Trungpa Rinpoche: Bar means "in-between" or "gap" or "the middle," and do means "island," so altogether bardo means "that which exists between two situations." It is like the experience of living, which is between birth and death.
Student: What is not bardo?
Trungpa: The beginning and the end. [Laughter]
"The Bon religion of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism both maintain that crucial moments of transition are charged with great spiritual potential, especially the intervening moments between death and rebirth. This intermediate period, called bardo, is a state of suspended reality in which the deceased are presented with a series of opportunities for recognition of the true nature of Reality. ....Both versions are classified as a type of literature known in Tibetan as tö-dröl or "that which liberates through hearing alone" (thos grol).... the instructions of the Liberation upon Hearing are meant to be read out loud by a teacher, after a person has died, to help guide him or her through the bewildering sensations of the bardo experience."
The Buddhist Text....."The Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Intermediate State"..... (bar do thos grol chen mo)....Karma Lingpa discovered several hidden texts (terma) on top of Mount Gampodar....Karma Lingpa (ཀརྨ་གླིང་པ་, Wyl. karma gling pa) (b. 1326) was a 14th century tertön who revealed the Shyitro Gongpa Rangdrol cycle, from which come the teachings on the six bardos and the Bardo Tödrol Chenmo, the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead..... ....From among these texts he found a collection of teachings entitled The Self-Emergence of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities from Enlightened Awareness (zhi khro dgongs pa rang grol), which included the texts of the now famous Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo.
The Bon Text...."The Lamp that Illuminates the Liberation upon Hearing"....The Oral Tradition
Tibetan: sNyan brgyud bar do thos grol gsal sgron chen mo
Author: Dampa Rangdröl.....Dam pa rang grol ye shes rgyal mtshan (b.1149 A.D.)
Then, the doctrine is mystically revealed in the mind of that discipleâs future reincarnation (e.g., Kundröl Drakpa) ...This famous mind treasure of Kundröl Drakpa offers a detailed presentation of the standard Bon-po doctrines on death, intermediate state, and rebirth, with special emphasis on the symbolism of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities that appear in the Bardo of Reality.
In the early eighteenth century, the great Bon-po treasure revealer (tertön) Rikdzin Kundröl Drakpa (Rig 'dzin Kun grol grags pa, b.1700) had a series of mystical visions of Dampa Rangdröl (Dam pa rang grol, b.1149), the twelfth century author of the "Bon-po Book of the Dead." In these visions, Dampa Rangdröl awakened in Kundröl Drakpa's mind the teachings contained in the scriptural treasure (terma) entitled The Peaceful and Wrathful Deities: A Collection of Visionary Revelations. This form of revelatory transmission is called a "mind treasure" or gongter (dgongs gter).
The Bon Text is more or less parallel in content to that of the more familiar Tibetan Book of the Dead....The instructions on the bardo from the oral tradition of Zhangzhung Valley, which is traced back to the master Tönpa Shenrap, founder of the Bon religion, are among the oldest recorded concerning knowledge of the intermediate state in Tibet....the Bon text being nearly two centuries older than its Buddhist counterpart, symbolism, and iconographic personality....the many Bon-po deities, of course, have different names.....
"According to the Bardo Thodol, upon dying the dead are “presented with a series of opportunities for recognizing the actual “truth” (de-bzhin-nyid) of that moment...Following one’s death the mind is separated from the body for 49 days and the dead are confronted with bardo visions of many wrathful deities.... If the person is able to distinguish these visions as simply “mental projections reflective of the previous life’s thoughts and deeds then it is said that Buddhahood will be attained”. If the person cannot make this distinction then he is led to an eventual rebirth and consequently further suffering in cyclic existence (“samsara”)."
The word bardo literally means "an interval between two things." Bar means 'interval' and do means 'two'. We can think of this interval in a spatial or temporal way. If there are two houses, the space between them is a bardo. The period between sunrise and sunset, the interval of daylight, is a bardo. A bardo can be of long or short duration, of wide or narrow expanse.
The six kinds of bardo that we experience as human or sentient beings in samsara can be changed for the better, but the power to do this lies in the waking state. It is in the bardo of our present lives that we can make the most progress in developing the ability to deal effectively with all the others. What we usually mean by the word, bardo, however, is the 'Bardo of Becoming', the phase of hallucinations before new physical conception.
From an absolute level, the mind that perceives a deity and the deity itself are not two separate things, but are essentially the same.
The six bardos are the six major phases of experience for any being wandering in the cycle of rebirth. In every one of them the practice of Dharma is of the greatest possible value, for through it we can purify ourselves of confusion, obscurations, and negative emotions, and further develop our awareness and merit.
{This intermediate period, called bardo, is a state of suspended reality in which the deceased are presented with a series of opportunities for recognition of the true nature of Reality. If the deceased persons are capable of recognizing the confusing and often frightening bardo visions as simply their own mental projections reflective of the previous life's thoughts and deeds (karma), the ongoing cycle of birth and death will be overcome.....Failure to recognize these appearances, on the other hand, leads eventually to rebirth and further suffering in cyclic existence (samsara)."
1. Bardo between Birth and Death.....che shi bar do.....The waking existence is the first great bardo on our experience, the 'Bardo between Birth and Death' ('che shi bar do')....The six kinds of bardo that we experience as human or sentient beings in samsara can be changed for the better, but the power to do this lies in the waking state. It is in the bardo of our present lives that we can make the most progress in developing the ability to deal effectively with all the others.....
2. Dream Bardo..... mi lam bar do.....The bardo of the dream state, which lasts from the moment we go to sleep at night until the moment we wake in the morning is another example. The state of consciousness that obtains during that interval is termed the 'Dream Bardo' ('mi lam bar do').
The Moment of Death...Death occurs as a result of one of three causes: reaching the end of one's lifespan, exhausting one's meritorious energy, or meeting with an untimely event, such as a sudden accident.....the final moment of the dying process is marked by the sudden and dramatic appearance of the radiant clear light....the fundamental mind of clear light is said to exist beginninglessly and continuously in each individual through each lifetime and into Buddhahood itself.
"It has been said that the clear light experience can only happen in the moment of death, when you begin to separate from physical being. At the moment of separation between consciousness and the physical body, you begin to develop the idea of clear light as spontaneous experience. In that perception of clear light, if you are a meditator who meditated before, you begin to see the clear light and you begin to recognize it, as in the analogy of son meeting mother."(Trungpa)
In Bon....According to the ritual texts, the moment just after death marks the beginning of a critical period in which the corpse becomes vulnerable to attacks by demons.....These evil beings may enter the body and reanimate it, in some cases assuming the form of a zombie or ro-lang (ro langs, "a corpse that has risen").....To guard against such attacks the corpse is watched continuously as the exorcism is performed. ....A small "ransom effigy" or lü (glud) is carefully crafted and decorated in a manner that will entice the demon and lure it away from the corpse.
....By reciting certain magical spells from the exorcism texts, the officiating Bon-po lama tricks the demon into entering the lifeless effigy and traps it there, rendering it powerless....This demon trap is then carted away in a carnival-like celebration that involves beating drums and shouting loudly to frighten the helpless demon out of the community.
The whole death process takes about 20 minutes. There are some situations in which it takes much shorter, specifically in accidents. The process remains the same, but it will be much faster then in case of a natural death......Once the consciousness has left the body, it does not hold the memory of the past life any more. So when it leaves the body, it can remain a certain amount of time around the body or in a room, without necessarily connecting to the dead body. When it comes out, it sees a dead body, it doesn’t connect necessarily, “Oh, this was me”. This is a concept, which was gone in the dissolution process. Nevertheless, when there is a very emotional environment: when there are people crying a lot, very emotionally, close to the body, naming the body, recalling his quality, who he was, .....For an ordinary person, the trauma of death produces a state of unconsciousness, which lasts for an indefinite time: it may be very brief or quite long. Traditionally, this period of blackout is considered to last three and a half days. Afterwards, the consciousness of the individual begins to awaken again and experience things in a new way. The interval of unconsciousness into which the mind is plunged by the trauma of death, and which lasts till the awakening of consciousness again, is referred to in Tibetan as the 'chö nyi bardo', the interval of the ultimate nature of phenomena; here the mind is plunged into its own nature, though in a confused or ignorant way.
3. "Bardo of Reality" or Chö-nyi Bardo (chos nyid bar do)....." the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities that appear in the Bardo of Reality. .....Those who have not practiced during their lives will fail to recognize the clear light at death and will digress into the intermediate state known as the "Bardo of Reality" or Chö-nyi Bardo (chos nyid bar do), wherein the deceased experiences the visions of the one hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deities......
Peaceful Deities....seven days after the initial appearance of the radiant clear light of death, the deceased awakens in the bardo, confused and bewildered by a stunning array of lights and visions.....On the fourteenth day, this peaceful mandala dissolves into the mandala of the fifty-eight Wrathful Deities."
Wrathful Deities....On the fourteenth day, this peaceful mandala dissolves into the mandala of the fifty-eight Wrathful Deities. These Deities manifest also in the same circular pattern of their peaceful counterparts, only now each Deity appears in its terrifying form. As blood-drinking, flesh-eating demons, the Wrathful Deities symbolize the intensity or "violence," if you will, of liberation, understood here as the compassionate "murdering" of the neurotic and distorted thoughts and emotions that trap human beings in the ongoing cycle of rebirth. Some more contemporary sources assert that the Deities, in both their quiescent and frightening forms, are not really gods in the traditional sense. They are actually symbolic manifestations of psychological states in the inner space of human awareness. If the deceased is capable of properly identifying these Deities as projections of the mind and as manifest reflections of past karma, he or she will merge with the enlightened consciousness that these images represent.
"In the third bardo the soul encounters the Lord of Death, a fearsome demonic deity who appears in smoke and fire, and subjects the soul to a Judgment. If the dead person protests that he has done no evil, the Lord of Death holds up before him the Mirror of Karma, "wherein every good and evil act is vividly reflected." Now demons approach and begin to inflict torments and punishments upon the soul for his evil deeds. The instructions in the Bardo Thodol are for him to attempt to recognize the Voidness of all these beings, including the Lord of Death himself; the dead person is told that this entire scene unfolding around him is a projection from his own mind. Even here he can attain liberation by recognizing this.....The soul who is still not liberated after the Judgment will now be drawn remorselessly toward rebirth.
For ordinary beings the 'chö nyi' bardo is experienced as a period of deep unconsciousness following the moment of death. There is no mental activity or perception, only a blank state of fundamental unconsciousness.
(The possibility exists of achieving liberation during the instant of confronting the mandalas of the deities......If this liberation does not happen in the interval between the 'chö nyi' bardo and the 'Bardo of Becoming', the benefits of receiving empowerment and understanding teachings about the nature of the after-death experience, that of the 'Bardo of Becoming'. This means that we can either experience a positive rebirth in the cycle of samsara or, in some cases, achieve existence in what we term the 'Buddha Realms', a great and sure step towards ultimate Enlightenment....The experience of confronting the mandalas of the deities takes place only briefly and if the opportunity is lost, then the mind enters the 'Bardo of Becoming'. Here the situation becomes roughly analogous to what we experience now - many varied impressions continually arise in the mind and we cling to them, taking them all to be ultimately real. This hallucinatory state is traditionally said to last for a period of forty-nine days before the consciousness takes physical form again as an embryo. At the end of each week there is the trauma of realizing that we are dead and our minds plunge into another state of unconsciousness like the one immediately after death, but not quite as intense. After each of these very short periods of unconsciousness, consciousness returns, and once more the mandalas of the deities present themselves, but now in a fragmentary and fleeting way. The successive opportunities afforded by these appearances are not as great as at the first stage, but the possibility of liberation does recur throughout the after-death experience.)
"Several days after the visions of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities have subsided, the deceased acquires a mental body complete with all five senses, enters the "Bardo of Becoming" or Sipa Bardo (srid pa bar do), and begins his or her descent to a new birth......The 'chö nyi' bardo ends with the first glimmer of awareness in the mind. In the interval between the end of the 'chö nyi' bardo and before the beginning of the 'si pa' bardo there arises what is called the 'Vision of the Five Lights'. The appearance of these is connected with the five elemental qualities.
4. "Bardo of Becoming" or Sipa Bardo (srid pa bar do).....Several days after the visions of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities have subsided, the deceased acquires a mental body complete with all five senses, enters the "Bardo of Becoming" or Sipa Bardo (srid pa bar do), and begins his or her descent to a new birth.....From the moment of this reawakening of consciousness (the end of 'chö nyi bardo') to the moment we take actual physical rebirth in one of the six realms of samsara, is known as the 'si pa bardo', the 'Bardo of Becoming'.
the Bardo of Becoming details this third and final bardo state, in which the visions that now appear become increasingly associated with physical rebirth and culminate with the onset of prenatal experience.....The text relates that just prior to entering the womb at the instant of conception the bardo-being perceives its future parents in sexual embrace....Being desirous, it rushes toward this vision, grows angry at either the mother or father (depending on whether it is to be born female or male), and in this emotionally agitated state makes the connection to its new life."
the 'chö nyi' bardo ends with the first glimmer of awareness in the mind. In the interval between the end of the 'chö nyi' bardo and before the beginning of the 'si pa' bardo there arises what is called the 'Vision of the Five Lights'. The appearance of these is connected with the five elemental qualities.
While in the Bardo of Becoming leading to the event of rebirth, the bardo-being experiences the manifestations of the previous life's accumulated karma and undergoes a series of disturbing sensations that create intense fear and confusion. At this late stage, full liberation from samsara is practically unattainable and thus the deceased must strive to achieve a suitable rebirth in one of the six realms of existence--that of the gods, demi-gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, or hell-beings. Ideally, the most favorable realm would be that of human beings, but actually to achieve this world is no easy task. In the bewildering state of the bardo, most beings usually have very little control over their behavior. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that the deceased gain outside assistance from a ritual expert or lama in order to receive the guidance necessary for insuring an auspicious rebirth within the six realms.
5. Bardo of Meditative Stability....The Bardo of Meditation....sam ten bar do......Another example is a state of meditation: when someone who practices begins to meditate effectively, there is a certain change in consciousness; when that person rises from the meditation and goes about wordly activities again, there is a cessation of that state of consciousness. The interval of actual formal meditation is called the 'Bardo of Meditative Stability', 'sam ten bar do'.
"In order to survive in that meditative state of the world of heaven, there is the experience of the clear light. In Tibetan it is called samten bardo. Samten means meditative state, in other words, complete absorption in the clear light, or the perception of luminosity." (Trungpa)
6. Bardo of Gestation.....che nay bar do..... The sixth bardo we distinguish is the 'Bardo of Gestation', 'che nay bar do'. This interval begins at the end of the 'Bardo of Becomnig' when the consciousness of the being unites with the sperm and egg in the womb of the mother and lasts until the time of physical birth, the beginning of the 'Bardo between Birth and Death'.
Sources:
TRANSCENDING MADNESS.....by Chogyam Trungpa.....(1971)....https://www.beezone.com/Trungpa/transcendingmadness/transcendingmadness3.html
The Six Bardos and Five Elements by Ven. Kalu Rinpoche (1982)
http://www.near-death.com/religion/buddhism/tibetan-book-of-the-dead.html......
https://tibettalk.wordpress.com/2007/12/07/bardo-thodol-the-tibetan-book-of-the-dead/......December 7, 2007 .....By: Jigme Duntak
The process of dying, intermediary state and entering the next life.....http://www.dharmaling.org/en/teachings/38-death-bardo-and-rebirth....Lama Tubten Shenpen Rinpoche - Teaching in Ljubljana, part of a series of teachings on the Lam Rim.
https://explore.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/show/dead/texts/transitions1.....https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/mistic/bardo_thodol05.htm.....UniversityOfVirginiaLibrary Website
The Bon-po funeral ceremonies....Death Rituals of the Tibetan Bonpos and Bonpo Funeral Rites Eliminating All Evil Rebirths
Tara's Enlightened Activity: An Oral Commentary on the Twenty-One Praises to ...By Khenchen Palden Sherab...(Google Books)
The Dharma: That Illuminates All Beings Impartially Like the Light of the .......By Khenpo Kalu Karma-Ran-Byun-Kun-Khyab-Prin-Las...(Google Books)
The Mirror of Mindfulness is a classic Tibetan text on bardo by Tse-le Natsok Rangdröl (rTse le sna tshogs rang grol, b.1608),
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