Tibetan Book of the Dead

Bardo Thödol, also known as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is a collection of funerary texts that are used by Tibetan Buddhists to ease the consciousness of a recently deceased person through death and rebirth.

Although Bardo Thödol is traditionally attributed to Padmasambhava, the Indian Tantric guru who is credited with introducing Buddhism to Tibet, the book was probably composed much later in the 14th century.

Before we delve deeper into the Buddhist philosophy of life and death, we first need to understand its main tenet.

All schools of Buddhism believe that a person’s craving and attachment to worldly things leads to nothing else but suffering and unease (dukkha). It is precisely these attachments that bind the person to the reverberating process of death and rebirth (samsara).

Only those who have attained enlightenment are spared from this endless cycle, thus reaching complete liberation.

The literal translation of Bardo Thödol is “Liberation in the Intermediate State Through Hearing”.

Buddhists believe that when a person dies, they get locked in an interval between death and rebirth for seven weeks (49 days).

Because it is believed that the deceased can still hear despite not physically being present, these funerary texts are read out by the lamas over a recently deceased person over the course of 49 days.