Sati Marie Frost’s Reviews > The Tibetan Book of the Dead > Status Update

Impossible to rate this one. Oh well.

Evans-Wentz’s biases towards Hindu and India are REALLY evident in this part.

It’s so odd for me to be reading a book to PREVENT reincarnation. As someone whose main experience with Buddhism is Japanese (though even that is very limited), reincarnation is often the goal, not the thing to avoid.

“Instructions to the Officiant: thus speak, and, if recognition result from that, Liberation will be obtained, without need of the wandering in the Six Lokas. If, however, through influence of bad karma, recognition is made difficult, thereupon say as follows:…”

How does the officiant know if the dead is having success or not? I’ve been wondering this since the beginning.

This is a slog. And I’m not honestly sure whether it’s the subject matter or the translation. I suspect a bit of both, but mostly the latter. And it seems curiously Hindu-inspired for a book about Tibetan Buddhism.

I like to think Evans-Wentz meant well in this translation, and I suppose I need to give him some credit for bringing knowledge of it to the West, but…ehh. It feels like he put a lot of his own beliefs and experiences into the translation, and I don’t think I trust it.