The Tibetan Book of the Dead – or the Bardo Thodol. Here is the complete English translation of the famous Tibetan death text, The Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Intermediate State. Bardo Thodol means “liberation by hearing on the after death plane”. The book was originally written in Tibetan and is meant to be a guide for those who have died as they transition from their former life to a new destination. The Tibetan Book of the Dead has been traditionally attributed to Padma-Sambhava, an Indian mystic who was said to have introduced Buddhism to Tibet in the 8th century. We have a range of more detailed works and commentaries on The Tibetan Book of Dead here on the site, do a search. From the book:
If the expiration is about to cease, turn the dying one over on the right side, which posture is called the ‘Lying Posture of a Lion’. The throbbing of the arteries [on the right and left side of the throat] is to be pressed. If the person dying be disposed to sleep, or if the sleeping state advances, that should be arrested, and the arteries pressed gently but firmly. Thereby the vital-force will not be able to return from the median-nerve and will be sure to pass out through the Brahmanic aperture. Now the real setting-faceto-face is to be applied. At this moment, the first [glimpsing] of the Bardo of the Clear Light of Reality, which is the Infallible Mind of the Dharma-Kāya, is experienced by all sentient beings.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead – or the Bardo Thodol is the English translation of the famous Tibetan death text, The Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Intermediate State.
Written by: Padma-Sambhava
Published by: Summum.us
Edition: English translation by Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup
[Audio Download] by Sogyal Rinpoche. (Author, Narrator). John Cleese (Narrator). Peri Eagleton (Narrator). Susan Skipper (Narrator).
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is a contemporary spiritual masterpiece and source of sacred inspiration that interprets Tibetan Buddhism for the West. Sogyal Rinpoche presents a radically new vision of living and dying. He shows how to go beyond our fear and denial of death to discover what it is in us that survives death and is changeless. Rinpoche explains simple yet powerful practices that listeners can use to transform their lives, prepare for death, and help the dying.
Though Western science has long rejected the idea of an immaterial self, modern research into near-death experiences, or NDEs, has now proven that many occur after the point of bodily death, and thus cannot be produced in the brain. Whether they are evidence of the soul or some other undiscovered phenomenon, NDEs have put Western materialist scientists on the defensive and led many researchers to embrace bold new theories of consciousness.
Negativities are the diseases of the heart. It begins to feel sore, and then the whole of life will become just a suffering, because you live through your own heart.
By Eckhart Tolle
Death is a great opportunity because death is one way in which the formless dimension comes into this life. It’s precisely at the moment of the fading of the form, that the formless comes into this life. But if that is not accepted, and the fading of form is denied, then it’s a missed opportunity.
As people around you pass away, you become increasingly aware of your own mortality. The body will dissolve. Many people still, in our civilization, they deny death. They don’t want to think about it, don’t want to give it any attention.
There is enormous potential there for spiritual flowering. Even in people who, up to the point of the beginning of the fading of the form, were completely identified with the form. It’s your last chance in this incarnation, as your body begins to fade – or you are becoming aware of this limited lifespan. It’s your last chance to go beyond identification with form. This is true whether it’s to do with your body, or somebody else’s body.
In the proximity of death, there is always that grace hiding underneath the seemingly negative event. Death in our civilization is seen as entirely negative, as if it shouldn’t be happening. Because it’s denied, people are so shocked when somebody dies – as if it’s not possible. We don’t live with the familiarity of death, as some more ancient cultures still do. The familiarity of death isn’t there. Everything is hidden, the dead body is hidden. In India you can see the dead bodies being carried through the streets, and being burned in public. To the Westerners, it’s terrible.
As the consciousness is changing, I feel that more and more death will become an important part of the evolutionary process, the process of the arising consciousness on our planet.
At any age, the form can dissolve. Even if you are very young, you may encounter death close to you. At any age, it is extremely helpful to become familiar with, or comfortable with, the impermanence of the physical form.
I recommend to everybody, to occasionally visit the cemetery. If it’s a nice cemetery, that makes it more pleasant. Some cemeteries are like beautiful parks, you can walk around and feel extremely peaceful. But even if it’s not nice, spiritually it is just as helpful to walk around the cemetery and contemplate the fact of death. I still do that, quite often, whenever I have a chance.
In Europe, in the villages and so on, you have a cemetery next to the church very often. I love walking around there. My favorite thing is reading the names on the gravestones. Sometimes if the gravestones are very old, you’ll see that the name is not there anymore – it got eroded by the weather.
It’s the contemplation of death and the acceptance of the impermanent nature of the human form that opens up, if you accept it. Don’t intellectualize it. Don’t come to some kind of conclusion about it. Just stay with the simple “isness” of the fact of the impermanence of the human form, and accept that for what it is without going any further. If you go further, you get into comforting beliefs, that’s very nice too. But what I am driving at is something deeper than comforting beliefs – instead of going to some kind of conclusion, stay with the fact of the impermanence of the human form, and contemplate this fact.
With the contemplation of the impermanence of the human form, something very deep and peaceful opens up inside you. That is why I enjoy going to cemeteries. When you accept the impermanence, out of that comes an opening within, which is beyond form. That which is not touched by death, the formless, comes forward as you completely accept the impermanence of all forms. That’s why it is so deeply peaceful to contemplate death.
If someone close to you dies, then there is an added dimension. You may find there is deep sadness. The form also was precious, although what you loved in the form was the formless. And yet, you weep because of the fading form. There too, you come to an acceptance – especially if you are already familiar with death, you already know that everything dies – then you can accept it more easily when it happens to somebody close to you. There is still deep sadness, but then you can have the two dimensions simultaneously – the outer you weeps, the inner and most essential is deeply at peace. It comes forward almost as if it were saying “there is no death”. It’s peace.
Buddha could send his disciples to the burning places, to cemeteries to look at dead bodies, to contemplate death, to meditate on death: The body is burning – the dead body is there – it is burning.
And Buddha would send his disciples there, to sit there and meditate on death. And meditating on death, the disciple would soon come to realize a different quality of life which never dies. Then he would come dancing, singing, to Buddha – from the dead body burning in the cemetery, he would come running, dancing – why? he should come sad, sorrowful, depressed, dead himself in a way.
But he has not accumulated the negative even from a dead body. He has accumulated something positive. He has been meditating on death, and if you meditate on death you become more and more aware of life. He comes running, dancing, grateful – grateful to Buddha, grateful to the dead man also. Why go on accumulating the negative? – we go on; that’s just a wrong habit. Change it! Always look at the positive, and soon you heart will be purified. Negativities are the diseases of the heart. It begins to feel sore, and then the whole of life will become just a suffering, because you live through your own heart. You go on accumulating negatives; then you have to live through this negativity; then everything becomes just a suffering, a long suffering – meaningless, purposeless, leading to nowhere.
“Someone is born on Earth, in France as a powerful king, rules for a while and then dies. He can be reborn in India and travel in an oxcar to the forest to meditate. Then he can be reborn in America as a successful businessman and when he dreams of death again, he may be reincarnated in Tibet as a Buddhist devotee and spend his life in a monastery. So don’t hate anyone and don’t cling to any nationality, because sometimes you are Hindu, sometimes French, sometimes English, or American or Tibetan. What is the difference? Every existence is a dream within a dream… “
“I will be sick, I will grow old, I will die, I will be separated from those I love, my relations and so forth. In such manner, the fully ripened effect of my actions will come to me and to no one else, and I am therefore not above depending on what I did in former lives.”
To think like this again and again is the antidote to such things as arrogance. Make every effort not to become arrogant by meditating on this antidote.
1. The Hell Realm is the first plane of the Unfortunate realm. It is a place that is devoid of all happiness and comforts. A rebirth in the Hell Realm takes place as a result of a being’s habitual misdeeds. Once in the Hell Realm, the Hell being will suffer the most horrifying pain and suffering through continuous and horrific forms of punishment. The Hell Realm is situated underneath ‘Mount Trigut’. It consists of eight major sites which are the Hell of ‘Mahanarok’, 128 satellite sites which are called the Hell of ‘Ussadanarok’ and 320 minor sites which are called the Hell of ‘Yomalok’.
Once a hell being has gone through all the forms of punishment in the Hell of Mahanarok’, it has to go through additional forms of punishment in the Hells of ‘Ussadanarok’ and ‘Yomalok’ until it has served the full sentence of its previous misdeeds as dictated by the Law of Kamma.
2. The Peta Realm is the second plane of the Unfortunate realm. It is a place that is filled with trouble, severe hunger, and severe thirst. Petas can be categorized into twelve families. They dwell in the gorges of ‘Mount Trigut’ as well as in a plane of existence parallel to earth.A rebirth in the Peta Realm is caused by the unwholesome deeds of parsimony. A rebirth in the Peta Realm occurs via two routes. The first route is after a being has already gone through the forms of punishment in the Hells of ‘Mahanarok’, ‘Ussadanarok’, and ‘Yomalok’. And the second route is immediately after the human existence.
3. The Asurakaya Realm is the third plane of the Unfortunate realm. It is a place that is devoid of joy. Asurakayas and Petas are very similar and it is difficult to differentiate them at times. Asurakayas dwell in the same location as Petas in the gorges of ‘Mount Trigut’. They possess bizarre forms. They may have a pig head with a human body, for example. Their existence is marked by severe hardship not unlike that of Petas. They live in constant thirst and hunger but the thirst is more prominent. A rebirth as an Asurakaya is caused by deeds of greed and covetousness.
4. The Animal Realm is the fourth and last plane of the Unfortunate realm. Animals suffer less than hell beings, Petas, and Asurakayas. They possess a body which parallels the ground, and are not capable of attaining Nibbana. They share the earth with human beings. They may have no feet. They may have two, four or more feet.
THE UNFORTUNATE REALMS :
Life in Samsara is fraught with danger. Should we be born and raised in an environment that is not conducive to the performance of good deeds, we may make the mistake of committing indecent deeds. When we die, the strength of our bad Kamma will propel us to have a rebirth in the Unfortunate realm. Unfortunate realms are the planes of existence in the Hereafter, which are devoid of happiness and are full of horrifying pain and suffering from the terrible heat of the hellfire, and from the various forms of punishment.
The forms of punishment are innumerable and uniquely different depending on the hell being’s misdeeds. They cause the hell being to Undergo horrific pain and suffering. Individuals in life that have not bothered to perform any decent deed but habitually commit misdeeds, on their deathbed, the sights and sound of their misdeeds would appear to them for their private viewing. These moving images cause their minds to become gloomy and remorseful. After they die, they will journey to the Unfortunate realm as stated by the Lord Buddha in the ‘Palabundit Sutta’
The Sutta teaches how one’s misdeeds committed through one’s physical, verbal, and mental means propels one to journey into the Unfortunate realm. Moreover, there are four more states of unhappy existence as follows: The Unfortunate realms (the State of Loss and Woe) denote the planes of existence where their inhabitants have no opportunity to perform any good deed due to the uncivilized condition of their environment. They are places of condemnation where even the slightest happiness cannot be experienced but there is only suffering, hence un-conducive to the performance of any good deed.
There are six realms of transmigration where beings take birth.
They are the realms of gods, demigods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell.
You take birth in those realms because of superior, middling, and evil karmas.
Having now become animals, your fathers, mothers, siblings, and friends from previous lives tremble with fear in the butcher’s sinful hands, tears streaming from their eyes, and panting for breath. In that state, they wonder what to do. Alas, there is no refuge! There is nowhere to go!
Thinking that, right now in this place, they may be killed, their urgent suffering is great. In such a state, like one approaching a terrifying pit of hellfire, their body is turned upside down, their muzzle is tied up, and their eyes move wildly with lights shining forth. What they see is their stomach being opened up. With their feet perpendicular to the ground, they are set on the path to the next life without even a quiver of compassion.
Over and over, the seeds all get planted; Over and over, the rain-god sprinkles rain. Over and over, the farmer farms the field; Over and over, the food grows in the realm.
Over and over, beggars do their begging;
Over and over, the givers give out gifts.
Over and over, the giver who has given;
Over and over, goes to a better place.Over and over, he tires and he struggles; Over and over, the fool goes to the womb. Over and over, he’s born and he dies; Over and over, they bear him to his grave.But one who’s wisdom is wide as the earth Is not born over and over, For he’s gained the path of not becoming over again.
In the great work of life and death, time will not wait for you. If you die tomorrow, what kind of body will you get?
Is not all of this of great importance?
Hurry up! Hurry!
Blue sky and green sea
Are the Buddha’s original face.
The sound of the waterfall and the bird’s song
Are the great sutras.
Where are you going?
Watch your step.
Water flows down to the sea.
Clouds float up to the heavens.
“This body is not me; I am not caught in this body, I am life without boundaries, I have never been born and I have never died. Over there the wide ocean and the sky with many galaxies All manifests from the basis of consciousness. Since beginningless time I have always been free. Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out. Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek. So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye. Tomorrow we shall meet again or even before. We shall always be meeting again at the true source, Always meeting again on the myriad paths of life.”
A 37 meter high statue of Padmasambhava sits above the small Himalayan town where I live. He is known as the second Buddha because he brought Buddhist teachings to Tibet in the eighth century. ~ Collette
Buddha could send his disciples to the burning places, to cemeteries to look at dead bodies, to contemplate death, to meditate on death: The body is burning – the dead body is there – it is burning.
Having now become animals, your fathers, mothers, siblings, and friends from previous lives tremble with fear in the butcher’s sinful hands, tears streaming from their eyes, and panting for breath. In that state, they wonder what to do. Alas, there is no refuge! There is nowhere to go!
Zen Flash 
Recent Comments