Into the Jaws of Yama, Lord of Death: Buddhism, Bioethics, and Death

6. Death and Enlightenment in Tibet

Chapter 6  Death and Enlightenment in Tibet The Tibetan Plateau is situated directly north of India and Nepal, separated by the enormity of the Himalayan mountain range that stretches from east to west. In this sparsely populated high-altitude region, the indigenous religious beliefs and practices known as Bön centered around the propitiation of deities in the natural environment. Due to the snowy Himalayan peaks and distance, it was not until the seventh century CE that Buddhist culture began to make a major impact in Tibet. Several miraculous portents are said to have drawn certain Tibetans’ attention to Buddhism as early as the first century CE, but it was not until the reign of Songtsen Gampo (618–650)—through marriage alliances with princesses from Nepal and China—that sacred images and monasteries began to proliferate in Tibet. King Songtsen Gampo sent the scholar Tönmi Sambhota to India to devise a script for the Tibetan language in order to facilitate the translation of Sanskrit Buddhist texts. Subsequent kings continued to send Tibet’s brightest young scholars to India to study, to invite teachers, and to acquire Buddhist texts and commentaries. Thus began a centuries-long process of translating the Buddhist canon into Tibetan. The Buddhism that prevailed in India during the period when Buddhist literature was transmitted to Tibet (between the eighth and tenth centuries) included two major discernible streams: the analytical systems of philosophical tenets that flourished in the great monastic universities, and the esoteric tantric meditation systems that were practiced in great secrecy in mountain caves and other solitary spots. Under royal patronage, the Tibetans exerted enormous energy to import 79 80 Into the Jaws of Yama, Lord of Death Buddhist texts and teachings of various traditions and lineages, and then spent the next thousand years analyzing and practicing them. Bön and Tibetan Buddhism The religious traditions of pre-Buddhist Tibet are collectively known today as Bön. These indigenous traditions have absorbed so many Buddhist ideas and practices over the course of time that they have in many respects become nearly indistinguishable from Buddhism. These confluences, combined with the lack of early historical documentation , make it extremely difficult to get an accurate idea of Bön civilization as it existed prior to the advent of Buddhism. We do know that pre-Buddhist shamanistic traditions were deeply concerned with the spirits of the dead. Skilled ritual specialists carried out elaborate funerary rites and were believed capable of discerning traces of the dead in substances, after a person’s consciousness had departed. Bön priests formulated three hundred sixty ways of dying, four ways of preparing graves, and eighty-one ways of taming evil spirits.1 Offerings to the dead, the sacrifice of particular animals, and other rituals were performed to ensure a blissful afterlife for the souls of the dead. It was also believed that souls could be exorcised by funerary specialists to benefit the dead. These early beliefs and practices reveal an early interest in the liminal aspects of death and could explain the Tibetan Buddhist emphasis on death and dying in subsequent centuries . Even today, Bön practitioners in some Tibetan cultural areas continue to perform these funeral rites.2 Sky burial, a Tibetan practice still in evidence in Tibet today, most likely springs from the Bön tradition. In sky burial, on a particular day that is determined by divination, the corpse of the deceased is chopped into pieces and fed to the birds. This unique practice, which may appear disrespectful of the dead, is performed as a final act of generosity. Since rotting flesh is of no use to the deceased and the consciousness of the deceased is believed to have already left the body, it is considered an act of merit to donate the flesh to animals, especially “higher” animals, such as birds. Disposing of the dead in this manner surely reflects the environment, because in the mountainous terrain of Tibet, the earth was too hard to dig graves and fuel for cremation was scarce and costly. Cremation was only an option for wealthy or illustrious people such as renowned lamas. Rituals carried out to determine the karmic destiny of a dead person or to exorcise troublesome spirits apparently trace their roots to Bön and similar shamanic practices, and are performed even today. Death and Enlightenment in Tibet 81 Shamanic practices never died out in Tibetan societies and...