The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo.

• Author: Sherburne, Richard

This is the first English translation of the popular Bardo Thotrol of Tibetan Buddhism since the pioneer work of W. Y. Evans-Wentz and Kazi Dawa-Samdup in 1927. The Evans-Wentz edition will always be valued for its extensive outline of the steps of the Bardo Thotrol, and perhaps even more for its commentaries by C.G. Jung, Anagarika Govinda, and John Woodroffe. However, the present version is welcome for its smooth and clear flow of language, and its noted absence of distracting sectional interruptions and cumbersome terminology. The Evans-Wentz translation with its King James biblical language gives the text an unnecessary impression of Western scripturalization.

As Fremantle's introduction points out, there is considerable disagreement between the Trungpa and Evans-Wentz versions, due both to the use of more reliable Tibetan texts, and a greater fidelity to the complexities of the Tibetan Buddhist ichnography.

Introductory descriptions of basic Buddhist and tantric concepts, and the summation of Trungpa's insights, help considerably the reading of the text. For example, the meaning of yidam as "expression of one's own basic nature" internally and psychologically, rather than the traditional "chosen or protective deity"; and the skandhas themselves as "psychological components" rather than just "heaps of phenomena."

Such small but important insights reflect the views that Trungpa developed over...