Review of The Hidden History of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, by Bryan J. Cuevas

As a corrective to past “homogenized” and “ahistorical” studies of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Cuevas offers an account of the origins and successive transformations of the fourteenth-century treasure revealer Karma Lingpa death liturgies.

In Cuevas’ words, the purpose of the book is to “provide a succinct overview of some of the main points of the history of the texts

themselves…[to] encourage a more balanced and contextualized approach to the study of the Liberation upon Hearing…in which the focus is as much on the role of historical development as it has been on doctrinal content” (206), and in this goal he certainly succeeds.

The book begins by criticizing past scientific, psychological, and humanistic presentations for contributing to a “universalist” view that is not consistent with the history of the texts or their ritual use.

Cuevas then gives a brief account of Buddhist and pre-Buddhist funeral rites in Tibet and discusses the development of the Tibetan conception of the intermediate state from its Indian antecedent, antarabhava.

According to Cuevas, the Tibetan Great Perfection model of the intermediate state is unique in its combination of cosmogony, theory of transitional phases between states of consciousness – particularly the pre-Buddhist notion of a perilous path (tranglam) that Cuevas

somewhat confusingly translates as “perilous passage between narrow pathways” – and concept of peaceful and wrathful deities (zhitro).

This original formulation, current in the fourteenth century, formed the basis from which Karma Lingpa drew in creating his liturgy.

In the second section of the book, Cuevas presents an account of the history of Karma Lingpa various treasure texts, and here things get complicated.

First, he sets out to locate “the foundational structure, or core unity, of the literary tradition” (102).

He specifies that by “core” he is not seeking to identify the earliest of the texts but “those principal texts that have been historically treated as the most important works of the literary and ritual tradition” (115).

He traces the core of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities to the Direct Introduction to Awareness: Self-Liberation through Naked Vision which, he states, “epitomizes the doctrinal foundation of the Liberation upon Hearing” (114).

A few pages later, he redefines his notion of “core” to designate “the main text recited in the Karling ritual,” that being the ritual as performed at Pelyül Monastery in South India and Dzokchen Monastery in Tokyo (117).

In this case, the “core” text becomes the Religious Liturgy of the Self-Liberation of Karmic Latencies which has been included in twenty of the twenty-one extant editions of the Karling cycle.

Based on this observation, Cuevas concludes that “it is certain that the Self-Liberation of Karmic Latencies is the core text of the Self-Liberated Wisdom of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities and lies also at the very heart of the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo” (118).

Having surveyed the texts, the next chapters turn to an enthusiastic account of the people who propagated and codified Karma Lingpa’s treasure tradition.

Cuevas credits the late fifteenth-century Gyarawa Namkha Chökyi Gyatso (b. 1430) with establishing the transmission lineage and with spreading the Karling cycle throughout Tibet.

As the figure who systematized the system and secured official sponsorship for its practices, it was due to the efforts of Gyarawa Namkha Chökyi Gyatso that the Karling cycle “became the basic ritual response to death and dying among most of the major Nyingmapa monastic orders,

and in a few instances among certain followers of the Kagyü tradition,” particularly in Southern Tibet and Kham where the treasures were most widespread (119).

After surveying other lineage persons including Nyida Özer (b. 1409 or 1421), Karma Chakmé (1613-1678), and Terdak Lingpa (1646-1714), as well as figures at Dakpo Tselé, Kongpo Tangdrok, and Katok monasteries, Cuevas presents Rikdzin Nyima Drakpa (1647-1710), “a rather fierce yet benevolent guardian of Buddhism and perhaps a tragically misunderstood religious savant” (180).

This “well-connected sorcerer from khams” was apparently a highly charismatic and persuasive individual, and Cuevas credits him with being “the unparalleled master of the Liberation upon Hearing” (200).

Rikdzin Nyima Drakpa’s contribution to the story lies in his arrangement of the Karling transmissions which were then preserved in a late eighteenth-century blockprint prepared at Dzokchen monastery,

the same blockprint that was likely the basis of the 1943 Paro version upon which most Western translations and studies have been based.

The book concludes with Cuevas describing his reactions when monks in South India showed him copies of their “liberation upon hearing” texts.

He reports that he “was disappointed to learn that none of the texts had any connection whatsoever [page 3] to Karma Lingpa’s Liberation upon Hearing; they were copies of prayers or short texts written by some local lama from the monk’s home village” (211).

Whereas for him, “liberation upon hearing” referred to “The Tibetan Book of the Dead, plain and simple,” for the Tibetans with whom he spoke, it meant something quite different.

As he explains, “For many Tibetans the Liberation upon Hearing has no real history in the sense of being tied to a specific compositor and historical tradition” (212).

Similar to what has happened in Europe and the United States since it was first translated into English, the Liberation upon Hearing has undergone what he cleverly labels the “Kleenex effect” such that what was once a brand name has become “a generic label for all similar products” (212).

Although not explicit, it is evident that Cuevas is critical of Tibetans ignorance of the cycle’s history and, unfortunately, he is uninterested in exploring the differences between his conception of “liberation upon hearing” and those of the monks.

Cuevas admits that a purely text-based investigation such as the one he presents here is unlikely to uncover details about social history or ritual practice, yet in focusing his work on the lineage and institutional history of one particular textual tradition and avoiding questions of popular practice and ideas,

Cuevas leaves off at precisely the point where a history of a particular transmission becomes important for illuminating larger historical questions.

It is here that one must turn to an investigation of the use of Karma Lingpa’s texts, popular opinion regarding the identity of “liberation upon hearing,” and adaptations of normative death procedures in order to develop the more balanced view of Tibetan death liturgies and customs that Cuevas advocates.

As yet another study of the Liberation upon Hearing, his book hardly acts to counterbalance Western scholarship’s fixation upon the Liberation upon Hearing as the authoritative text of Tibetan writings on the intermediate state.

That being said, Cuevas’ helpful and well-researched work (including a bibliography of over one hundred Tibetan-language texts) provides a skeleton on which theorists, ethnographers, and those pursuing questions of social history, practice, and interpretation can now hang the meat and flesh of their studies.

While it is unlikely to inspire any new paradigms, The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead represents solid scholarship which will perhaps inspire further investigation into other death-related literature and practices.

Source

http://www.thlib.org/collections/texts/jiats/#!jiats=/01/rev_cuevas/