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    The Tibetan Book of The Dead

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    Dawn Robin
    This document provides a description of the fourth edition of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It describes the book as one of the sacred texts hidden in Tibet by Padmasambhava and rediscovered by Western readers beginning in 1927. The book relates the experiences of death and rebirth over three intermediate states of being and was intended as a guide not only for the dead but also the living. This new edition includes a foreword and afterword by Donald Lopez that traces the history of the book and its changing audience over time.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    The Tibetan Book of The Dead

    Uploaded by

    Dawn Robin
    310 views1 page
    This document provides a description of the fourth edition of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It describes the book as one of the sacred texts hidden in Tibet by Padmasambhava and rediscovered by Western readers beginning in 1927. The book relates the experiences of death and rebirth over three intermediate states of being and was intended as a guide not only for the dead but also the living. This new edition includes a foreword and afterword by Donald Lopez that traces the history of the book and its changing audience over time.

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    The Tibetan Book of the Dead

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    This document provides a description of the fourth edition of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It describes the book as one of the sacred texts hidden in Tibet by Padmasambhava and rediscovered by Western readers beginning in 1927. The book relates the experiences of death and rebirth over three intermediate states of being and was intended as a guide not only for the dead but also the living. This new edition includes a foreword and afterword by Donald Lopez that traces the history of the book and its changing audience over time.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as txt, pdf, or txt
    310 views1 page

    The Tibetan Book of The Dead

    Uploaded by

    Dawn Robin
    This document provides a description of the fourth edition of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It describes the book as one of the sacred texts hidden in Tibet by Padmasambhava and rediscovered by Western readers beginning in 1927. The book relates the experiences of death and rebirth over three intermediate states of being and was intended as a guide not only for the dead but also the living. This new edition includes a foreword and afterword by Donald Lopez that traces the history of the book and its changing audience over time.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    The Tibetan Book of the Dead

    Or The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, according to Lama Kazi Dawa-
    Samdup's English Rendering
    Compiled and Edited by W. Y. Evans-Wentz
    with a New Foreword and Afterword by Donald S. Lopez

    354 pages; 10 b/w line illus; 5-1/2 x 8-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-513311-0ISBN10: 0-19-
    513311-0

    Description
    The Tibetan Book of the Dead is one of the texts that, according to legend, Padma-
    Sambhava was compelled to hide during his visit to Tibet in the late 8th century.
    The guru hid his books in stones, lakes, and pillars because the Tibetans of that
    day and age were somehow unprepared for their teachings. Now, in the form of the
    ever-popular Tibetan Book of the Dead , these teachings are constantly being
    discovered and rediscovered by Western readers of many different backgrounds--a
    phenomenon which began in 1927 with Oxford's first edition of Dr. Evans-Wentz's
    landmark volume. While it is traditionally used as a mortuary text, to be read or
    recited in the presence of a dead or dying person, this book--which relates the
    whole experience of death and rebirth in three intermediate states of being--was
    originally understood as a guide not only for the dead but also for the living. As
    a contribution to the science of death and dying--not to mention the belief in life
    after death, or the belief in rebirth--The Tibetan Book of the Dead is unique among
    the sacred texts of the world, for its socio-cultural influence in this regard is
    without comparison.

    This fourth edition features a new foreword, afterword, and suggested further
    reading list by Donald S. Lopez, author of Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan
    Buddhism and the West . Lopez traces the whole history of the late Evans-Wentz's
    three earlier editions of this book, fully considering the work of contributors to
    previous editions (C. G. Jung among them), the sections that were added by Evans-
    Wentz along the way, the questions surrounding the book's translation, and finally
    the volume's profound importance in engendering both popular and academic interest
    in the religion and culture of Tibet. Another key theme that Lopez addresses is the
    changing nature of this book's audience--from the prewar theosophists to the beat
    poets to the hippies to contemporary exponents of the hospice movement--and what
    these audiences have found (or sought) in its very old pages.
    Reviews

    "Dr. Evans-Wentz, who literally sat at the feet of a Tibetan lama for years in
    order to acquire his wisdom...not only displays a deeply sympathetic interest in
    those esoteric doctrines so characteristic of the genius of the East, but likewise
    possesses the rare faculty of making them more or less intelligible to the
    layman."--Anthropology (on the previous edition)

    About the Author(s)


    Compiled and Edited by W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Jesus College, Oxford (Emeritus)
    with a New Foreword and Afterword by Donald S. Lopez, Professor of Buddhism and
    Tibetan Studies, University of Michigan

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