Death in the twentieth century is at once imminent and invisible. Lulled by the false comforts of medical and technological advancement, western culture dreams that progress will domesticate once and for all death's senseless malignancy. Science has offered many solutions to life's questions, but has yet to explain, for example, the spark of new life, the mysterious workings of consciousness, or a person's fate after death. As this exhibit has hopefully demonstrated, the Tibetans possess a vibrant wealth of literature dealing with the nature of consciousness and the dying experience. For centuries Tibet has engaged in the systematic study and analysis of the human death process as a cautious and practical preparation for this inevitable event. In the past several decades, many spiritually inquisitive westerners from both Europe and the United States have turned to the wisdom of Tibet's mature religious understanding for answers to those questions that science and medicine have failed to address. In the end, there is not a single human being who is not going to die, sooner or later. It is therefore impractical, according to some opinions, not to examine the issue with the greatest concern and not to benefit from the trials and errors of ancient tradition. It is this view that has motivated many of the western studies on the Tibetan Books of the Dead, and it is in these studies that Tibet's sophisticated methods of dealing with death and dying are appropriately recognized as a skillful, compassionate, and humane response to life's certain end. 

The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Edited by Walter Y. Evans-Wentz and translated by Kazi Dawa Samdup. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927. First Edition. (On loan from Bryan J. Cuevas)

The first English language translation and commentary of the most famous Tibetan death text, 'The Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Intermediate State' (Bardo Tö-dröl, bar do thos grol chen mo), appeared in 1927. Its editor, Dr. Walter Y. Evans-Wentz (1878-1965), christened the text with the title The Tibetan Book of the Dead in order to convey to the western reader the true character of the text as a whole. The actual translation into English was provided by Kazi Dawa Samdup (Kazi zla ba bsam 'grub, 1868-1922), who had previously served as interpreter to both the British Government in Sikkim and the Tibetan Plenipotentiary in India, and had also been the teacher and translator for the first great female pioneer of Tibet, Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969) during her stay in Sikkim. After Dawa Samdup's death, over the course of several years, Evans-Wentz reworked, edited, and composed lengthy notes to the surviving translations, basing his interpretive conclusions upon material drawn less from the Tibetan Buddhist traditions (with which he was only vaguely familiar) and more from the Spiritualism of Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), founder of the Theosophical Society, and from the neo-Vedantic Hindu views of his Indian guru Swami Satyananda. Consequently, Evans-Wentz's reworking of Dawa Samdup's earlier translations and his copious commentarial footnotes are truly idiosyncratic and impressionistic interpretations of the Tibetan Buddhist doctrines contained in the text. The commentaries of Evans-Wentz certainly bear the imprint of his romantic Theosophical leanings and nineteenth century intellectual prejudices. 

The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Edited by Walter Y. Evans-Wentz and translated by Kazi Dawa Samdup. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960. Paperback Edition.

Further contributions to Evans-Wentz's creative interpretations of the Book of the Dead were not offered again until the renowned psychoanalyst Carl G. Jung (1875-1961) psychologized the text's message in his commentary of 1938, which was published for the first time in English in the third Oxford Press edition of 1957 and subsequently prefaced to all future editions of Evans-Wentz's Tibetan Book of the Dead. Jung's insightful essay demonstrated to the wider academic population that this Tibetan text could be relevant beyond the specialized arena of Tibetology and that its content could speak to the concerns of anthropologists, philosophers, and psychologists alike. Moreover, Jung's psychological perspective generated considerable interest in non-academic circles and directly influenced the interpretations of several translations and commentaries that would follow.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo.
Chogyam Trungpa and Francesca Fremantle. Berkeley, California: Shambhala Publications, 1975.

Based on lectures presented at his own Buddhist institute in Vermont, the charismatic Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa (1939-1987) published his own edition of The Tibetan Book of the Dead in 1975. This edition exhibits the distinctive quality of Trungpa's peculiar blend of American counter-culture individualism and Tibetan Buddhist orthodox conservatism. His highly individualized commentary to the translation certainly owes a debt to Carl Jung. In Chögyam Trungpa's view the bardo experience is an active part of every human being's basic psychological make-up, and thus it is best described using the concepts of modern psychoanalysis, such as ego, the unconscious mind, neurosis, paranoia, and so on. Indeed, the greatest virtue of Trungpa's text is its ability to convey the messages of the Book of the Dead in a free-flowing and comfortable style unburdened by the specialized and obscure language so often encountered in more academic works.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Liberation Through Understanding in the Between.
Robert A.F. Thurman. New York: Bantam Books, 1994.

This most recent translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead is inspired by the contemporary hospice movement in America. In this new translation, Robert Thurman, Columbia University professor and president of Tibet House in New York City, sets out to produce an even more accessible version of the popular Tibetan text for those individuals who might wish to read it at the bedside of their dying friend or relative. In this way, Thurman's Tibetan Book of the Dead is presented clearly as an "easy- to-read" guidebook for contemporary Americans. His edition is among the first to give simple practical instructions on how to make use of the Tibetan text, and includes a well-informed and extensive commentarial introduction to the essential Buddhist topics that serve as background to the ideas and practices encountered in the original work.