Customer Reviews
"Abridged and Simplified" and with nice photos - By: calmly, 25 Oct 2007 
This is a well-packaged presentation: the paperback is bound well, thick paper is used, the photos are lovely & plentiful, there's ample commentary which is interspersed conveniently with the text.
By the translators' intent, it is "abridged & simplified", aiming to reach an audience unfamiliar with [Tibetan] Buddhism & perhaps not up to the weight of the full texts.
What may be the problem with this approach is that the resulting text seems literal. Literalism doesn't seem an appropriate simplification as it may filter out the symbolic value of the text. In the introduction the translators' do point out the the teachings of The Book apply as much to the living (in the quest of enlightenment) as to the dead, but that reminder may get lost within the subsequent details. The translators' also speak of gods to pray to & the need for masters, which, along with the literal approach, might lead the reader to think that Tibetan Buddhism is essentially a fundamentalism.
Closely related to the Tibetan Book of the Dead is another text which has been translated by John Reynold as "Self-Liberation Through Seeing with Naked Awareness". That book, arguably quite advanced, presents a profound teaching (Dzogchen) that canin no way be mistaken for, or simplified into, a fundamentalism
figurative description of the process of dying - By: , 08 Jun 2001 
This book describes the various phases that one passes through during the death experience. It prepares one for facing the subtleties of mind & the inner process at the time of death. This translation is accompanied with a beautiful set of commentaries & illustrations that bring this text alive to the Western reader, who is unfamiliar with Eastern thought.
