THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD - An Introduction

Ken Finch

2 days ago

4 min read

In the opening of 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead', in the introductory commentary, the question is raised whether or not there exists a continuity of consciousness after death. In answering this question 'His Holiness The XIVth Delia Lama' first relates the idea of 'self' or 'I'; what constitutes a person, psycho-physical aggregates, dependencies and factors involved in personality and rebirth. Explains an interdependence of consciousness, mind and body. Describes higher levels of rebirth and different types of beings, including spirits and gods; three realms of awareness. In answer to the question at the start of the book; death and rebirth cycle is continual and retaining memory is possible. Retaining memory through rebirth can be enhanced by meditation practice and depends somewhat on the conditions of death. Liberation from cyclic existence can be attained through highest yoga tantra and complete buddhahood.

The remainder of the introductory commentary 'His Holiness The XIVth Delia Lama' explains once the notion of continuity of consciousness is realized a person would begin to prepare for death. If the individual were simply seeking rebirth as a human being or the attainment of other successive forms of existence conducive to the continuation of their journey towards enlightenment, then simply a virtuous life or limited meditation is sufficient preparation.

The practices of highest yoga tantra are fundamental in attainment of complete Buddhahood. In utilizing the processes of death; transformation between the three realms of consciousness, three types of Buddha body, involving an inner radiance and a pure awareness learned through meditative practice, it is possible to attain liberation from cyclic existence.

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Extracts from chapter 1

'AN OUTLINE OF TIBETAN HISTORY'

- Chapter 1, pg. 11

A SPIRITUAL CIVILISATION

The ultimate example of the inwardly directed rationality of the modern Tibetan mind is precisely our present concern, the Tibetan exploration of death. The outwardly directed Western mind long ago dismissed the topic of death and future lives as archaic, of concern only to the superstitious traditional mind. Materialistic habits of thought reduce the mind to matter and eliminate the soul. Ruling out the possibility of future lives, death is merely a physiological condition, equated with a “flatline” on an electroencephalograph. There is no interest at all in the states of the person or condition of the mind after death. Scientific investigation restricts itself to the material quanta perceivable by the physical senses, augmented by machinery, during this one bodily life. At the same time, Westerners have set about exploring the outer world, the farthest continents, the macro realms of the outer galaxies, and the micro realms of the cell, the molecule, the atom, and the subatomic forces.

Tibetan inwardly directed reason put the material world second on its list of priorities. Its prime concern was the world of inner experience, the waking, gross realm of causality, relativity, sensation, percept and concept, and the subtle realm of image, light, ecstasy, trance, dream, and finally, death and its beyond. The Tibetans considered the inner, subtlemost, experiential realm the important point at which to assert control of all subjective and objective cosmic events. And so they set about exploring this inner world, using analytic insight and contemplative concentration to extend their awareness into every crevice of experience. They used the manipulation of dreams and inner visions to visit lucidly the territories of the unconscious. They used focused disidentification with coarse subjectivity to gain access to the subtlest level of sentience. And they used an augmented sense of mindfulness and memory to gain access to past life experience, including the dreamlike experiences of the between states traversed from death to birth.

Furthermore

BUDDHISM UN SUMMARY

The Buddha used the Sanskrit word “Dharma” to designate his Truth or Teaching. In the process he added a new dimension of meaning to the word. “Dharma” was derived from the verb Idhr, “to hold,” and had a range of important meanings associated with holding. It could mean a distinct phenomenon, one that held a particular character, or also the particular character itself. It could mean a custom, duty, or law that held human behavior in a particular pattern. It could also mean religion, in the sense of a held pattern of belief and ritual. But the core of the Buddha’s discovery was the essential reality of freedom—that underlying the lived reality of existence is the immediacy of total freedom, especially freedom from suffering, from bondage, from ignorance. This essential freedom can be realized by the human mind as its own deepest and most true condition. This realization makes it possible for freedom to prevail over the habitual suffering of personal experience. So the realized individual is thenceforth held apart from suffering; not held in anything, but held out of binding patterns. Thus the new range of meanings of “Dharma” concerned being held away from suffering. Dharma came to mean the Teaching, the path of practice of the Teaching, the virtue of that practice, the reality or Truth taught in that Teaching, and the freedom of that reality or Truth, nirvana itself. This Dharma as “Teaching” is divided into two branches: the Textual Dharma and the Experiential Dharma (the Teaching and its practice). Each of those is in turn divided into three: the Textual into three types of verbal teachings, the Discipline, Discourse, and Clear Science collections, and the Experiential into three types of higher learning, the Ethical, Meditational, and Wisdom higher educations.

.... Further on it goes into some detail about the Three Buddha Bodies: Truth, Beatific and Emanation.

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