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The Tibetan Book of the Dead (The Great Book of Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between) | 
| Creators: The Dalai Lama, Karma Lingpa, Padma Sambhava, Robert Thurman
Publisher: Bantam Books, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
Buy Used: $9.90
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Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 12779
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0553370901
Dewey Decimal Number: 294.3423
EAN: 9780553370904
ASIN: 0553370901
Publication Date: December 1, 1993
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Condition: Help save a tree. Buy all your used books from Green Earth Books. Read -> Recycle -> Reuse!
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Amazon.com Review
Imagine that as you leave your body at death, you hear the voice of a loved one whispering in your ear explanations of everything you see in the world beyond. Unlike other translations of Bar do thos grol (or The Tibetan Book of the Dead), Robert Thurman's takes literally the entire gamut of metaphysical assumptions. Thurman translates Bar do thos grol as The Great Book of Natural Liberation through Understanding in the Between. It is one of many mortuary texts of the Nyingma sect of Tibetan Buddhism and is commonly recited to or by a person facing imminent death. Thurman reproduces it for this purpose, explaining in some depth the Tibetan conception of postmortem existence. Over as many as 12 days, the deceased person is given explanations of what he or she sees and experiences and is guided through innumerable visions of the realms beyond to reach eventual liberation, or, failing that, a safe rebirth. Like a backpacker's guide to a foreign land, Thurman's version is clear, detailed, and sympathetic to the inexperienced voyager. It includes background and supplementary information, and even illustrations (sorry, no maps). Don't wait until the journey has begun. Every page should be read and memorized well ahead of time. --Brian Bruya
Product Description
The most prominent expert on Tibetan Buddhism in the West offers a translation of this essential book of Tibetan philosophy that captures the true spirit and poetry of the original work--a profound book that reveals the nature of the mind and its manifestations and offers pure enlightenment.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
Scholarship meets practice from a professor-adept August 15, 2008
John L Murphy (Los Angeles)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Prof. Thurman's strength is that he combines academic skills with personal conviction about the truth of what he translates. Many scholars may scoff; many seekers may smile. The value of this formidable ninth-century "treasure-text" of considerably advanced instructions for the passage through the illusions of the afterlife lies in its haranguing-- if one's own hallucinated terrors and wonders manage to be manifested rather than the stunning blackness of unconsciousness.
You get the impression from Thurman that unless you've mastered "creation" deity visualization practices under a master teacher in this life, you may not even be able to witness, let alone try to attain enlightenment, post-mortem. Thurman does not simplify what has to be done in this life to increase the odds of attaining clarity and freedom from existence trapped in cyclical karma. He devotes in-depth coverage in his hundred-page introduction to this preparation, as well as the appendix on a Buddha-field visualization. (I assume he later expanded this into his "Jewel Tree of Enlightenment" text and tapes on this advanced dharma practice.)
You do close the TBoD, if not the supplements, probably overwhelmed. The degree of preparation required to comprehend the journey after death, from a traditional Tibetan Buddhist perspective, may discourage not only dilettantes. When you read that even deceased monks and high-ranked yogis can fail after death to read the signs explicated repeatedly in this text, you wonder how those of us raised totally outside of such conceptions, and likely to have come across the TBoD only after a considerable amount of our precious human life has passed, will fare on the eschatological rollercoaster ahead. You also wonder how stupid all of us must have been in a previous existence to fall back into the patterns that this text tells us to break away from.
I remain unclear about how everyday folks outside of Buddhism can truly benefit from the so-called TBoD-- despite also reviewing Francesca Fremantle's commentary "Luminous Emptiness" and Stephen Hodge & Martin Boord's concise "Illustrated TBoD." I've heard that the Dalai Lama encourages those raised in other faiths to stay in them to seek inspiration, but I've also read His Holiness (in "The Way to Freedom") warning how the Dharma and karma all but demand that we accept Buddhist tenets as our longshot, attenuated, but logical way eventually (he reckons the odds appear slim to practically none in any given incarnation, and I figure he should know) out of delusion. So, while I muddle through this guidebook to be recited by the living to the departed, while I am confused about its efficacy for those of us so far removed from its Himalayan contexts a millennium ago, I still am fascinated by this text and its visions and its warnings. It's the challenge of a lifetime, certainly, and for the greatest reward possible, if our hunches pay off in the karmic lottery. Yet, I wish Thurman, as a Western pioneer who earlier became the first American monk in the Tibetan tradition that I know of, could have explained this discrepancy between ancient context and rational mindset and if it matters or not to we his audience today-- more clearly in his admittedly wide-ranging preface or notes.
He appears to encourage us to transfer the cherubim and seraphim that we may know, for instance, into the "fierce deities"; he also tells "secularists" on p. 198 to follow a sort of Pascal's wager to imagine wise figures after one dies, in case the oblivion assumed by atheists does not come to pass. I agree with Scott Snyder in his review here (on Amazon); I would have welcomed a presentation placing this within a broader cross-cultural comparison of how the Tibetan conceptions overlap as well as differ with Western and other non-Buddhist realms. Yet, that may turn into a shelf of dissertations. Nonetheless, I can't fit the TBoD neatly with Dante, the visions of Ezekiel or Daniel, or the Egyptian or Norse or indigenous otherworlds as clearly as Thurman could have done, in a few pages of general orientation, in this edition aimed at an English-speaking audience, likely picked up by many non-Buddhists.
I like Thurman's attitude, speaking of a wider readership in the West, towards the likely state of wavering or denying belief that many skeptics who open this book are likely to possess. Thurman, with me reading a bit between the lines, adds the "Jewel-Tree" visualization, supplements that distill other Tibetan teachings. He intersperses bold-faced commands from the text to be read to a recently deceased individual as opposed to the other typeface incorporating the more explanatory material, and then stacks indented commentary of his own printed alas in a smaller font, as if in a Talmudic array. This enriches his text cleverly and helpfully. I get the impression that Thurman wants us to learn more about Tibetan Buddhism than the same old TBoD, and his anthology of "Essential TB" & his "Jewel-Tree" and books on the Dalai Lama surely attest to his convictions to disseminate vajrayana dharma.
The core of Thurman's exegetical insight comes, note well, quite late in the text proper. Around p. 161 the "concept of clarity-voidness" and "truth-status" on p. 186 prove profound, but they're rather buried in the details. Likewise, the glossary defines many terms we need to understand efficiently, but if they'd been asterisked in the text itself, it'd be easier to know that they lurk at the back. The photos for aiding meditation which he refers to on p. 224 as the volume's central color plates would, I concur, be helpful to accompany and guide the printed visualization. However, as may be inevitable for a mass-market paperback, they remain too small to make out satisfactorily, even when a painting's details gain separate depictions.
This translation reads a bit eccentrically, but "hey you" does get your attention now as I suppose it may in the hereafter, as "so-called so-and-so." Thurman does not let you get overwhelmed by the later "days" with their hundred deities and whirlwinds of surround-sound emanations, but he keeps the commentary moving forward. He guides us to the essential landmarks easiest to appreciate in a bewildering text much more bandied about than studied carefully.
It's therefore best read after a briefer presentation such as Hodge & Boord, or secondarily Fremantle & Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (although this 1975 version was revamped by Fremantle in her 2001 commentary). Such background prepares you for taking on Thurman's academic edition combined with a practitioner's depiction that can unsettle, perplex, or stimulate you. It's not some facile Tim Leary psychedelic wild ride, but it's not as dissimilar as you may think from a more familiar culture's renderings of heavens and hells. There's one crucial difference, with the Buddhist construction, ultimately: it's all in your mind. Mastering that conundrum and overcoming "duality" represents the challenge that, if the lamas who predicted these harrowing journeys prove accurate, we all must face sooner than later.
 Tibet's gift to the world, presented by Robert Thurman June 13, 2008
Dannon Flynn
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is an atlas. It is a valuable friend that will do more than save your life, it will alter your destiny beyond life as well. It is an essential guidebook for every voyager through life, death and rebirth. Inside are complete instructions to recognize every "in between state" and how to use them by remembering your true nature to become liberated from the wheel of death or to choose the best rebirth, instead of unconsciously falling into a random rebirth...like we have been doing for eons.
It is masterfully translated by Robert Thurman complete with insightful, inspiring, enchanting chapters on the history of Tibet and its evolution from a tribe of warrior shamans to the nonviolent peaceful people devoted to the Buddha Dharma. He tells in a very down to earth way about the Tibetans' view on life, death and rebirth. Read this book; you'll be glad you did; especially when you find yourself trying to navigate the afterlife.
 At least he was honest March 27, 2008
A reader (New York, NY)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
In the introduction, Thurman admits that he prefers the Geluk tradition to the Nyingma tradition out of which this text arose. He agrees to translate this text to capitalize on the name recognition (despite the fact that he obviously doesn't think very highly of it), and uses entirely different Geluk materials to base his own commentary on.
If you want to read a better translation of the text from someone who belongs to and esteems the tradition from which it arose, get the 2006 Penguin Books translation by Gyume Dorje and skip this opportunism.
 As False as False can get February 12, 2008
K. Tarin (Calif)
4 out of 51 found this review helpful
Talk about lies
The Author says, once your expired from your current life here, your not dead and finished, you move onto another life, and that your next life depends on this life, so you have to make an effort here and now.
Note I said "here and now" keep this in mind.
To keep this simple and short, how about this:
Everyone knows someone at your job site, someone who has a better position than you, or others below them, yet this person, or even multiple person(s), have a multitude of personality issues.
One of more of the following:
Rude, Arrogant, Self Seeking, Thoughtless about others, Drunkard, Smoker of cigs and or pot, goes to stripper joints, watching porn, and the list goes on but again to make this brief.
How is it, that these people, and again they are everywhere in every job site, promote more than those who are nice and caring, do things for others?
And don't even try and reply to me saying job title and therefore money does not bring happiness or a better life.
That's a lie and you know it, you and just about everyone you know likes to promote at work, to have a nicer house, in a better area, to eat better food, to take more and or nice vacations, and most of all to be able to provide for you kids, no give them what they want, to be able to provide as much as possible for them.
So don't try and twist the words as in, many people with great jobs and money do not have happy lives. I know that, we all know that.
So now that we are on the same track.
So then, why is it that someone at almost every job site, be it an office or construction, whatever, is many things I listed above and is living better than you now?
Who where THEY In the past life? THEY had to be reborn from somewhere
Right?
And this is key, stay on track now, why do most job sites NOT have people at the top who are good and caring people?
See, its all a lie. and in the name of hating organized religion, you want to believe it, for everybody wants to believe in something.
You are smarter than that right?
A thoughtful read October 18, 2007
Justin Lo
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"Hey! Now when the reality between dawns upon me, I will let go of the hallucinations of instinctive terror, enter the recognition of all objects as my mind's own visions..." - page 132
The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a very thoughtful read, appealing both to the reader's spiritual and philosophical sides. Part introduction to Tibetan history and culture, part manual of incantations for the late and the still living, this book helps the reader understand the Tibetan philosophical conception of life and death and the Tibetan science of the world in between. Naturally, the reader needs to approach this book with an open mind, since it is expected that the reader not be familiar with the more esoteric intricacies of Tibetan thought. One note of caution: the Tibetan Book of the Dead is not meant to be read once. Instead, it is meant to be explored multiple times, because there are many details that escape the reader upon the first read.
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