Travel

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Drove into Tibet over the high Himalaya passes from Kathmandu.  I was following the route of the Indian sage who brought Buddhism to Tibet sometime in the 9th c.  They say he rode in on a Siberian tiger.  I took a kind of cross between a jeep and a mini bus.  Not quite as exciting but still pretty adventurous. 

We passed a lot of ruined monasteries – destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and came at last to the central plateau and the palace of the Dalai Lama.  An interesting story: the India sage composed a lot of texts – and he used the local Tibetan dialect – writing it in a Sanskrit script.  He buried the texts just before he died, saying that they would be unearthed when they were needed.  One of these was found, many centuries later and it’s called the Bardo Thotrol.  In the West, we know it as the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

It’s a series of chants to be read over a person as they die (and for the 24 hours afterwards) to ease them into the next incarnation (it’s apparently a bit of a worrying time).  The discarded body, meanwhile, is given a sky burial.  It is taken to a sacred spot and chopped up into pieces with an axe.  Then the birds of prey carry off the bits and pieces, scattering them to the winds.  

My video podcast of the Tibetan Book of the Dead is now on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/PilgriminthePalace

Or, even better.  On itunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=344689204

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