Bardo in Tibetan means “intermediate state” or “transitional period.” In the context of teachings on the bardo, it mainly denotes the period between this life and the next.

According to Buddhism, after you die there will be a bardo, a transitional period, and then you will take rebirth in another life.

For your present life you have lots of correct and incorrect ideas and information about how you are living and what you are experiencing.

But you have no idea about and very little interest in your dying and your future lives. Yet you are here for only a few days, months, or years, and then you will be in the bardo and future lives for ever and ever.

At this time, the most worthwhile thing for you to do is to learn how you will be traveling through the bardo to your future lives, and especially how you can turn those lives into everlasting joy and wisdom, for yourself and for others.

Before going into a summary of the bardo, I would like to make a couple of points clear.

First, in Tibetan Buddhist scriptures there are many detailed descriptions and classifications of the bardo, but it is not necessarily the case that every being will experience the same processes unfolding in the bardo. A few years after birth, a Western child goes to school, then college, then work, then gets married, then has children, and ends with retirement. But not every human being goes through this same life process. The descriptions in the following pages just represent the experiences of a good many average people, most of whom are undergoing a natural death.

Second, in many Tibetan Buddhist scriptures, the bardo is classified into six separate bardos [bardos of life (birth), dream, absorption dying, ultimate nature and becoming], and in other texts four are given. Here we will be speaking in terms of the four bardo system.

Third, although the actual bardo is the state between two lives, between this life and the next, the scriptures have also considered our present life itself to be a bardo. For while bardo exists between two phases of life, it is illusory in nature and involves wandering without a reliable body and fixed place to stay—characteristics that apply to this life, too, in many ways.

You may think, “I am so and so, and am living in my house with my family,” but in fact you are just spending some time in this guest-house-like body of yours, in a bubblelike place.

You are gathered with family and friends, like seasonal travelers, because of the forces of your karma, which brought you together like dried leaves collected together in a corner by the autumn wind.

Yet soon you will depart to different directions and will never return to each other, not even to these most cherished bodies of yours. So, your present life is akin to a bardo, a dreamlike state, and that is why the scriptures have classified it as a bardo.

Finally, if you recognize the true nature of the mind and appearances in any of the four bardos, you will not go on to the next stage of bardo, as you will be instantly liberated and attain Buddhahood.

The four bardos are the bardo of life, meaning our present life, the bardo of dying, the bardo of ultimate nature, and the bardo of becoming.

Source: Tulku Thondup. Edited by Harold Talbott. Enlightened Journey: Buddhist Practice as Daily Life. Boston and London: Shambhala Publications, 1995.

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