To Speak the Name of the Dead Is to Make Them Live Again Tibet
The Tibetan Volume of the Dead is the English translation of the Tibetan texts known as bar-do thos-grol (Bardo Thodol) – "Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State" – and serves as a guide for the soul of the deceased after it has left the body and earlier it is reborn.
The texts were starting time written in the eighth century CE, discovered in the 14th, and translated into English in the 20th century by the American scholar and anthropologist Walter Evans-Wentz (l. 1878-1965), who was also a spiritualist. Evans-Wentz's translation became the standard English version nearly people in the mod day are familiar with and the one other English-speaking authors usually depict from.
Evan Wentz's Theosophical understanding of the piece of work, supported by the Swiss psychiatrist and analyst Carl Gustav Jung (l. 1875-1961), has established the book as a popular guide in self-transformation, in recognizing the illusory nature of existence, used to gratuitous oneself from misconceptions which keep one bound to repetitious cycles of self-subversive or self-limiting beliefs. This was not, however, the original purpose of the piece of work.
The Bardo Thodol was written to be read to the spirit of the deceased in the intermediate state between the moment the soul left the trunk & the time it was reborn.
The Bardo Thodol was written to be read to the spirit of the deceased in the intermediate state (bardo) between the moment the soul left the body and the time information technology was either reborn in another form or liberated from the cycle of rebirth and decease (samsara). When ane died, it was believed, i was confronted by the deeds one had washed in life personified in the forms of wrathful and peaceful entities. These would be frightening to the soul so a lama (Tibetan Buddhist monk) would read the Bardo Thodol aloud to let the soul know what it was encountering, and this understanding would enable a more than peaceful transition through the intermediate state to a new class of being.
Withal, The Tibetan Volume of the Expressionless equally a guidebook for the living has taken on its own life and purpose independent of the original intention. The work, no matter how one interprets it, depends on the recognition of the soul's survival of bodily death and offers comfort in the promise of continued existence. It is sometimes used in the present day by Hospice workers to calm the fears of the dying and direct them in letting go of their present life to encompass a new experience, addressing the age-old terror of not-existence at death.
History of the Text
According to legend, the Bardo Thodol originated in the 8th century when the Lotus Guru Padmasambhava was invited to Tibet by the emperor Trisong Detsen (r. 755 - c. 797) who required his help in ridding the country of dark spirits that were preventing an credence of Buddhist doctrine. Padmasambhava subdued these spirits and transformed them from selfish, fearful, obstructions to guardians of the cosmic law of Dharma, freeing the land from the darkness of ignorance and allowing for the spread of Buddhist enlightenment.
Padmasambhava
Among the beginning to respond to the Buddhist message was Yeshe Tsogyal (l. mid 8th century), either principal wife or a espoused of Trisong Detsen. She may have been an early devotee of the goddess Tara, a principal deity in the Esoteric Buddhism of Padmasambhava, who inspired women to seek enlightenment and encouraged equality of the sexes. Yeshe Tsogyal, often referred to as the Mother of Tibetan Buddhism, studied dutifully with Padmasambhava, attained enlightenment, and helped him to write the texts which they then concealed in diverse locations to be plant later past those who would reveal them when they were needed.
In the 14th century, the texts were discovered by Karma Lingpa (l. 1326-1386), considered the reincarnation of i of Padmasambhava's disciples, who was a gter-ston (as well given every bit terton), a "revealer" of the spiritual treasures of the past. Karma Lingpa discovered several texts, not simply the Bardo Thodol, as noted past scholar Bryan J. Cuevas:
These were Karma Lingpa'due south textual revelations, commonly referred to collectively equally the Karling Peaceful and Wrathful: a large literary cycle entitled Self-Liberated Wisdom of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities and a smaller prepare of funerary texts called Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo. (17)
These texts were taught by masters to students orally into the 15th century and passed betwixt students in the same way. Cuevas notes how "manual of religious knowledge, whether in the form of texts or direct oral teaching, was actually a rather fluid procedure in Tibet" at this time and earlier (19). The texts were not printed until the 18th century when they began to circulate more widely.
Underlying the vision of the Bardo Thodol is the Buddhist understanding of the interconnectedness of all things.
In 1919, the British officer Major W. L. Campbell, stationed in Sikkim, Bharat, was traveling in Tibet and purchased a number of these block print manuscripts. Campbell had an interest in Tibetan Buddhism and afterwards his return to Sikkim, he shared them with Dr. Walter Evans-Wentz, an anthropologist in the region studying the religious and spiritual aspects of the culture. Evans-Wentz had a very poor command of the linguistic communication of the texts and then enlisted the help of Lama Kazi Dawa Samdup (50. 1868-1922) who was headmaster and teacher at a local school.
Dawa Samdup already had an impressive reputation as a translator equally he had worked with the famous travel author and spiritualist Alexandra David-Neel (fifty. 1868-1969) translating Tibetan into English. He agreed to help Evans-Wentz with the manuscripts, and they met together to translate and interpret the texts until Dawa Samdup's death in 1922. At this bespeak, merely the funerary text of the Bardo Thodol was by and large translated and Evans-Wentz filled in the missing parts with his own interpretation and published it in 1927 under the title The Tibetan Book of the Dead to resonate with the title of The Egyptian Book of the Expressionless start published in English in 1867 through the British Museum. Since its 1927 publication, The Tibetan Volume of the Dead has not only remained in print but has inspired other translations and hundreds of pages of manufactures and commentary.
The Bardo Thodol
Underlying the vision of the Bardo Thodol is the Buddhist understanding of the interconnectedness of all things and life equally a constant cycle of change and impermanence. All things come into being and pass abroad according to their nature and human suffering arises from trying to maintain permanent states of being in a earth of impermanence. The scholar Fung Kei Cheng elaborates:
For Buddhists, life is considered to be not only a procedure just, more than chiefly, a "vast process of becoming" with an unceasing bike of living and dying, implying that individuals experience expiry innumerable times…Depending on the individual response to reality, it becomes possible to transcend suffering and subdue death feet, when a person successfully searches for pregnant in life and afterward prepares to die well through letting go of death. (68-69)
One's response to reality in life is thought to shape one's experiences after death. If one has devoted oneself to elevated thought and action, one might expect to encounter just peaceful entities on the other side, but homo beings are flawed and even the most devout spiritual person will experience lapses, negative thoughts and feelings, and dark times when they are separated from their higher ability.
Deities of the Padmakula Mandala
In the afterlife, both the positive (peaceful) and the negative (wrathful) energies of one'due south life are manifested as entities trying to block or open 1's path through the intermediate country. The Bardo Thodol is read to the soul to let it know what it is encountering and what to expect side by side.
At that place are six sections to the text, each addressing a dissimilar land within the larger intermediate state:
- Reminder of the Bardo of Reality-Itself
- Root Verses on the Vi Bardos
- Religious Liturgy of the Self-Liberation of Karmic Latencies
- Self-Liberated Vision: A Prayer to the Five Pure Lands
- Direct Introduction to the Bardo of Becoming
- Prayer Requesting Assist from the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the Ten Directions
(Cuevas, 174)
In the first bardo, one experiences the moment of death and passes to the "clear light seen at the moment of death" which is reality itself, non the illusion of reality one experienced on earth.
In the 2d bardo, ane is introduced to an overview of all 6 bardos and the Buddha forms that may manifest likewise as other entities.
In the third bardo, one experiences the personifications of one'southward sins and good deeds in life as sometimes frightening hallucinations which, if one recognizes them for what they are, one may pass through toward rebirth or liberation.
In the fourth bardo, one frees oneself from the illusions of the by life and wakes to pure consciousness.
In the fifth bardo, ane moves toward a meditative country prior to rebirth or liberation from samsara.
In the sixth bardo, one requests the aid of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who take come up before or will come up likewise equally deities similar Tara for protection equally ane enters the dream land prior to rebirth in another class. If one has cleaved gratis from the Wheel of Condign and will no longer be incarnated, one gives cheers and goes on toward ultimate release.
White Tara and Greenish Tara
The fourth, fifth, and sixth bardos place ane's previous being in perspective and let one to allow it get earlier moving on. Cuevas comments:
In basic terms, the bardo ritual is a plea for the purification of the soul of the sins of the departed, for release from the perilous pathways of the bardo, and for auspicious rebirth among one of the three higher destinies (human, demigod, or god). The prescribed texts that accompany these rites ritually recreate the circumstances of the deceased'southward journeying through the bardo after decease and invoke the image of buddhas and bodhisattvas coming down to lead the departed along the path. (74)
The entire process, from death to rebirth, is thought to take 49 days of seven phases each lasting a week – one week for the preparation of the body and funerary rituals and a calendar week each for the soul to pass through the six bardos – and so the work was originally intended to be read for all 49 days. As Cuevas observes, however, "the length and frequency of recitation and ritual performance is dependent largely on the wealth of the family" (76). It costs coin for the lamas to come, for those attention the rituals to be housed and fed, and for the materials required for the rituals such as incense and assorted artifacts and relics.
One time the ritual of the reading of the Bardo Thodol was complete, the family of the deceased was considered to have done their duty properly regarding respect for the dead and could keep with their lives. Although information technology seems some rituals final only a week or sometimes a few days – depending on a family'southward financial situation – the act itself is thought to have settled one'south account with the deceased and so in that location should be no fearfulness of their ghost returning to haunt the living with bad luck, sickness, or death in retribution for improper funerary rites.
Modern Interpretation & Employ
The above ritual of the reading and setting to rest the soul of the dead was the only purpose of the original Tibetan text, but once information technology was translated by Dawa Samdup and published by Evans-Wentz, it assumed a new course every bit a spiritual guide for the living. Evans-Wentz was deeply impressed by the theosophy of Helena Blavatsky (l. 1831-1891) which taught the Divine Absolute dwelt within each immortal soul that passed through many lifetimes toward liberation, a concept quite close to Buddhism and especially to the Esoteric Buddhism of Tibet, which Blavatsky claimed was a seat of ancient wisdom.
Madame Blavatsky
Evans-Wentz's interpretation of the Bardo Thodol, therefore, was influenced by his theosophical behavior, and he understood the work as both exoteric and esoteric; its exoteric purpose was as a funerary rite, simply esoterically information technology could assist one live a better life on this plane of reality. In his introduction, Evans-Wentz writes:
It is highly sensible of the Bardo Thodol to make clear to the dead man the primacy of the soul, for that is the one thing which life does not brand clear to us. We are so hemmed in by things which jostle and oppress that we never get a chance, in the midst of all these 'given' things, to wonder by whom they are 'given'. It is from this world of 'given' things that the dead man liberates himself; and the purpose of the instruction is to help him towards this liberation. Nosotros, if we put ourselves in his place, shall derive no lesser reward from information technology, since we larn from the very first paragraphs that the 'giver' of all 'given' things dwells within u.s.. (forty)
Evans-Wentz'south interpretation inspired all those that followed in understanding The Tibetan Book of the Dead equally just as valuable to the living as the dead. Cuevas notes that, since the publication of Evans-Wentz's work, the popularity of The Tibetan Volume of the Expressionless has never flagged, and the work is understood and appreciated through iii approaches having nothing to do with its original purpose:
These iii approaches can be identified in the most basic terms as the scientific, the psychological, and the humanistic. Generally speaking, the first approach seeks a rational and empirically verifiable foundation; the 2nd insists on a symbolic and archetypal reality; and the third pursues the promise of the private's capacity for self-transformation. (seven)
The scientific approach follows Evans-Wentz's exclamation that the being of the Bardo Thodol is proof of an afterlife in that information technology 'scientifically' addresses the progress of the soul afterwards death to rebirth as a psycho-physical truth. In other words, it describes a recognizable psychological state of transition that is supported by psychological case studies and then is 'scientific'. The two other approaches mentioned concentrate on recognizing in the work the principles that can guide one to a more consummate and fulfilling life without regard for supernatural powers or religious conventions, although religion certainly may play an important part. Fifty-fifty though none of these approaches were probably imagined by the eighth-century Tibetan sage said to have written the text, they are now the most common understandings of the text.
Many different translations and fake translations take appeared over the years, and all fit into i of the categories Cuevas notes. One of the about pop is The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche published in 1992. The work is based closely on The Tibetan Book of the Dead simply is not a translation. Information technology is an interpretation whose purpose is to comfort the dying, requite hope to the grieving, and encourage pity and commitment to a purposeful life.
Determination
The Tibetan Volume of the Expressionless was written to give comfort & guidance to the expressionless in the afterlife only today serves that aforementioned purpose for the living.
Sogyal Rinpoche's work has been criticized as "unscholarly", but it was never intended to be an academic text. It epitomizes how The Tibetan Volume of the Dead is used in the present as a source of comfort for both the dying and the grieving that provides that aforementioned sort of "scientific" proof of an afterlife Evans-Wentz claimed the original work provided.
In the Us, especially, where funerary rituals are normally planned and carried out by morticians and clergy, non family, in that location is a tendency to disconnect from the act of dying and dealing with the dead and leave to the professionals the question of what comes after death. In his commentary to Evans-Wentz's text, Carl Jung observes:
The provisions nosotros make for the dead are rudimentary and on the everyman level, non because we cannot convince ourselves of the soul's immortality, but considering nosotros take rationalized the above-mentioned psychological need out of existence. We conduct as if we did not have this need and because nosotros cannot believe in a life subsequently death, we adopt to do nothing about it. (7)
The Tibetan Book of the Dead encourages one to "do something most" expiry past engaging in the process of dying, fifty-fifty if one does not accept or internalize the symbolism or terms used. The psychological demand Jung mentions of a conventionalities in the survival of bodily decease is met by the work in describing a process of letting go and moving on that corresponds, all the same figuratively, to a personal feel one can relate to.
Departures from i signal are understood to take destinations at another. The significant and purpose of any written work will change over time in accord with the needs of its audition. The Tibetan Volume of the Expressionless was written to give comfort and guidance to the dead in the afterlife but today serves, or can serve, that aforementioned purpose for the living.
This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication.
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Source: https://www.worldhistory.org/Tibetan_Book_of_the_Dead/
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