Many people engaged in serious spiritual practice have suceeded in indefinitely putting off a "confrontation" with the Tibetan Book of the Dead. After all it is very complex, loaded with esoteric Tibetan Buddhist teachings, and the subject is so -- well, shall we say not a light entertainment accompanied by an immediate warm glow of satisfaction.
Now there is no reason to put it off any longer! The beautifully produced new Illustrated Tibetan Book of the Dead(a new translation with commentary) by Stephen Hodge with Martin Boord fills a void with great success.
First the book is physically beautiful with absolutely splendid color photographs of the Tibetan people, colorful religious celebrations and ceremonies and the awesome scenery of this spectacular country.
Reading, absorbing and responding to this book is very much like participating in a several day retreat. The retreat is conducted by someone who really understands his topic. The text of the book is reduced in size from the original, eliminating much of the more obscure material and examples, but the central, essential elements are all here.
Those central elements, very well introduced, are presented in a fine new translation and accompanied by very helpful explanatory material by Stephen Hodge. The first time visitor to this esoteric spiritual classic can therefore come away from a several day "retreat" of reading feeling well satisfied that the book has been opened for him/her and explicated by a master.
As our life is truly for the sake of dying into an eternity of awareness and bliss, and since we can in fact become familiar with the process of dying through meditative reading and understanding of this book -- and since a major point of the book is to show how easy it is to be so unfamilar with the open doors to eternal bliss that we can move right past them out of ignorance, why not stop now and take the time to study and learn the lesson of lessons.
Whether a reader of this book will wish to follow it up by going to a complete text of the Tibetan Book of the Dead is of course an individual decision based on how satisfied one is with the book discussed here. Certainly, this superlatively planned, written and produced book is l00% more helpful and satisfying than never bothering with the Book Of The Dead at all. And it is probably equal to the task of satisfying most readers completely.
