What is the Tibetan Book of the Dead?

thanks to one dream for sponsoring this video in the late 1920s the psychoanalyst Carl Jung encountered a Buddhist text that radically shaped his own theories of the Mind the Tibetan Book of the Dead in his commentary on the text he called it the quintessence of Buddhist psychological criticism calling its philosophy Sublime and unparalleled the Tibetan Book of the Dead went on to become one of the most widely recognized Buddhist texts in Europe and the United States it inspired movies novelists and musicians like John Lennon of The Beatles Lenin Drew inspiration from the Tibetan Book of the Dead when he wrote the song Tomorrow Never Knows also drawing inspiration from a psychedelic experience he had while on LSD but what is this text what does it say and why did it become such a big deal to people like Jung the Tibetan Book of the Dead is the Western name for the Bardo thotle meaning the great Liberation By Hearing in the intermediate States that's a complicated title but it tells us Allah lot about the text so let's unpack it the text is a funerary right it's intended to be read aloud to someone who's dying or recently dead it's traditionally read by a llama which if you remember from our previous episode on Tibetan Buddhism are religious teachers the Tibetan equivalent to the Sanskrit word guru the opening lines are a direct address to the dead o alas alas fortunate child of Buddha nature do not be oppressed by the forces of ignorance and delusion but rise up now with resolve and Courage by reciting the text the Llama prepares the dead to enter the Bardo Bardo refers to an intermediate state after death but before rebirth this is the intermediate States part in the official title but to understand what Bardo states are you can compare it to a type of purgatory it's a bewildering state of transformation and suspended reality technically it's a state that happens entirely in the mind not an action physical place the deceased sometimes called the Bardo being will be born there as a mental body in the shape of the body of their next Incarnation the word Bardo itself can also help us understand the concept Bardo breaks down into the word bar denoting movement or flowing and do which means a stepping stone or Island thus a Bardo is a mind island of Stillness As you move from death to the next state of being the gold during the Bardo state is to liberate the being from samsara or the cycle of death and rebirth hence the first part of the title The Great Liberation the consciousness of the deceased is in some sense still present in the corpse and can hear the text being read as the Llama guides them through the bewildering experiences of the bardos I say bewildering because the Bardo beings own Karma conjures all sorts of Visions some of them are absolutely terrifying and the Llama reading the text helps the Bardo being recognize what they're seeing during this intermediate state so let's go through three of the bardos that one passes through after death as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead though I'll note that there are a total of six bardos mentioned in the text but will focus on the last three the first of these bardos known as the Bardo of the moment of death begins as a person as physically dying at the moment of death the Bardo being enters into an experience of inner Radiance sometimes known as luminous mind and can briefly experience a kind of ultimate truth of reality if the Bardo being recognizes this state as absolute reality they become enlightened and are liberated from rebirth if they do not recognize it which is more often the case they enter the second Bardo called the Bardo of reality it involves experiences and visions that can disorient the Bardo being if they don't have the llama's help the text stresses the importance of moving on stating that it's not possible to remain here in this life even if they were to try not that the Bardo being is reminded of these things the Llama then warns them of what's to come O child of Buddha nature when your mind and body separate the pure luminous apparitions of reality itself will arise subtle and clear radiant and dazzling naturally bright and awesome do not fear them do not be terrified do not be odd whatever sounds lights or Rays may arise they cannot harm you for you are beyond death now now Bright Lights may not seem all that terrifying but the Bardo being will soon be confronted by the peaceful and wrathful deities what you're looking at is an 18th century Tibetan painting of these deities the text instructs the Bardo being to visualize the assembled peaceful and wrathful deities as a mandala of deities within one's body mandala being a visual representation of a Buddha Palace specific pure lands deities or even the entire Cosmos they're often used as visual aids during meditation the peaceful deities manifest before the Bardo being first for many this procession of deities will strike fear for others awe and Fascination the text attempts to steer the Bardo being away from these emotional highs and lows because to be liberated they must recognize that these images are not separate from themselves instead the deities are manifestations of their own mind the entire mandala of peaceful deities will array itself in a rainbow of color they will Dazzle the Bardo being with many Bright Lights while the text Direct the Bardo being to achieve Unity with them and not be distracted by the dull path back to rebirth at that moment do not withhold your compassion but draw us back from the path which is the gateway to the deluded animal realms but if the Bardo being has not identified with the peaceful deities and become Buddhas they will then be approached by the Assembly of wrathful blood drinking deities and these wrathful beings are as terrifying as they sound they have many heads they have sharp fangs they will laugh at the Bardo being and make strange sounds and they're depicted as being surrounded by Flames with weapons in their hands although they're wrathful and appear as terrifying blood-drinking demons they are manifestations of pure nature and the text explains that they shouldn't be feared if the Bardo being recognizes either the peaceful or wrathful deities as manifestations of their own mind the text says you will dissolve inseparably within the lights and Buddha bodies and buddhahood will be attained so this is a second chance to achieve enlightenment and escape the cycle of rebirth but many people will find this difficult to say the least if the Bardo being becomes afraid they will not attain buddhahood and the deities will morph together the peaceful deities will become mahakala known as the protector of the Dharma and the wrathful deities will become Yama dharmaraja the Lord of Buddhist Hells Yama will be as vast as the sky brandishing in his hand the wooden slate documenting past actions his mouth echoing with the cries of strike and kill he is drinking brains severing heads and ripping out internal organs the Bardo being will then faint from fear and wake up later having failed to achieve Liberation from samsara from there they enter the third Bardo of rebirth or existence in this stage the Bardo beings Karma determines which realm they're born into the realm of the Gods the jealous Gods humans animals hungry ghosts or Hells the Bardo being will be presented with womb entrances which they'll feel attracted to upon entering one entrance conception occurs and they are reborn the transmigration process is complete and the Bardo being enters into a different Bardot of birth as we unpack this complex text we should remember its ritual context the Tibetan Book of the Dead is meant to be read aloud it's an oral performative text and moreover as one scholar says it's meant to be read to the dead corpses are the intended audience as you read the text you'll notice so much of it is addressed specifically to O child of Buddha nature and many of the stanzas are encouragements or instructions on how to navigate the wild visions of the Bardo States the text reads very differently when you remind yourself of this oral nature of the text especially the more terrifying parts of Yama drinking brains so where did the Tibetan Book of the Dead come from well first of all we should be clear that the name is a bit of a misnomer although it's called a book it's actually a section of just three chapters from a larger text a text called peaceful and wrathful deities a natural Liberation through recognition of enlightened intention the text is originally attributed to the 8th Century tantric Master Padma sambhava who is one of the most revered figures in Tibetan Buddhism as the tradition goes He prophesied that his teachings Would One Day become corrupted so to protect them he began hiding texts around the Tibetan landscape to be revealed when the time was right sometimes hiding the texts in a cave lake or on top of a mountain but other times hiding the texts and the heart and mind of a future disciple that would one day be revealed spontaneously centuries later these hidden teachings of Padma sambhava are called terma translated as treasure the Tibetan book The Dead is one part of one such termitext the people who discover these Treasures are called turtons or treasure discoverers turtons are thought to be reincarnations of Padma sambhava's disciples after giving a lecture Padma sambhava would choose one of his disciples and assign the task of revealing that teaching in a future life according to tradition this is how the Tibetan Book of the Dead was discovered in the 14th century a 15 year old boy named Karma lingpa the son son of a tantric Master is said to have found several texts buried in a cave including the entire collection of peaceful and wrathful deities which as I said includes the section that we now call the Tibetan Book of the Dead it's worth mentioning though that this is the traditional Narrative of the terma many scholars don't accept the story as historical instead the terma are considered to be works of the turton who discovered it and attributing the authorship to Padma sambhava is more of a traditional sign of respect or claim to Authority although the Tibetan Book of the Dead is the most famous Tibetan Buddhist writing in the west it's not actually that Central in tibetan Buddhist practice itself many Tibetan Buddhists are often surprised to hear that this small section of one of their many funerary texts became so popular in fact some Scholars have even argued that it's become more of an American spiritual classic than a Tibetan one why is that let's turn to this guy Walter Evans Wentz the American who first published the text in the West Evans Wentz was a theosophist theosophy is a spiritual movement that arose in the late 19th century that Drew from several strands of esoteric thought including Hinduism and Buddhism in 1919 while on a spiritual journey in India Evans Wentz bought a bunch of Tibetan funerary texts from a British officer who had recently returned from Tibet which at the time had been invaded by the British Empire Evans Wentz had a bit of a habit of collecting old texts in languages he didn't know well enough to translate so wanting to know what these texts said he traveled to Northeast India to meet qazi dawa samdup an English language teacher who had helped westerners translate religious texts in the past after the texts were translated Evans Wentz then published them under the title The Tibetan Book of the Dead because of similarities he saw between it and the Egyptian Book of the Dead he even believed they both derived from a single source of ancient wisdom Evans Wentz would later describe his relationship with samdup as one of a guru and disciple in the preface of the first edition published in 1927 by Oxford University press he says in this book I am seeking so far as possible to suppress my own views and to act simply as the mouthpiece of a Tibetan Sage of whom I was a recognized disciple so by publishing these texts Evans Wentz positioned himself in a lineage of Guru to disciple however the scholar Don Lopez says there's nothing indicating that they had this sort of relationship as far as we can tell from the letters they exchanged their interaction was a brief two months of formal professionalism nevertheless thanks to Evans Wentz the Tibetan Book of the Dead which go on to Fascinate Western audiences due partly to the orientalist tendency to romanticize Tibet as a land of mysticism and partly because of the perennial fear of death and the desire to understand what comes after it was immensely popular especially among Americans interested in spiritualism esotericism and Altered States of Mind especially throughout the 1930s and 40s and all the way into the 1960s as we saw at the start of this video Carl Jung famously wrote introductions to several the book's editions and in 1964 the notorious psychedelic researcher Timothy Leary along with a few others published the Psychedelic experience a manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead which essentially was a how-to guide for psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin the Tibetan Book of the Dead also had a major impact on Western culture the movie's Jacob's Ladder and entered the void both draw heavily from its ideas in symbolism now the idea that the Tibetan book The Dead is more American than Tibetan can sound off base or even insult melting after all Tibet is in the name the text was composed in the Tibetan language it's performed by Tibetan Buddhist llamas but thanks to Evan's wins and those that came after him the Tibetan book The Dead was reshaped and repackaged to appeal to an American audience it's a curious byproduct of religious globalization in which sacred ideas of one culture become something entirely new when they interact with a different culture as Don Lopez says ironically the Tibetan Book of the Dead is not really a book and it's not really about death it's about rebirth The Rebirth of Souls and the resurrection of termitexts Evans wentz's classic is not so much Tibetan as it is American a product of American spiritualism Evans Wentz extracted a few chapters from a much larger cycle of texts and rebranded it with a new american-friendly title and added all sorts of commentary to the original text it wasn't until recent years that we finally got more complete scholarly translations in English the translation I've been using is from 2005 and translates more than double the content of Evans original version moreover his version is removed from the concerns of Tibetan Buddhism as Lopez says the text is concerned with Buddhist rebirth while for American audiences it's been received more as a psychological or even psychedelic classic in many ways the history of the Tibetan Book of the Dead is also a lesson in religious Authority and the transmission of sacred texts many religions have some method of connecting their holy books to an important figure who legitimizes the text like how Christians ascribe books like the Gospel of John to specific Apostles of Jesus or how the sick sacred texts the guru Gran sahib is the Eternal Guru for six standing in the lineage of the religion's ten human gurus we see a similar phenomenon in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition as well which Roots the authority of termitexts and the lineage of Padma sambhava's disciples who continually reintroduce terma by reincarnating generation after generation for the theosophists grounding their ideas in more ancient religions like Buddhism and Hinduism is their claim to Authority two like how Evans Wentz claimed to be a disciple of a llama he positioned himself in the same lineage of authority as karma lingpa himself the revealer of the Tibetan Book of the Dead linking his chain of authority to a much more ancient chain thanks to wandrium for sponsoring this video wondrium is an online learning platform featuring educational documentaries lecture series tutorials and More in today's video we explored the Tibetan Book of the Dead which exploded in popularity in Europe and the United States especially among people interested in Psychology and Altered States Of Consciousness if these sorts of topics Fascinate you too then I'd really check out one dream series redefining reality the intellectual implications of modern science which tackle similar questions like what counts as reality and what is human consciousness in the first place it's taught by Dr Stephen gimble who's a philosopher specializing in the philosophy of science some episodes focus on physics like the episode Quantum Consciousness which sets out to answer the question can physics explain human consciousness other episodes are more biological like an episode on evolutionary psychology how the human brain evolved overall it's a sweeping series that will help you understand some very free abstract metaphysical ideas if you'd like to watch the series wandream is offering the religion for breakfast audience a free trial head on over to onedrim.com for breakfast or click the link in the comments below to get started thanks everyone

Channel: ReligionForBreakfast

Views: 564,268

Keywords: Bardo Thodol, Padmasambhava, Karma Linpa, Dalai Lama

Id: -5GJNsPLqbs

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 23 2023