Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I'm not doing a recitation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead for my father. He wasn't spiritual at all as far as I know, much less did he pay any mind to Buddhist teachings or mindfulness practice. There's no proscription against reading it for non-Buddhists or atheists, but the times that I've done it were for people far distant from me.

In my thinking, having no guidance or instruction whatsoever, the concern is to not disturb the consciousness of the deceased, and with someone distant there's reason to think there would be minimal affect anyway. Even if there was a mental impression from their name being called repeatedly and then exposure to the teachings, there's no personal connection to disturb the consciousness.

In my thinking, if there's a personal connection, the deceased could be distracted or disturbed by the recognition, which could lead to feeling negatively, wondering what I was doing. I wouldn't do a reading for my brothers if they died, either, because it might be an affront to their sensibilities.

I am, however, taking advantage of my father's death, since it is so proximate, to track the stages of the recitation to get a sense of what goes where and when; what makes sense to me. For me it is mindfulness practice to meditate on and visualize the death process, even though I have no formal training in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

The first few (about three) days are focused on various root and aspirational prayers and introductions to the death-point bardo. The reality bardo recitations begin on the fourth day, and the injunction that the recitations be done "three to seven times" is fulfilled (in my thinking) by staggering the daily recitations so that each day/section is ultimately done three times total.

So on the first day I recite day one. On the second day I recite days one and two. On the third day I recite days one to three. On the fourth day I recite days two to four, etc. Each "day" gets read three times. I don't know if that's the way it's supposed to be done. It's almost assuredly not right, but that's what I do.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead mentions that a source of distress for the deceased may come when the family gathers for meals but doesn't set a place for the deceased and the deceased feels despair and abandonment.

To counter that, the practice is to set a place for the deceased and to provide meals. The important part of the practice is not only to ease their despair or sense of abandonment, but to help the deceased realize that he or she is dead.

The experience in the death bardos is described as being very confused and turbulent and the deceased may not even realize he or she is dead. Setting their place at meals and even calling them to come for the meal can help them realize they are dead when it occurs to them they cannot partake in the meal.

We did that until yesterday. I got a sense that he had already realized he's dead a few days earlier and has moved on, but we did it for a whole week just in case. I mean you never know and too much practice is better than too little.

I continued sitting meditation every morning when I was in New Jersey, partly helped by back-end insomnia, whereby I never got a full night's sleep when I was there. There were two days in those initial days after my father died where I got the sense to help him move on.

On those occasions during sitting, I clapped my hands loudly to get his attention and called out aloud, addressing him as I normally would (and would be familiar to him) and said, "Ba! You are dead, you have died. You have nothing to fear so do not be afraid of anything you are experiencing now. You must move on, you can't come back. Focus on being reborn in a human life".

The Tibetan description of the experience of the consciousness after death resonates with me as being possible or plausible. After the consciousness is released from the body and the concrete sensations that informed the mind and existence cease to function, it enters a state of being (maybe an energy state) whereby it is buffeted by confusion and disorientation. Mmm, buffet. Oh, but of confusion and disorientation. Ixnay on the buffet.

Deeply ingrained habit senses kick in and the consciousness is drawn to what was habitually familiar, so it is drawn to places and people that were familiar. In my father's case, he would have been habitually attracted to the house and to my mother, and since that's where I was staying I was in a unique position to intervene if I sensed the opportunity. That's what I was doing.