Douglas G. Bernstein
March 8th, 2021
W.Y. EVANS-WENTZ, THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD, AND THE THEOSOPHIZATION OF
TIBETAN BUDDHISM
When the iron bird flies,
And horses run on wheels,
The Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the world
And the Dharma will come to the land of the Red Man. (Levine 2010)
- Prophecy of Padmasambhava
Ignoring for the moment issues of attribution and of interpretation,1 the preceding lines of
Padmasambhava (Skt. Padmākara; Wyl. pad+ma 'byung gnas)2 are most often invoked in
reference to the Tibetan Diaspora and the spread of Tibetan Buddhism to the Western Hemisphere
in the middle of the Twentieth Century. Yet even before the Tibetans’ flight into exile, the dharma
(Wyl. chos)3, had long since arrived on American shores. Indeed, well before the armies of
Chairman Mao set about ‘liberating’ Tibet in the autumn of 1950, not only was Buddhism present
in America but Tibetan Buddhism, and Tibet in general, had for decades fascinated both American
spiritualists and the country’s haute monde.4 While the introductions of other forms of Buddhism
were facilitated, at least in part, by those indigenous to the tradition they propagated, such as
Anagarika Dharmapala in the case of Theravāda and Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki in the case of Zen,
Tibetan Buddhism’s first real steps into American society were not made by a Tibetan, or even a
1
Tibetologist Stephen Batchelor has advanced the notion that the prophecy corresponds not to the 20th Century
Tibetan diaspora, but actually presages the spread of Buddhism from China to Tibet, which, while problematic for a
number of reasons, is nevertheless a compelling interpretation (Batchelor 2000).
2
Lit. “The Lotus-Born”; known to most Tibetans as Guru Rinpoche (Wyl. gu ru rin po che), “Precious Master;” the
semi-apocryphal progenitor of Vajrayāna (Wyl. rdo rje theg pa) Buddhism; born from a lotus flower blossoming out
of a lake in the Kingdom of Oḍḍiyāna (Wyl. u rgyan), very likely corresponding to the modern-day Swāt Valley of
Pakistan.
3
Notoriously impossible to translate, but encompassing such meanings as “truth, law, reality, duty;” in this case it is
synonymous with Buddhism (Skt. buddhadharma; Wyl. sangs rgyas kyi chos).
4
The Presidential retreat, Camp David, was originally named Shangri-La by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, after the
mythical kingdom that is the setting for James Hilton’s novel of the same name. The novel Shangri-La also being a
prime example of America’s infatuation with the mystic east and Tibet in particular.
Bernstein |2
Buddhist, but by the son of two Baptists from New Jersey (Lopez Jr. 2011, 22). Known to posterity
as W.Y. Evans-Wentz, he was born Walter Yeeling Wentz, and he would do more to popularize
Tibetan Buddhism, as well as distort it, than any other American before or since.
Dead now for half a century,5 Evans-Wentz’s writings on Tibetan Buddhism have long
outlasted his corporeal form. Of these tomes, none is more famous than The Tibetan Book of the
Dead6. To this day, it remains the second most popular literary work related to Tibet.7 EvansWentz’s work, and more importantly, the exegesis of Tibetan Buddhism popularized therein
continue to haunt the American understanding of Tibet’s dharma, casting shadows from which
neither academic nor popular discourse has managed to escape. Yet, the purpose of this essay is
not to dispel these shadows, a task far beyond the scope of these few pages. Rather, this essay
seeks to understand Evans-Wentz—his influences, motivations, and methodology, and his
creation—its connections, doctrines, and impact, so that we may see it for what it is, not a
presentation of Tibetan Buddhism, but an affirmation of Evans-Wentz’s own fetishes and
prejudices, and ultimately, as a work of Theosophy.
Returning to the prophecy of Padmasambhava at the very beginning of this essay, it was in
1927, twenty-four years after the iron bird first flew,8 that an actual text of Tibetan Buddhism,
albeit highly adulterated, finally came to America, or the land of the Red Man9 (Tweed and
Prothero 1999, 161). The individual responsible was W.Y. Evans-Wentz, and the title of his work
5
He died, unmarried and childless, on 17 July, 1965 in San Diego California, having spent the last 23 years of his life
in the Keystone Hotel (Lopez Jr. 1998, 54).
6
Evans-Wentz’s full title being The Tibetan Book of the Dead or the After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane,
according to Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s English Rendering.
7
The most popular is Hergé’s comic, Tintin in Tibet.
8
That is to say the Wright Brothers demonstration of heavier-than-air flight on the beaches of Kitty Hawk, North
Carolina on 17 December, 1903.
9
Most scholars interpret this to mean Caucasians, whose skin and cheeks blush red, and not Native Americans, for
whom the appellation “Red skin”, a slur, was, and is still used.
Bernstein |3
was The Tibetan Book of the Dead. But before proceeding any further with regards to this book or
its author, it is perhaps necessary to establish some context. Although Evans-Wentz was to be the
most successful of those to popularize Tibetan Buddhism prior to the Tibetan Diaspora, he was
not the first. Furthermore, without the earlier wave of Spiritualism10 that swept the post-Civil War
United States and the Occultism and Esotericism of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth
centuries The Tibetan Book of the Dead, nor Evans-Wentz as we know him, could never have
been.
Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism first came to wider American attention through the efforts of
a Russian émigré, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky11, and the former editor of British India’s bestselling English daily, Alfred Percy Sinnett. Sinnett deserves brief mention only for his work,
Esoteric Buddhism, which first subsumed Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism as agents for Theosophical
discourse, and for first advancing “esoteric Buddhist” doctrine of rebirth, which is an etic
invention, totally removed from actual Buddhist ontology. Esoteric Buddhism also generated a raft
of public interest in Buddhism and Tibet upon which Blavatsky quickly capitalized. However, it
is Madame Blavatsky, as she came to be known, who is the far more memorable character. She,
along with Henry Steel Olcott12, was the founder of the Theosophical Society13, the new religious
movement par excellence, from which numerous others have spawned. Complementing Sinnett’s
Esoteric Buddhism were Madame Blavatsky’s own works, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine,
the latter of the two being the seminal work of the Theosophical literary corpus. Yet, Blavatsky
10
The idea that the dead were still present and could be contacted through various means.
Blavatsky was eventually exposed as a fraud, and is remembered primarily not as a mystical savant, but as one of
the greatest charlatans in American religious history.
12
Olcott’s impact on Buddhism in America was no less profound than Blavatsky’s, though his interest, fortunately for
the Tibetans, was primarily in Theravāda Buddhism.
13
Though still extant, the Theosophical Society has suffered much the same fate as its founders and is no longer taken
seriously.
11
Bernstein |4
did not claim what she purveyed to be her own,14 but that of secret cabal of enlightened sages
called the Great White Brotherhood. Beset by the nightmarish advance of civilization, these
sages—whom Blavatsky referred to as Mahātmās15—had, over the centuries, congregated in Tibet,
where the magnetizing forces they felt so abhorrent were least concentrated (Lopez Jr. 2000, C).
It was in Tibet where Blavatsky discovered the Mahātmās, claiming to have spent seven
years studying as their initiate prior to her arrival in the United States. Even half a world away
from Tibet, Blavatsky claimed to possess a mystical connection with the Mahātmās in which their
instructions and teachings would manifest as visions, automatic writing, and most frequently, as
letters that would miraculously materialize in the Madame’s cabinet (Lopez Jr. 1998, 51). Perhaps
in response to the growing American interest in Tibet, a vast unknown at a time of rapid and
traumatic scientific advancement, or to her own childhood encounters with Tibetan Buddhism
while summering in Kalmykia16, Blavatsky chose Tibet as the stage for her drama (Lopez Jr. 2011,
20). Despite this, in all of Blavatsky’s writing, and her output was tremendous,17 Tibet is always
of secondary importance. The Tibetans themselves, save, frequently, the Panchen Lama (Wyl. paN
chen bla ma)18, are presented as hapless naïfs, completely unaware of the Mahātmās and their
goings-on. Nor are the Tibetans privy to ‘esoteric’ Buddhism. The Tibetans’ Buddhism,
14
We shall see this tendency repeated again with Evans-Wentz.
Sanskrit, lit. “Great Soul;” part of a larger Vedantic lexicon appropriated by, and employed in Theosophical parlance
(Albanese 2007, 338).
16
A region of present day Russia bordering the Caspian Sea in which Tibetan Buddhism has predominated since the
early Seventeenth century, the result of a mass migration by the Oirat Mongols and their establishment of the Khalmyk
Khanate.
17
The Secret Doctrine was over 1,500 pages (Albanese 2007, 335).
18
Lit. “Great Scholar, Spiritual Master;” Panchen is a Tibetan contraction of the Sanskrit paṇḍita, “scholar,” and the
Tibetan chen po, “great;” also known as the Panchen Rinpoche (Wyl. paN chen rin po che) and the Tashi Lama (Wyl.
bkra shis bla ma), in reference to the Panchen Lama’s traditional seat at the monastery of Tashilhunpo (Wyl. bkra shis
lhun po); the Panchen Lama is considered to be an emanation of the Buddha Amitābha (Wyl. ‘od dpag med), the one
of “Infinite Light.”
15
Bernstein |5
Lamaism19 to Blavatsky, being a deterioration of pure20 Buddhism onto which has been heaped a
mass of petty superstition and ritual (Lopez Jr. 1998, 37). Through Theosophy, Blavatsky
inaugurated a colonialist discourse with Tibet, setting the stage for Evans-Wentz, by placing within
Tibet the means to humankind’s apotheosis, but at the same time, denying the Tibetans any agency
in the process. Tibet, and certain elements and figures21 of “Lamaism,” were a means of
legitimating her own wildly divergent doctrines, as Albanese notes, “Asian historical particularity
was effaced, and the universalizing potential of concepts like reincarnation, karma, and subtle
bodies was amplified many times over,” (2007, 336).
Leaving Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society behind,22 we must now turn our attention
to Evans-Wentz, but before doing so, it is perhaps necessary to delineate the Tibetan Buddhist
understanding of death and rebirth so that we may set this in contrast with Evans-Wentz’s in The
Tibetan Book of the Dead. Within Buddhism, mundane reality is understood as cyclic existence
(Skt. saṃsāra; Wyl. ‘khor ba)23, an endless round of birth, death, and rebirth into one of six realms
(Skt. ṣaḍgati; Wyl. rigs drug)24: the various hells25, the realm of hungry ghosts, the animal realm,
the realm of human beings26, the realm of the demi-gods27, and the god realm. The first three
realms are regarded as unfortunate, the last three as fortunate, while the human realm, though
19
The pejorative designation for Tibetan Buddhism then in vogue; thoroughly discredited by Lopez in the first chapter
of Prisoners of Shangri-La.
20
Read: Theosophical.
21
Tsongkhapa (Wyl. tsong kha pa), the founder of the Gelugpa (Wyl. dge lugs pa) school, in which the Panchen Lama
is the second highest incarnate, seems to be invoked with some frequency.
22
Though, admittedly, there is still a great deal that could be said; see Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Prisoners of Shangri-La:
Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
23
Lit. “Flow,” in Sanskrit, but meaning “to turn round in a [vicious] circle,” in Tibetan; the endless round of birth,
death, and rebirth in which all unenlightened beings are trapped as a result of ignorance and past karma.
24
Lit. “Six Kinds” or “Six Types.”
25
Of which there are many, all delineated in great detail by the Buddha.
26
The one which we, or at least most of us, inhabit.
27
Skt. asura, Wyl. lha min; lit. “Not gods.”
Bernstein |6
replete with suffering, is considered the most fortunate rebirth28 as the dharma is most readily
accessible to human beings. Driving cyclic existence, which is without beginning or end, is karma
(Wyl. las)29. Standard Buddhist karmic theory holds that every action leaves an imprint on its agent
(Lopez Jr. 1998, 67). This imprint, often likened to a seed, eventually fructifies (Skt. vipāka, Wyl.
rnam par smin pa), resulting in either positive or negative experience, depending on the nature of
the original action. As with all of cyclic existence, the process of rebirth is also governed by karma,
with the circumstances of one’s rebirth determined by the ripening of past karma (Ibid. 67-68).
Thus, any being, depending upon their actions, may be reborn in any of the six realms, regardless
of the realm they inhabited before. Positive and negative rebirths are equally accessible to all
beings, and it is the fear of the latter that is the preeminent religious concern of most Buddhists30,
which they seek to avoid through the accumulation of merit (Skt. puṇya, Wyl. bsod nams)31 and
the avoidance of karmically detrimental behaviors32.
After death, there exists an intermediate state, known, in Tibetan, as the bardo
(Skt. antarābhāva; Wyl. bar do)33, which one must traverse before attaining rebirth. With the dawn
of Indian Tantric Buddhism, otherwise known as Vajrayāna (Wyl. rdo rje theg pa)34, the bardo, in
28
Not including rebirth in a pure land (Skt. buddhakṣetra, Wyl. zhing khams or sangs rgyas kyi zhing) or in the Tuṣita
(Wyl. dga’ ldan, lit. “Joyful”) heaven, where the future Buddha, Maitreya (Wyl. byams pa, lit. the “Loving One”),
resides.
29
Lit. “Action.”
30
The quest for enlightenment being the preserve of decidedly few, even among the ordained.
31
“Good Karma” in layman’s terms.
32
These are the Ten Unwholesome Actions (Skt. daśākuśala, Wyl. mi dge ba bcu): killing, stealing, sexual
misconduct, lying, harsh speech, idle gossip, covetousness, ill will, and wrong view.
33
Lit. “Between two points;” the period between death and rebirth, generally lasting 49 days, in which one is subjected
to various visions and experiences arising from the karmic seeds sown during one’s life.
34
Lit. “Adamantine,” or “Thunderbolt Vehicle;” also known as Tantrayāna (Wyl. theg pa rgyud) or the Fruitional
Vehicle (Skt. phalayāna; Wyl. 'bras bu'i theg pa) because it seeks not to establish the causes of enlightenment, but
the direct realization of the fruitional result, i.e. enlightenment, that is the very basis of mind according to Tantric
Buddhist theory.
Bernstein |7
true Tantric fashion, was transformed from an obstacle35 to a vehicle. Eventually, the bardo state,
and its concomitant yogic disciplines, became the most advanced and efficacious means of
realizing enlightenment, in which consciousness itself is transformed into Dharmakāya (Wyl. chos
sku)36 (Lopez Jr. 2011, 45-46). Such an understanding was ultimately transmitted to Tibet, over
the course of several centuries in various waves, where the bardo receives its fullest exposition, in
both literature and yogic practice, their development being somewhat intertwined. According to
the extrapolations extant in Tibetan Buddhism, transmigration through the bardo is characterized
by a number of visions, the first and most important, known as the inner radiance or clear light of
the ground (Wyl. gzhi’i ‘od gsal), occurring at the moment of death (Wyl. ‘chi kha’i bar do)
(Padmasambhava and Lingpa 2006, 227-28). Should one recognize this vision as reality,
unsurpassed Buddhahood is achieved instantaneously along with absolute liberation from cyclic
existence. If one is unable to recognize the clear light of the ground, one progresses to the second
bardo, the bardo of reality (Wyl. chos nyid bar do), in which one is subjected to a multitude of
visions conditioned by one’s previous karma. If one recognizes these visions, a lesser
enlightenment is obtained37, but rebirth is still escaped (Ibid. 235, 258). If one fails to recognize
the visions of the second bardo, one progresses to the third bardo and must again take rebirth.
While familiarization, and ultimately control of this process stems from the practice of
Highest Yoga Tantra (Skt. Niruttara-yoga; Wyl. rnal 'byor bla na med pa'i rgyud), decidedly few
Tibetan Buddhists ever reach this stage of tantric practice, or even practice tantra at all. As such,
35
Death, even in Buddhism, being something of a frustration to most people.
Lit. “Truth Body;” the ultimate body of a Buddha, totally without form, generally beyond conceptualization,
corresponding to the realization of emptiness and the perfection of wisdom, sometimes understood to be synonymous
with the fundamental nature of reality.
37
Sambhogakāya (Wyl. longs sku, it. “Enjoyment Body”) the subjective, celestial body of a Buddha corresponding to
their perfected form free of all defilements; the thirty-two major and eighty minor marks of a Buddha are present in
the Sambhogakāya.
36
Bernstein |8
for the vast majority of individuals, the bardo state is still a harrowing experience wrought with
danger. To address this need, there developed a mortuary practice, wherein the dead would be
guided through the bardo via oral instruction, the subtle body still able to hear despite the corporeal
body being dead. To facilitate this practice there developed a large body of ritual texts called Bardo
Tödol (Wyl. bar do thos grol)38. Within this corpus, there is a relatively small text called the Great
Liberation upon Hearing in the Intermediate State (Wyl. bar do thos grol chen mo)39 (abbreviated
as Great Liberation from hereon), discovered by the treasure revealer (Wyl. gter ston) Karma
Lingpa (Wyl. kar ma gling pa) in Fourteenth Century Tibet (Lopez Jr. 2000, D). It was a copy of
this text, the Great Liberation, which eventually made its way into the hands of Evans-Wentz.
Having finally provided the necessary context, we may now direct our attention to Evans-Wentz
himself, and his role in this saga.
Evans-Wentz, then merely Walter Yeeling Wentz, was born on February 2 nd, 1878, three
years after Olcott and Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society. Although his parents were
Baptists, they developed a growing interest in Spiritualism and eventually left the church. This
interest in Spiritualism had a profound impact on young Walter, who grew up reading Blavatsky,
and in 1901, joined the American Section of the Theosophical Society in Point Loma, California,
where it was headed by Katherine Tingley. In 1903, having earned his diploma from the
Theosophical Society, he enrolled in Stanford, at Tingley’s urging, majoring in English. At
Stanford40, he was exposed first to William Butler Yeats, himself a Theosophist since 1888, and
later, to William James, who lectured at Stanford in the spring of 1906. James was no Theosophist,
but his theories on mystical experience forming the basis of religiosity seemed to confirm EvansLit. “Liberation through Hearing in the Intermediate State.”
Itself part of a larger cycle of texts commonly known as the kar gling zhi khro (Cuevas 2003, 17).
40
Despite his undressing as a legitimate scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, Stanford still has a lectureship named in EvansWentz’s honor.
38
39
Bernstein |9
Wentz’s Theosophical beliefs of a mystic-esoteric praxis at the heart of all religion. Wentz then
proceed to the University of Rennes and Oxford to study Celtic folklore, where he began to go by
Evans-Wentz in an attempt to sound more British (Lopez Jr. 2011, 23). Foreshadowing his later
work, Evans-Wentz’s first book41 projects onto its subject matter esoteric notions of rebirth and
spiritual evolution, advocating Theosophical understandings in the guise of Celtic religion (Ibid.
25-27).
After the conclusion of the Great War42 Evans-Wentz journeyed first to Sri Lanka and then
to India, studying with Swami Satyananda and visiting the Theosophical Society’s headquarters,
where he met with Annie Besant, Blavatsky’s successor as the Society’s matriarch43. In 1919,
Evans-Wentz arrived in the picturesque Himalayan hill-station of Darjeeling (Wyl. rdo rje gling)44.
It was here Evans-Wentz acquired a portion of the Great Liberation,45 enlisting Kazi Dawa
Samdup (Wyl. ka dzi zla ba bsam ‘grub)46, the English teacher at the Maharaja Boy’s School in
Gangtok (Wyl. sgang tog)47 to translate48 the text. The translations49 took two months, with
Samdup and Evans-Wentz meeting each morning before Samdup had to teach. To quote Lopez,
“Their time together was brief,” with Evans-Wentz returning to Satyananda’s ashram to practice
yoga50 and study with various neo-Vedantin teachers (1998, 53). It is perhaps worth noting that
41
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries.
Evans-Wentz avoided service, spending most of the war in Egypt (Lopez Jr. 1998, 52).
43
As Tweed notes elsewhere, a common feature to American esoteric groups, including the Theosophists, was a
preponderance of female members, particularly in positions of authority (Tweed 2000, 53)
44
Lit. “Place of the Vajra;” the name Darjeeling is a corruption of the proper Tibetan pronunciation, ‘Dorje Ling.’
45
Evans-Wentz claims to have received it from a monk, though other sources indicate he simply bought it in the bazaar
(Lopez Jr. 2000, D).
46
A quite interesting character in his own right, and something of a go-to resource for Theosophists and other ‘seekers’
in Sikkim. In addition to Evans-Wentz, he assisted Alexandra David-Neel during her time in Sikkim.
47
Lit. “Top Between Two Rivers;” the capital of Sikkim.
48
Evans-Wentz never learned to read or even speak Tibetan.
49
Evans-Wentz incorporated these translations in The Tibetan Book of the Dead as well as two others works in his
Tibetan tetralogy: Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines and The Tibetan Book of Great Liberation.
50
He learned to sit motionless for four hours and forty minutes every day (Lopez Jr. 2011, 77).
42
B e r n s t e i n | 10
while in Sikkim, or at any other point in his life for that matter, there is nothing to suggest EvansWentz actually practiced Tibetan Buddhism or considered himself a follower of the tradition,
despite later claims of initiation and disciplehood. The only other meeting between Evens-Wentz
and Samdup was in Gangtok in 1920. In 1922, Dawa Samdup, only 54, entered the bardo.51 Though
Evans-Wentz elevates their relationship to great heights, as we will discuss shortly, there is little
to suggest a profound connection between the two men. As Evans-Wentz’s biographer noted:
The few letters that have survived that they exchanged show a surprisingly distant and formal tone.
Even in Dawa Samdup’s diaries there is no word to suggest otherwise. There is nothing at all
foreshadowing the later declarations that [Dawa Samdup] was the guru of Walter Evans-Wentz,
nothing about the ‘teachings’ [Evans-Wentz] was supposed to have received. (quoted in Lopez Jr.
2011, 78)
How exactly their partnership actually functioned during those two months in 1919, short of what
Evans-Wentz would have us believe, remains a mystery.
Evans-Wentz continued to visit India throughout the 1920’s and 30’s, primarily to study
yoga, showing a greater affinity for neo-Vedanta than Tibetan Buddhism. He returned to Sikkim
on only two occasions, in 192452 and in 193553. Evans-Wentz’s Asian sojourn came to an end in
1941, when he returned to the United States. He spent the remainder of his life in California, and
his last months studying with the Vedantin Hindu reformist, Swami Yogananda (Lopez Jr. 2000,
F). In 1965, Evans-Wentz entered the bardo. The Tibetan Book of the Dead was read at his funeral,
for once, fulfilling the role for which it was actually meant, but, ironically, for none other than the
On a cultural note, Tibetans and their religious kin rarely refer to someone ‘dying.’ The religiously skilled ‘depart
for the heavenly fields,’ while the rest of us simply ‘expire.’
52
To visit Dawa Samdup’s family, from whom he received a translation of The Hundred Thousand Words of the
Master (Wyl. rje btsun bka’ ‘bum), which formed the basis of the second piece of the tetralogy, Tibet’s Great Yogi
Milarepa (Lopez Jr. 2000, E).
53
On this occasion, Evans-Wentz employed two Sikkimese monks to translate another text of Karma Lingpa’s, from
the same treasure (Wyl. gter ma) cycle as the Great Liberation, which became the basis of the final book of the
tetralogy: The Tibetan Book of Great Liberation (Ibid. F-G).
51
B e r n s t e i n | 11
man most responsible for its divorce from that original role as a mortuary text to be read at the
time of death.
Building upon the prototype inaugurated by Blavatsky, Evans-Wentz sought to legitimate
The Tibetan Book of the Dead by establishing himself in an authoritative lineage of the mystic
East. To do this, Evans-Wentz transformed his translator, the English teacher54 Kazi Dawa
Samdup, into his guru, proclaiming him to be the Lama (Wyl. bla ma)55 Kazi Dawa Samdup, a
designation by which no one else ever referred to Samdup (Ibid. G). Evan-Wentz then casts himself
as Samdup’s disciple, a relationship, which as we have already noted, has no basis in reality. Secure
in lineage, Evans-Wentz, again mirroring Blavatsky, sought to establish the text as unadulterated,
devoid of outside influence, as though it came straight from the lama’s mouth. Indeed, in the very
first words of the preface to the first edition, Evans-Wentz proclaims: “In this book I am seeking—
so far as possible—to suppress my own views and to act simply as the mouthpiece of a Tibetan
sage, of whom I am a recognized disciple,” (quoted in Lopez Jr. 1998, 55). From this, we see
Evans-Wentz’s bold assertion that his own voice is minimized to the absolute extent, when in point
of fact, the opposite is true. To see this, one need only look56 at the most recent edition of The
Tibetan Book of the Dead, published in 2000 by Oxford University Press, in which the actual
translation of the Great Liberation comprises less than a third of the book, the remainder filled out
by prefaces, introductions, forwards, commentaries, and Evans-Wentz’s incessant annotations
54
Admittedly, a position that does not inspire a great deal of awe.
Equivalent to the Sanskrit guru, meaning “teacher” or “master;” a contraction of lanamé pa (Skt. anuttarā; Wyl. bla
na med pa), meaning “unsurpassable; supreme; none higher.” The formal prerequisite for any fully qualified lama,
regardless of order, is the completion of the traditional three year, three month, three day meditation retreat (Wyl. lo
gsum phyogs gsum; “three years, three fortnights”); there is nothing to indicate Samdup ever completed such a retreat.
56
Quite literally, it should be noted.
55
B e r n s t e i n | 12
(Lopez Jr. 2011, 5).57 Samdup’s translation, the one remotely authentic Tibetan Buddhist voice we
have, is drowned out, the loudest voice of course, being none other than that of Evans-Wentz.
Admittedly, that there is even an actual Tibetan voice in The Tibetan Book of the Dead represents
something of a positive development from Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, in which the Tibetans
are not only excluded, but deemed irrelevant. Even so, buried under various prefaces,
introductions, and annotations, the indigenous voice is rendered mute, retooled to serve EvenWentz’s Theosophist agenda.
The indigenous, authentic voice minimized, we find in Evans-Wentz’s The Tibetan Book
of the Dead not an elaboration of Tibetan Buddhism, but ultimately, of doctrines popularized by
Blavatsky and the Theosophist movement. To begin, the Great Liberation is divorced from any
historical context, and is recast as a scientific exposition on the art of dying, thereby lending
credence to the Theosophist preoccupation with unifying science and religion in a single praxis
that will eventually confirm the spiritual evolution of humanity (Cuevas 2003, 7 & Lopez Jr. 2011,
81-82). Similarly, Evans-Wentz decontextualizes the Great Liberation from location and history.
He declares the true58 wisdom of the text to be timeless, predating human civilization, yet
appearing throughout history and across the Earth, from the ancient Egyptians to Plato, from
Ireland to Tibet, where it materialized in the form of the Great Liberation (Lopez Jr. 2011, 106).
Even the title of the book is evidence of this, Evans-Wentz seeking to link the Great Liberation,
as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, with the already extant Egyptian work, The Book of the Dead
(Lopez Jr. 2000, K).
57
By comparison, in the most recent, and also the first complete translation of the Great Liberation, by Gyurme Dorje,
the translation accounts for two-thirds of the books 576 pages, most of the ancillary pages belonging to a glossary of
key Tibetan and Buddhist terminology.
58
Read: esoteric or Theosophist.
B e r n s t e i n | 13
It is, however, in invoking the trope of esotericism where Evans-Wentz truly sets about his
work. Declaring the true meaning of the Great Liberation to be esoteric59, Evans-Wentz castigates
a literal reading of the text, and thus an indigenous understanding, deeming the ‘exoteric’ text a
corruption of the text’s true, pure wisdom that exists outside of any literal confines (Cuevas 2003,
8). Evans-Wentz declares that only through a coded symbolism, a concept of prime importance
within Theosophy, can the Great Liberation be properly understood. He attempts to legitimize this
argument through the preposterous notion that this symbolic code is actually emic, known to the
more astute lamas (Lopez Jr. 2011, 102-103). Despite the vast majority of Tibetan Buddhists being
ignorant of this code, Evans-Wentz, conveniently enough, is enlightened to the symbolism via his
own position as Samdup’s “disciple.” From this redoubt of symbolism, Evans-Wentz, through his
interminable, garish interpretations—allegedly sanctioned by Samdup, sets upon his main task of
rendering the text to endorse Theosophy.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Evans-Wentz’s elaborations on the doctrine of
rebirth, the accepted Buddhist understanding of which was discussed earlier. Evans-Wentz, with
grand aplomb, recriminates the exoteric view, i.e. Buddhism, as absurd, founded upon “the
untested authority of gurus and priests who consider the literally interpreted written records to be
infallible and who are not adept in yoga,” (quoted in Lopez Jr. 1998, 69). Just who these sub-par
yoga practitioners are is never mentioned, nor are the “various philosophers, both Hindu and
Buddhist,” on whose authority Evans-Wentz sanctions his elucidation of the esoteric doctrine of
rebirth (Ibid.). According to Evans-Wentz, and directly contradicting accepted Buddhist
understandings, rebirth follows a process of evolution. Indeed, not only is physical form the result
of evolution, but so is consciousness. According to this view, human consciousness is the result of
59
The vast majority of Evans-Wentz’s terminology belies his Theosophist and neo-Vedantic sympathies.
B e r n s t e i n | 14
an exceptionally long process of positive spiritual development. Therefore, consciousness,
irrespective of karma, cannot rapidly devolve into a form that would allow it to inhabit the physical
body of another species, e.g. a dog or a fish or a goat (Evans-Wentz 2000, 43-44). As Lopez puts
it, “There can be gradual progression and retorgression only within a species,” (1998, 69).60 Ever
mindful to synonimize his own voice with that of the “Lama’s”, Evans-Wentz credits this
understanding to Samdup and not to its real progenitor, Madame Blavatsky (Ibid.). Although
Evans-Wentz is exceedingly eager to mention a great deal of purported concomitants in his
introduction and annotations, he fails to mention that the esoteric theory of rebirth he advances is
exactly the same as that Blavatsky’s, ascribed to the Mahātmās, in The Secret Doctrine in 1888,
thirty-nine years prior to the publication of The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Lopez Jr. 2000, O).
Thus do we find ourselves where we began, having passed through the bardo of The Tibetan
Book of the Dead’s creation and exegesis, to discover Blavatsky, an enigmatic but enchanting
Tibet, and the mystic wisdom of a timeless cult staring us in the face, as though we never left their
company. For, ultimately, The Tibetan Book of the Dead is not a science of dying, or an elucidation
of the highest philosophies of Tibetan Buddhism in which one may find spiritual truth unalloyed,
but an attempt by Evans-Wentz to confirm in an obscure text of an unfamiliar—yet in vogue—
culture his own deep-seated beliefs (Lopez Jr. 2000, N). But by the time Evans-Wentz arrived in
Darjeeling, Blavatsky had been dead for nearly three decades. In the years since she entered the
bardo, in 1891, Blavatsky had been exposed as a fraud, and with her, all of Theosophist doctrine
was called into question. Yet, the power of faith is strong, and, chancing upon the Great Liberation,
Evans-Wentz, blinded by his own convictions, saw a confirmation of his beliefs, a means to
60
This also fits into a racial stratification of human beings espoused by Blavatsky, with Africans, Pacific Islanders,
and Australian Aborigines rounding out the bottom of the totem pole and Aryans sitting at the top (Lopez Jr. 2000,
N).
B e r n s t e i n | 15
rehabilitate both the Madame and all she professed. Whether Evans-Wentz effaced the Great
Liberation callously or unintentionally as part of his larger effort to substantiate his own views,
the result was the same as with Blavatsky: a colonialist discourse in which the setting and its
inhabitants are denied agency.
For Blavatsky, the setting was Tibet, mythic and grand, where the cures for the West’s
material sickness could be found. For Evans-Wentz, the setting was the Great Liberation itself, a
detailed elucidation of the process of dying, pointing towards a mystical praxis present throughout
space and time. Similarly, just as Tibet’s actual inhabitants were irrelevant to Blavatsky’s
millennialist drama, a Tibetan voice, Samdup’s original translation, threatened what Evans-Wentz
wished for others to hear. And so, Samdup’s voice was coopted, made to serve a new master, to
speak beliefs it never held true. And while Samdup’s mindstream (Wyl. sems rgyud)61 took rebirth
long ago, his voice remains, set helplessly adrift in the bardo by Evans-Wentz, where it cannot
escape, nor, as continual reappearances of the Great Liberation demonstrate, speak for itself.62
Bibliography
Albanese, Catherine L. 2007. A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American
Metaphysical Religion. New Haven, Connecticutt: Yale University Press.
Lit. “Mental Continuum.”
See Lopez Jr, Donald S. Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. 1999 Paperback. Chicago,
Illinois: University of Chicago Press and Ibid. 2011. The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography. Princeton, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press for the various forms Samdup’s translation has taken since Evans-Wentz’s original
volume. See Cuevas, Bryan J. 2003. The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. New York, New York:
Oxford University Press, Inc. for an exhaustive history of the original Tibetan text.
61
62
B e r n s t e i n | 16
Batchelor,
Stephen.
2000.
Tibet,
Tibet.
January 28.
Accessed
October
1,
2015.
http://www.stephenbatchelor.org/index.php/en/tibet-tibet.
Bernstein, Douglas Gregory. 2013. "Tearing the Yellow Hat in Two: Conflict and Controversy in
the Evolution of Gelugpa Buddhist Authority in Tibet." Religious Studies Honors Papers.
Paper 5. New London, Connecticut. http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/relighp/5.
Cuevas, Bryan J. 2003. The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. New York, New
York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
Evans-Wentz, Walter Yeeling. 2000. The Tibetan Book of the Dead : Or, the After-Death
Experiences on the Bardo Plane, According to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English
Rendering. 2000 Paperback. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
Korom, Frank J. 2001. "The Role of Tibet in the New Age Movement." In Imagining Tibet:
Perceptions, Projections, and Fantasies, edited by Thierry Dodin and Heinz Räther, 167182. Boston, Massachusetts: Wisdom Publications.
Levine, Naomi. 2010. "Kagyu Monlam Blog." When the Iron Bird Flies. December 14. Accessed
October 1, 2015. https://monlam.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/when-the-iron-bird-flies/.
Lopez Jr., Donald S. 2000. "New Foreword and Afterword." In The Tibetan Book of the Dead :
Or, the After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, According to Lama Kazi DawaSamdup's English Rendering, by Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz, A-Q; 243-253. New York,
New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
—. 1998. Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. 1999 Paperback. Chicago,
Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
B e r n s t e i n | 17
—. 2011. The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press.
Padmasambhava, and Terton Karma Lingpa. 2006. The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great
Liberation By Hearing in the Intermediate States. Penguin Classics 2008. Edited by
Graham Coleman and Thupten Jinpa. Translated by Gyurme Dorje. London, England:
Penguin Books.
Tweed, Thomas A. 2000. The American Encounter with Buddhism 1844-1912: Victorian Culture
& the Limits of Dissent. Paperback. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North
Carolina Press.
Tweed, Thomas A., and Stephen R. Prothero, . 1999. Asian Religions in Ameria: A Documentary
History. Paperback. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
B e r n s t e i n | 18
WILL THE REAL TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD PLEASE STAND UP:
SUBSEQUENT LIVES OF THE GREAT LIBERATION
“In the blended world in which students of Theosophy, New Thought, and new American
Asia dwelled, boundary lines were effaced or fuzzed over, and appropriation was a
habitual, unremarkable, and even unconscious strategy.” (Albanese 2007, 389)
In severing the Great Liberation63 from its historical and cultural moorings, Evans-Wentz
inaugurated a cycle of texts, not unlike the cycle of texts of which the Great Liberation, the Tibetan
mortuary text that Dawa-Samdup translated for Evans-Wentz, forms but a small part. What we
turn our attention to now, having labored over Evans-Wentz’s progeny enough for one semester,
are the subsequent developments of the Great Liberation in American literature and culture, for
the story of the Great Liberation does not end with W.Y. Evans-Wentz. Proceeding
chronologically, we shall following the Great Liberation through its most significant incarnations
of the Twentieth Century, and in doing so, discover something of a pattern: essentially, that The
Tibetan Book of the Dead, regardless of the version or author(s), can never really be Tibetan or of
the dead. Ultimately, this pattern betrays an enterprise of misappropriation centered upon the Great
Liberation, in which the text can never exist on its own or in a native context, but must always be
understood through another, etic primer. Thus, yet again, we venture into the bardo of the Great
Liberation.
“Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream,” begins the song
“Tomorrow Never Knows,” the final track from The Beatles’ 1966 album, Revolver. Fittingly
enough, Revolver marks the beginning of The Beatles’ ‘psychedelic’ period, with the above line
63
As in the previous essay, this refers to the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Intermediate State (Wyl. bar do
thos grol chen mo) revealed by Karma Lingpa.
B e r n s t e i n | 19
lifted from The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead,
published in 1964 by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert64. We need not go into
the biographical details of the three, suffice to say all were psychologists involved with research
into, and advocates of, psychedelic drugs such as LSD65, mescaline, and psilocybin mushrooms66.
None of the trio were conversant in Tibetan or had any religious or academic exposure to
Buddhism, much less Tibetan Buddhism. Indeed, Leary, Metzner, and Alpert never even consulted
the actual Tibetan text. They make this clear in the book’s introduction, with a section titled “A
Tribute to W.Y. Evans-Wentz,” in which they proclaim:
W. Y. Evans−Wentz is a great scholar who devoted his mature years to the role of bridge and shuttle
between Tibet and the west…No greater tribute could be paid to the work of this academic liberator
than to base our psychedelic manual upon his insights and to quote directly his comments on "the
message of this book." (Leary, Metzner and Alpert 1964, 6)
Being unversed in the subject matter they were about to disembowel, it is unsurprising to the see
Leary, Metzner, and Alpert praise Evans-Wentz effusively. Taking Evans-Wentz’s text as a
starting point, The Psychedelic Experience was, in effect, a translation of a translation. It recast
Evans-Wentz’s The Tibetan Book of the Dead into a manual for conducting psychotropic drug
trips, verbalized in the lexicon of the 1960’s counterculture movement. The inane result,
exemplified in the following example from the text:
All the harsh, dry, brittle angularity of game life is melted. You drift off − soft, rounded, moist,
warm. Merged with all life. You may feel yourself floating out and down into a warm sea. Your
individuality and autonomy of movement are moistly disappearing. Your control is surrendered to
the total organism. Blissful passivity. Ecstatic, orgiastic, undulating unity. All worries and concerns
64
The most successful of the trio. Alpert would go onto become a devotee of the Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba and
write the best-selling book, Be Here Now. He is perhaps better known by his religious name, Ram Dass.
65
Colloquially, acid.
66
Colloquially, magic mushrooms or shrooms.
B e r n s t e i n | 20
wash away. All is gained as everything is given up. There is organic revelation. Every cell in your
body is singing its song of freedom − the entire biological universe is in harmony, liberated from
the censorship and control of you and your restricted ambitions. (Ibid. 25)
This vocabulary, while appealing to counterculture and hippie sensibilities, is quite antithetical to
a traditional Tibetan perspective. No Tibetan would ever speak of the Great Liberation in such
‘far-out’ language. Therefore, such a ridiculous reading only becomes possible if the root text and
tradition—the Great Liberation and Tibetan Buddhism, are totally decontextualized, or worse,
made to speak in voices other than their own.
As was the case in Evans-Wentz’s work, the introduction to The Psychedelic Experience
serves to unmoor the Great Liberation from its original role as a mortuary text. In doing so, a
panoply of religious figures are invoked—from nameless Vedic sages, to Lǎozǐ67, Jesus Christ,
and even Albert Einstein—to universalize the text (Leary, Metzner and Alpert 1964, 17 & Lopez
Jr. 1998, 72). Similar to Evans-Wentz’s theosophy, the authors of The Psychedelic Experience
seemed to believe, at least at the time of writing, in the congruence of the world’s mystic and
religious traditions, that all these traditions came to the same definite universal truths, and that
Western science was now coming to the same conclusions as the world’s various mystics (Lopez
Jr. 2000, 246). Resorting to an exoteric-esoteric dichotomy, as Evans-Wentz did, The Psychedelic
Experience acknowledges and then discards Tibetan understandings, declaring, “The concept of
actual physical death was an exoteric facade adopted to fit the prejudices of the Bonist tradition in
Tibet. Far from being an embalmers' guide, the manual is a detailed account of how to lose the
ego;” (Leary, Metzner and Alpert 1964, 8). How Leary, Metzner, and Alpert came to such an idea,
that a treasure text composed by Padmasambhava—a figure antagonistic to Bön (Wyl. bon)68,
67
68
Rendered in the text as Lao Tse; the apocryphal author of the Dàodéjīng.
Tibet’s indigenous, pre-Buddhist religion.
B e r n s t e i n | 21
responsible for propagating Buddhism at the direct expense of the former—would be written in a
voice sympathetic to Bön69 reveals their ignorance of the subject matter they profess to adroitly
understand.
Worse, still, within The Psychedelic Experience, we find at times a fabricated Tibetan
voice, reinforcing the wild elaborations of the authors. While Evans-Wentz made Tibetan
Buddhism speak Theosophy, through the contrived personage of ‘Lama’ Kazi Dawa-Samdup, The
Psychedelic Experience invokes more generic categories, either nameless lamas, or the Tibetans—
as a singular monolithic entity. Conveniently enough, this supposed emic voice always speaks in
etic rationales, specifically the psychedelic bend of Leary, Metzner, and Alpert. Just such a voice
informs us that, “the Tibetans estimate that about 50% of the entire psychedelic experience is spent
in the Third Bardo [coming down from a trip] by most normal people,” (1964, Ibid. 34). It is
perhaps worth noting that the authors fail to provide a source for this ‘Tibetan estimate,’ which is
only natural, because for a Tibetan to make such a claim is not merely impossible, as hallucinogens
were never widely used in Tibet, much less the mathematic concept of percentages, it is also
wrong. While there is no universally authoritative schematic for the bardo, the most generally
accepted,70 discussed in the previous essay, states the longest of the three bardos is the second, the
bardo of reailty,71 which lasts for 49 days (Cuevas 2003, 47). As no Tibetan voice existed to lend
credence to its argument, The Psychedelic Experience simply made one up. We see then, as EvansWentz’s The Tibetan Book of the Dead took rebirth as The Psychedelic Experience, so too did the
creative process behind it, with Leary, Metzner, and Alpert adulterating a Tibetan voice to
By the time of the Great Liberation’s revealing by Karma Lingpa in the Fourteenth Century, Bön had come to
subscribe to the Buddhist cyclical model of existence.
70
Based on the teachings of the Indian mahāsiddhas (Wyl. grub thob chen po) Tilopa (Wyl. ti lo pa) and Nāropa (Wyl.
nA ro pa), the forefathers of the Kagyü (Wyl. bka' brgyud) school of Tibetan Buddhism, to which Karma Lingpa also
belonged.
71
Dubbed the Bardo of Hallucinations by Leary, et. al.
69
B e r n s t e i n | 22
legitimate thoroughly non-Tibetan and non-Buddhist conclusions. A process to be repeated in later
incarnations of the text.
When The Psychedelic Experience does bother to predicate its preposterous interpretation
of Tibetan Buddhism on an actual, as opposed to fictitious source, the most often cited is Anagarika
Govinda72, who also receives a tribute in the book’s introduction.73 Born Ernst Lothar Hoffmann
in 1895 in Kassel, Germany, Anagarika Govinda74 was a major figure in the popularization of
Tibetan Buddhism among Western audiences (Lopez Jr. 1998, 59), but his credentials as an
authority on Tibetan Buddhism have grown increasingly dubious with time. The most obvious
reason to doubt Govinda being that his understanding of Tibetan language seems to have been
rudimentary at best, if he even understood Tibetan at all (Lopez Jr. 2001, 183). The real issue,
however, as Lopez highlights, is that “[his] eyes were closed to the realities of Tibetan history and
culture” instead, “…embellishing the realities of Tibet with [his] own mystical fancies,” (Ibid.
184). We see this in Govinda’s preface to the 1948 edition of Evans-Wentz’s The Tibetan Book of
the Dead, and in Govinda’s latter writings such as The Way of the White Clouds and Foundations
of Tibetan Mysticism, with Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism the answer to the West’s ills, albeit, sans
Tibetans. Such a narrative, of the diseased West finding its cure in the mythic East, first gained
traction under the Theosophists, reemerging with the counterculture movement of the 1960’s, to
whom Govinda was something of a cult figure (Pedersen 2001, 161). So important was Govinda
to this movement that his home in India became a virtual pilgrimage site for hippies and seekers,
72
Unlike Blavatsky, Evans-Wentz, or the authors of The Psychedelic Experience, Govinda actually visited Tibet, on
several occasions, and was anything if not sympathetic to Tibetan Buddhism, considering himself a convert, as well
as an initiate of several high lamas. He is best known for his autobiography, The Way of the White Clouds.
73
As does Carl Gustav Jung, who wrote a commentary to the 1935 edition of Evans-Wentz’s The Tibetan Book of the
Dead.
74
A Sinhalese name given to him by a German Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka, with whom he studied.
B e r n s t e i n | 23
with Govinda eventually putting up signs to shoo them away (Lopez Jr. 2011, 92). Yet, even for
Govinda, a self-professed “lama”75 in the Kagyü (Wyl. bka' brgyud)76 school of Tibetan
Buddhism, Tibet’s Buddhism cannot exist on its own but must be incorporated into an ecumenical
framework spanning both time and space, echoing the sentiments of Evans-Wentz and earlier
Theosophists (Lopez Jr. 1998, 62). With Govinda, there is also a strong tendency to psychologize
Tibetan Buddhism, referencing yogic control of the subconscious in the same breath that he does
Jungian notions of collective consciousness (Lopez Jr. 2011, 95). It seems only natural then that
the primary reference of The Psychedelic Experience would be Govinda, both lionized by the
counterculture movement and essential to priming Leary, Metzner, and Alpert—all psychologists
by training—to further reinterpret the Great Liberation, and by extension, Tibetan Buddhism as a
whole, along psychological lines.
This psychologizing endeavor of The Psychedelic Experience reaches its crescendo when
we discover the six realms of existence, the foundation of Buddhist cosmology, do not exist in any
literal sense, but are instead, “six personality types” into which the ego re-enters following a
psychedelic experience (Leary, Metzner and Alpert 1964, 36). It seems hard to imagine Tibetan
Buddhists, totally unexposed to Western psychology prior to 1959,77 subscribing to such an
interpretation, so clearly at odds with the most basic tenets of Buddhism. But, as it turns out,
The Sages of the Snowy Ranges [Tibet] have developed a most sophisticated and precise
understanding of human psychology, and the student who studies this manual will become oriented
for a voyage which is much richer in scope and meaning than any Western psychological theory.”
(Ibid. 45)
75
Govinda was a lama neither in the colloquial sense, simply being a monk, nor in the more formal sense, completing
a meditation retreat of three years, three months, and three fortnights. As such, he seems to have awarded the honorific
title to himself.
76
Lit. “Oral Transmission.”
77
The beginning of the Tibetan Diaspora.
B e r n s t e i n | 24
Consequently, according to The Psychedelic Experience, not only do the Tibetans subscribe to
psychology, a Western invention, they understand it more fully than do Western psychologists!
Therefore, as with Evans-Wentz, the authors of The Psychedelic Experience legitimate their
hermeneutic by transforming the Tibetans to suit their own proclivities, thereby effacing Buddhist
understandings and coopting emic voices. Once again, we see Tibetan Buddhism impossibly
distorted to suit an argument unrelated to Tibet or Buddhism. In this instance, that the Great
Liberation is, in fact, not a mortuary text used to guide the mindstream (Wyl. sems rgyud)78 to a
positive rebirth, as any Tibetan remotely familiar with the text would tell us, but a psychological
guide to ‘floating’ through the higher states of consciousness, formerly reserved for mystic adepts,
but, now available to all in the form of an acid trip. A great deal more criticism could be levied
upon Leary, Metzner, Alpert, and their abominable creation, but that would belabor what should
by now be obvious: The Psychedelic Experience is an evisceration of Tibetan Buddhism in general,
and the Great Liberation in particular, serving to legitimate the authors’ hallucinogenic79
worldview.
The next incarnation of the Great Liberation represented a new translation of the Tibetan
text, by an actual Tibetan lama, the renowned, though not universally adored,80 Chögyam Trungpa
(Wyl. chos rgyam drung pa), along with his student, Francesca Fremantle. This new translation,
also titled The Tibetan Book of the Dead, published in 1975, represents a vast improvement over
Evans-Wentz’s version. Despite the emic qualifications of Trungpa, a recognized tulku (Skt.
nirmāṇakāya; Wyl. sprul sku)81 in both the Karma Kagyü (Wyl. karma bka’ brgyud)82 and
Lit. “Mind Continuum.”
Pun intended.
80
He was a rapacious drunk, among certain other failings.
81
Lit. “Emanation body;” colloquially, used in reference to any incarnate lama.
82
Lit. “Action Oral Transmission;” the largest of the various Kagyü subschools.
78
79
B e r n s t e i n | 25
Nyingma (Wyl. rnying ma)83 traditions, the translation represents another psychologizing of the
Great Liberation, “with much talk of neurosis, paranoia, and unconscious tendencies,” which also
denies the history and peculiarities of the text as a funerary implement (Lopez Jr. 1998, 77). In this
new cycle of de-contextualization, Fremantle, echoing previously cited comments by Leary,
Metzner, and Alpert, extols the vernacular of Western psychology, particularly Jungian, in
expressing Buddhism, while also advocating a congruence of Western psychological theories with
Buddhist doctrine (Ibid.). Unlike Evans-Wentz, or the authors of The Psychedelic Experience,
Trungpa does not have to invent or appropriate a Tibetan voice to lend credence to his
interpretation, which, according to Brian J. Cuevas, owes “owes a large debt to Carl Jung,” (2003,
10). As a Tibetan lama elaborating upon a Tibetan text, his voice is intrinsically legitimate.
Although we cannot challenge the authenticity of his voice, his exegesis can still be questioned, as
Trungpa parlays the bardo from a profound, literal understanding of after-death liminalities to a
psychological metaphor for mundane lived existence. In doing so, the six realms of existence
become six “different types of instinct,” each realm being “a psychological portrait of oneself,”
(quoted in Lopez Jr. 1998, 78). For instance, the animal realm, traditionally associated with the
destructive emotion (Skt. kleśa; Wyl. nyon mongs)84 of ignorance (Skt. avidyā; Wyl. ma rig pa)85,
is, according to Trungpa, “characterized by the absence of a sense of humour,” (quoted in Ibid.).
The result, not unlike the Christianized Buddhism of Sir Edwin Arnold or Paul Carus (Albanese
2007, 389), is a chimera of Buddhism and depth psychology bounded up in its own idiosyncratic
vernacular (Cuevas 2003, 10 & Lopez Jr. 2011, 122).
Lit. “Ancient;”; the oldest of the four primary schools of Tibetan Buddhism, tracing its lineage back to the
introduction of Buddhism in Tibet under Padmasambhava during the height of the Tibetan Empire; distinguishing the
Nyingmas from the other schools is their use of earlier translations (Wyl. snga 'gyur) of Buddhist Tantras from the
first dissemination of Buddhism to Tibet.
84
Lit. “Affliction.”
85
Lit. “Not-Knowing.”
83
B e r n s t e i n | 26
It is difficult to argue with a highly venerated Tibetan lama such as Trungpa, but his
interpretation stands at odds with historic and prevailing Tibetan Buddhist understandings of the
bardo and cyclic existence. Such a psychological explication actually calls into question his own
position as a tulku, predicated as it is upon a literal reading of the bardo and of Buddhist cyclic
existence, in which the tulku consciously directs their mindstream through the bardo, determining
the nature and circumstances of their rebirth. None of which, traditionally, is understood as
metaphor, but as a fundamental component of existence. If this process does not literally occur,
then the actuality of tulkus86, as reincarnations of their corporeal predecessors, would be a lie
foisted over the Tibetan people for nearly nine centuries87, used to empower religious institutions
while exploiting Tibet’s general populace. A notion that fits quite well with Chinese Communist
propaganda about Tibet prior to its ‘liberation,’ albeit less so in forging a multi-million dollar
business empire88 centered upon Trungpa’s own charismatic position as a tulku. It would seem,
however, that this particular understanding of the Great Liberation was not even authoritative for
Trungpa, as, following his death, his reincarnation lineage continued and his tulku was recognized
in 1991 (Oldmeadow 2004, 290). What Trungpa himself believed is open to debate, less so, is his
version of the Great Liberation, an etic narrative (read Jungian or depth psychology), purveyed
through an emic voice.
86
Of which there are thousands.
Starting in the Twelfth Century with Düsum Khyenpa (Wyl. dus gsum mkhyen pa),the first head of the Karma
Kagyü School, and as such, the First Karmapa Lama, the proper title of which is the Gyalwa Karmapa (Wyl. rgyal ba
karma pa; or rgyal ba kar ma pa), ‘the Victorious One of the Karmapas.’ At the time of his death, Düsum Khyenpa
took the hitherto unheard-of step of prophesizing his future rebirth. Whereas Düsum Khyenpa was the first of the
lineage, he was not the first tulku. That particular distinction belongs to his successor, Karma Pakshi (Wyl. kar ma pa
kshi; or karma pak+Shi), the Second Karmapa. Karma Pakshi was formally enthroned on the monastic seat previously
held by Düsum Khyenpa and recognized not as superseding, but rather, directly continuing the reign of his predecessor
(Bernstein 2013, 25).
88
Shambhala International.
87
B e r n s t e i n | 27
The final incarnation89 of the Great Liberation we shall examine is also the product of
another generally well-regarded90 Tibetan lama, Sogyal Rinpoche (Wyl. bsod rgyal rin po che)91,
although, the degree to which he was actually involved in the writing of the text is open to debate.92
Our issues, however, lie not with Sogyal personally, but his text, The Tibetan Book of Living and
Dying. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying93 is a work that spans genres, being part self-help,
part memoir, part introduction to Buddhism. While not a translation of the Great Liberation per
se, the subject matter is heavily influenced94 by Tibetan Buddhist understandings of death and the
bardo, with the title clearly invoking Evans-Wentz’s popular text and the American fascination
with Tibetan death traditions.
Here too, as in all cases prior, we discover a mission to transform Tibetan Buddhism or
subsume it in something else. In fact, one need not even open the book to discover such a project.
One need only look at the dust jacket, which proclaims The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, “a
spiritual masterpiece,”95 that “brings together the ancient wisdom of Tibet with modern research
on death and dying and the nature of the universe,” (quoted in Lopez Jr. 1998, 78). Thus, in
describing the work a ‘spiritual’ masterpiece as opposed to Buddhist, Tibetan, or even religious,
the text whitewashes the Tibetan Buddhist peculiarity of its origins for an ecumenical framework.
89
There are a number of others, but I make no attempt to be exhaustive in the confines of this partiuclar essay.
Where Trungpa’s failing was drink, dying of cirrhosis of the liver, it seems Sogyal’s is women, and a number of
women have accused him of sexual impropriety. See Finnigan, Mary. “Lama sex abuse claims call Buddhist taboos
into question.” The Guardian, July 1, 2011. (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/jul/01/lamasex-abuse-sogyal-rinpoche-buddhist)
91
Also a tulku.
92
The book was written by Andrew Harvey and Patrick Gaffney using transcriptions of Sogyal’s teachings, with
Sogyal providing editorial direction, but only Sogyal’s name appears on the cover.
93
Quite likely the best-selling book with the word ‘Tibetan’ in the title after Evans-Wentz’s The Tibetan Book of the
Dead.
94
As Lopez notes, “The Tibetan text is so thoroughly appropriated in Sogyal’s work that its translation need not be
included,” (1998, 79).
95
One assumes that Sogyal’s hubris was not so great as to put this accolade on the first edition, and must therefore be
a subsequent addendum.
90
B e r n s t e i n | 28
Upon actually reading the book, we discover much the same chicanery. While Sogyal refers to the
deaths of Tibetan Buddhist masters, he also cites the passing of ordinary individuals with no
exposure to Tibetan Buddhism, universalizing the understandings at work. Echoing the grand
invocations of The Psychedelic Experience, Anagarika Govinda, Evans-Wentz, and the
theosophists that came before, Sogyal produces a massive body of quotations that spans the globe
and human history (Lopez Jr. 2011, 122). The only thing uniting much of this disparate parade of
references96 is how thoroughly foreign to Tibetan Buddhism they are. Which may well be the
point, as, to quote Lopez, “together [they] create a cosmopolitan eclecticism around Sogyal’s
message, as if what the book conveys is not a Tibetan Buddhist tradition but a universal message,
a perennial philosophy,” (1998, 79).
At this point, it may be worthwhile to acknowledge the nature of Sogyal’s intended
audience, because, while Tibetan himself, Sogyal is not writing for Tibetans, but for readers in
Europe and America, where his multi-million dollar organization, Rigpa, is most active. To a
certain degree, Sogyal has forsaken Tibet, and the Tibetan people by extension, declaring, “Tibet
is lost…all that remains is its wisdom,” (Ibid.) Even in light of all the death and destruction since
the Chinese army first crossed into Tibet on the 7th of October, 1950, to proclaim Tibet lost seems
just a bit hyperbolic. Particularly, since six million Tibetans still live within the confines of
ethnographic and geographic Tibet! Whether or not Sogyal’s morbid pronouncements on Tibet as
a nation are accurate, it is clear that Tibetans are not his primary concern, but rather, Westerners
of the ‘spiritual’ variety. Therefore, in order to maximize the appeal of Tibetan Buddhism to those
averse to formal religion, with all its structures and strictures,97 he decontextualizes and
They are, “Montaigne, Blake, Rilke, Henry Ford, Voltaire, Origen, Shelley, Mozart, Balzac, Einstein, Rumi,
Wordsworth, and the Venerable Bede,” (Lopez Jr. 1998, 79).
97
Which Tibetan Buddhism exemplifies as much as any other religious tradition.
96
B e r n s t e i n | 29
universalizes it, placing it, “in a global and ahistorical spiritual lineage of thinkers no other Tibetan
author has ever cited,” (Ibid.). This leads, once more, to a deconstruction and repackaging of
Buddhist cosmology, blurring literal understandings, with the six realms now cast as metaphors
for various human situations: surfers in California populate the god realm, the demi-gods are Wall
Street bankers and Washington politicians, hungry ghosts have a penchant for litigation and hostile
business takeovers (Sogyal Rinpoche 2003, 117). Much like with Trungpa, this interpretation,
which inserts Tibetan understandings of death into a spiritual-secularist framework, flies in the
face of Tibetan Buddhism as practiced and propagated since the time of Padmasambhava. Were
one to survey average Tibetans (we might wonder which realm they occupy according Sogyal’s
America-centric wheel of existence), they would likely laugh98 at such a reading of Buddhist
cosmology. To learn it came from a Tibetan lama, they would be in disbelief.
In the dissimilar but interconnected visions of the bardo examined, we discover a pattern.
Each of the three presentations of the Great Liberation examined herein, while invoking the
authority of Tibetan tradition—explicitly in the case of The Psychedelic Experience, implicitly for
Trungpa, explicitly and implicitly for Sogyal—distort the historical realities of the Great
Liberation in particular, and more generally, the essential tenets of Tibetan Buddhism and its
concomitant doctrines. This pattern, in which we find emic understandings of the Great Liberation
and Tibetan Buddhism silenced and misappropriated to validate etic discourses, brings us back to
where this sad story began. For it was Evans-Wentz,99 and the first English language incarnation
of the Great Liberation, who inaugurated this pattern, in which the Great Liberation cannot exist
on its own but must be read through, and as an expression of, a foreign primer. By creating a
98
Or cringe.
Madame Blavatsky and her spurious Book of Dzyan deserve some credit as the prototype for Evans-Wentz’s own
work, and in a sense, as the foremother to all of this.
99
B e r n s t e i n | 30
template of de-contextualization and transposition, employed wittingly or unwittingly by all
subsequent editions of the Great Liberation, Evans-Wentz created a lineage unable to escape from
the cycle of rebirth. Happily though, in the Great Liberation’s most recent rebirth
(Padmasambhava and Lingpa 2006), though not perfect, we begin to see the emergence of a true
emic voice and the rejection, not of accepted Tibetan Buddhism, but of Evans-Wentz’s
disenfranchising template. Perhaps, finally, this newest edition may mark the Great Liberation’s
own release from the bardo into which Evans-Wentz first set it adrift almost a century ago.
Bibliography
Albanese, Catherine L. 2007. A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American
Metaphysical Religion. New Haven, Connecticutt: Yale University Press.
Bernstein, Douglas Gregory. 2013. "Tearing the Yellow Hat in Two: Conflict and Controversy in
the Evolution of Gelugpa Buddhist Authority in Tibet." Religious Studies Honors Papers.
Paper 5. New London, Connecticut. http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/relighp/5.
Cuevas, Bryan J. 2003. The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. New York, New
York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
Korom, Frank J. 2001. "The Role of Tibet in the New Age Movement." In Imagining Tibet:
Perceptions, Projections, and Fantasies, edited by Thierry Dodin and Heinz Räther, 167182. Boston, Massachusetts: Wisdom Publications.
Leary, Timothy, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert. 1964. "The Psychedelic Experience: A
Manuel Based on the The Tibetan Book of the Dead." Psychedelic Frontier. Accessed
November 10, 2015. http://psychedelicfrontier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ThePsychedelic-Experience-A-Manual-Based-on-the-Tibetan-Book-of-the-Dead.pdf.
B e r n s t e i n | 31
Lopez Jr., Donald S. 2000. "New Foreword and Afterword." In The Tibetan Book of the Dead :
Or, the After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, According to Lama Kazi DawaSamdup's English Rendering, by Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz, A-Q; 243-253. New York,
New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
—. 1998. Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. 1999 Paperback. Chicago,
Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
Lopez Jr., Donald S. 2001. "The Image of Tibet of the Great Mystifiers." In Imagining Tibet:
Perceptions, Projections, and Fantasies, edited by Thierry Dodin and Heinz Räther, 167182. Boston, Massachusetts: Wisdom Publications.
—. 2011. The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press.
Padmasambhava, and Terton Karma Lingpa. 2006. The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great
Liberation By Hearing in the Intermediate States. Penguin Classics 2008. Edited by
Graham Coleman and Thupten Jinpa. Translated by Gyurme Dorje. London, England:
Penguin Books.
Pedersen, Poul. 2001. "Tibet, Theosophy, and the Psychologization of Buddhism." In Imagining
Tibet: Perceptions, Projections, and Fantasies, edited by Thierry Dodin and Heinz Räther,
151-166. Boston, Massachusetts: Wisdom Publications.