Tibetan Book of the Dead Club Meeting #7: The Last Thing You Hear

This isn’t your average book club. Break open the Tibetan Book of the Dead with bardo scholar Ramon Prats and draw comparisons between the ancient text and modern-day perspectives on mortality.

Club Meeting #7: The Last Thing You Hear

Tibetan Buddhism and Native American traditions have several things in common, and Karen Waconda-Lewis believes practices from both cultures can work in harmony with Western medicine to better people’s lives and guide the transition to death. In this discussion she addresses the role that sound plays across cultures in the transformation from one state to another.

About the Speakers

Karen Waconda-Lewis is a native from Isleta/Laguna Pueblo. After initiation into Native medicine, she brought her expertise to an urban American Indian health clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and continues to expand the program to the Indian Health Service, VA and other local hospitals, hospice centers, and surrounding organizations. She joins Western medicine with Native healing in preventive health, mental health, and overall well-being. She is the founder and director of Center for Native American Integrative Healing, LLC, and Wa’Kanda Retreat and Spa, both located in Albuquerque, where other indigenous healers practice their traditional medicine and extend healing and ceremonies nationwide. She is a graduate of Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leaders and regularly provides dharma teachings integrated with Native teachings throughout New Mexico, as well as nationally. She has interlaced Native teachings with Vipassana teachings in ceremonies, sweat lodges, and into her community at Laguna Pueblo. At Laguna Pueblo the ancestral teaching of mindfulness complements Buddhist teachings at the detention center, giving insight and wellness to the inmates and families. She is co-founder of the Annual Indigenous and Native Healer’s Silent Retreats and the Albuquerque People of Color and Allies Sangha.

Ramon N. Prats was the first person to translate The Tibetan Book of the Dead into Spanish. He holds a doctoral degree in Tibetan Studies from the Oriental Institute of the University of Naples (Italy), where he was associate professor of Tibetan language and literature from 1980 to 1995. He was subsequently appointed professor of Buddhist studies at the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona (Spain). From 2006 to 2009 he was Senior Curator at the Rubin Museum of Art, where he organized an exhibition on the Bardo Thodrol, among others. Ramon Prats has more than 60 publications to his credit.