediate State when seeking rebirth.¹¹

Footnotes

1. ’The Guide Series‘ refers to various treatises offering practical guidance to devotees on the Bodhi Path through the human world and thence through Bardo, the After—Death State, and onward to rebirth or else to Nirvāṇa.

2. The Text contains merely the Tibetan word Hpho (pron. Pho), meaning ‘transference’ (of the sum—total, or aggregate, of karmic propensities, composing, or bound up with, personality and consciousness). The use of the term ’soul’ being objectionable, since Buddhism, as a whole, denies the existence of a permanent, unchanging personal—consciousness entity such as the Semitic Faiths and animistic creeds in general understand thereby, the translator has avoided using it. But wherever any similar or equivalent term occurs herein it should be taken to imply something akin to ‘consciousness—principle’ or ‘compound of consciousness’ as implied by the Tibetan Hpho, or else as synonymous with the term ‘life—flux’ as used chiefly by Southern Buddhists.

3. A Tibetan work of the Bardo cycle, commonly used by lāmas as supplementary to the Bardo Thödol. It treats of the symptoms of death in particular, scientifically and in very great detail. The late Lāma Kazi Dawa—Samdup had planned its translation into English.

4. Liberation in this context does not necessarily imply, especially in the case of the average devotee, the Liberation of Nirvāṇa, but chiefly a liberation of the ‘life—flux’ from the dying body, in such manner as will afford the greatest possible after—death consciousness and consequent happy rebirth. Yet for the very exceptional and very highly efficient yogī, or saint, the same esoteric process of Transference can be, according to the lāma—gurus, so employed as to prevent any break in the flow of the stream of consciousness, from the moment of a conscious death to the moment of a conscious rebirth. Judging from a translation, made by the late Lāma Kazi Dawa—Samdup, of an old Tibetan manuscript containing practical directions for performing the Transference, which the editor possesses, the process is essentially yogīc, and could be employed only by a person trained in mental concentration, or one-pointedness of mind, to such a high degree of proficiency as to have gained control over all the mental and bodily functions. Merely remembering the process at the all-important moment of death - as the text implies - is, for a yogī, equivalent to performing the Transference itself; for once the yogi’s trained mind is directed to the process, instantaneously, or, as the text explains, automatically, the desired result is achieved.

5. The lāma or reader, stationed in the house of the deceased as directed, whether the corpse be there or not, is to summon the departed one in the name of Truth, saying, ‘As the Trinity is true, and as the Truth proclaimed by the Trinity is true, by the power of that Truth I summon thee’. Although no corpse be at hand (as there would not be when a person had met a violent or accidental death entailing loss or destruction of the human—plane body; or when, to accord with astrological calculations, the body had been removed or disposed of immediately after death, a not uncommon event in Tibet), the spirit of the deceased, in the invisible Bardo-plane body, must, nevertheless, be present at the reading, in order to be given the necessary guidance through the Other-world - as the Egyptian Book of the Dead also directs.

6. This prohibition is found in Brāhmanism too.

7. According to Tibetan and lāmaic belief, the body of a dying person should not be touched, that the normal departure of the consciousness-principle, which should take place through the Brāhmanic aperture on the crown of the head, be not interfered with. Otherwise, the departure maybe brought about through some other bodily aperture and lead to birth in one of the non-human states. For example, it is held that if the departure is through the aperture of the ear the deceased will be obliged - ere he can return to human birth - to be born in the world of the Gandharvas (fairy-like celestial musicians), wherein sound, as in song and music, is the prevailing quality of existence.

8. See the Appendix, where each of these chief Bardo prayers (or ‘Paths of Good Whishes’) is translated.

9. Cf. the two following passages, the first from The Book of the Craft of Dying, the second from The Craft to Know Well to Die (both, fifteenth century): ‘Last of all, it is to be known that the prayers that follow may be conveniently said upon a sick man that laboureth to his end. And if it is a religious person, then when the covent [i. e. convent] is gathered together with smiting of the table, as the manner is, then shall be said first the litany, with the psalms and orisons that he used therewith. Afterward, if he live yet, let some man that is about him say the orisons that follow hereafter, as the time and opportunity will suffer. And they may be often rehearsed again to excite the devotion of the sick man—if he have reason and understanding with him.’

‘And if the sick man or woman may, nor can not, say the orisons and prayers beforesaid, some of the assistants [i.e. bystanders] ought to say them before him with a loud voice, in changing the words there as they ought to be changed.’

10. Cf. the following from The Craft to Know Well to Die: ‘After all these things he [the person dying] ought to say three times, if he may, these words that follow.’

11. The first Bardo is the Chikhai Bardo; the second, the Chönyid Bardo; the third, the Sidpa Bardo.