excerpted from Wikipedia:
The Bardo Thodol, 'Liberation through Hearing in the Intermediate State', traditionally but inaccurately called the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is a funerary text that describes the experiences of the consciousness after death during the interval known as bardo between death and rebirth. It is recited by lamas over a dying or recently deceased person, or sometimes over an effigy of the deceased. It has been suggested that it is a sign of the influence of shamanism on Tibetan Buddhism. The name means literally "liberation through hearing in the intermediate state".
The Bardo Thodol actually differentiates the intermediate states between lives into three bardos (themselves further subdivided):
-the chikhai bardo or "bardo of the moment of death"
-the chonyid bardo or "bardo of the experiencing of reality"
-the sidpa bardo or "bardo of rebirth".
W. Y. Evans-Wentz (editor) and Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup (translator) did an English translation" Tibetan Book of the Dead: Or, The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane", Oxford, 1927, 1960. ISBN 0-19-500223-7 This was a long-term best-seller in the 1960s. Evan-Wentz came up with the title based on the previously published famous Egyptian Book of the Dead.
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Edward Conze wrote a precis in Buddhist Scriptures that was published by Penguin books in 1959 that is excellent if you can find it.
There is also an excellent website at
Book of the Dead with an English translation by Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup; Compiled and Edited by W. Y. Evans-Wentz - E-book by Summum - that is quite good.
If you are looking for the most scholarly and current translation, I am told that Francesca Fremantle and Chögyam Trungpa, "The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo by Guru Rinpoche according to Karma Lingpa", Shambhala(1975), is supposed to be the best translation, though I have not read it (Difficult to get a hold of outside of libraries).
Rob
[ June 17, 2006, 09:37 PM: Message edited by: ITJock ]