My sister-in-law's mother died early this month. I've been reciting the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Natural Liberation Through Hearing) for her. It's been almost a year and a half since I've done a recitation, and that's kinda too long.

Not a big deal, but I feel I "got it wrong" by "starting too late". There are preliminary portions that probably should be begun immediately, and there are various prayers that are suggested in the book for this purpose. Which ones get used depends upon the reciter and the deceased. That's not an official teaching, just going on instinct.

I also like to include a description of the "dissolution of elements" that supposedly occurs during the death point between (the first of three death betweens). I'm not sure why it's not included in the Liberation Through Hearing recitation. It seems important.

The description is in a chapter entitled "Signs of Death", which I don't read because it seems heavily based on superstition in light of modern medical perspectives. The difference in the superstition aspect of that chapter and the entire book is that modern medicine has little insight into the after-death experience itself.

There's also a good general point in time to get into the thick of the recitation, about 3-4 days after death. That's in the book and I have no instinct on that matter. When I say maybe there is no real "getting it wrong" or "starting too late", it's because those are just . . . concepts.

The recitation itself is a matter of faith. Being of scientific bent, I'm not putting any great meaning into the recitation. Maybe it's something, maybe it's not. But whatever is occurring to a person after death according to Tibetan Buddhism (science has nothing), it's still something very amorphous and inexact and the living's strictures on time may not apply. Whether someone is receptive to someone doing a recitation on their behalf is probably a shot in the dark. But if there is even a moment of recognition, the benefits may be great, so might as well.

Something different about this recitation is that it's for someone I actually knew and who knew me, and someone who professed herself as being Buddhist and knew at one point I was considering becoming a monk.

Perhaps at a theoretical worst, she won't recognize the recitation, but will be reborn open to it in her next life. Maybe that's what happened to me (or maybe I was well-versed in it, I don't have to be modest about what I can't know).

The last time I read through it, I recognized parts that seemed out of place. I had taken on an analytical perspective that some human being, a person, compiled this work in a social, cultural, historical context and so it is fair game to be analyzed and critiqued.

So I am reading through the work and rearranging portions to make more chronological sense to me. I'm keeping an eye on things that don't make sense where they are, and even written in a tense that doesn't make sense where it is. If something feels wrong or is facially inconsistent, it may have been human error.

I'm also going through both translations I have with me here. I'm only using the 2005 Gyurme Dorje translation for the recitation. The earlier Robert Thurman translation was the first one I was exposed to, and I think I did read/study it fairly intently and got a lot of great ideas from it.

The 2005 complete translation is clearly the superior translation. I think Robert Thurman was doing something specific in his translation. It's more academic and ecumenical and still a very valuable piece of scholarship that would interest people who might not necessarily get hooked by the 2005 translation.

There are various tweaks in the recitation I put in of my own. Like terminology for the six classes of beings. There is a class that Thurman calls "titans" and the 2005 translation calls "anti-gods", but those terms don't quite describe anything. My own term is "aggressive gods", meaning they are elevated beings, but they are driven by strong ambition and desire for power (politicians, military leaders, CEOs).

And another class that Thurman calls "pretans" and the 2005 calls "anguished spirits"; neither of those are descriptively as helpful as "hungry ghosts". Thurman does explain why he doesn't like to call them ghosts, because ghosts are a completely different thing, but I think it captures the concept well. Beings who have insatiable hungers for something they constantly pursue in futility. I believe my parents, or at least my mother was born in this realm. Her insatiable hunger is for money and material wealth. Even in retirement, she's still chasing how to get more out of what she has.

The 2005 translation also assumes only Buddhists are reading the book because it mentions things like the "three precious jewels" and the "six syllables" without clarifying that they are the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha; and om mani padme hum, respectively.

I suppose the important thing is that it's not taboo to change things around. It's a sacred work, but not in the Western sense that it's perfect and can't be messed with (which to me is more an imposition of power). With something so varied, important and personal as human experience, spirituality should be flexible and accommodating.

I had a second dream about my brothers and I having been siblings before in a past life. The first dream was a while ago, I can't remember when or whether I mentioned it, but in that dream, I felt I was the oldest and had the most power, and may not have been particularly liked because of that.

The dream I had this morning was more impressionistic. It required post-wakem interpretation to think it had anything to do with a past life. What was happening in the dream was more about how I was feeling, rather than any visuals.

My interpretation was that I was very sick, possibly about to die. I was on medication. Walking was very difficult and precarious. And I was on a ventilator.

The on medication part I got from an early part of the dream where I was floating. This part may have been a semi-conscious dream that I had some control of and was struggling not to come out of. Actually, it may have started as a full dream.

The dream started in what felt like San Francisco, Richmond District, and might have involved a police car chase coming right off the Golden Gate Bridge and turning left. It didn't look like any of that (except the left turn), it just felt like that.

And there wasn't any real chase, it was rushing down a straight, grey, concrete, fluorescent-lit industrial corridor that felt like Clement or California Street, one of those long streets that run the length of the Richmond.

I was hanging off the side of the car, or it may have been a medical cart, hoping not to get slammed against the wall or by the swinging doors it was crashing through. When it stopped, that's when the semi-conscious floating part began, me trying to navigate back up through the corridor without waking up.

The next part was full dream. There was an image, perhaps a still image, of me and my brothers as children sitting in the back seat of our parents' car back in the 70s. There was some panning and recognition of who would be who of these children. The outside of the car looked like New York City.

The dream then switched to like a construction or demolition site (a pile of rubble) that was in the side of a building. It wasn't a restricted site as other people were making their way through and there were construction workers. My brothers and I were navigating our way through, I was having difficulty with my footing. This is the metaphor of a medical patient having difficulty walking.

My brothers were simultaneously helping me and getting frustrated at my inability. I remember a huge gloop of snot dripping out of my nose and trying to maintain my dignity. That's the first suggestion that I was ill.

The dream ended with me noticing a package of tissue on some rubble and trying to get a tissue to wipe my nose, but for some reason I couldn't do it. I kept getting thwarted or the tissue turned into something else and I actually got frustrated. All through this later part of the dream, and this was something I noticed semi-consciously, that my breathing was heavily labored and loud like trying to breathe through mucous, and that's where I get the ventilator part from.

When I woke up, I could still hear that raspy, labored breathing.

It's all interpretation. None of the imagery was about sickness, but after I woke up, that's the first thing that came to mind and that's how I put it together and tied it to my previous dream that suggested that my brothers and I were siblings in a past life.