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.