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FEATURE | EASTERN HORIZON 27

with the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, my great-grandfather, that my ancestral past and my outlook as a Westerner
S.W. Laden La, translated excerpts from Guru were coming together.
Rinpoche’s biography into English (published in Evans-
Wentz’s Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation). Every Legend says that when Guru Rinpoche was traveling
winter he led a group of Buddhists on pilgrimage from around Tibet, he concealed terma (“treasure”)
Darjeeling to Tso Pema, the lake in northern India teachings—including the Bardo Thödol—in caves,
where Guru Rinpoche is said to have been born from rocks, lakes, the sky, the mindstream, to be found at
within a lotus. On the lake was an island that moved in the right time by later generations. Like one of these
your direction if you were a good Buddhist; it always termas, my great-grandfather’s lesson was hidden
floated toward my great-grandfather as he approached. in our family mindstream and revealed to me when I
Wonderful as these stories were, I’d never felt they held needed it most. Evans-Wentz said in The Tibetan Book
personal weight, since I wasn’t Buddhist. As I lay gravely of the Great Liberation that my great-grandfather “was
ill, though, they took on new meaning for me. one of the really true Buddhists of our generation,
who not only fostered but also practically applied the
Tormented by excruciating joint pain and unremitting Precepts of the [Buddha].” My great-grandfather’s faith
headaches, violent chills and horrific nightmares, I had felt distant since I wasn’t Buddhist, but I discovered
longed to return to my ordinary existence as a wife and that it encompassed a dedication to living by Buddhist
mother, writer and literature professor. Things probably principles that was of vital relevance to me.
aren’t that bad, I told myself as—like the traveler in
the after-death bardo who refuses to accept what’s In his introduction to my great-grandfather’s translation
happened—I fantasized about spontaneous remission. I of Guru Rinpoche’s biography, Evans-Wentz wrote,
wondered if, trapped in the snow, my great-grandfather “Nothing is known either of the origin or of the end
had wished he were riding down to Darjeeling as usual of [Guru Rinpoche]. According to tradition, [he is]
on a sunny winter day in the Himalayas and assured believed never to have died.” The same can be said
himself things weren’t that dire. for the wisdom in the Bardo Thödol, which lives on
as Guru Rinpoche intended, for me and for all those
Then the bacteria in my heart valve traveled to my it has encouraged and guided through the centuries.
brain, lodging in the occipital lobe and obstructing the I’m reminded of this continuity by one of the family
flow of blood to the surrounding tissue. It was likely, the heirlooms I keep next to my desk for inspiration: my
doctors said, that I’d end up paralyzed or in a vegetative grandmother’s prayer beads, with which she prayed
state, or die. Overwhelmed by despair, I realized that every morning and evening to Guru Rinpoche. They
my great-grandfather had survived because he didn’t originally belonged to my great-grandfather and were
turn away from the truth of his predicament. He could given to her when he passed away in 1936, the same
have expended his dwindling energy and time on denial, prayer beads he waved up through the snow that winter
clinging to the life he’d known even though it no longer morning in Tibet.
existed. Instead, he acknowledged the bardo he was in
and saved himself. In the most profound way possible, Ann Tashi Slater contributes to the New Yorker,
as I confronted death, my great-grandfather’s story the Paris Review, the New York Times, the Washington
helped me sustain hope by illuminating the wisdom Post, Catapult, Guernica, the Huffington Post, and
at the heart of The Tibetan Book of the Dead: accept others. She recently finished a memoir. Find her at www.
reality but don’t give up. And as I faced the reality of my anntashislater.com.
situation, I understood that, whether or not I survived,
I could determine how I journeyed through the bardo; I Published with the permission of the author. The
saw how Guru Rinpoche’s guide inspires us to embrace essay first appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of
our role as the creators, the artists, of our lives. These Tricycle (www.tricycle.com). EH
insights brought me a new feeling of integration, a sense