Rituals, Mandalas and the Tibetan Book of the Dead - Period 1

The so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead, with its colourful visions of ma??alas of peaceful and wrathful deities, and its engaging narratives on the vicissitudes of the journey between death and rebirth, has captured the imagination of many outside Tibet.

When, at the beginning of the twentieth century, this selection of texts was first translated into English, it immediately became a hit, a bestseller even; yet, oddly enough, in Tibet, these texts and practices are not very well known or popular at all (which should give one reason to pause and think ?). How could that be? This perhaps reveals part of the discrepancy between our ideas about Tibet and the historical and sociological realities on the ground in Central Asia?

What do these Tibetan traditions look like in their regions of origin, in Tibet and the Himalayas (but also in China and Mongolia)? What is their history and context?

We shall read some of those Tibetan texts on death and dying in translation and look at their native religious and sociological backgrounds, and contexts of use. We shall therefore pay particular attention to a number of lesser-known and ritualistically arranged Tibetan texts (in translation) regarding death and dying that are mostly ignored in popular translation, and discuss these in their native contexts of use and in their ritualistic and cosmological frames of understanding.

We also delve further into the important ideas and practices regarding the mentioned ma??alas, including their reception history outside Tibet (and yes, who has not heard of ma??alas ??), and, by way of example, look at some influential and explicitly psychologizing commentaries, such as by the eleventh Trungpa Tulku, called Chögyam (Tib. Chos kyi rgya mtsho), a naturalized Tibetan teacher (1939?1987), and the now famous (if not notorious ?) psychological commentary by the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875?1961).

We shall also try to ford the complex issue of the reception history of things Tibetan in general by examining the case of the Tibetan Book of the Dead more closely. What might this history teach us about the nature of our (changing) interests and perceptions vis-à-vis Tibet? How much does this reveal about Tibet and how much about what is in the eye of the beholder? How can the culture of a Diaspora of relatively few down-and-out refugees capture the imagination of so many?

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam) awards credits based on the ECTS system. Contact hours listed under a course description may vary due to the combination of lecture-based and independent work required for each course therefore, CEA's recommended credits are based on the ECTS credits assigned by VU Amsterdam. 1 ECTS equals 28 contact hours assigned by VU Amsterdam.