BARDO IS A TIBETAN WORD that simply means a “transition” or a gap between the completion of one situation and the onset of another. Bar means “in between,” and do means “suspended” or “thrown.” Bardo is a word made famous by the popularity of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Since its first translation into English in 1927, this book has aroused enormous interest among psychologists, writers, and philosophers in the West, and has sold millions of copies.
The title Tibetan Book of the Dead was coined by its compiler and editor, the American scholar W. Y. Evans-Wentz, in imitation of the famous (and equally mistitled) Egyptian Book of the Dead.1 The actual name of the book is Bardo Tödrol Chenmo, which means the “Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo.” Bardo teachings are extremely ancient and found in what are called the Dzogchen Tantras.2 These teachings have a lineage stretching back beyond human masters to the Primordial Buddha (called in Sanskrit Samantabhadra, and in Tibetan Kuntuzangpo), who represents the absolute, naked, sky-like primordial purity of the nature of our mind. But the Bardo Tödrol Chenmo itself is part of one large cycle of teachings handed down by the master Padmasambhava and revealed in the fourteenth century by the Tibetan visionary Karma Lingpa.
The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is a unique book of knowledge. It is a kind of guide book or a travelogue of the after-death states, which is designed to be read by a master or spiritual friend to a person as the person dies, and after death. In Tibet there are said to be “Five Methods for Attaining Enlightenment Without Meditation”: on seeing a great master or sacred object; on wearing specially blessed drawings of mandalas with sacred mantras; on tasting sacred nectars, consecrated by the masters through special intensive practice; on remembering the transference of consciousness, the phowa, at the moment of death; and on hearing certain profound teachings, such as the Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead is destined for a practitioner or someone familiar with its teachings. For a modern reader it is extremely difficult to penetrate, and raises a lot of questions that simply cannot be answered without some knowledge of the tradition that gave birth to it. This is especially the case since the book cannot be fully understood and used without knowing the unwritten oral instructions that a master transmits to a disciple, and which are the key to its practice.
In this book, then, I am setting the teachings, which the West has become familiar with through the Tibetan Book of the Dead, in a very much larger and more comprehensive context.
Because of the popularity of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, people usually associate the word bardo with death. It is true that “bardo” is used in everyday speech among Tibetans for the intermediate state between death and rebirth, but it has a much wider and deeper meaning. It is in the bardo teachings, perhaps more than anywhere else, that we can see just how profound and all-encompassing the buddhas’ knowledge of life and death is, and how inseparable what we have called “life” and what we have called “death” truly are, when seen and understood clearly from the perspective of enlightenment.
We can divide the whole of our existence into four realities: life, dying and death, after-death, and rebirth. These are the Four Bardos:
1. The natural bardo of this life spans the entire period between birth and death. In our present state of knowledge, this may seem more than just a bardo, a transition. But if we think about it, it will become clear that, compared to the enormous length and duration of our karmic history, the time we spend in this life is in fact relatively short. The teachings tell us emphatically that the bardo of this life is the only, and therefore the best, time to prepare for death: by becoming familiar with the teaching and stabilizing the practice.
2. The painful bardo of dying lasts from the beginning of the process of dying right up until the end of what is known as the “inner respiration”; this, in turn, culminates in the dawning of the nature of mind, what we call the “Ground Luminosity,” at the moment of death.
3. The luminous bardo of dharmata encompasses the after-death experience of the radiance of the nature of mind, the luminosity or “Clear Light,” which manifests as sound, color, and light.
4. The karmic bardo of becoming is what we generally call the Bardo or intermediate state, which lasts right up until the moment we take on a new birth.
What distinguishes and defines each of the bardos is that they are all gaps or periods in which the possibility of awakening is particularly present. Opportunities for liberation are occurring continuously and uninterruptedly throughout life and death, and the bardo teachings are the key or tool that enables us to discover and recognize them, and to make the fullest possible use of them.
One of the central characteristics of the bardos is that they are periods of deep uncertainty. Take this life as a prime example. As the world around us becomes more turbulent, so our lives become more fragmented. Out of touch and disconnected from ourselves, we are anxious, restless, and often paranoid. A tiny crisis pricks the balloon of the strategies we hide behind. A single moment of panic shows us how precarious and unstable everything is. To live in the modern world is to live in what is clearly a bardo realm; you don’t have to die to experience one.
This uncertainty, which already pervades everything now, becomes even more intense, even more accentuated after we die, when our clarity or confusion, the masters tell us, will be “multiplied by seven.”
Anyone looking honestly at life will see that we live in a constant state of suspense and ambiguity. Our minds are perpetually shifting in and out of confusion and clarity. If only we were confused all the time, that would at least make for some kind of clarity. What is really baffling about life is that sometimes, despite all our confusion, we can also be really wise! This shows us what the bardo is: a continuous, unnerving oscillation between clarity and confusion, bewilderment and insight, certainty and uncertainty, sanity and insanity. In our minds, as we are now, wisdom and confusion arise simultaneously, or, as we say, are “co-emergent.” This means that we face a continuous state of choice between the two, and that everything depends on which we will choose.
This constant uncertainty may make everything seem bleak and almost hopeless; but if you look more deeply at it, you will see that its very nature creates gaps, spaces in which profound chances and opportunities for transformation are continuously flowering—if, that is, they can be seen and seized.
Because life is nothing but a perpetual fluctuation of birth, death, and transition, so bardo experiences are happening to us all the time and are a basic part of our psychological makeup. Normally, however, we are oblivious to the bardos and their gaps, as our mind passes from one so-called “solid” situation to the next, habitually ignoring the transitions that are always occurring. In fact, as the teachings can help us to understand, every moment of our experience is a bardo, as each thought and each emotion arises out of, and dies back into, the essence of mind. It is in moments of strong change and transition especially, the teachings make us aware, that the true sky-like, primordial nature of our mind will have a chance to manifest.
Let me give you an example. Imagine that you come home one day after work to find your door smashed open, hanging on its hinges. You have been robbed. You go inside and find that everything you own has vanished. For a moment you are paralyzed with shock, and in despair you frantically go through the mental process of trying to recreate what is gone. It hits you: You’ve lost everything. Your restless, agitated mind is then stunned, and thoughts subside. And there’s a sudden, deep stillness, almost an experience of bliss. No more struggle, no more effort, because both are hopeless. Now you just have to give up; you have no choice.
So one moment you have lost something precious, and then, in the very next moment, you find your mind is resting in a deep state of peace. When this kind of experience occurs, do not immediately rush to find solutions. Remain for a while in that state of peace. Allow it to be a gap. And if you really rest in that gap, looking into the mind, you will catch a glimpse of the deathless nature of the enlightened mind.
The deeper our sensitivity and the more acute our alertness to the amazing opportunities for radical insight offered by gaps and transitions like these in life, the more inwardly prepared we will be for when they occur in an immensely more powerful and uncontrolled way at death.
This is extremely important, because the bardo teachings tell us that there are moments when the mind is far freer than usual, moments far more powerful than others, which carry a far stronger karmic charge and implication. The supreme one of these is the moment of death. For at that moment the body is left behind, and we are offered the greatest possible opportunity for liberation.
However consummate our spiritual mastery may be, we are limited by the body and its karma. But with the physical release of death comes the most marvelous opportunity to fulfill everything we have been striving for in our practice and our life. Even in the case of a supreme master who has reached the highest realization, the ultimate release, called parinirvana, dawns only at death. That is why in the Tibetan tradition we do not celebrate the birthdays of masters; we celebrate their death, their moment of final illumination.
In my childhood in Tibet, and years afterward, I have heard account after account of great practitioners, and even of seemingly ordinary yogins and laypeople, who died in an amazing and dramatic way. Not until that very last moment did they finally display the depth of their realization and the power of the teaching they had come to embody.3
The Dzogchen Tantras, the ancient teachings from which the bardo instructions come, speak of a mythical bird, the garuda, which is born fully grown. This image symbolizes our primordial nature, which is already completely perfect. The garuda chick has all its wing feathers fully developed inside the egg, but it cannot fly before it hatches. Only at the moment when the shell cracks open can it burst out and soar up into the sky. Similarly, the masters tell us, the qualities of buddhahood are veiled by the body, and as soon as the body is discarded, they will be radiantly displayed.
The reason the moment of death is so potent with opportunity is because it is then that the fundamental nature of mind, the Ground Luminosity or Clear Light, will naturally manifest, and in a vast and splendid way. If at this crucial moment we can recognize the Ground Luminosity, the teachings tell us, we will attain liberation.
This is not, however, possible unless you have become acquainted and really familiar with the nature of mind in your lifetime through spiritual practice. And this is why, rather surprisingly, it is said in our tradition that a person who is liberated at the moment of death is considered to be liberated in this lifetime, and not in one of the bardo states after death; for it is within this lifetime that the essential recognition of the Clear Light has taken place and been established. This is a crucial point to understand.
I have said that the bardos are opportunities, but what is it exactly about the bardos that makes it possible for us to seize the opportunities they offer? The answer is simple: They are all different states, and different realities, of mind.
In the Buddhist training we prepare, through meditation, to discover precisely the various interrelated aspects of mind, and to skillfully enter different levels of consciousness. There is a distinct and exact relation between the bardo states and the levels of consciousness we experience throughout the cycle of life and death. So as we move from one bardo to another, both in life and death, there is a corresponding change in consciousness which, through spiritual practice, we can intimately acquaint ourselves with, and come, in the end, completely to comprehend.
Since the process that unfolds in the bardos of death is embedded in the depths of our mind, it manifests in life also at many levels. There is, for example, a vivid correspondence between the degrees in subtlety of consciousness we move through in sleep and dream, and the three bardos associated with death:
Of course the bardos of death are much deeper states of consciousness than the sleep and dream states, and far more powerful moments, but their relative levels of subtlety correspond and show the kind of links and parallels that exist between all the different levels of consciousness. Masters often use this particular comparison to show just how difficult it is to maintain awareness during the bardo states. How many of us are aware of the change in consciousness when we fall asleep? Or of the moment of sleep before dreams begin? How many of us are aware even when we dream that we are dreaming? Imagine, then, how difficult it will be to remain aware during the turmoil of the bardos of death.
How your mind is in the sleep and dream state indicates how your mind will be in the corresponding bardo states; for example, the way in which you react to dreams, nightmares, and difficulties now shows how you might react after you die.
This is why the yoga of sleep and dream plays such an important part in the preparation for death. What a real practitioner seeks to do is to keep, unfailing and unbroken, his or her awareness of the nature of mind throughout day and night, and so use directly the different phases of sleep and dream to recognize and become familiar with what will happen in the bardos during and after death.
So we find two other bardos often included within the natural bardo of this life: the bardo of sleep and dream, and the bardo of meditation. Meditation is the practice of the daytime, and sleep and dream yoga the practices of the night. In the tradition to which the Tibetan Book of the Dead belongs, these two are added to the Four Bardos to make a series of Six Bardos.
Each of the bardos has its own unique set of instructions and meditation practices, which are directed precisely to those realities and their particular states of mind. This is how the spiritual practices and training designed for each of the bardo states can enable us to make the fullest possible use of them and of their opportunities for liberation. The essential point to understand about the bardos is this: By following the training of these practices, it is actually possible to realize these states of mind while we are still alive. We can actually experience them while we are here now.
This kind of complete mastery of the different dimensions of mind may seem very hard for a Westerner to comprehend, but it is by no means impossible to attain.
Kunu Lama Tenzin Gyaltsen was an accomplished master, who came originally from the Himalayan region of northern India. When he was young he met a Lama in Sikkim, who advised him to go to Tibet to pursue his studies of Buddhism. So he went to Kham in eastern Tibet, where he received teachings from some of the greatest Lamas, including my master Jamyang Khyentse. Kunu Lama’s knowledge of Sanskrit earned him respect and opened many doors for him. The masters were keen to teach him, in the hope that he would take these teachings back to India and pass them on there, where they knew the teachings had almost disappeared. During his time in Tibet, Kunu Lama became exceptionally learned and realized.
Eventually he did return to India, where he lived as a true ascetic. When my master and I came to India on pilgrimage after leaving Tibet, we searched for him everywhere in Benares. Finally we found him staying in a Hindu temple. No one knew who he was, or even that he was a Buddhist, let alone that he was a master. They knew him as a gentle, saintly yogin, and they offered him food. Whenever I think of him, I always say to myself, “This is what St. Francis of Assisi must have been like.”
When the Tibetan monks and Lamas first came into exile, Kunu Lama was chosen to teach them grammar and Sanskrit at a school founded by the Dalai Lama. Many learned Lamas attended and studied with him, and they all considered him an excellent language teacher. But then one day someone happened to ask him a question regarding the teaching of Buddha. The answer he gave was extremely profound. So they went on asking him questions, and they found that whatever they asked, he knew the answer. He could in fact give any teaching that was asked for. So his reputation spread far and wide, and in no time at all he was teaching members of each of the different schools their own unique traditions.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama then took him as his spiritual guide. He acknowledged Kunu Lama as the inspiration for his teaching and practice of compassion. In fact, he was a living example of compassion. Yet even when he became well known he did not change. He still wore the same simple old clothes, and he lived in one small room. When anyone came and offered him a gift, he would make a present of it to his next visitor. And if someone cooked for him, he would eat; if not, he would go without.
One day a master whom I know well went to visit Kunu Lama, to ask him some questions about the bardos. This master is a professor, extremely well-versed in the tradition of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and experienced in the practices connected with it. He told me how he asked his questions, and then listened, spellbound, to Kunu Lama’s reply. He had never heard anything like it before. As Kunu Lama described the bardos, it was so vivid and precise that it was as if he were giving someone directions to go to Kensington High Street, or Central Park, or the Champs Elysées. It was as if he was actually there.
Kunu Lama was pointing out the bardos directly from his own experience. A practitioner of his caliber has journeyed through all the different dimensions of reality. And it is because the bardo states are all contained within our minds that they can be revealed and freed through the bardo practices.
These teachings come from the wisdom mind of the buddhas, who can see life and death like looking in the palm of their hand.
We too are buddhas. So if we can practice in the bardo of this life, and go deeper and deeper into the nature of our mind, then we can discover this knowledge of the bardos, and the truth of these teachings will unfold in us by itself. That is why the natural bardo of this life is of the utmost importance. It is here and now that the whole preparation for all the bardos takes place. “The supreme way of preparing,” it is said, “is now—to become enlightened in this lifetime.”