The Book Report #92
Episode #91
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
By Padmasambhava, Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup (Translator), John Baldock (Editor)
The Book
The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thödol) originates from 8th-century Tantric Buddhism, dictated by Guru Padmasambhava (founder of the Nyingma school) to his disciple Yeshe Tsogyal, then hidden as a terma (treasure text) for future discovery.
Lama Kazi Dawa-Samhup was the first translator of the text into English. And because of the translation, Kazi helped introduce Buddhism to the West.
In 1927, Oxford University Press published the first translation of the book.
My copy of the book was published in 2009 by Arcturus Publishing LTD. Printed in China, it has 127 pages and includes prayers for each path of the journey through limbo.
What Did I Think?
Do you want to achieve enlightenment? Are you prepared to study hard for it? Then maybe. Just maybe, this book could be for you.
This book is part of the Buddhist religion. I didn’t really understand that until I started reading the book.
The book is a guide to what might happen after you die. It explains what to look out for, and with training, you should be able to recognise them after, or a little while after, death.
After you die, you have up to two weeks to recognise that you are dead and perform various actions to help you achieve enlightenment. If you recognise it early, you may be able to arrive in heaven within a few days. But if not, you have to appease the numerous deities and work out their tricks and illusions while remaining calm and collected during the act of meditation. And also perform chants and poems that can ward off deities.
If you fail, the next option is rebirth. Here, you still have to try to get past the deities who will try to dissuade you and send you to their version of hell or, in some cases, eat your “soul”.
Whatever the Womb
After battling for a few more days, and if you succeed, you enter a place where you find a door, or in my mind, a cave, and in the cave is the entrance to all the wombs in the universe. And depending on how well you have done during your trials, you will end up as a human or as any other species you can think of.
I did find this a bit difficult to accept and maybe a tad rude. The Buddhist religion has portals open to every female womb, and they decide which new form you will take in reincarnation.
I also couldn’t understand the timeline. If the concept of the waiting area, or limbo, is set after death, and your soul is sent there, the place itself would be classed as another dimension, outside of space and time. So how do they know how long each path may take? What concept of time are they using?
As far as I know, the person returning will have to remember every path as they are reincarnated into a baby and then up to adulthood. That in itself would be virtually impossible, as most people forget everything and cannot remember what happens after the age of two or three years.
So, how was this information sent to those who received it? And who sent it?
Would I Recommend?
Are you interested in Buddhism, or would you like to learn its history? This might help you on that path of knowledge. But for everyone else: unless you want to become a Buddha or learn the ways of the dead to gain enlightenment, this book isn’t for you.
I don’t recommend this book. But don’t let me stop you from trying it for yourself.
Please give this book a go.
Would you like to purchase your very own copy?
You could try these online stores: Amazon UK/USA. Waterstones. AbeBooks UK/USA, Barnes & Noble, or eBay UK/USA.
Alternatively, you could try your local bookshop or even your local library.
