Dying as Supreme Opportunity:
A Comparison of Plato's Phaedo and The Tibetan Book of the Dead
By Maurice Cohen
Philosophy East and West
Vol. 26, No. 3 (July 1976)
pp. 317-327
Copyright 1976 by University of Hawaii
Press
Hawaii, USA
During the last few years, there has been a surge of interest in the subject
of death. Unusual as such concern is in our society, there have been many
periods in the past when major thinkers have studied the process of dying and
its consequence, death.
In this article, I will compare two theories on dying,
one present in Plato's Phaedo, the other in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. In
each work, dying is viewed as a supreme opportunity, a culmination of life to
be prepared for thoughtfully and rigorously throughout one's adulthood.
The method I will employ is first to place the Phaedo
imaginatively beside The Tibetan Book of the Dead and see what attitudes toward
Plato's dialogue result from such a juxtaposition. I will then reverse the
process and consider the perspectives on The Tibetan Book as a consequence of
examining it alongside of the Phaedo. In both cases, I will attempt to deal
with matters of general interest, as well as with technical philosophical
issues: and because of the wide-ranging appeal and implications of these two
works, I welcome comments from all quarters.
Turning first to the Phaedo, which I will examine now
beside The Tibetan Book, we recognize it as belonging to the Middle Dialogues
in the corpus of Plato's writing. Coming after the Early Socratic Dialogues
(the most famous of which is the Apology), the group of Middle Dialogues
includes, in addition to the Phaedo, the Gorgias, Symposium, Republic, and
Phaedrus. They are followed by a number of highly technical works, among which
the Theaetetus and Parmenides are perhaps best known.
The Middle Dialogues are distinctive in the body of
Plato's writing because of the intensity of their ethical and metaphysical
dualism. It is in these dialogues that Plato most emphatically turns away from
the body and senses, and denigrates vehemently the reality of the corporeal
world. The Middle Dialogues are also the works in which Plato's imagination is
most active. Dramatically, they are unusually vivid; the language in which they
are written is by turns feverish, brilliant, and fantastically humorous, and
myths--usually myths of judgment after death--are important parts of these
dialogues.
What distinguishes the Phaedo among the Middle Dialogues
and makes it uniquely comparable to The Tibetan Book of the Dead is its total
preoccupation with death and dying. Only in the Phaedo does Plato emphasize
that he considers the philosophic life to be a long rehearsal for dying; [1] only in the Phaedo does he deal
critically, as well as imaginatively, with the fate of the soul after death;
and only in the Phaedo does he depict, with all the power of his art, a noble
and religious death, that of Socrates.
Certain artistic and dramatic resemblances between the
Phaedo and The Tibetan Book stand forth immediately. There is the peculiar
colorfulness of the Phaedo's myth of judgment. [2] I mean colorfulness literally, for none of
Plato's
p. 318
myths is more suggestive of specific visual fantasies than the Phaedo's
lyrical description of a brighter, purer, multihued world over and above the
drab world we live in before the death of the body. I would not go so far as to
say or authors of The Tibetan Book do so brilliantly on one level of
conception, but just as Tire Tibetan Book calls out to be read with drawing
block and pastels, so the Phaedo's myth produces a sequence of exciting
fantasies, in the literal sense of image-ings on the part of the reader.
Another obvious resemblance between the Phaedo and The
Tibetan Book derives from the role of Socrates. In the Phaedo, his companions
know that they are losing, not merely a beloved older friend and philosophical
mentor, but a moral and spiritual guide. In no other Socratic dialogue is
Socrates portrayed in quite this way, we are not using terms casually when we
say that in the Phaedo Socrates acts as a guru. He is not the orator of the
Apology, the patient expositor of the Crito, or the ironic intellectual
"midwife" of the Theaetetus. In the Phaedo, he teaches with his whole
personality, in which intellectual power, albeit essential, is not all that is
essential. He impresses his disciples in many ways, challenging their
intellects, exalting their imaginations, and equally, if not more importantly,
demonstrating through his own conduct in extremis the strength of his character
and faith.
So much for more evident resemblances. Let us look now at
the Phaedo's philosophical arguments, which occur in the first of its three
major sections, the other two sections being the myth of judgment and the
description of Socrates death. There are, in the first or dialectical section
of the Phaedo, four logically independent proofs for the immortality of the
soul. The last proof, which employs extensively the Theory of Forms, is the
longest and most intricate of the four proofs. All of these arguments have been
the subject of a good deal of critical commentary; for my purposes, it is
sufficient to make the following observations.
First, none of the four proofs is completely rigorous.
All show, in fact, continuing use of deliberate fallacies of many kinds, a
characteristic of Plato's writing long before the Phaedo. In earlier dialogues,
he fallacizes to force the reader to scrutinize critically the explicit
argument of the dialogue and reconstruct for himself the true and intended philosophical
message of the dialogue. [3] This is still the case in the Phaedo.
Second, none of the positions developed in the proofs of the Phaedo are
maintained continuously by Plato throughout his subsequent writing. He does not
present the Theory of Forms--whether he ever believed he had a firm theory is a
question in itself--in exactly the same way in the other Middle Dialogues, and
treats it very differently in the later dialogues. He makes no use in later
writings of the notion of learning as recollection, the philosophical keystone
of the Second Proof; and he makes no use elsewhere of the idea of generation
from opposites as a basis for demonstrating the soul's immortality.
p. 319
My own belief is that at the time of writing the Phaedo,
Plato knew perfectly well that he had no unassailable proof for the immortality
of the soul (there is certainly no evidence in any of his later writings that
he ever came to believe he had developed such a proof). [4] On the other hand, I think that when Plato
wrote the Phaedo he did believe strongly in certain more general views which
underlie the theories upon which the proofs are made to depend.
What are these views which Plato does seem to hold
positively in the Phaedo? He does show a genuine interest in coming-into-being
and passing-away (generation and corruption) as opposing processes. In the
Protagoras, written considerably before the Phaedo, Plato had already shown
himself to be in possession of a logical theory of opposites; in the Phaedo, we
have an attempt at using the logical theory as a model for explaining real
changes of all kinds.
Closely related to this experiment is Plato's relatively
new, but earnest, commitment to ethical and metaphysical dualism. Body and soul
are now depicted as severely opposed to one another, an argument not advanced
until the Middle Dialogues and moderated appreciably in most of Plato's later
writing. In the Middle Dialogues, however, and in the Phaedo particularly the
body is seen as a person's oppressor, or, even worse, corrupter; thus the goal
of philosophy is now said to be to teach the soul to keep itself pure, that is,
undistracted by desire.
Correlated with this severe ethical dualism in the Phaedo
is a dualistic metaphysics. Reality, we now hear, consists of two levels, the
world of the body, senses, and physical events, and a sharply demarcated higher
realm, accessible only to the mind, and then only when the mind draws into
itself, rejecting the enticements of the senses.
Indeed, soul in the Phaedo is spoken of as though it is
only mind or reason (nouns); there is also a clear emphasis on mind as the
highest reality in the universe as well as in the individual person. Such a
comprehensive view of the primacy of the mind is present in Socrates'
observation that as a young man he had hoped for much from a book by Anaxagoras
that was supposed to show how mind causes and arranges everything. [5] But he was disappointed, Socrates goes on
to say, and developed perforce his own method of investigating reality,
analyzing concepts (logoi) through systematic deduction from hypotheses. [6] Socrates does not apologize for this
approach because it is discursive, and insists that the use of concepts is an
effective way of studying reality; but Plato presents him as critically aware
of the problems inherent in the use of deduction as a way of establishing the
truth of hypotheses. [7] In any event, it is important when
comparing the Phaedo with The Tibetan Book on the relation of mind to reality
to keep in mind the fact that although Socrates talks about using a new method
for demonstrating the relation between mind and reality, he gives no indication
of having abandoned his original hope that the truth about reality is that mind
causes and arranges all things.
Nevertheless, the Phaedo itself does not seem to be
suggesting a fully deve-
p. 320
loped mind-only theory of reality like the one in The Tibetan Book of the
Dead. What is lacking in the Phaedo is an argument to the effect that soul not
only resembles the Forms, but generates them. To commit oneself thus far--and I
do not think Plato is even deliberately suggesting such a position in the
Phaedo--one would have to postulate a dissolution, at some point, of the
difference between the individual mind and universal mind. We are familiar
enough with such a view in the Upanishads and Mahaayaana Buddhism; is anything
like it present at least in Platonism, the particular Western philosophical
tradition based on the Middle Dialogues and Plato's oral teachings? If there
is, we could then say that although the Phaedo itself does not argue for such a
view, it has helped to provide the basis for its development in the West. The
answer here is clearly, yes, Platonism is, in fact, characterized by insistence
that ultimate deliverance results from overcoming the illusion of separateness.
Each in his own way, Hegel, Spinoza, and Plotinus are all explicit on this point.
More germane, because of his closeness in time to Plato, are Aristotle's
remarks in the De Anima on the role and fate of Active Intellect. [8]
Dialectically, this lineage is not surprising, for all
that is needed to complete the transition, from the Phaedo's suggested view on
the relation between mind and reality to an explicit mind-only theory analogous
to that in The Tibetan Book, is one step: the assertion that in perfect knowing
the mind discovers its identity with what it knows. Had Plato himself taken
this step in the Phaedo, he could have said that in coming to know the Forms
the individual mind ceases to be individual, for it sheds completely all
time-and place-bound preoccupations, and with them all sense of separateness,
of any distinction whatsoever between knower and known.
Exactly how far the Phaedo is from this position need not
be plotted exactly at this point; but it certainly belongs in any series
converging on such a position, and its tendencies along these lines are
effectively brought out by comparing it in connection with The Tibetan Book of
the Dead.
There is, then, an important anticipation in the Phaedo
of a metaphysical position significantly like that in The Tibetan Book. Now
that we have begun to consider the Phaedo closely in juxtaposition to The
Tibetan Book, do any other technical resemblances emerge? I think there is at
least one other major resemblance, but to develop it we must focus now on the
Fourth Proof for the immortality of the soul, the climax of the dialectical
section of the Phaedo. [9] In the preceding proofs Socrates has
presented a number of propositions, each of which has analogues in Hindu and
Buddhist thought. He has argued that being born and dying are usually
reciprocal and thus complementary processes; [10] that the reincarnated soul bears traces
of its previous existence; [11] and that in its capacity as mind, the
soul is very like the incorporeal Forms, which are the objects of knowledge. [12] In the Fourth Proof, using again the
Theory of Forms, he develops a more complex position. He demonstrates that part
of the essence of soul is to live. Without life, there can be nothing that can
p. 321
meaningfully be called "soul"; in short, soul is essentially
death-less. [13] Socrates is presented as recognizing
clearly, however, that to demonstrate that it is logically absurd to speak of a
"dead soul" is not equivalent to demonstrating that soul is also
indestructible or eternal. How do we know that at the onset of death, the soul
does not vanish, like snow in the presence of fire? How can we show that soul, unlike
snow, goes away intact when it comes into contact with something opposed to
part of its essence? [14]
The surprising thing about the Fourth Proof of the Phaedo
is that although the first major step, the demonstration of the essential
death-lessness of soul, is established deductively, the next stage of the proof
is not. For Socrates does not proceed to demonstrate the indestructibility of
soul wholly from philosophical premises, as he has done with regard to its
death-lessness. Rather, he completes the proof by accepting from his respondent
a "postulate of faith," to use A. E. Taylor's apt expression. [15] Without further argument, the soul is
conceded to be essentially like the imperishable gods as well as the forms, and
the proof is brought to an end.
Thus, in the Phaedo the value of the Fourth Proof turns
out to depend as much upon the religious faith of the interlocutors as it does
upon their philosophical commitment to the Theory of Forms. Given Plato's
logical sophistication and dialectical ingenuity, we must assume that his
procedure in the Fourth Proof results from a conscious decision. And the fact
that the most elaborate proof in the dialectical section of the Phaedo is,
logically considered, a religious argument brings the Phaedo close, in this
respect, to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which complements its philosophical
discussions with frank demands upon the faith of its readers and listeners. [16]
Thus, in the Phaedo we have a conception of immortality
articulated rationally, but conceded to rest ultimately on faith. Dying is
viewed in the Phaedo as a physical event that does not obliterate the soul.
Only the philosopher knows this; others, ignorant of the true nature of soul
and mind and unable to use death to separate soul from body once and for all,
must return to be born and die many times. Deliverance results from achieving
self-recognition: realizing that one is essentially soul and that one' s fate
is to turn completely from the physical world, where everything is mutable.
Once the soul, which in turn is essentially mind, discovers its kinship with
the Forms and the fact that it is death-less, it will embrace the opportunity
to divest itself of the body. One prepares for death, according to the Phaedo,
by deliberately anticipating it over a long period of time, rehearsing the
physical act of dying by habitually denying all but the minimum claims of the
body, and maintaining one's confidence by means of appropriate philosophical
and imaginative activities.
Hence, we now appreciate the significance of the Phaedo
as a whole. The first, dialectical, section indicates the right uses of reason
in the presence of death; the second, or mythical passage, shows the right use
of imagination; while the final, dramatic, section presents Socrates' manner of
dying as the
p. 322
culmination of the philosophic life. The overall effect, which must be
considered as intended by Plato, is of a work designed to influence the actual
behavior of its readers. If I am correct in assigning this practical twist to
the Phaedo, we have uncovered still another aspect of its deep compatibility
with The Tibetan Book of the Dead. I wish I could linger over this stage of our
examination, but it is time to reverse our comparative process now, considering
The Tibetan Book beside the Phaedo, and deciding what insights into that great
Tibetan work result from the juxtaposition.
With regard to style and form, The Tibetan Book of the
Dead is most dissimilar to the Phaedo. The latter, like all of Plato's works,
was written for an elite, highly literate philosophic audience. The Tibetan
Book of the Dead is a breviary to be read to anyone who is actually dying. Its
plainly stated purpose is to guide the dying person, regardless of his
intelligence or past behavior, through all the states he may have to go through
during and after the death of the body. Just how many states he actually goes
through depends completely, according to The Tibetan Book, on his ability to
overcome the karmic propensities accumulated during his life. Most fortunate of
all is the individual who recognizes instantaneously while dying the true
nature of his being: for him, there are no succeeding Bardo states with their
trials and, of course, no rebirth. If one fails this first test, however, one
goes into the second Bardo state, where another opportunity to overcome one's
karmic propensities is presented, with a lesser, though still glorious reward
for success. Failing the second test, there is still another, and then another
and another until, if necessary, one is reborn on earth. At every stage, there
is an opportunity to arrest one's descent, but the trials become more fearsome
and the rewards relatively less desirable as the series of Bardo states
unfolds.
Complex as the details of trials and rewards are, the
organization of The Tibetan Book is classically simple, and its central
philosophical theses are a rigorous development of Mahaayaana Buddhist thought.
The states of the Bardo, with their visions and rewards or penalties, make up a
psychologically profound scale of events in the religious life. There are, to
be sure, peculiarities from a Western standpoint, but they need not be serious
barriers to understanding. The contents of the later, more earthbound visions
seem not merely strange but savage to someone unacquainted with "primitive"
art and culture. But they are completely appropriate, given the precision and
psychological realism of The Tibetan Book. Written long ago for Tibetans, and
at a time when Buddhism had just begun to supplant the indigenous religions, it
had to draw upon the Tibetan imagination as it actually was. Willing to deal in
as much detail with the lower levels of the spiritual life as with the
higher--a consequence of the fact that it was designed to be read to every kind
of dying person, bad and indifferently virtuous as well as saintly--it must
present horrifying as well as exalted visions.
Another seeming peculiarity is even easier to accept. In
Western religious
p. 323
literature, we are accustomed to accounts of ascent, not descent. The ladder
of the Symposium is described from the bottom up, the divided line and myth of
the cave in the Republic take us from illusion to reality; Augustine's
Confessions begins with his sinful infancy and youth and moves on to his
conversion, Dante's Divine Comedy proceeds from Hell through Purgatory and
thence to Paradise. But The Tibetan Book of the Dead commences with a
description of the highest state and then describes in detail the descent of
spirit.
Taken on its own terms, however, The Tibetan Book's reason
for placing the supreme vision first is proper and plausible--and brings us
back to the work's closeness to the Phaedo in certain key respects. The Tibetan
Book places the highest vision first, because one of its central positions is
that it is during the actual process of dying that the mind is most clear and
the individual therefore most capable of discovering his true nature. This is
why dying is a supreme opportunity for everyone, according to The Tibetan Book,
although like the Phaedo it argues that only the properly prepared individual
can take full advantage of this opportunity.
Like the Phaedo, The Tibetan Book presents certain
difficulties, though in its case the problems stem more from the nature of its
core philosophical positions rather than from any deliberate esoterism as is
the case with the Phaedo. For The Tibetan Book has as the basis for its
assertion that dying is really a glorious learning experience, a rigorous,
subtle, and difficult philosophy of reality and mind; and that philosophy must
be understood, at least in outline, if The Tibetan Book is to be appreciated
critically and compared exactly with the Phaedo. Fundamental to this position
on the nature of reality and mind is the concept of Voidness. Voidness is the
last and highest result of emptying one's consciousness. [17] It is also the final truth about
everything, since everything is void in the sense of being incapable of
subsisting independently, or withstanding the flood of time and events.
Voidness is thus both the supreme truth of self and the supreme truth of being.
Hence The Tibetan Book's view that when the dying person experiences voidness
he is discovering the nature of all reality. And according to The Tibetan Book,
that discovery is possible for most people only during the process of dying,
for it is only then that the average person is most free. During his life, he
was preoccupied with corporeal and emotional concerns; once dead, the habits
developed during life will obscure truth once again, as his disembodied
consciousness moves on through the various Bardo states.
Stated somewhat more technically and in language closer
to that of The Tibetan Book itself, Voidness is discovered through the
absorption of intellect (shes-rig) back into consciousness (rig-pa). [18] Throughout life, the intellect of
everyone who is not saintly has been wholly taken up with organizing concepts
about the phenomenal world. In its preoccupation, it has failed to recognize
its total indebtedness to consciousness, deep within the person and
inaccessible except to those who meditate devotedly.
p. 324
Thus, all but enlightened individuals have been ignorant
of the true nature of their own minds and selves. and in this ignorance they
have necessarily been ignorant too of the true nature of all beings. They have
allowed themselves to act as though they had always been destined merely to respond
to sensual and emotional impulses: they have never allowed themselves to
realize that without the creative activity of their own minds and the
illumination coming from their own consciousness there could be no cognitive
activity of any kind. Not knowing how to return voluntarily into themselves to
discover just who they are, their actions and thoughts have been only desperate
reactions.
The Tibetan Book recognizes two ways in which intellect
can be absorbed back into consciousness: through meditation and through dying.
It appears unique in that, unlike the Zen masters of Asia
and Milarepa, the great Tibetan poet-philosopher, it emphasizes the
universality and advantages of the ultimate self-discovery offered while one is
dying. The Tibetan Book agrees with other Mahaayaana texts in asserting that
the experience of voidness is both self-illuminating and blissful. It is
liberating or exalting, not frightening or depressing, to discover that
voidness is the basis of mind as well as of the phenomenal world, and that mind
and the world are thus identical au fond. But, as already mentioned, the
individual must be properly prepared; otherwise, his accumulated psychic and
moral momentum, or karman, will impel him to turn away to "escape from
freedom." Hence the need, according to The Tibetan Book too, for a
lifetime of preparation, or, lacking such preparation, faith in the guidance
offered by The Tibetan Book. Given its nonselective purpose, The Tibetan Book
is understandably more emphatic about the necessity of faith as an alternative
to knowledge of what leads to salvation; but when it is placed beside the
Phaedo, we can hardly fail to be reminded, not only of the implicit appeal to
faith in the Phaedo's Fourth Proof, but of Cebes' remarks earlier in the Phaedo
on the necessity of using a raft of human doctrine to sail through life if one
is vouchsafed neither the personal discovery of truth nor divine revelation. [19]
What can I say now more generally about The Tibetan Book
of the Dead vis a vis the Phaedo? On many points, it seems to me, The Tibetan
Book makes use of a more developed theory than that which is present in the
Phaedo. The Tibetan Book's distinction between consciousness and intellect; its
analysis of the discovery of reality as depending upon the absorption of
intellect back into consciousness; and its doctrine of karman--from the
standpoint of philosophical precision, these positions are technically more
finished than those of the Phaedo on comparable issues. I will say, then, that
one result of placing The Tibetan Book beside the Phaedo is an appreciation of
The Tibetan Book's greater explicitness on certain metaphysical and
psychological questions common to both works. The Phaedo suggests only
potentially a mind-only theory of reality; The Tibetan Book presents such a
position in a technically developed form. [20] On the other hand, the greater
familiarity of the Phaedo's views and
p. 325
its more evident divisions between technical and nontechnical material make
it much easier for the average reader to develop for himself a general model of
a mind-only theory of reality. [21] He is then better able to sort out
technical and nontechnical material in The Tibetan Book, which can otherwise be
overwhelming in its profusion of imagery and visions.
One advantage, then of juxtaposing The Tibetan Book and
the Phaedo is the help thus gained in understanding the former philosophically:
and as we make progress in such comprehension, we realize increasingly, I
believe, the extent to which The Tibetan Book presents us with a philosophically
mature theory of reality. That theory, like the Phaedo's, is even more
radically opposed today to that by which most people live---and in which they
frame their views on dying and death--than it was when The Tibetan Book was
written, perhaps a thousand years ago. But because of the systematic character
and technical finish of The Tibetan Book's philosophy, there results a powerful
critical challenge: to use it, only by way of contrast, in constructing a
better contemporary Weltanschauung, one which can be as effective as The
Tibetan Book seems to have been in encouraging an integrated, useful, and
exalted set of attitudes toward dying and death.
This is not the place to follow the path of inquiry, but
I can suggest here that for anyone who is interested in developing such a
practical ethic for dying The Tibetan Book can be inestimably suggestive; that
it will be valuable insofar as it is first understood precisely on its own
philosophic terms; and that one way of furthering one's understanding of it is
by considering it alongside of Plato's Phaedo.
In this article, I have attempted to demonstrate that
Plato's Phaedo and The Tibetan Book of the Dead are significantly and usefully
comparable. I have compared them by conducting a kind of philosophical thought
experiment, placing the Phaedo beside The Tibetan Book and seeing what results
with regard to comprehending the Phaedo, then reversing the process, placing
The Tibetan Book beside the Phaedo. I hope I have been successful in suggesting
that interesting discoveries can be made through such an approach.
We have seen that both the Phaedo and The Tibetan Book
insist that dying can be a positive experience, during which the individual has
a chance to discover truths about himself and the world which are difficult to
learn during life. According to both works, the discoveries thus possible are
so exalting that, given suitable preparation, dying can be anticipated as the
cognitive and spiritual culmination of life. Both works agree also, however,
that lifelong study and practice in self-discipline are required for there to
be assurance of such a culmination (they differ in the hope they offer to those
who have not rehearsed all their lives, the Phaedo mentioning no second
chances, The Tibetan Book offering a whole array of second chances to those who
have faith in its teachings).
Both books are practical in intent, though The Tibetan
Book is more evidently
p. 326
so; both are based upon positions in which mind is seen as infinitely higher
in value than body. The Phaedo is metaphysically, as well as ethically
dualistic; The Tibetan Book, though ethically dualistic too, is in a rather
subtle sense monistic in its metaphysics, or theory of reality, since it
explicitly ascribes all phenomena to mind, which it identifies in turn with
voidness. In sum, both books are ascetic in their ethics, and both oppose
themselves deliberately to common sense and naturalistic theories of reality.
The contemporary challenge presented by these works when taken
together seems to me to be serious and important. By way of conclusion, let me
outline that challenge as follows: If we are impressed favorably in any way by
the emphases of the Phaedo and The Tibetan Book of the Dead on dying as a
supreme cognitive and spiritual opportunity, how do we adapt their attitude to
our own needs? How far will we have to go in reconstructing our views on how we
should live? Is it possible that we will even have to modify our views on the
nature of reality? It may be that the American Way of Death is so intimately
associated with the American Way of Life that we cannot transform the first
without deeply altering the second--a thought which would only please Plato and
the author (or authors) of The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
NOTES
1. Plato, Phaedo, 63 E-67 E.
2. Phaedo, 107 D-114 C.
3. Cf. Maurice H. Cohen, "The Aporias in
Plato's Early Dialogues," Journal of the History of Ideas 23, No. 2
(April-June, 1962):163-174.
4. Cf. Maurice H. Cohen, "Un-Natural
Deduction in Plato's Phaedo," a paper presented at the 10th Annual
Congress of the Canadian Philosophical Association, Sherbrooke. Quebec, June 16, 1966.
5. Phaedo, 97 B-C.
6. Phaedo, 99 D-100 A.
7. Cohen, "Un-Natural Deduction in Plato's Phaedo."
8. Aristotle, De Anima, 480a. Cf. W. D. Ross,
Aristotle (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1923), pp. 148-153.
9. Dialectical section, Phaedo 70 C-107 B; Fourth
Proof, 95 B-107 A.
10. Phaedo, 70 D-E.
11. Phaedo, 75 B.
12. Phaedo, 80 A-B.
13. Phaedo, 105 E.
14. Phaedo, 106.
15. Plato (New York: The Humanities Press, 1926),
p. 206.
16. Cf. The Tibetan Book of the Dead, comp. and
ed. W. Y. Evans-Wentz (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 152.
17. Cf. Helmuth von Glasenapp, Die Philosophie der
Inder (Stuttgart: Alfred Koner Verlag, 1958), pp. 340-346.
18. Tibetan Book, p. 96.
19. Phaedo, 85 C-D; the terminology used in the
paraphrase is based on Fowler's translation, p.327, Plato with an English
Translation (Loeb Library), Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, trans.
by Harold North Fowler (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914).
20. Strictly speaking The Tibetan Book of the Dead
builds on certain consciousness only (cittamatra-vada) theories which had
appeared in Indian Buddhism. V. von Glasenapp, Die Philosophie der Inder, p.
247.
21. On the construction of interpretive models for
philosophic writing, see my paper, "Reflections on the Role of Philosophy
in Studying Other Cultures." Culture 29, (1968): 241-243.