A text, not a place
Despite the word “pilgrimage” in the title, the Tibetan Book of the Dead is not a location you can travel to. It is a text. Its Tibetan name, Bardo Thodol, is usually translated as something like “Liberation Through Hearing in the Intermediate State”. The English title “Tibetan Book of the Dead” became popular after an early twentieth-century English edition, and it borrowed the name of the unrelated Egyptian funerary texts. Tibetan readers know the work by its own name, and it belongs to a wider body of teachings often connected with the Nyingma school.
The pilgrimage in the title is best read as an inner one: the text frames death, and the experiences it describes, as a journey of the mind that can be met with awareness. No monastery or mountain has this journey as its destination.
Where the text comes from
According to tradition, the teachings were composed in the eighth century by the teacher Padmasambhava, hidden, and later rediscovered as a “treasure text” (terma) by a revealer named Karma Lingpa, usually placed around the fourteenth century. Historians and traditional sources do not always agree on such details, and the text exists in several versions. For readers, the safe summary is that it is a Tibetan Buddhist work with a traditional attribution and a long history of use.
The idea of the bardo
The word bardo means “between” or “in-between state”. Tibetan teachings describe several bardos, including the time of life itself, the process of dying, the period after death, and the movement toward a new existence. The Bardo Thodol concentrates on the last three.
In general terms, the text describes the dying person meeting experiences of light and of peaceful and wrathful appearances. Its central advice is to recognise these as arising from one’s own mind rather than as external threats, and thereby to gain freedom or a favourable rebirth. How literally these descriptions are taken varies between teachers: some stress the symbolic and psychological reading, others a more literal one, and both are found in Tibetan communities.
How the text is used at death
The title includes “liberation through hearing” because the book is traditionally read aloud near a person who has died, or while they are dying, so that they can hear guidance. At a general, public level, this means:
- a lama or monk may recite the text or related prayers, often over a period commonly given in tradition as forty-nine days;
- family and community may sponsor prayers and light lamps in the deceased person’s name;
- offerings and acts of generosity are made so that the merit benefits the one who has died.
Specific rites differ by region, lineage and family, and some ceremonies are not open to outsiders. This article does not describe private instructions, and visitors should not expect to be admitted to a funeral.
Death rites and remembrance visits
The themes of the text shape Tibetan death rites more widely. The idea of an in-between period gives families something to do: pray, make offerings, recite mantras and remember. In later months and years, people may visit monasteries to offer butter lamps, circle a stupa or hang prayer flags in memory of a relative. Such circumambulation practice is a common sign of respect and remembrance, as are donations to monastic communities.
Visitors to Tibetan monasteries may notice painted images of fierce and peaceful figures. Many of them express the same teaching that appearances reflect the mind. The Wheel of Life mural, found in many entrance halls, shows the cycle of rebirth that the bardo teachings address.
Reading the book respectfully
If you wish to read the Bardo Thodol, choose translations that include scholarly or traditional commentary, and notice who is introducing the text. Some older English editions mix translation with the editor’s own religious ideas, so it helps to compare several. The text is also not a travel guide, a prediction or a medical or legal resource.
If you meet a funeral or memorial rite while travelling, stay at a distance unless invited, avoid photographing, and follow local guidance. Practices differ across Tibet, Nepal, India and Bhutan, and rules and access can change, so check current local conditions before travelling.
The inner journey
Seen as an inner pilgrimage, the Bardo Thodol offers a way to think about impermanence while living. Many Tibetan teachers say its lessons are meant to be studied and practised before death, not only recited after it. That is the sense in which the title may be called a pilgrimage: a path of understanding rather than a route on a map.