Bardo

Definition

Pronunciation: BAR-doh

Also spelled: Bar do, Antarabhava (Sanskrit), Chung-yu (Chinese)

Bardo literally means 'between two' or 'intermediate state' in Tibetan. While commonly associated with the period between death and rebirth, the term encompasses six distinct transitional states that include waking life, dream, meditation, the moment of dying, the luminous ground of reality, and the karmic process of becoming.

Etymology

The Tibetan bar (between, interval, gap) and do (two, pair) form a compound describing any in-between state. The Sanskrit equivalent antarabhava (antara meaning between, bhava meaning becoming or existence) appears in Abhidharma literature as early as the third century BCE, where it generated debate between Buddhist schools — the Sarvastivadins affirmed its existence while the Theravadins denied it. When Padmasambhava brought Vajrayana teachings to Tibet in the eighth century CE, the concept expanded from a post-death interval into a comprehensive framework for understanding consciousness in all transitional states.

About Bardo

Padmasambhava, the Indian tantric master who established Buddhism in Tibet in the eighth century CE, is credited with composing the Bardo Thodol — the Great Liberation through Hearing in the Intermediate State — which was concealed as a terma (hidden treasure text) and later discovered by Karma Lingpa in the fourteenth century. This text, known in the West as The Tibetan Book of the Dead since W.Y. Evans-Wentz's 1927 translation, presents the bardo not as a single state but as a series of opportunities for liberation that the consciousness encounters after physical death.

The six bardos, as systematized in the Nyingma tradition, map the complete cycle of consciousness. The bardo of this life (kyenay bardo) encompasses ordinary waking experience from birth to death. The bardo of dream (milam bardo) includes all sleep and dream states. The bardo of meditation (samten bardo) covers the states of absorbed concentration achieved during practice. The bardo of dying (chikhai bardo) spans the process of death itself. The bardo of dharmata (chonyid bardo) is the period immediately after death when the ground luminosity of reality manifests. The bardo of becoming (sipai bardo) is the karmic process that leads to the next rebirth. Each bardo is both a specific phase of experience and a metaphor for any moment of transition.

The bardo of dying (chikhai bardo) begins with the dissolution of the elements. Earth dissolves into water: the body becomes heavy, vision blurs, and the dying person feels as if sinking into the ground. Water dissolves into fire: fluids dry up, hearing fades, and emotions fluctuate. Fire dissolves into wind: body heat withdraws from the extremities, smell fades, and the sense of personal history begins to fragment. Wind dissolves into consciousness: breathing becomes labored, then ceases, and the taste faculty dissolves. Padmasambhava described these dissolutions with clinical precision, providing landmarks that both the dying person and their attendants can recognize.

At the moment of clinical death, the consciousness encounters what the Bardo Thodol calls the ground luminosity (od gsal) — the clear light of the mind's true nature, unconditioned and primordially pure. This is the most critical moment in the entire bardo cycle. A practitioner who has trained in recognizing the nature of mind during life — through Dzogchen, Mahamudra, or other awareness practices — can recognize this luminosity as their own nature and achieve liberation on the spot. Padmasambhava taught that this ground luminosity appears to every being at the moment of death, regardless of their spiritual training, but untrained minds fail to recognize it and are carried forward by the momentum of habitual patterns.

The bardo of dharmata (chonyid bardo) unfolds over approximately fourteen days in traditional accounts. During this period, the consciousness encounters a sequence of visions: the peaceful deities (shitro) appear first, radiating brilliant light that represents the pure qualities of the five buddha families. Each deity appears with its corresponding color, sound, and light. Simultaneously, a dim, seductive light appears representing the corresponding realm of samsaric rebirth. The untrained mind, terrified by the brilliant light and attracted to the dim light, turns away from liberation and toward rebirth. The Bardo Thodol is designed to be read aloud to the deceased during this period, reminding the consciousness that the terrifying and brilliant visions are projections of its own mind.

After the peaceful deities, the wrathful deities appear — the same enlightened energies in fierce form. Gampopa, in The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, explained that the wrathful deities represent the same wisdom as the peaceful deities but manifest with intensity proportional to the consciousness's resistance. The more the deceased clings to a sense of separate self, the more terrifying the appearances. The teaching instruction remains constant: recognize these visions as your own mind's display, and liberation is immediate.

The bardo of becoming (sipai bardo) is the final phase before rebirth. By this point, the consciousness has missed the opportunities for liberation offered in the previous bardos and is now driven by karmic winds toward a new birth. Padmasambhava described the experience as disorienting and chaotic: the consciousness has a mental body that can travel instantly to any location it thinks of, but it has no control over the karmic forces propelling it. It may see its former body, attend its own funeral, and attempt to communicate with the living without success. Eventually, it is drawn toward a copulating couple and, depending on its karmic momentum, enters a new womb.

The psychological reading of the bardos, developed by teachers including Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Francesca Fremantle, interprets each bardo as a description of mental states accessible in this life. The bardo of dying corresponds to any experience of letting go — the end of a relationship, the loss of a job, the dissolution of a belief system. The bardo of dharmata corresponds to the gap between the end of one experience and the beginning of the next — a moment of raw, unstructured awareness that occurs dozens of times each day but is almost always missed. The bardo of becoming corresponds to the habitual process by which the mind grasps at a new identity, a new project, a new narrative to replace the one that just ended.

The relationship between bardo practice and dream yoga is central to the Tibetan Buddhist approach. Since the dream bardo is structurally parallel to the after-death bardos — in both, the mind encounters its own projections without a physical body — training in lucid dreaming is considered direct preparation for navigating the post-mortem states. Naropa's Six Yogas, transmitted through the Kagyu lineage, include dream yoga as one of the six core practices, alongside tummo (inner heat), clear light yoga, illusory body, phowa (consciousness transference), and bardo yoga itself.

The practice of phowa (consciousness transference) provides a practical application of bardo teachings for the moment of death. In phowa, the practitioner trains to eject consciousness through the crown of the head at the moment of death, directing it toward a pure land — typically the pure land of Amitabha Buddha (Dewachen). This practice is considered a failsafe: if the practitioner cannot recognize the ground luminosity at the moment of death, phowa provides an alternative route to liberation. Signs of successful phowa practice include a softening or slight opening at the crown of the head, sometimes accompanied by a drop of blood or lymph.

Contemporary hospice work has drawn on bardo teachings through the influence of Sogyal Rinpoche's The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (1992) and the work of Christine Longaker. These teachers have adapted bardo principles for secular end-of-life care, emphasizing the importance of creating a calm environment for the dying, maintaining presence and love rather than panic, and understanding death as a transition rather than an ending. The bardo framework's most practical contribution to modern dying practices may be its insistence that consciousness persists after clinical death and that the quality of the environment — sounds, words, emotional atmosphere — matters during and after the dying process.

Significance

The bardo teachings represent Tibetan Buddhism's most detailed and systematic account of what happens to consciousness during and after death. No other contemplative tradition has produced a comparable roadmap of the dying process, the post-mortem states, and the specific practices designed to navigate them.

Philosophically, the bardo framework extends the Buddhist teaching of impermanence to its most radical conclusion: not only is everything changing, but the transitions between states are themselves the primary opportunities for awakening. This reframes death from an ending to be feared into a transition to be prepared for, and it reframes every moment of change in daily life as a potential gap in which habitual mind can be recognized and released.

The bardo teachings have had a disproportionate influence on Western reception of Tibetan Buddhism, beginning with Evans-Wentz's 1927 translation. Carl Jung wrote the psychological commentary for that edition, recognizing in the bardo framework a map of psychic transformation that paralleled his own understanding of individuation. In the contemporary period, the bardo teachings have influenced hospice care, psychedelic research (Leary, Metzner, and Alpert's 1964 The Psychedelic Experience was explicitly modeled on the Bardo Thodol), and the emerging science of near-death experiences.

Connections

The bardo teachings connect directly to the practice of rigpa (pure awareness) in Dzogchen: the ground luminosity that appears at the moment of death is rigpa itself, and a lifetime of Dzogchen practice is preparation for recognizing it. Tonglen (giving and taking) is recommended as a practice that can be maintained through the bardos, sending compassion to all beings who share the confusion of the intermediate states.

The bardo of dharmata, in which the consciousness encounters brilliant visions that are projections of its own mind, parallels the Zen teaching that all phenomena are expressions of buddha-nature. The concept of upaya (skillful means) applies directly to the bardo: the practice of reading the Bardo Thodol to the deceased is an upaya adapted to the specific conditions of the after-death state. The tulku tradition depends on bardo mastery — recognized reincarnates are understood to have navigated the bardos consciously rather than being swept along by karmic momentum. The Tibetan Buddhism section places the bardo teachings within the broader Vajrayana path.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does the bardo between death and rebirth last?

The traditional Tibetan Buddhist account gives a maximum of forty-nine days (seven weeks) for the complete after-death bardo cycle, based on the Abhidharmakosha of Vasubandhu. The bardo of dharmata unfolds in the first fourteen days as the peaceful and wrathful deities appear. The bardo of becoming occupies the remaining time as karmic momentum drives the consciousness toward rebirth. However, duration in the bardo is not experienced linearly — without a physical body, the consciousness has no stable reference for time. Some beings may be reborn almost immediately if their karmic momentum is strong, while highly realized practitioners may remain in the clear light state for extended periods. The forty-nine-day framework structures the ritual practices performed by the living for the deceased.

Can bardo practices help with ordinary life transitions, not just death?

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche emphasized that the six bardos describe psychological states accessible in every moment of ordinary life. The bardo of dying occurs whenever something ends — a relationship, a job, an identity, a belief. The bardo of dharmata is the gap between the end of one experience and the habitual grasping for the next — a moment of raw, open awareness that occurs constantly but is almost always missed. The bardo of becoming is the compulsive process of constructing a new narrative to replace the one that just dissolved. Recognizing these patterns in daily life is considered direct training for the after-death bardos: if you can maintain awareness during the small deaths of ordinary experience, you are building the capacity to maintain awareness during the great transition.

Do you have to believe in rebirth for the bardo teachings to be useful?

Many contemporary teachers, including Francesca Fremantle and Judy Lief, present the bardo teachings as a psychological map that does not require literal belief in rebirth to be valuable. The six bardos describe universal patterns of consciousness: how the mind clings to stability, how it responds to groundlessness, how it constructs new identities after dissolution, and how moments of clear awareness arise in the gaps between habitual patterns. Whether or not consciousness literally survives bodily death, the bardo framework provides a sophisticated understanding of how the mind navigates transition, loss, and uncertainty. The practical instructions — maintaining awareness, recognizing projections as one's own mind, not grasping at the familiar — apply directly to any moment of significant change.