Description
Book SynopsisThe 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 belie
Trade ReviewDr. 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) *
Table of ContentsForeword by Donald S Lopez Jr ; Suggested Readings ; Preface to the 1960 Paperback edition ; Preface to the Third Edition ; Preface to the Second Edition ; Preface to the First Edition ; Book I, Part I: The Bardo of the Moments of Death ; Book I, Part II: The Bardo of the Experiencing of Reality ; Book II, Part I: The Sidpa Bardo ; Book II, Part II: The Process of Rebirth ; Afterword: The Long Life of 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead' by Donald S Lopez Jr. ; Index
