Travels in the Netherworld: Buddhist Popular Narratives of Death and the Afterlife in Tibet

by Bryan J. Cuevas

In Travels in the Netherworld , Bryan J. Cuevas examines a fascinating but little-known genre of Tibetan narrative literature about the délok , ordinary men and women who claim to have died, traveled through hell, and then returned from the afterlife. These narratives enjoy audiences ranging from the most sophisticated monastic scholars to pious townsfolk, villagers, and nomads. Their accounts emphasize the universal Buddhist principles of impermanence and worldly suffering, the fluctuations of karma, and the feasibility of obtaining a favorable rebirth through virtue and merit. Providing a clear, detailed analysis of four vivid return-from-death tales, including the stories of a Tibetan housewife, a lama, a young noble woman, and a Buddhist monk, Cuevas argues that these narratives express ideas about death and the afterlife that held wide currency among all classes of faithful Buddhists in Tibet.

Relying on a diversity of traditional Tibetan sources, Buddhist canonical scriptures, scholastic textbooks, ritual and meditation manuals, and medical treatises, in addition to the délok works themselves, Cuevas surveys a broad range of popular Tibetan Buddhist ideas about death and dying. He explores beliefs about the vulnerability of the soul and its journey beyond death, karmic retribution and the terrors of hell, the nature of demons and demonic possession, ghosts, and reanimated corpses. Cuevas argues that these extraordinary accounts exhibit flexibility between social and religious categories that are conventionally polarized and concludes that, contrary to the accepted wisdom, such rigid divisions as elite and folk, monastic and lay religion are not sufficiently representative of traditional Tibetan Buddhism on the ground. This study offers innovative perspectives on popular religion in Tibet and fills a gap in an important field of Tibetan literature.

Genres: Buddhism, Nonfiction, History, Religion

216 pages, Hardcover

First published April 2, 2008

About the author

Dr. Bryan J. Cuevas, the John F. Priest Professor of Religion at Florida State University, teaches courses in Asian religious traditions, specializing in Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhism, Tibetan history, language, and culture. His research focuses on Tibetan history and historiography, the social history of death and death-related practices, Buddhist popular religion, and the politics of religious power in medieval Tibetan society.

Reviews

[Samuel Cho · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author focuses on four stories (narratives) about dying and coming back to life. What I really like about this is that, although it is a study, the author shows awe and appreciation in his analyses of the four narratives. He makes sure to set up a ground clear and well enough for him to explain his analyses and he is thorough, in that he explains everything, from Tibetan cultural norms to citing lines from Sutras from Buddhist Canon.

What he achieved in the end of his study is that he successfully showed the florid and fluid religious aspect of Tibetan society. This was a focus for him from the start of the book. Because of his analyses, I felt that the people had character and belonged to a much more complex society than to the conventional 'religious - secular' dichotomy, as he mentions in the beginning.