Tibetan Book of the Dead translated by Fremantle.

I received this transmission at the age of eight, and was trained in this teaching by my tutors, who also guided me in dealing with dying people. Consequendy I visited dying or dead people about four times a week from that time onwards. Such continual contact with the process of death, particularly watchin~ one's close friends and relatives, is considered extremely important for students of this tradition, so that the notion of impermanence becomes a living experience rather than a philosophical view.

THE Bardo Thotrol is one of a series of instructions on six types of liberation: liberation through hearing, liberation through wear- ing, liberation through seeing, liberation through remembering, liberation through tasting, and liberation through touching. They were composed by Padmasarp.bhava and written down by his wife, Yeshe Tsogyal, along with the sadhana of the two maJ.lcJalas of forty-two peaceful and fifty-eight wrathful deities.

Padmasabbhava buried these texts in the Gampo hills in central Tibet, where later the great teacher Gampopa established his monastery. Many other texts and sacred objects were buried in this way in different places throughout Tibet, and are known· as terma, 'hidden treasures'. Padmasarp.bhava gave the transmission of power to discover the termas to his twenty-five chief disciples. The Bardo texts were later discovered by Karma-Lingpa, who was an incarnation of one of these disciples. by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in introduction.

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