A guide to the intermediate states between death and rebirth, read to the dying and the dead to lead the consciousness through the visions of peaceful and wrathful deities toward liberation or a favorable rebirth. It maps the bardo experiences as projections of the mind and instructs the deceased to recognize the clear light of reality. It is a central text of the Nyingma school.
Facts
Origins
Era of Composition Era of CompositionAttributed to Padmasambhava in the eighth century and held to have been concealed as terma and recovered later. The text as it exists is the fourteenth-century revelation of Karma Lingpa, and it is one work among many in the Tibetan literature of dying rather than a Tibetan book of the dead. 1Tradition: Nyingma Origin of the Name"The Tibetan Book of the Dead" is Walter Evans-Wentz's title, coined for his 1927 edition on the model of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The Tibetan title is Bardo Thodol, "liberation through hearing in the intermediate state", and the book's Western reception has been shaped by the title it was given. 1 Attributed Author / CompilerAttributed to Padmasambhava 1 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseFrom Evans-Wentz's Theosophical framing through Jung's commentary to Timothy Leary's 1964 psychedelic manual, the text has been read in the West as a document of universal consciousness. Each reading rests on the previous one rather than on the Tibetan tradition that produced and uses it. 1 Transmission
Manuscript TraditionPresented as Padmasambhava's eighth century teaching, concealed as terma and recovered later; the text as it survives is Karma Lingpa's fourteenth century revelation, one work within a wider Tibetan literature of dying rather than a single continuous manuscript line. 1 Text
Literary Form Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteIts English title was coined by W.Y. Evans-Wentz for his 1927 translation, echoing the Egyptian Book of the Dead though the two traditions share no historical connection, and scholars now treat that framing as having shaped Western reception of the text as much as the text itself. 1 Learn More
The 'Great Liberation Through Hearing'
The work known in English as the Tibetan Book of the Dead is properly the Bardo Thodol, "Liberation through Hearing in the Intermediate State", a set of instructions to be read aloud to the dying and the dead to guide the consciousness through the bardo, the interval between death and rebirth, past the visions of peaceful and then wrathful deities (understood as projections of the mind's own nature) toward either liberation or, failing that, a favourable rebirth. It belongs to the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism and is a terma or "treasure text": tradition holds that it was concealed by the eighth-century master Padmasambhava and revealed centuries later, in the fourteenth century, by the treasure-finder Karma Lingpa. Historically, then, its composition is medieval Tibetan even though the tradition assigns its authority to the earlier Padmasambhava, a pattern characteristic of the terma literature.
The Book the West Half-Invented
Much of what the general reader "knows" about this text is a Western overlay. The title The Tibetan Book of the Dead was coined by the American editor W. Y. Evans-Wentz, whose 1927 edition, based on a translation by the Sikkimese teacher Kazi Dawa-Samdup, framed the work through Theosophy and comparative religion; C. G. Jung later added a psychological commentary, and in the 1960s Timothy Leary and others recast it as a guide to psychedelic experience. Each of these readings tells us more about its own moment than about the Tibetan ritual, in which the Bardo Thodol is one text among many in an elaborate funerary practice, not a stand-alone "book of the dead" on the Egyptian analogy that its Western title imports. Scholars such as Bryan Cuevas and Donald Lopez have reconstructed both its actual history within Tibetan tradition and the story of its Western reinvention.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Attests
The Bardo Thodol is the text that maps the intermediate state and is read aloud to the dying and the newly dead.
Attributed To
Why this is disputed. Ascribed to Padmasambhava in the eighth century and revealed as a treasure text by Karma Lingpa in the fourteenth. The ascription is the tradition's own account of how treasure texts work rather than a claim historians test in the usual way.
Related To
Read to the dead through the forty-nine days in Tibetan practice
Sources
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