The "Bardo Thödol" (Tibetan: "Liberation in the Intermediate State Through Hearing"), commonly known in the West as THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD, is a funerary text that is recited to ease the consciousness of a recently deceased person through death and assist it into a favourable rebirth.  Although tradition attributes it to Padmasambhava, the Indian Tantric guru credited with introducing Buddhism to Tibet in the 7th century, the book was likely composed in the 14th century.  For Westerners, the book has become a principal reference on Tibetan Buddhism.

The text describes, and is intended to guide one through, the experiences that consciousness has after death, in the bardo, the intermediate or transitional states that mark an individual's life from birth to death and rebirth.  According to Tibetan tradition, the period between death and rebirth involves three bardos.  The first is the moment of death itself: the consciousness of the newly deceased becomes aware of and accepts the fact that it has recently died, and it reflects upon its past life.  In the second bardo, it encounters frightening apparitions and hallucinations that arise from the impulses of one's previous unskillful actions.  Without an understanding that these apparitions are unreal, the consciousness becomes confused and, depending upon its karma, may be drawn into a rebirth that impedes its liberation.  The third bardo is the transition into a new body.  Reciting of the Bardo Thödol, usually performed by a lama (religious teacher), begins shortly before death, if possible, and continues throughout the 49-day period leading to rebirth.

The first English translation was compiled by Walter Evans-Wentz (1927), who titled it "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" because of similarities he claimed to detect between it and the Egyptian Book of the Dead.  His interpretations and organization of the Tibetan material is hermeneutically controversial, being influenced by preconceptions he brought to the subject from Theosophy and other metaphysical schools.  (Timothy Leary's The Psychedelic Experience (1964), a guide for LSD trips, was loosely based on the Evan-Wentz translation.)  The book has since been issued in multiple new translations, both into English and other Western languages.

C. G. Jung applied his extensive knowledge of Eastern religion to craft a psychological commentary specifically aimed at a Western audience unfamiliar with eastern religious tradition in general and Tibetan Buddhism specifically.  He did not attempt to directly correlate the content of the Bardo Thödol with rituals or dogma found in Occidental religion, but rather highlighted karmic phenomena described on the bardo plane and showed how they parallel unconscious contents, both personal and collective, encountered in the West.  (See esp. Vol. 11 of his Collected Works.)


The following books are in ePUB and/or PDF format as indicated:

* Buddhist Scriptures (Penguin, 2004).  D. Lopez, ed. — ePUB
* Meditations on Living, Dying and Loss (Penguin, 2010).  G. Coleman, ed. — ePUB
* Tibetan Book of the Dead (Oxford, 2000).  W.Y. Evans-Wentz, ed. — ePUB
* Tibetan Book of the Dead (Viking/Penguin, 2008).  G. Dorje, trans. — ePUB + PDF^
* Tibetan Book of the Dead (Shambhala, 1992). Fremantle & Trungpa, trans. — PDF
* Tibetan Book of the Dead (Shambhala, 2010). Fremantle & Trungpa, trans. — ePUB
* Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bantam, 1994).  R. Thurman, trans. — PDF
* Tibetan Book of the Dead (North Atlantic, 2013).  E. Guarisco, trans. — ePUB
* Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography [D. Lopez] (Princeton, 2011) — ePUB + PDF

PDF^ courtesy of Mohamed5438

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