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| Walter Evans-Wentz and Lama Kazi Dawa Samdup |
Part 1 by Bryan Jare Cuevas
At the beginning of his lengthy introduction to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Evans-Wentz informed us that its translator, Lama Kazi Dawa Samdup, was cautious to avoid "misinterpretations and consquent misuse" of his translated Tibetan text and thus he had requested that his explanatory notes be included with the translation.1 Tragically, Dawa samdup died in 1922 just a few years before Evans-Wentz had begun to collate the materials for publication. Evans-Wentz thus took it upon himself to "correlate and systematize and sometimes to expand the notes thus dictated". Over the course of several years, he reworked, edited and composed a mass of notes to the surviving translation.
His comments were drawn less from Tibetan Buddhist traditions--with which he was really only vaguely familiar--and more from his own Spiritualist learning and early twentieth-century intellectual prejudices. With his truly idiosyncratic interpretations of Dawa Samdup's tex (pervading every part of its published version), Evans-Wentz both inaugurated and authorized in one fell swoop a distinctive style and method of commentarial tradition that would mark the Tibetan Book of the Dead throughout its many lives in western popular culture. Strangely enough, even academic specialists in Tibetan studies have not escpaed the intoxicating power of Evans-Wentz's romance.12
How was he able to do this? Why was his book (and the later versions that it inspired) so appealing? Why does the Book of the Dead continue to attract the attention of both popular and scholarly audiences? I believe the answers lie in how the book has been presented to the west, and the remarkable ways in which its manning and significance have been shifted to accomodate the interests and concerns of each new generation. But, as Peter Burke declared in our opening quote, the translated Book of the Dead is no tthe same as the book on which it is based, the Tibetan Ba-do thos-grol. To be sure, each new and creative presentation of this text has been, in spite of Dawa Samdup's early warning, "peculiarly liable to misinterpretation and consequent misuse". This tendency for misinterpretation has been caused for the most part by a minsunderstanding, or perhaps even willful ignorance, of the acutal context of the text. As Per Kvaerne has noted.
"[the] ritual use of the text is well-known; yet in the West it has too often been presented as a literary text, even as a kind of psychological document. This it no doubt may be; yet it must be clearly understood that outside of the ritual context the text has no function at all in the Tibetan religion."13
Western misapppropriations of the Bar-do thos-grol are not the focus of the present study, although I do feel it is necessary to highlight at the beginning some of the key facets of the translated book's peculiar legacy over the past seventy-two years, particularly in America. My aim in this effort is simply to demonstrate that in most incarnations of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, no matter how unique, each of this compositors have all shared uncritically the assumption that the book communicates an ancient and universal truth.14 With few exceptions, this presupposition has led problematically to a homogenized understanding of the Tibetan text(s) that has been typically universalist and ahistroical. It is my hope that by the end of this brief discussion the reasons become more obvious, though no less regrettable, why a sufficient history of these Tibetan texts has yet to appear in the secondary literature.
We can begin to understand the appeal of the Tibetan Book of the Dead if we first recongnize that the book has been presented consistently as "a powerful symbol of highly organized spiritual attainments, an affirmation of a pure spiritual science".15 This "spiritual science"--a term adopted with some fervor by Robert Thurman--is believed to have ancient roots in Tibet. Through proper initiation into its mysteries, it is though to provide access to a persistent and universal wisdom. Each new "author" of the Tibetan Book of the Dead has claimed for him or herself the authority to introduce us to this hidden truth concealed behing the words of the text. In most cases, each of them have resorted to what Lopez has termed "the trope of the esoteric meaning", in which at leat two layers of meaning are assumed: one which is literal, the "exoteric", and another which is symbolic, the "esoteric".16 It is the latter, of cuorse, which is considered correct by those who know the truth. We should make clear that Lopez's distinction echoes a traditional and long-standing Buddhist trope, in which scriptures are divided between those texts which are to be interpreted (neyartha, drang-don) and thos which are to be taken literally (nithartha, nges-don).17 Truth in both tropes is contingent, however upon the goals and impressions of its beholder. In my mind, there have been three basic "truths", or "orientations to truth", that have compelled specialists and non-specialists alike to comment on the "real" meaning of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and that in turn have attracted legions of devoted readers. In the most basic terms, these are the scientific, the psychological, and the humanisitc. Generally speaking, the first approach seeks a rational and empirically verifiable foundation; the second insists on a symbolic and achetypal reality; and the thrid pursues the promise of the individual's capacity for self-transformation. Principal examples of each of these three will be considered below.
The first perspective was fully formulated in the pages of Evans-Wentz's introduction of 1927, and subsquently gained widespread assent among scholars and enthusiasts of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Perhaps it can be best summed up in the following statement:
"In other words, the Bardo Thodol seems to be based upon verifiabl data of human physiological and psycholigical experiences; and it views the problem of the after- dead state as being purely a psycho-physical problem; and is, therefore, in the main, scientific."18
Once uttered, this idea that the Book of the Dead offered a verifiable "science of death" was forged permanently into something on the order of a fundamental proposition, in one form or another. Evans-Wentz, however, was the most vigorously extreme in his attempts to substantiate this point. Nowhere in this more clear than in his discussion of reincarnation.
Inspired by the Spiritualist ideas of Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891), founder of the Theosophical Society, Evans-Wentz interpreted the doctrine of rebirth--which he declared to be the fundamental principle of the Book of the Dead--in light of a semi Darwanist theory of genetic and biological evolution.19 Under the spell of this peculiar breed of scientific rationalism, he argued vehemently against Buddhism that humans could only be reincarnated as humans, animals as animals, and so forth. This, he procalimed, was the true, or "esoteric", interpretation of the traditional "exoteric" Buddhist doctrine.20 He asserted further that since it is only the esoteric teaching that communicates a universal truth,21 the exoteric viewpoints shold be dismissed as irrational, nothing more than popular misunderstandings.22 Central to this standpoint was the notion of the corrupt text:
"Similarly, as the popular interpretations appears to have fundamentally shaped the Jataka, so it may have also affected the compilation of the Bardo Thodol; for like all treatises which have had at leat a germ-origin in very ancient times and then grown up by the ordinary process of amalgamating congenial material, the Bardo Thodol, as a doctrine of Death and Rebirth, seems to have existed at first unrecorded, like almost all sacred books now recorded in Pali, Sanskrit or Tibetan, and was a growth of unknown centuries. Then by the time it had fully developed and been set down in writing no doubt it had lost something of its primitive purity. By its very nature and religious usage, the Bardo Thodol would have been very susceptibl to the influence of the popular or exoteric view; and in our own opinion it did fall under it, in such a manner as to attempt the impossible, namely, the harmonizing of the two interpretations. Nevertheless, its original esotericism is still discernible and predominant."23
11 Evans-Wentz 1960 p.1n.1: "This, he thought would not only help to justify his translation, but moreover, would accord with the wishes of his later guru with respect to all translations into a European tongue of works expository of the esoteric lore of the Great Perfectionist School into which that guru has inititiated him". That guru was a certain Bhuatanese lama named Slob-dpon Mtshams-pa-nor-bu and the Great Perfectionist School wo which he ascribed is, of course, the Rdzogs-chen tradition. I have not yet identified this Mtshams-pa-nor-bue, but we will have much to say about his School and its relationship to the Tibetan Book of the Dead in Chapter 1. 12 It has never been acknowledged that most scholars who have written on the topic of the Tibetan Book of the Dead--although occasionally working from the original source material--have tended to base their interpretations upon long-outdated and uncritical secondary opinion. Oddly enough, Evans-Wentz's book, and the successive generations of commentaries and new translations that it inspired, has remained the standard point of reference for most experts. It is certainly remarkable that even today there Tibetan scholars who continue to cite as principal sources the pipular secondary work on the Tibetan Book of the Dead--this in spite of the fact that on other topics the very same scholars are usually quite rigorous in supporting their arguments with extensive reference to primary literature. As examples, I should cite snellgrove 1987, p 453; Dudjom Rinpoche 1991 (Gyurme Dorje and Matthew Kapstein), vol 2, p. 76m 1072; Samuel 1993, pp. 210, 515-516; Gyatso 1998, p 293n.16 Lopez 1998, p.233n.6. Why is this popular literature accepted so uncritically as a valid and authoritative source of evidence? Surely, the fact that there have been far too few critical studies of the Bar-do thos-grol and related topics must be at least part of the answer. It is my hope that scholars in the future will begin to take this literature more seriously and examine it with more scholarly precision. 13See Brauen and Kvaerne 1978c p.10. - 14 Consider, for example, the following declaration so emblematic of this presupposition at to appear generic. The statement is by Micheal Lord in his "Introduction to the Causeway Edition" (1973), a reprint of Evans-Wentz 1927: "There is a mechanism in the purified individual which expands the consciousness to share an ever-present ocean of truth and wisdom infintely beyond the limitations of single brain and senses. In ancient times this was the prime means of knowledge, and provided manking with an unexcelled wisdom. The divine inspirations of the great sages and religious geniuses of the past have been recorded in sacred scriptures like the present work." 15 Bishop 1993, p. 73 - 16 Lopez 1998, p. 72. - 17 For further discussion see, for example, the essays collected in Lopez 1988. This twofold Buddhist hermeneutical "trope' can be traced as far back as the Samdhinirmocana-sutra. See snellgrove 1987, pp. 94-95: Williams 1989, pp. 78-80 - 18 Evans-Wentz 1960, p. 34 - 19 In this period, any explanatory model founded upon Darwin's evolutionary premise was for the most part openly supported as self-evidently correct. Blavatsky was perhaps an exception to this general rule, for apparently she was opposed to Darwin--whome she labelled her "baboon". Washington 1995, p. 45. But even she, it appears, could not escape the appeal of the evolutionary focus rested upon the authority of the anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917). See Evans-Wentz 1960, pp. 59-60. It was Tylor's intention to demonstrate the continuity of human culture by priving the theory that civilization was the result of a gradual process of growth, adaption, and evolution, from an original primitive state to one of increased complexity, such as that witnessed in the scoeities of modern Europe. This theory of the progress of human development had a profound effect on the work of the infamous James Frazer (1854-1941) - 20 Evans-Wentz 1960, pp. 42-43. - 21 See Evans-Wentz 1960, p. 43 :As to the processes affecting the life-flux which the human eye cannot see, the esoteric teaching coincides with that of the ancient Greek and Egyptian mystics: 'As below, so above: which implies that there is one harmonious karmic law governing with unwavering and impartial justice the visible as well as the invisible operations of nature." - 22 Evants Wentz 1960, p. 59 - 23 Evans-Wentz 1960, pp. 54-55
The Hidden Treasures of Sgam-po-gdar Mountain:
A History of the Zhi-kbro revelations of Karma-gling-pa and the Making of the Tibetan Book of the Dead - by Bryan Jare Cuevas
