In his 1915 essay, “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death,” Sigmund Freud wrote, “It is indeed impossible to imagine our own death; and whenever we attempt to do so we can perceive that we are in fact still present as spectators.” Four years later, the American Theosophist Walter Evans-Wentz, traveling in the Himalayas, chanced upon a Tibetan text and asked the English teacher of the Maharaja’s Boarding School for boys in Gangtok, Sikkim to translate it for him. What is known in the West as The Tibetan Book of the Dead is the product of their collaboration.
Posts Tagged ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’
March 23rd, 2011
The evolution of a text
posted by Donald S. Lopez, Jr.Tags: Buddhism, death and dying, history, Lives of Great Religious Books, spirituality, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Tibet
Posted in Book blog | No Comments »
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