The latest offering from Roli Books is a funerary text that explores how the Tibetans bid formal goodbye to the world with a little help from vultures, and recitations that inspired a John Lennon song
The latest offering from Roli Books is a funerary text that explores how the Tibetans bid formal goodbye to the world with a little help from vultures, and recitations that inspired a John Lennon song
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An arresting image accosts readers midway through the new illustrated edition of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Captured in Tibet, in 1990, it depicts a "sky burial", where vultures wait patiently for a feast being prepared as the last act of charity on behalf of the deceased. The lama, or priest, goes about his business calmly, dragging a bloody carcass while surrounded by birds of prey.
As a funerary text, the title Tibetan Book of the Dead has always been somewhat limiting. It is careless, thrown across the book's pages in much the same way as "The Egyptian Book of the Dead" has. For the Tibetans, this is more than just a formal goodbye. Recited by lamas over the dying or recently deceased, they call it Bardo Todol, which translates clumsily as "liberation through hearing during the intermediate state". It is a guide to one's consciousness in the states after death, and the interval between death and rebirth.
The new edition has a lot going for it. As Mullin explains, this is not a literal translation. The photographs by Thomas L Kelly named Photographer of the Year by Hinduism Today add a great deal of value but, more importantly, draw attention to the little-known world of Bardo art. Mullin starts by addressing the background of the Tibetan tradition on death, then gives us an abbreviated version of the text stripped of jargon. With more than 24 books on Central Asian culture behind him, he is more than qualified to take on the role of teacher.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is about Bardo Todol that continues to reel in generations of rapt readers. In the sixties, portions of the text were adapted into a guide for use in LSD experiences. John Lennon used it while writing the song Tomorrow Never Knows. Mullin says he encountered it 40 years ago, and it "shook him to the very core of his being".
Pick it up, won't you?
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