The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Attributed to the eighth-century Indian Buddhist master Padmasambhava and rediscovered in the fourteenth century by the Tibetan treasure-finder Karma Lingpa, this compendium of teachings, known in Tibetan as The Great Liberation by Hearing in the Intermediate States, offers a comprehensive guide to living, dying, and the after-death experience according to the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. The intermediate states are transitional phases through which consciousness passes between death and rebirth. The present edition, translated by Gyurme Dorje and edited by Graham Coleman with Thupten Jinpa, is the first complete English translation of all 12 core chapters, supplemented by two additional chapters from the larger cycle.

In his Introductory Commentary, the Dalai Lama establishes the philosophical framework. He explains that Buddhism rejects an independent, permanent soul, understanding a person as a dynamic interplay of five psycho-physical aggregates: form, feeling, perception, motivational tendencies, and consciousness. From the perspective of Highest Yoga Tantra, the highest class of Buddhist esoteric practice, a distinction exists between the temporary person (the coarse body and conditioned mind) and a subtle person (the subtle body and subtle mind), the latter identified as buddha nature. He outlines the doctrine of dependent origination, in which cyclic existence is perpetuated through 12 interdependent links beginning with fundamental ignorance, and describes the six classes of beings (gods, antigods, humans, animals, anguished spirits, and hell beings) among which rebirth occurs according to habitual tendencies and karmic energy, the momentum generated by past actions.

Central to the commentary is the parallel between three ordinary states (death, the intermediate state, and rebirth) and the three dimensions of a fully enlightened being: the Buddha-body of Reality (dharmakāya), the Buddha-body of Perfect Resource (sambhogakāya), and the Buddha-body of Emanation (nirmāṇakāya). Tantric practitioners simulate the dissolution of gross consciousness in meditation, using dying as a basis for liberation. At death, the four gross elements (earth, water, fire, and wind) dissolve sequentially, culminating in whiteness, redness, blackness, and finally inner radiance, the subtlest level of consciousness.

Coleman's Editor's Introduction explains that the text is based on the Guhyagarbha Tantra, a revelation from the primordial buddha Samantabhadra. The mandala (a symbolic representation of the enlightened mind's components) described throughout maps psycho-physical aggregates and mental processes onto an assembly of peaceful and wrathful deities. Coleman proposes that Chapter 11 can be read as a metaphorical narrative of cognitive processes in which pure awareness becomes clouded by dualistic perception and habitual tendencies. Gyurme Dorje's Brief Literary History traces the text's origins. According to tradition, Padmasambhava foresaw that oral transmissions would become corrupted and concealed sacred texts at power-places (sites believed to hold spiritual potency) throughout the Tibetan plateau. Karma Lingpa extracted the cycle from Mount Gampodar in Dakpo in the fourteenth century but died young, reportedly because he revealed a treasure scroll prematurely and failed to form a relationship with a prophesied consort. Rigdzin Nyima Drakpa (1647–1710), a later lineage holder, standardized the anthology in its present form.

The 14 chapters follow a practitioner through the entire cycle of life and death. Chapters 1 through 7 address the intermediate state of living. Chapter 1 presents the preliminary practices: reflections on impermanence and the rarity of human birth, taking refuge, generating an altruistic intention to attain enlightenment for all beings, purification through visualization of Vajrasattva (a buddha embodying purification), and the symbolic offering of the entire universe. Chapter 2 presents a prayer for union with the spiritual teacher through the three buddha-bodies, in which each of the three poisons (ignorance, desire, and aversion) is naturally liberated without being renounced. Chapter 3 offers a concise poem summarizing the essential perspective for each of six intermediate states: living, dreams, meditative concentration, death, reality, and rebirth.

Chapter 4 presents the direct introduction to intrinsic awareness, asserting that the single nature of mind pervades all of existence yet remains unrecognized. It instructs the practitioner to examine the mind through three considerations: Past thoughts are traceless, future thoughts are unproduced, and the present moment abides naturally. The resulting awareness is described as radiant, empty, and without an observer, containing the three buddha-bodies inseparably. Chapter 5 presents the generation stage practice, in which the practitioner visualizes the 42 peaceful deities within the heart center, the awareness holders (a class of enlightened beings) within the throat center, and the 60 wrathful deities within the skull as expressions of the natural purity of one's own psycho-physical components. Chapters 6 and 7 present physical prostrations to each deity and a confessional practice in six parts, respectively.

Chapter 8 shifts to the time of death, presenting six categories of signs indicating impending death, culminating in the sequential dissolution of the elements and the arising of inner radiance, a supreme moment at which accomplished practitioners can attain the Buddha-body of Reality. Chapter 9 presents rituals for averting death when such signs appear. Chapter 10 describes consciousness transference, directing awareness out of the body at death through the crown fontanelle (the soft spot at the top of the skull). Training involves visualizing seed-syllables (sacred single-syllable mantra symbols) blocking the body's orifices and using vigorous breathing to force a seminal point (a subtle drop of vital essence) upward through the central channel (the body's main subtle-energy pathway). Four modes of transference range from dissolving into the Buddha-body of Reality through recognition of emptiness to that for ordinary persons, in which a spiritual teacher calls out a buddha's name to guide the dying.

Chapter 11, the most famous portion, presents instructions to be read aloud to the dying and deceased. The first section introduces the inner radiance arising at death as the ultimate nature of one's own awareness. The second section describes a seven-day sequence in which peaceful deities arise from the deceased's heart; each day, a specific buddha appears within brilliant light alongside a dull light associated with a realm of rebirth, and the text urges the deceased not to fear the brilliant light. On the sixth day, the five enlightened families (the five buddha family groupings) appear simultaneously, and on the seventh, the awareness holders and ḍākinīs (female sky-going spiritual beings) arise. Beginning on the eighth day, wrathful deities emerge from the deceased's brain; the text insists these terrifying appearances are natural manifestations of one's own awareness, and recognition brings liberation. The third section addresses the intermediate state of rebirth, describing the deceased's encounter with Yama Dharmarāja, the judge of the dead, who consults a mirror of past actions and counts white and black pebbles representing virtue and non-virtue. Five methods for obstructing womb entrances and instructions for choosing a birthplace follow.

Chapter 12 presents three aspirational prayers for recitation at the time of death. Chapter 13 offers an allegorical masked drama depicting the contrasting fates of Lakṣaṇāraka, a butcher who disbelieved in the hells, and Śrījāta, a virtuous householder, before the court of Yama Dharmarāja. The wrongdoer is weighed down by black pebbles and led along a black path; the householder, who made offerings and saved living creatures, is led along a white path toward higher rebirth. Chapter 14 presents the mantra circle of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, said to confer liberation simply by being worn on the body at death. It lists the seed-syllables and mantras of each deity, describes the signs that appear at cremation, and instructs the practitioner to inscribe the mantras on fine blue paper with refined gold and wear the resulting amulet continuously.