BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA:
The Tibetan Book of the Dead, 1994, Part I: A Way of Life, Part II: The Great Liberation, country of production: Japan (NHK), France (Mistral films), and Canada (National Film Board of Canada), locations: Ladakh (India) and San Francisco (California), length: approximately 2 x 46 minutes, language: Tibetan with subtitles, narration in English by Leonard Cohen for the Canadian version.
GENRE:
Documentary
SYNOPSIS:
The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a 1994 documentaryin two partsdirected by Barrie McLean. The film explores Tibetan Buddhist beliefs surrounding death and the afterlife. It focuses on the Bardo Thodol, a sacred text read aloud to the dying or deceased in order to guide the consciousness through the intermediate states (bardos) between death and rebirth. The first part of the film (A Way of Life) shows the reading of the text by a traditional specialist, Tibetan funeral rites, and interviews with Tibetan lamas, Western practitioners, and patients. The second part (The Great Liberation) provides more religious and cultural background, following a young novice monk who, for the first time, accompanies his teacher to a neighboring village for a ritual reading of the Bardo Thodol. Both parts of the film feature extensive footage of daily life in Ladakh. The first part also incorporates scenes showing the use of the Tibetan Book of the Dead at the Living/Dying-Project in San Francisco.
KEYWORDS:
1.Tibetan Buddhism
2. Bardo thodol
3. The Tibetan Book of the Dead
4. Intermediate state
5. Death and dying
6. Compassion.
BACKGROUND/CONTEXT:
The text of the “Tibetan Book of the Dead”, forming the central topic of the eponymous documentary, was translated into English almost a hundred years ago by Lama Kazi Dawa Samdup and then edited and published by Walter Y. Evans-Wentz (Oxford University Press: London 1927). The book was received with great interest by academic and spiritually interested readers and became a bestseller almost immediately after its publication. Its third edition included an introduction by C. G. Jung which helped to turn the book into a reference for people interested in spiritual practices generally as well as the esoteric aspects of Tibetan Buddhism, especially during the 1960s and 1970s (see Lopez 1998 for more details on the editorial history of the Wentz-edition of the book). The translation used in the documentary is not the one from 1927 but a more recent translation by Francesca Fremantle and Chögyam Trungpa (Berkeley and London, Shambhala, 1975). The documentary emphasizes the relatively intact nature of traditional religious culture in Ladakh due to its isolation from the outside world until the mid-1970s.
ACADEMIC COMMENTARY:
If the aim of esoteric practices is understood as identifying and influencing present and future life events, then the documentary The Tibetan Book of the Dead is indeed esoteric as it investigates the one future event that awaits everyone: death.
The viewer of the first part of the documentary, A Way of Life, follows a Tibetan ritual specialist through the snow covered mountains of Ladakh to the house of a deceased man. There, the specialist will read for the deceased from the Bardo Thodol. According to Tibetan Buddhist cosmology, the deceased are able to hear what is going on around them for as long as 49 days after death. Listening to the recitation of Bardo Thodol offers them guidance on the difficult path of letting loose of all attachments to their previous existence and preparing for their next life at the moment of reincarnation. In one of the first scenes we see the ritual specialist entering the house of the deceased man. The air in the room where the deceased is lying is cold. The ritual specialist’s speech is accompanied by white puffs of breath. The ritual complex we are witnessing is not limited to the reading of the text. At a certain stage, the ritual specialist calculates the date on which the deceased man should be cremated, making use of an astrological manuscript in front of him. The cremation shall take place after nine days. Until then the Bardo Thodol will be recited every day and there is time for all the necessary preparations.
The imagery and scenes of the documentary are powerful. The dead man on his bed under a thick layer of blankets, his shriveled skin, his closed eyes, his dry and grey hair. Would a filmmaker today dare to film a dead person like this? Later, we witness the cremation of the man’s body and learn that the destruction of the physical body by fire is meant to free the dead person from all her attachments to her old life. Then the ashes are scattered on a lonely mountain slope, not more than a few black pieces of what looks like charcoal.
In another sequence, we meet an American man called Bruce lying on his bed in a facility for the terminally ill in conversation with the then director of Living/Dying-project based in San Francisco. In a short interview, Ram Dass (1931–2019), who inspired the foundation of this project in the early 1970s, explains his reasons. Western medicine, he says, sees death as a failure while in truth, it is inevitable. The Living/Dying-project, he continues, was founded to provide a different metaphorical system for those deeply entrenched in such a materialist understanding of the world.
From an anthropological standpoint, the documentary provides an ethnographic lens into Tibetan death rituals, religious cosmology, and the socio-cultural framework surrounding mortality. It offers insight into the ritualreading of the Bardo Thodol as a guide for the deceased in their passage from one life to another. Tibetan Buddhism views death not as an end but as a transformative journey.
From the viewpoint of esoteric studies, the documentary delves into a body of sacred knowledge traditionally reserved for initiated practitioners. The instructions of The Bardo Thodol describe subtle realms, divine and demonic visions, and the dissolution of ego-centered identity, aligning with systems of religious and esoteric thought that chart spiritual topographies beyond the material world. Death is presented as a potential moment of spiritual liberation. As a monk explains, the vivid descriptions of peaceful and wrathful deities can be understood as representing archetypal forces within the psyche, resonating with Jungian-influenced esotericism where inner experience and symbolic vision are central to spiritual awakening.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1994) is a profound exploration of death that bridges anthropology and esoteric spirituality. It reveals how death simultaneously is an inevitable event in life that, if adequately culturally negotiated, can be perceived as a passage from one existence to another rather than the simple end of a biologically determined span of life. In this regard, the documentary provides an important guide towards a cultural understanding of death that sees individual existence as part of a much larger, cyclical unfolding of life, almost like the Bardo Thodol itself.
The voice-over in the second part of the documentary, The Great Liberation, reminds us of the harsh facts of existence and reveals the reasoning behind the central Buddhist notion of compassion:
“Anything that has a shape will crumble away, anything in a flock will disband. We are all like bees, alone in this world, buzzing and searching with no place to rest. So we offer this prayer: delusions are as various as the reflections of the moon on a rippling sea. Beings so easily become caught in a net of confused pain. May I develop compassion boundless as the sky so that all may rest in the clear light of their own awareness.”
Knut Graw
References:
Lopez, Donald S., Jr. (1998) Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
