Extract :
A Brief Literary History of the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
by Gyurme Dorje
Since the publication in 1927 of Lama Kazi Dawa Samdups and W. Y. Evans-Wentz’s pioneering English translation of three chapters from the cycle of texts known in the original Tibetan as The Great Liberation by Hearing in the Intermediate States (Bar-do thos-grol chen-mo), the chapters they translated, dealing with the nature of the after-death state, including the accompanying aspirational prayers, have attracted a compelling interest outside Tibet under the title the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Learned Tibetans today often express their surprise that this particular collection of meditative practices concerning methods for understanding the nature of mind and transforming our experiences throughout the round of life and death has become one of the most well-known of all the works of Tibetan literature in translation. This renown is especially unexpected when one considers the esoteric origins of the text and its highly restricted transmission within Tibet until the mid-fifteenth century. It is on account of this widespread popular recognition however that the title coined by the editor of the first translation, Evans-Wentz, has been retained in all subsequent translations and related studies. Following in this tradition, we too have retained the title the Tibetan Book of the Dead to refer to the first complete English translation of The Great Liberation by Hearing in the Intermediate States, which includes translations of all twelve chapters of the original compilation.
EARLY ORIGINS
‘The Great Liberation by Hearing in the Intermediate States’ is an outstanding example of Nyingma literature. The Nyingmapa are the followers of the oldest of all the schools of Tibetan Buddhism, tracing their lineage back to the first wave of transmission of the Buddhist teachings to Tibet, to the royal dynastic period of Tibetan history in the eighth century, when great Indian masters such as Padmasambhava, Vimalamitra and Buddhaguhya initially introduced the three inner classes of tantra: Mahayoga, Anuyoga and Atiyoga. These tantra texts are differentiated on the basis of their distinctive meditative techniques, known respectively as the generation stage, the perfection stage and the Great Perfection (Dzogchen).
All traditions of Tibetan Buddhism today share the inheritance of the canonical compilations of the Indian Buddhist scriptures and treatises contained in the Kangyur and Tengyur. The former contains those teachings of the Buddhas (vinaya, sfltras and tantras) that were translated from Sanskrit and other languages into Tibetan, mostly from the late tenth century onwards and compiled initially by Buton Rinchendrub. The latter includes the classical Indian commentaries that were also translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan. In a recently published and collated master edition of both the Kangyur and Tengyur these texts comprise i18o volumes.
At the same time, each school has its own distinctive writings. The particular literature of the Nyingma school comprises translations from Sanskrit and other languages, which are preserved in the twenty-six volume Collected Tantras of the Nyingmapa (rNying-ma’i rgyud-’bum), and a companion anthology of cornmentarial treatises, written by successive generations of Indian and Tibetan lineage holders. The latter, which has been faithfully handed down through a “long lineage of oral precepts” fring-brgyud bka’-ma), that is to say through an unbroken lineage of transmission from one generation of accomplished masters to the next, is continuously growing and currently comprises i zo volumes in a recently published edition.
The Collected Tantras of the Nyingmapa has three main sections, corresponding to the compilations of Atiyoga, Anuyoga and Mahayoga. Among them, the most influential single text is the Guhyagarbha Tantra, a revelation of the primordial Buddha Samantabhadra, transmitted through Vajrasattva and Guhyapati Vajrapatii. The compendium of texts that we now know as the Tibetan Book of the Dead bases its symbolism and iconography on the Guhyagarbha Tantra. Founded on the classical Abhidharma view of the elements, psycho-physical aggregates, etc., this tantra text is the earliest known literary work to portray the natural purity and natural transformation of our mundane psychological states, respectively, as the maqçlala of the forty-two peaceful deities and as the mai~çla1a of the fifty-eight wrathful deities. Though generally and rightly classified as a Mahayoga text, the Guhyagarbha Tantra has also been obliquely interpreted from the perspective of Dzogchen, most famously by Longchen Rabjampa (13 08—63). The meditative techniques of both Mahayoga and Dzogchen are clearly expressed among the chapters of our present work: the generation stage of meditation is emphasised in Chapters 5—7, and the Great Perfection in Chapters 4 and ii, these latter two chapters being based on the teachings of the two key aspects of the Great Perfection, namely Cutting Through Resistance (khregs-chod) and All-Surpassing Realisation (thod-rgal) respectively. Thus from the point of view of its theoretical foundation and practice, as well as in its iconography and symbolism, the Tibetan Book of the Dead echoes its roots in the Guhyagarbha Tantra but, in addition, vividly incorporates the classical teachings of Dzogchen.
The Guhyagarbha Tantra was initially compiled by King Indrabhuti and Kukkuraja of Sahor in north-west India (circa sixth century). The monarch, also known as King Dza, received the whole corpus of the Mahayoga tantras in a vision from Vajrasattva, and Kukkuraja, a great accomplished master, divided this literature into eighteen books (tantras) — the most all-embracing of which is the Guhyagarbha. During the eight century, the Guhyagarbha Tantra was translated into Tibetan from Sanskrit three times: initially by Buddhaguhya and Vairocana, secondly by Padmasambhava and Nyak Julanakumara, and definitively by Vimalamitra with Nyak Jnanakumara and Ma Rinchen Chok. A much later indigenous Tibetan translation was also prepared in the fifteenth century by Tharlo Nyima Gyeltsen and Go Lotsawa. The anthology of treatises related to the Guhyagarbha Tantra includes a large number of commentaries on this text, of both Indian and Tibetan origin, composed by illustrious masters such as Lilavajra, Buddhaguhya, Rongzom Pai~çlita, Longchen Rabjampa, and Lochen Dharmaêri.
The iconography and symbolism of the hundred peaceful and wrathful deities presented in the Guhyagarbha Tantra subsequently gave rise to a whole genre of literature in Tibet known as the Cycles of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities (zhi-khro), among which our compilation of texts The Great Liberation by Hearing in the Intermediate States is the most influential.
THE CLOSE LINEAGE OF TREASURES
According to traditional accounts, when Padmasambhava introduced these teachings to Tibet in the eighth century he foresaw that the oral transmission of the “long lineage” would be subjected over time to corruption and misapplication, and that the efficacy of the teachings would be diminished. To counteract this, through the agency of his consort Yeshe Tsogyel and other foremost disciples, he concealed a large number of “treasure-teachings” (gter-chos), in the form of books and sacred artefacts, at power-places (gnas) throughout the Tibetan plateau, predicting that they would be rediscovered in future generations by their respective “treasure-finders” (gter-ston) and promulgated for the sake of future generations. Prophecies were written, describing those who would have the power to unearth such revelations in the future — figures of the calibre of Nyangrel Nyima Ozer, Guru Chowang, and the discoverer of our text, Karma Lingpa. The term “treasure-teachings” is generally extended to include not only concealed “earth-treasures” (sa-gter), but also revelations discovered in a telepathic manner directly from the enlightened intention of buddha-mind (dgongs-gter), and pure visionary experiences (dag-snang).
This notion of the concealment of texts in the form of treasure had precedents in both Indian and Chinese Buddhism. NagArjuna, for example, is said to have received the Prajnaparamita Sutras in the form of treasure from the ocean-depths, and, according to Nyingma doxographers, a recension of Mahayoga Tantras was revealed to the eight teachers of Padmasambhava, at the Sitavana charnel ground near Vajrasana. Similarly, the Chinese Buddhist tradition of elemental divination, which includes aspects of Feng Shui and Yi Jing, also recounts how the bodhisattva Mafljugho~a concealed certain divinatory texts on Wang Hai Feng, the Eastern Peak of the sacred Mount Wutai Shan. Tibetan sources then describe how Manjugho~a subsequently revealed the Precious Clarifying Lamp (Rin-chen gsal-ba’i sgron-me) to the Chinese master Dahura Nagpo.
Since the initial discoveries of the first Tibetan “treasure-finder” Sangye Lama, in the eleventh century, a vast literature has been produced in Tibet by way of revelation through the “close lineage of treasures” (nye-brgyud gter-ma), and redacted within the public domain. The Collected Treasures of the various treasure-finders are too voluminous to mention here, but many of their works are represented in the extensive nineteenth-century anthology known as the Store of Precious Treasures (Rin-chen gter-mdzod), which was recently republished in 76 volumes. Just as the anthology of the “long lineage” contains many commentaries on the Guhyagarbha Tantra, a significant number of “treasure-teachings” are also inspired by its portrayal of the hundred peaceful and wrathful deities. Among them the most elaborate is the cycle discovered in the fourteenth century by Karma Lingpa — the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities: A Profound Sacred Teaching, [entitled] Natural Liberation through [Recognition of] Enlightened Intention. The compendium of texts now known outside Tibet as the Tibetan Book of the Dead is an abridgement of this treasury of texts discovered by Karma Lingpa.
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