History Ch_Tibetan Book of the Dead
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00:00It is one of the holiest books in the world, key scriptures for the Dalai Lama, and an
00:11exact description of what flatliners experience while clinically dead.
00:17Written in the 8th century, the Tibetan Book of the Dead is a guide for the dying, a map
00:23for the journey we will face in the afterlife.
00:27I think the Tibetan Book of the Dead is the first how-to book.
00:32And how did it capture the imagination of so many in Western culture?
00:37Anyone who picks up the book can learn something from it.
00:40There's some kind of wisdom there that's universal.
00:43And what does the Book of the Dead offer the living?
00:46We have a tool that in this very lifetime we can attain freedom.
00:56These matters affect us all.
00:58And if ancient Tibetan culture is correct, the Book of the Dead is nothing less than
01:02the key to life after death, and the answer to humanity's oldest questions.
01:27Death.
01:28It is humanity's greatest mystery.
01:32Shakespeare called it the unknown country, the land from which no man returns.
01:39Every culture has stared at death and has wondered at its finality, but none has solved
01:45its ultimate mystery.
01:52In a remote corner of the world, however, one people believes that it knows exactly
01:57what happens after death.
02:06They say the answers are contained in a mysterious 1,200-year-old text called the Tibetan Book
02:13of the Dead.
02:15The Tibetan Book of the Dead can be understood like a Thomas guide, you know, map quest for
02:26everyone who's ever wants to find ultimate meaning in the life and afterlife experiences.
02:40I think the Tibetan Book of the Dead is perhaps the first how-to book.
02:45It's a manual.
02:47It's a guidebook for the deceased to travel through the afterworld with advice from day
02:55to day.
02:59For centuries, this book was kept secret in an isolated land known as the Forbidden Kingdom.
03:12But then, in the early years of the 20th century, a lone American went on a spiritual quest.
03:20His name was Walter Evans Wentz, an Oxford-educated folklorist in search of ancient wisdom.
03:30He traveled alone through Europe, Arabia, India, and finally came to the borders of
03:36Tibet and the Himalaya Mountains.
03:44And there, in a small monastery, he became the first Westerner to read the book that
03:49claimed to know the mysteries of life after death.
03:56This is a profoundly spiritual text, but it's also challenging experientially.
04:02In that way, this is quite scientific.
04:04It also has a good philosophical orientation to it.
04:09Evans Wentz spent three years helping translate the text, which he published in English in
04:141927.
04:17Today, this extraordinary book can be bought in any major bookshop in one of several translations,
04:24and its supporters range from Hollywood actors to the Dalai Lama.
04:31Written in the 8th century, the Tibetan Book of the Dead is a precise description of what
04:36each individual will endure in the afterlife, an experience that Tibetans call the bardo.
04:43When they passed away, then they will reborn somewhere else.
04:47Between the births, that's time we call intermediate life.
04:51In Tibet, we call bardo.
04:53In Tibetan Buddhism, the emphasis dies a lot, because we consider that this life is important,
05:03but not as important as the next life.
05:10Intriguingly, stories from the Tibetan Book of the Dead seem to match the modern descriptions
05:15of those pronounced clinically dead on the operating table, so-called near-death experiences.
05:22I think the similarity is spine-tingling.
05:25Almost everyone talks about this blinding light, often it's called the white light.
05:31In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, they talk about the white light, it's very clear, it's
05:37very alluring.
05:40The text of the book describes the light with precision.
05:44Oh, nobly born, that which is called death has now come.
05:49Now thou art experiencing the radiance of the clear light of pure reality.
05:55It's very seductive.
05:57And the fascinating thing about near-death stories is that they want to go toward the
06:04light, and when the doctor is bringing them back to consciousness in the yard, they're
06:10bringing them back to consciousness in the yard room, they feel a reluctance to leave.
06:24Whether in a modern western city or a remote Tibetan village,
06:28the one constant for all mankind is the mystery of death.
06:40Death has come to a small village in rural Tibet.
06:44The time could be yesterday, it could have been centuries ago.
06:50In Tibet, the rituals of the dead have remained the same for at least the last 600 years.
06:59A young man has died in the village.
07:01His family mourns his passing and begins to prepare for the coming funeral.
07:07The dead man's mother has sent for the local Buddhist monks, or lamas.
07:12The monks settle at the side of his body in order to read from the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
07:21Their words are meant to guide the dead man through the frightening world of the afterlife.
07:36Oh nobly born, thou art departing from this world, but thou art not the only one, death cometh to all.
07:58The experience will be terrifying.
08:01In the bardo they can see lots of different lights, different images, lots of confusion.
08:07Also, it has lots of fear.
08:13Only the Tibetan Book of the Dead can guide a soul safely to a new life.
08:31To understand the power of the book, one must first understand its roots.
08:41Tibetans practice a form of Buddhism, one of the great religions of Asia.
08:46It began 500 years before the birth of Jesus, with the teachings of an Indian holy man known to his followers as the Buddha, or the Awakened One.
09:00Well, Buddhism is a very old tradition, 2,500 years old.
09:04Over this period, it has traveled and become assimilated in a wide variety of cultures,
09:09and I mean internally very diverse cultures, from Afghanistan 1,500 years ago,
09:14to North Korea, to Siberia, to Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, and China, of course, Tibet.
09:19But despite the diversity in this wide range of teachings within this broad Buddhist tradition,
09:24there are some core themes that one can say, well, this is Buddhism 101.
09:30The basic belief of Buddhism is a simple but profound truth.
09:35Life is full of suffering.
09:37According to Buddhists, suffering is caused by desire and ignorance.
09:43But suffering can be eliminated through meditation, through study, and through compassion.
09:50Buddhists, I think, it's not just a religion, it's a philosophy.
09:54But we emphasize two things.
09:56One is compassion, one is wisdom.
09:59When you earn those two things, then you're already enlightened.
10:07A concept central to all forms of Buddhism is reincarnation,
10:11the idea that after death, one is reborn.
10:15And with that concept comes the idea of karma,
10:18the belief that one's good and evil deeds in this life will be paid for in the next.
10:24Tibetan Buddhists will think about, well, I'm not going to do this thing,
10:28because I know if I do this thing, which is a wrong thing to do,
10:32if I don't get punished for it this lifetime, I'm going to have to pay the karma sooner or later.
10:38The goal of Buddhism is to step off the eternal wheel of karma
10:41and thus be liberated from suffering.
10:46The Tibetan Book of the Dead promises a shortcut to liberation.
10:51You have techniques for actually jettisoning the consciousness of the deceased
10:57out of the body and into a better realm.
11:03For centuries, the secrets of the Tibetan Book of the Dead
11:06were guarded in the mountain vastness of the Himalayas,
11:11until its publication in English in the 1920s.
11:17It's never gone out of print since 1927.
11:20There's been six or more other translations from the Tibetan,
11:24so it's continuing to maintain that hold on Western imagination.
11:35The book became even more famous in 1964 when psychedelic guru Timothy Leary re-translated it,
11:41proclaiming that the Tibetan sacred text was the ideal description of an LSD trip.
11:47The Tibetan Book of the Dead has found its way into Beatles songs,
11:51Hollywood films, pop culture slogans, even fashion designs.
12:00But beneath it all is the simple but powerful mystery of an ancient culture.
12:06But might it be possible to actually know what happens after death?
12:10Maybe there is not only great mythic wisdom here,
12:13but actually empirical insight into the nature of consciousness.
12:16Maybe there is an individual continuity of consciousness beyond death.
12:23Does this ancient text from a remote corner of the world
12:27hold the answers to mankind's oldest questions?
12:33As monks chant praises of Buddha,
12:35and his only guide in the world beyond the grave is the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
13:05Death comes to every home.
13:08But in Tibet, death and burial practices are unlike any other funeral traditions in the world.
13:15They begin with monks chanting prayers at the side of the deceased.
13:21Their text is the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
13:26It will guide the soul through the stages, or bardo, of death.
13:30It will guide the soul through the stages, or bardo, of the afterlife.
13:39Oh, nobly born, this now is the hour of death.
13:44Listen with full attention.
13:48Thou will experience three bardos.
13:50Recognise them. Be not afraid.
13:53It is said that it's quite common for such a spirit, a ghost, a bardo being,
13:58to come back to this person's familiar habitat, home, the office place,
14:05and to be hovering around one's loved ones.
14:11The most important thing that the family members can do
14:13is to silently reassure the soul, hey, everything's going to be okay.
14:18You have the right to live.
14:21You have some important business to attend to. Now go do it.
14:33After several days, the corpse is prepared for burial
14:36by experts in the Tibetan funeral process.
14:40The traditional Tibetan funerary traditions,
14:43they even did it in a special way where they had a special class of people
14:47where they had a special class of people known as ragyawa
14:50who would go and dismember the bodies at the request of the family.
14:57According to Tibetan tradition, the body is forced into a foetal position.
15:01The spine is broken and the arms and legs are bound together.
15:09The corpse, now half its normal size,
15:11is tightly wrapped and allowed to stiffen in a small bundle.
15:18The traditional Tibetan funeral is known as sky burial.
15:27The bundle is taken to a remote location
15:30and left as an offering of food for the vultures.
15:34This seems very gruesome and morbid from the Western viewpoint,
15:38but, again, it's a very practical idea.
15:41The Tibetans believe that once the body is dead,
15:44it is absolutely worthless,
15:47unless you give one last gift of this life,
15:50which is yourself as food toward other sentient beings.
15:57This is the end for the body, but not for the soul.
16:01For the next seven weeks, monks will continue to chant
16:04from the Tibetan Book of the Dead
16:06to guide the wandering soul through the afterlife, or bardo state.
16:15O nobly born, be not attached to this world,
16:19be not distracted, do not fear.
16:29The Tibetan form of Buddhism
16:31is unlike any other style of this great Asian religion.
16:36The Tibetan Book of the Dead is based on the experience
16:39of the Tibetan Buddhist yogis and meditators
16:42over many, many centuries.
16:44Tibetan Buddhism is undoubtedly one of the highest forms
16:48of spiritual teachings that's appeared on this planet.
16:54One of the rare practices of Tibetan Buddhism is the sand mandala.
16:58It is a geometric depiction of the cosmos made with coloured sand.
17:03Its creation is a form of meditation.
17:13Its elaborate swirls, gateways and colours
17:16each represent a different form of wisdom.
17:19It may take the monks weeks
17:21to complete one of these beautiful works of art.
17:26The physical structure is the representation
17:30of the enlightened qualities
17:32when it is created with the right kind of motivation.
17:38Complete it and maintain that motivation
17:42when it is being consecrated.
17:45It is something like bringing the life force to the mandala.
17:53The sand mandala is a symbol of life
17:56and as soon as the intricate artwork is completed...
18:01..it is destroyed.
18:04It is a profound symbol of the briefness of life itself
18:08and the certainty of death.
18:13At the heart of Tibetan beliefs about death and reincarnation
18:17lies the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
18:20But the creation of the book is as strange and bewildering
18:23as its description of the afterlife.
18:29It begins with a mysterious figure with magical powers
18:32who travelled to Tibet from India.
18:39Even his true name is unknown and through the centuries
18:43he has only been known by the title Padmasambhava,
18:46the Lotus Born.
18:54Padmasambhava was born in the northwest corner of Pakistan
18:59in the present-day Swat Valley or perhaps in Afghanistan.
19:03Wherever he came from, he ended up in India
19:06and became a superstar in terms of his mystical powers.
19:15750 AD.
19:17In Europe, the Vikings were raiding the English coast
19:20and Charlemagne was in the process
19:22of uniting the warlike tribes of the continent.
19:26In Asia, the Buddha had been dead for 12 centuries.
19:30His religion had spread from Afghanistan to Japan.
19:37And in the remote Himalayan plateau, Padmasambhava arrived,
19:41bearing the message of Buddhism.
19:48His first task was to defeat the evil demons that plagued Tibet
19:52by challenging them to magical combat.
20:00He didn't just destroy the demons,
20:02he converted them, let's say forcefully, to Buddhism.
20:06And all of those indigenous spirits, all those indigenous demons
20:11then had a role and continue to have a role in Tibetan religion
20:15as protectors of Buddhism.
20:23In addition to quelling and converting demons,
20:26Padmasambhava performed miracles, healed the sick,
20:29prophesied the future and even taught some of his followers to fly.
20:39Padmasambhava's greatest challenge, however, was to defeat death itself.
20:44Around the year 800, the Indian saint wrote down specific instructions
20:49relating to the process of death and rebirth.
20:54He called it Bardo Tordol,
20:57or the Book of Liberation Upon Hearing in the Afterlife.
21:04It was unlike any existing Buddhist scripture.
21:08Even the Indians who had the knowledge about the way you die and are reborn
21:12didn't have a popular Book of the Dead like that, only the Tibetans.
21:17The book's message was so powerful, its guidance so important,
21:21that the Buddhist saint decided it was actually dangerous.
21:27He felt that the Tibetans were not ready for that teaching
21:31and they might have misunderstood it in some way.
21:35And perhaps it would have been misused by necromantic priests or something
21:40in some sort of strange cults.
21:43There's a whole elaborate mythology of Padmasambhava's hiding
21:48of these teachings, of these texts,
21:51providing a prophecy of who would be the one to discover them at a future date.
21:59Padmasambhava in these stories is said to have hidden the texts
22:03in very strange places, very remote,
22:06in the middle of rocks and stones and boulders.
22:13Padmasambhava died around 800.
22:16His accomplishments were remarkable.
22:19He had converted the entire nation of Tibet from a military empire
22:23into the most spiritual society on earth.
22:31But his greatest work had disappeared.
22:34All that was left of the guidebook to the afterlife was a secret prophecy.
22:40And 600 years to the day, that prophecy was to be fulfilled.
22:59In a Tibetan village, a young man has died.
23:03For 49 days, the dead man's spirit is said to wander in the afterlife,
23:08guided only by the chanting of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
23:21The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes three stages, or bardos, of the afterlife.
23:27Having met a brilliant white light at the moment of death,
23:30the dead person then enters the second stage of his journey,
23:33the bardo of peaceful deities.
23:40Oh, nobly born, before you appears Lord Vajrasattva
23:45in the act of union with his female consort, Buddhalochana,
23:50the white light of wisdom shines upon you.
23:56Bright and clear.
24:01Each of the peaceful deities offers the soul guidance to paradise
24:05or entrance into the sensual pleasures of the gods.
24:09But the peaceful deities can be a trap.
24:12Then you become too seduced by it and it's so beautiful,
24:15then you become kind of deluded and go off into fantasy.
24:20The point is to stay centred.
24:22Meditation means centring and concentration means centring.
24:27Oh, nobly born, do not be enticed by the soft light of the gods.
24:32It is an obstacle to liberation.
24:37The goal of the bardo is to achieve enlightenment,
24:40not to pursue the pleasures of the gods.
24:43And if the soul fails the test of the peaceful deities,
24:46he will be forced to encounter their terrifying alter egos,
24:50the wrathful deities.
24:57Only the chanting of the Buddhist monks
24:59can guide the wandering spirit through the bardo of the wrathful deities.
25:08The most elaborate depiction of the bardo is in the Shithra Mandala,
25:12a three-dimensional miniature representation of the afterlife.
25:16This exquisite miniature sculpture
25:18is the Tibetan Book of the Dead made real.
25:21Like the Book of the Dead,
25:23its purpose is to help the living prepare for the next life.
25:29If you can really get adept and learn about the bardo before you die,
25:33then when you slip into the bardo, this bardo of becoming,
25:37you may recognise, hey, this is the bardo.
25:40There's nothing to be afraid of.
25:49This elaborate portrayal of the Tibetan afterlife
25:52was first developed in the 8th century,
25:57when it was transcribed after a vision by the Indian saint Padmasambhava.
26:04But to protect this sacred document from unworthy eyes,
26:07he is said to have concealed the book,
26:10leaving behind only the prophecy
26:12that it would not be discovered for 600 years.
26:19SILENCE
26:27Beginning in the 14th century,
26:29we begin to see these visionaries
26:32rediscovering the teachings of Padmasambhava,
26:36which he had hidden in the 8th century.
26:40And those figures were called treasure-revealers, or tertön.
26:46One of the greatest of these tertöns, or treasure-revealers,
26:50was Karma Lingpa,
26:52who is said to have discovered a map to the hidden book in a vision.
26:58What's interesting is that the map is written in a code,
27:02a special kind of script that no-one else can read
27:06but the one who's prophesied to discover the text.
27:11Around the year 1350,
27:13Karma Lingpa followed the map's clues
27:15to the Gampadhar range of the Himalayas,
27:18where he uncovered the long-hidden guide to the afterlife.
27:28The discovery of the Book of the Dead
27:30had a profound influence on Tibetan Buddhism.
27:34Over the following centuries,
27:36the book became a standard element
27:38in traditional Tibetan death rituals,
27:40the key to the ultimate mystery of death and rebirth.
27:46But Tibet, and its spiritual heritage,
27:49was to remain isolated from the rest of the world
27:52until the 20th century.
27:55The story of the Book of the Dead's journey to the West
27:58began in 1919,
28:00with an American scholar arriving at the foothills of the Himalayas,
28:05seeking the wisdom of the East.
28:10Walter Evans-Wentz,
28:12the founder of the Buddhist school of Buddhism,
28:15said,
28:18Walter Evans-Wentz was a very intriguing,
28:21interesting, insightful individual.
28:24He was, I think, above all, an anthropologist.
28:28He also became very fascinated by Tibetan Buddhism.
28:34Born in New Jersey in 1878,
28:37Evans-Wentz studied Celtic mythology at Oxford
28:40and was already an established author
28:42when he arrived in New Jersey in 1878.
28:46But as one of the first Westerners to reach the borders of Tibet,
28:50he was astonished by its deeply spiritual culture.
28:55Here was a civilisation in which, to a very large extent,
28:59the primary focus and the magnet
29:02for many of the most intelligent, creative, energetic individuals
29:06in this civilisation for a good 1,000 years or so,
29:09was the Tibetan Buddhism.
29:11While studying Buddhist meditation,
29:13Evans-Wentz was presented with a strange document.
29:17He was told that it contained
29:19the greatest spiritual secret of Tibetan Buddhism,
29:22the secret to life after death.
29:25Wentz immediately found a local meditation teacher
29:28to help him translate the text and write a commentary.
29:32The text was written in Tibetan,
29:34and the text was translated into Tibetan.
29:38Evans-Wentz was convinced that he had discovered
29:41a profound book of spiritual teaching
29:43and felt it was his mission to tell the outside world.
29:51This text speaks of the quintessence of the supreme path
29:55and reveals the method of attaining enlightenment.
29:58It is for those who have hungered after wisdom
30:01that this book has been revealed.
30:04It is for those who have hungered after wisdom
30:07that this book has been written.
30:09Walter Evans-Wentz.
30:11When Evans-Wentz published The Tibetan Book of the Dead in 1927,
30:16he thought it might appeal to a handful of spiritual seekers.
30:20He was wrong.
30:22From everything that we can gather in 1927,
30:26it was a great hit, bestseller.
30:29It hooked into a certain fascination that was re-emerging in that time
30:34with the occult and with exotic religious ideas
30:39and comparative religion.
30:41Thanks to his translation,
30:43Evans-Wentz became the most influential author on Tibet for a generation.
30:48Evans-Wentz was a sincere scholar and spiritual seeker.
30:53His work is valuable, his language is kind of a little Edwardian
30:57and a little bit quaint to us nowadays,
30:59but the works do stand the test of time.
31:03A year before Evans-Wentz's death in 1965,
31:07the book was re-translated by another unconventional scholar...
31:13named Timothy Leary.
31:16Leary was to claim that The Tibetan Book of the Dead
31:19was the perfect Bible for a drug generation.
31:28When a person dies in Tibet,
31:30he is said to travel through the afterlife for 49 days.
31:34Each stage, or bardo, is a test.
31:38Each test determines whether his next life will be on earth,
31:42in a heaven, or in a terrifying hell.
31:46And the most frightening bardo is an encounter with terrifying demons
31:51known as the Ravana.
31:54With terrifying demons known as the wrathful deities.
31:59Oh, nobly born, this is the bardo of the wrathful deities.
32:04The 58 flame-enhaled, wrathful, blood-drinking deities come to dawn.
32:18The wrathful beings are simply manifestations of the peaceful beings.
32:22But again, they can terrify the uninitiated
32:27and the people who don't understand what they really represent
32:30and think that they're enemies.
32:33The Tibetan Buddhists create these images of absolutely horrible-looking demons
32:37with fangs and bulging eyes and blood-curdling weaponry,
32:41and so the person has already been contemplating these images
32:45and the paintings beforehand.
32:47So when they encounter things, they say,
32:49Oh, yeah, well, that's it.
32:51This is the one that's going to actually devour,
32:53you're going to be devoured now or ripped to shreds.
32:58The wandering soul can become terrified and flee in panic
33:02and in so doing can become lost.
33:06These hallucinatory experiences helped inspire
33:10the strangest incarnation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
33:20It was an American translation with a new emphasis and a new title.
33:28The Psychedelic Experience was written in 1964
33:31by Harvard professor Timothy Leary.
33:34His collaborator and protégé was Ralph Metzner.
33:38I was a graduate student in psychology at Harvard
33:41and I was working with Timothy Leary
33:43and we were studying what are called psychedelic drugs.
33:46We knew nothing about them beforehand
33:48and so we were exploring their potentials,
33:51applications and implications for psychology,
33:54understanding the human mind.
33:56The researchers found strong similarities
33:59between the drug experience
34:01and the description of the Tibetan death experience.
34:04What typically might happen would be like a death of the former self
34:08and then there would be an intermediate period
34:11and then there would be like a rebirth of a new self.
34:14And that would be the analogy to the Tibetan Book of the Dead's guidance
34:18to somebody actually physically dying.
34:23Leary, Metzner and associate Richard Alpert
34:26rewrote the Tibetan Book of the Dead
34:28as a guide for psychedelic drug trips.
34:33What we did is we stripped away from the text
34:36all the specifically Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhist iconographic references.
34:41What's the core message?
34:43And the core message always is be conscious,
34:46don't be either too frightened by the frightening visions
34:50or too seduced by the interesting, beautiful visions,
34:54but remember that they're all constructions of your own mind.
34:58The language of the book was updated and Americanized,
35:02but the message remained.
35:06Oh friend, listen well.
35:08Oh friend, listen well.
35:11No harm can come to you from these hallucinations.
35:15Relax.
35:18Merge yourself with them.
35:22The psychedelic experience.
35:30The psychedelic experience became a counterculture bestseller,
35:34inspiring rock albums, underground films and experimental theatre.
35:41To this day, I get letters from people thanking me
35:45and the rest of us for having written it,
35:48was that it prepared people for considering psychedelic experience
35:52as a possibly authentic spiritual experience.
35:59But whatever the perceived similarities,
36:02death and the psychedelic experience are distinctly different.
36:09To a wandering soul in the Bardo,
36:11these visions may be an authentic experience
36:14and they are a terrifying one.
36:20And the Bardo ends with an encounter with the most powerful figure of all.
36:25The Tibetans call him Yama.
36:28He is death.
36:31When you pass away, you will meet Yama.
36:35So Yama looks like a restful deity waiting for you somewhere there.
36:45Yama, the lord of death, will examine the deeds of the dead soul,
36:51piling up his good deeds in the form of white pebbles.
37:01And his evil deeds in the form of black pebbles.
37:08A life of good deeds will earn a positive rebirth,
37:11perhaps even entrance to the world of the gods.
37:15A life of evil will condemn a soul to rebirth as an animal
37:19or a lifetime of torture in hell.
37:24However, the Tibetan Book of the Dead provides an escape
37:27from the merciless judgment of karma.
37:29If the soul can listen to the distant sound of the monks chanting,
37:33he can leave the lord of death behind.
37:40Oh, nobly born, fear not the lord of death.
37:44He is thine own hallucination.
37:47Listen and go forward.
37:58With the help of monks chanting the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
38:02the soul can enter the third bardo,
38:06where he will choose his own rebirth and meet his future parents
38:11as they engage in sexual intercourse at the very moment of his conception.
38:19The Tibetan Book of the Dead can help guide a person to a better life
38:23but it is a person's good and bad karma
38:26that determines how one will be reborn.
38:29A saintly person can be reborn in a better life.
38:32A particularly evil person can be reborn as an animal, a demon,
38:37or, worst of all, a wraith-like spirit called a hungry ghost.
38:46The imagery there is that you have this tremendous hunger
38:50and yet your neck is the size of a pencil.
38:53So even if you try to swallow something, you can't consume it.
38:57You are always hungry.
38:59You're very attached to previous lives and you're never satisfied.
39:03It's a realm of great suffering.
39:06A person who has lived a good life can even be reincarnated as a god.
39:11But even better than that is the chance to be reborn.
39:16As Padmasambhava instructs in the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
39:19you really want to go back to a human life form
39:22because you have the opportunity to study suffering
39:25and realize that other people are suffering
39:27and you have the opportunity of benefiting these people
39:31after you understand their suffering.
39:34Once you have the suffering, then you can learn something.
39:37We're always saying you learn something, you learn something.
39:41Similarities between the Tibetan concept of reincarnation
39:44and modern physics have been noted by some commentators.
39:50Buddhism has a theory of the conservation of consciousness
39:53that is very comparable to the scientific principle
39:56of the conservation of energy.
39:58And that is you can do all kinds of things
40:00and you can do all kinds of things
40:02and you can do all kinds of things
40:04and you can do all kinds of things
40:06and you can do all kinds of things
40:09And that is you can do all kinds of things to energy.
40:11The one thing you can't do to energy is make it become nothing.
40:14And you can do all kinds of things to consciousness.
40:17It, too, is one of the core elements of the universe.
40:20You can't destroy space, you can't destroy energy,
40:23and you can't destroy consciousness.
40:27As the wandering soul prepares for rebirth as a human,
40:30he will experience the most erotic section
40:33of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
40:39O nobly born, at this time thou wilt see visions
40:43of males and females in sexual union.
40:46Meditate upon them with great fervency.
40:55You then begin to have visions of couples copulating.
40:59That means you're about to enter into a new life.
41:02And then you should meditate very strongly
41:06and focus on choosing a favourable family.
41:13It is the final test,
41:15the moment when a soul can foresee the future
41:18and choose the next life he will live.
41:22Just at the moment when the seed and the egg are about to unite,
41:26the soul will experience bliss.
41:29O nobly born, enter into the womb.
41:33Walk with thy head erect
41:35and enter into the light path of human beings.
41:39The journey ends as it began,
41:42with a long trip down a dark tunnel towards a glowing light.
41:47Only this tunnel is the womb,
41:50and the brightness is the first light seen
41:53when a newborn baby opens its eyes.
41:57It is the end of one stage, or bardo,
42:00and the beginning of the bardo called life.
42:04So then the message for the Buddhist teaching is
42:08we prepare for your death.
42:12For Tibetans, death is inevitable.
42:17But it is not the end.
42:20Death and rebirth is an archetypal process.
42:23An archetype is a kind of a core, primordial image
42:27that is shared by all of humanity.
42:30That's why the Tibetan Book of the Dead was written.
42:33It's trying to tell you, no, death does not mean nonexistence.
42:36It's something completely else.
42:38It's a kind of an opportunity for liberation.
42:41It's an expansion of a consciousness.
42:43I think Westerners have a tendency to put death in a shelf
42:47until it's open for them and they have no choice to look at it.
42:51The value of the Tibetan Book of the Dead is they're saying,
42:54looking at death, becoming comfortable accepting it,
42:57is a better way of getting on with your life.
43:01The Tibetan Book of the Dead wants you to know
43:04that your life will go on after you die,
43:07and how it will go on will depend on how well you live.
43:12So live better, make an effort.
43:15That's the message of the Book of the Dead.
43:18For religious faiths and philosophies around the world,
43:21the decision to examine one's own mortality is a step toward wisdom.
43:30And that is as true in the streets of a Western metropolis
43:33as it is in the lofty mountains of a remote Himalayan kingdom.
43:41The Tibetan Book of the Dead may be more than 1,000 years old
43:45and come from one of the furthest corners of the world,
43:48yet it addresses the great question asked by every individual
43:52who has looked into the future and wondered at the mystery of death.