Delog

Dawa Drolma, a great Vajrayana Buddhist lama and mother of Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, lived in Kham in Eastern Tibet. At the age of 16 she fell ill and died, but returned to her body and lived into her 30's. For the benefit of others, she recorded every detail of her experiences in the bardo and pure realms. Her daughter, T'hrinlay Wangmo, preserved the diary until 1987 when Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche brought it out of Chinese-occupied Tibet to be published in the West.

The Tibetan word delog (DAY-loak) refers to one who has crossed the threshold of death and returned to tell about it. For Delog Dawa Drolma, renowned as one of the great realization holders of Vajrayana Buddhism in this century, being a delog meant that she lay without any vital sign of breath, pulse, or warmth for five days. During that time the link between her mind and body was released and her consciousness journeyed to other realms of experience. What she saw then, recounted in these pages, engendered in her a limitless compassion for sentient beings.

"Delog Dawa Drolma’s account is as vivid as that of a tourist describing a country he or she has visited, yet hers is really a journey of consciousness through the pure and impure displays of mind. The delog experience is extraordinary, marvelous, even within the esoteric context of Tibetan schools of Vajrayana Buddhism. Yet Delog Dawa Drolma’s account has the power and immediacy of direct experience, and I trust that those who read it will find that the phenomena of the realms correspond to aspects of their own mind’s experience." ~ Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche from the introduction to Delog