Tibetan Book of the Dead

A 1972 english translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.. From the To Tibetan mystics, death is no mystery. They have made a science of death and what for us is an undiscovered country, to them is an area well defined and easily recognized. Their road map is this book, and it spans continents and cultures, reaching back thousands of years. It can teach us that death is as natural as life and a suitable subject for study and reflection. Everything living must die. Why not put as much emphasis on the art of dying as the art of living? We westerners have a morbid fear of death. Funerals are sad occasions where we clothe ourselves in black, the color of despair. Easterners, on the other hand, accept death without deep anxiety. Their calmness confuses and disturbs us. Could it be they understand death better than we? Contrast Jesus on the cross, suffering and crying out for deliverance, with the death of Buddha some centuries before. Buddha preached forty years longer than Jesus, and he died quietly, teaching his monks up to the last minute.