Tibetan Book Of The Dead: Bardo Between Death & Rebirth

This episode of the podcast Letting Grow is all about the most famous part of the death and rebirth cycle in Tibetan Buddhism: the bardo between death and rebirth also called the bardo of becoming. We start with a summary of the traditional description of this bardo state, in which we’re said to have a mental body. This bardo is said to be a dreamlike state in which we’re blown around by our thoughts and emotions (like daily life, but more so).

Transcript

Today's episode is all about the most famous part of the death and rebirth cycle in Tibetan Buddhism,

The bardo between death and rebirth,

Also called the bardo of becoming.

I'll summarize the traditional description of this bardo state in which we're said to have a mental body,

And we start off still connected with the identity of the life that just finished,

And we end up connecting with the life we're about to begin.

It's said to be a dreamlike state in which we're blown around by our thoughts and emotions,

Which sounds like daily life sometimes,

But more so.

There are two books I highly recommend if you want to read more on this bardo state,

Tulku Tundup's Peaceful Death,

Joyful Rebirth,

And Dzogchen Phuong Phuong Phrai's Mind Beyond Death.

If you're new to all this,

Peaceful Death,

Joyful Rebirth is an easier one to start with,

And you'll find the names of both books in the show notes.

Teachings about this bardo state offer us some lessons for transitions,

Too.

For instance,

In the bardo of becoming,

We start off still thinking of ourselves as the person who just died,

And it takes a while to realize that life is over.

In a transition,

It sometimes takes a while to realize that we've finished a stage of our lives,

And stop spending our energy looking back.

And as we get ready to leave the bardo of becoming,

We start to have visions related to the lifetime we're about to enter.

Similarly,

As we move through the in-between stage of a transition,

We may find ourselves preparing for what comes next,

And beginning at least to know what we'd like for the next chapter of our lives.

And as is always true,

The more we can stay awake and aware,

The better we're able to say yes to situations that feed our souls,

And no to what drains us.

I hope today's episode sheds some light on this super important part of the cycle of transitions.

Welcome to Letting Grow,

The podcast about one of the spiritual journey's most difficult and courageous moments,

Letting go of who we think we should be,

So we can grow into who we most deeply are.

I'm your host,

Claire Villareal,

And I appreciate your joining me today.

This week we've arrived at the bardo of becoming,

Which is what most people think of when they think of the bardo.

So it's kind of the most famous bardo state,

The one that you're most likely to have already heard of,

And it's also the one that lasts the longest,

Other than the bardo of this life,

Obviously,

In this process of death and rebirth.

So there's a lot to talk about this week.

For starters,

I want to address the question that I know I had coming into my study of this bardo,

Which is why is it called the bardo of becoming?

Like,

Why not the in-between bardo or something like that?

And okay,

Technically,

Bardo means in between,

So every bardo state is an in-between state,

But you know what I mean,

Like this is a long stay in between the end of the death process and the beginning of the birth process.

So in Mind Beyond Death,

Dzogchen Ponglam Burmache,

Basically says it's called the bardo of becoming because anything can arise in this state.

There are descriptions of visions that you might have in this state,

And also at the end of the bardo of becoming,

You're growing into your next lifetime.

So it really is a state in which everything is possible,

Nothing is nailed down,

And one way or another,

Something very new is definitely going to come out of it.

So this bardo begins when we wake up out of the bardo of clear light.

If you recall from the teaching on the bardo of clear light,

Unless we are highly advanced meditators,

Which probably most of us are not,

The bardo of clear light is likely to pass just in a moment like that.

So most of us are not really going to have these detailed experiences and everything that gets described in the texts.

So for most of us,

It's going to be a moment.

It'll be probably a bit disorienting and confusing because we don't even know what we're experiencing.

Hint,

We're experiencing our Buddha nature and the ultimate nature of reality.

But if we're not used to that,

It just feels overwhelming.

And then we pass out and when we wake up,

We are in the bardo of becoming.

And it said that when we wake up into this bardo,

We have what's called a mental body.

So there's no physical body to keep us kind of anchored in one place.

But we do have a sense that we have a body.

And I'll talk about this a bit more later.

But it said that in the beginning of this bardo of becoming,

That mental body takes the shape of the body we had in our previous life.

So if you've ever watched The Matrix,

They have these sort of training simulators.

So people go into virtual reality,

And they're just digital.

There's no like physical body to them,

But they have what they call the residual self image.

So however people think of themselves as looking,

That's how they look in this training simulator and also in The Matrix.

So if that's helpful,

It's a little pop culture reference there to help understand the bardo of becoming.

So this bardo state is said to last for up to 49 days.

And the reason for that is that it's kind of divided into seven seven day periods.

And I don't know why that is.

But the idea is that every seven days,

If the bardo being hasn't already been drawn into its next lifetime,

It has a little mini death and a little mini birth,

You wake back up again in this bardo of becoming,

And you live out your next seven days in this bardo of becoming.

And you actually read different things in different accounts of this bardo.

For example,

One explanation I've heard of how long a day is,

Is that in the beginning of the bardo of becoming,

A day is about equal to the length of time that a day would have been in the bardo being's previous life.

So if you were human,

It'd be seven days,

And you'd be living out your next seven days in this bardo of becoming.

So if you were human,

It'd be something like 24 hours.

If you were,

I don't know,

A mosquito or fruit fly,

It might be a much shorter period of time.

But like,

Really,

At the end of the day,

Days are more about the experiences that we have during that time and less about the exact amount of time.

Like for instance,

A fruit fly or a mosquito lives fewer days,

But maybe it experiences just as much stuff as I do.

I don't know.

And then during the second half of the bardo of becoming,

Which is where we're beginning to be more oriented toward our next lifetime,

The teaching is that at that point,

The days we experience would be more like the days of our lifetime to come.

And if we're talking about a human experience versus a fruit fly experience,

Like those are probably pretty similar in the grand scheme of things.

But Buddhists also think in terms of other realms of existence.

And for instance,

In the God realm,

Which is where you go if you have a lot of great merit that you've accumulated,

A day can last for eons,

It can just last on and on and on and on.

So in that case,

The traditional explanation would be,

Maybe during the second half of this bardo of becoming,

Your seven days in a seven day period would last for eons.

Who knows how literally to take that,

But that is what the tradition says.

Because the bardo of becoming is said to last for about 49 days.

That's why in Tibetan culture and in some other cultures around the world,

Too,

Actually,

People will do special practices for someone who's recently died,

Especially for the first 49 days after they pass.

And especially every week,

They might do special rituals or extra practice.

Coming back to the bardo being as they go as we go through the bardo of becoming,

There's said to be in a mental body.

And so that means that we're not necessarily perceiving through physical senses.

So we perceive the world differently,

And we interact with the world differently,

Too.

So it's said that we can see without external light,

Wherever we think of,

We just go there.

So we move very easily.

And we have some amount of clairvoyance,

Too.

I'll talk in a moment about this idea that a bardo being can just move with thought.

And this clairvoyance that a bardo being is said to have allows them to know what the people who were close to them in their previous life are thinking or feeling,

Especially as it relates to them,

To the person who's recently passed away.

So one of the instructions for trying to support someone who has recently died and might be in this bardo state is actually to try and have positive thoughts,

Positive feelings,

Especially toward them.

And obviously,

We might have complicated relationships with people,

But as much as we're able to,

Focusing on the good aspect of our relationship with them could actually be helpful to them if they're in this in-between state and they're,

You know,

Very sensitive to what we're saying.

Coming back to the idea of a mental body,

One of the big characteristics of the bardo of becoming is that we're blown around more easily by our thoughts because we don't have a physical body to anchor us anymore.

So although it's said that during this in-between state of the bardo of becoming,

It's more clear to us that appearances are just that,

You know,

All these different appearances arise and they cease,

It's not actually said to be a great time to practice because it's like being in an incredibly distracting environment.

Like if we already have a strong meditation practice,

That might be a great time to practice and it might be a great way for us to strengthen our existing practice.

But if we're just starting out and we're in the middle of time square,

For instance,

It's pretty unlikely that we're going to be able to rest our mind successfully on the object of our choosing.

So that's why training and recognizing everything as just appearances,

Recognizing impermanence,

Recognizing things change in this lifetime can be so helpful,

It's said,

For the bardo of becoming.

Because we don't have a physical body and our mind is just blown around so easily,

It's said to be difficult to remember experiences that we're having.

So for instance,

Someone might wake up in this bardo state and see their dead body,

Their accounts of this in Tulku Tundup's book,

Peaceful Death,

Joyful Rebirth,

That has these really interesting accounts,

They're called deluk accounts,

Which is Tibetan for someone we might say has had a near-death experience,

Someone who seemed to be dead and comes back.

So there's really interesting stories there,

I highly recommend checking that out if you're interested.

But basically Tulku Tundup has stories about people who have passed away,

It seems,

And then in this bardo of becoming,

They see their body,

They see their relatives around it,

So in that moment they recognize that they're dead.

But because their mind is tossed around so much in this bardo of becoming,

They forget that they've died.

So they might later think about their friends or their family or their loved ones and they just show up there and they might feel as though they're at the table with their family,

And the family is eating but they don't set a place for them,

And they try to tell them,

Hey I'm hungry,

And the family doesn't pay attention to them,

And the little bardo being can become upset by this and really feel,

You know,

Lonely or hurt,

Or even if they realize that they've died,

They might feel like they're all alone,

They can't contact their loved ones from their previous life.

So Tulku Tundup actually writes this really interesting passage,

And this is,

I read this on Kindle,

So it's from location 2198,

But it's in the chapter on the bardo of becoming.

He says,

How should we handle the bardo?

First,

It is very important to verify whether we are really dead or not,

So we must look for certain signs.

Look into a mirror or water.

If you don't have a reflection,

You are dead.

Walk on sand or in snow.

If there are no footprints,

You are dead.

Go into the sun or walk in the light.

If there is no shadow beside your body,

You are dead.

If people are not responding to you,

If they are not even looking at you,

Or if they are not serving you any food,

That is not their fault,

Nor are they angry with you.

It is because you are dead.

You are dead.

I really enjoyed reading that little passage,

And I was also struck by how some of those criteria for knowing if you're dead,

They seem to apply to like vampires and you know different supernatural creatures from western folklore,

So I don't know if there's something going on with that.

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Now let's get back to the good stuff.

Part of what's also interesting to me is that that list of ways that you can check and see if you're dead is kind of similar to the ways you can check and see if you're dreaming.

So if you've ever tried to cultivate lucid dreams,

One of the things you can do is during the day to walk around thinking,

Am I dreaming?

Am I dreaming?

You could use any of these techniques,

Trying to look at a mirror,

Seeing if you're casting a shadow,

Something like that,

And then you can look at the other techniques.

So if you're trying to do that,

And just train in it during the day,

And then at night,

If you've planted the habit of wondering,

Is this a dream or am I dead,

Then in your dreams,

You might have a moment when you wonder,

Oh,

Is this a dream?

Am I dead?

And you can check and see if you're dead or if you're dreaming.

Dreams actually are a really good analogy for this bardo of becoming,

Because a lot of the things that are described in this bardo state really sound a lot like dreams.

So I mentioned earlier that there's this idea that,

Especially in the first part of the bardo of becoming,

We might be drawn toward people we knew and were close to in our previous life.

So we might be seeing our family or seeing our body.

But what's interesting is that in some of Tulku Tundeop's accounts of these dhelog,

Tibetan near-death experiencers,

They'll report seeing their body,

But they might see it in a different way.

So they might see it as the body of a dead snake or the body of a dog.

So there's an interesting mixing of something that we might call veridical,

Or they're actually experiencing something that's happening in the world,

But it takes on a dream-like quality.

And we'll talk about this a bit later,

But as we go through the bardo of becoming,

Those experiences of people and places we were related to in the previous life,

They become less and less literal,

So to speak,

And more and more dreamlike.

And then toward the end of the bardo of becoming,

We might start having visions of the life that's to come.

Another thing that's really interesting here,

Speaking of Tulku Tundeop and the dhelog stories that he tells,

Is that there's actually a pretty substantial body of research by a team at the University of Virginia on cases of children who claim to remember previous lives.

And the thing that strikes me in this context is that some of those children do actually talk about,

For instance,

Going to their funeral or hanging around their family or their old home after their previous personality died.

So it seems to kind of validate what the teachings are saying,

That somehow in this mental body,

We're still kind of hanging out in the places and with the people that were associated with the lifetime that's just ended.

As we start moving,

Though,

Into the second half of the bardo of becoming,

It's said that we lose some of that identification with the previous lifetime,

And the experiences that we're having become more oriented toward our next lifetime.

So in the bardo of clear light,

It's said that we,

You know,

See different visions and Buddhas and whatnot may appear to us,

Bright lights.

In the bardo of becoming,

What actually leads us on to our next lifetime is when we see dull lights of different colors.

So remember,

In the Buddhist world,

You can be reborn into any one of six realms of existence.

And I'll have a whole other episode on this,

So I'm not going to go into it in too much detail now.

But those realms are in order of like worst to best,

The hell realm,

Where if your life has been dominated by hatred and anger,

You come back and you're just basically tormented for a period of time approximating forever,

You know,

We're talking thousands of years here potentially.

The next one up is the hungry ghosts in which if you've been stingy your entire life,

Now you have a hard time finding food and drink and it's just a constant state of deprivation.

The next level up is the animal realm.

So those we know we can see animals,

The suffering there is that they don't necessarily know what's going on and they're often eaten or exploited by either other animals or by human animals.

The next one up is the human lifetime,

Which is said to be the best one for realizing our true nature because we have enough comfort and enough enjoyment that we're not just constantly trying to find food the way animals are,

But at the same time we still have enough suffering that we're motivated to try to find a way out of suffering.

The next step up from there is called the demigods and these are folks who have so much wealth,

So much pleasure,

But they're not gods,

That's the next step up from them.

So they spend basically their entire extremely long life fighting to get what the gods have.

And finally there's the god realm and this is basically the Buddhist would say all the Hindu deities,

Sorry Hindus,

Are not really the ultimate source of creation or the ultimate powers in the world,

But they've just been reborn into this god realm where they have a very long life,

They have all these special powers,

They have all this personal beauty,

It's just a very idyllic sounding existence,

But the thing is they have no motivation to practice,

So they're just basically using up all of their good karma but they're not producing any more good karma.

So once that lifetime is over and they've used up all their good karma,

Their next lifetime is not so great.

So that's the traditional presentation of the six realms,

Like I said I'll get into it more and in ways that can also be understood metaphorically and sort of brought into daily existence,

Whether or not you understand it literally as well.

So basically we see lights of different colors and the lights are kind of dull and it makes them cozier,

We're more likely to be drawn toward them to feel a certain affinity for say a yellow light or a red light or something like that and to be drawn that way and then that leads us into whichever realm we're going to be born into next.

It's also said that we might start having types of visions that would indicate what lifetime we're going to have next and again Buddhists are thinking of this in the same way they're thinking of this in terms of the six realms of existence.

But if we're going to have a human rebirth for instance,

As we get toward the end of the bardo of becoming,

We might see a human couple copulating and we might be drawn toward one of them,

Like sexually attracted toward them and jealous of the other one and that moment of emotional engagement is what draws us into that relationship with them and into the little egg that's supposedly just gotten fertilized and basically our consciousness passes out again and when we come to we're that developing baby.

One thing about this description though that's really interesting is that it said that if we can keep our wits about us in the in-between state in this bardo of becoming,

Then we have the opportunity to kind of evaluate these different potential parents and see if we like them or if they'd be a good fit.

So we're not just automatically drawn into the first opportunity to get reborn.

We might be able to wait it out for a bit and choose something that's really better for us than just whatever happens to come up first.

So I want to come back to that later.

That's more or less a thumbnail sketch of the bardo of becoming.

So how does that bardo of becoming apply to the in-between states in the cycle of transitions?

We've talked about how things fall apart in a transition.

We've talked about moments of clarity that we might have in that process.

But for a lot of people,

One of the most difficult parts of a transitional process is staying in that in-between state rather than just grabbing onto the first opportunity to develop something new.

And that,

I think,

Is one of the most interesting lessons we can take from teachings on the bardo of becoming.

Like I just mentioned,

There's this thought that if we can be aware that we're in the bardo of becoming,

Keep our wits about us enough,

Then we have the opportunity to choose,

At least to choose not to be reborn into certain families or certain situations.

And I think that really applies as well to these in-between states that we go through in the process of transition.

It's really uncomfortable and difficult,

Emotionally speaking,

To stay in between,

To really have let go of an old way of being,

An old identity,

And to not have something new yet.

And to me,

That's where it's really valuable to realize I am in a transitional state.

What I do now is really important for helping to shape the next period of my life.

If we can recognize that we really have an opportunity to be deliberate,

To make choices about what we want to do next,

Then it's much more likely that the next chapter in our life is going to align with our values.

It's going to be something that we really appreciate and love and can grow into as opposed to just being the first way out of that spacious,

Scary in-between state that we happen to come across.

So having said that,

Part of the reason that the teaching on what to do in the Bardo of Becoming,

Namely recognize that what you're experiencing is dreamlike in a certain way,

And recognizing that you have the possibility right now of really choosing your next steps deliberately instead of just falling into something,

All of that is true in part because there are some important characteristics that are similar between the Bardo of Becoming and that in-between stage of transitions.

So first of all,

In both of those,

We've really lost the daily routine that grounds us,

That lets us know what we should be doing now,

And that often holds together our sense of identity.

If we've lost a job,

For instance,

Then the whole structure of our day and the structure of our week,

Of going somewhere,

Of doing a particular type of work,

All of a sudden we don't have that anymore to hold together our sense of time and our sense of self.

And the loss of that sense of a solid or a well-defined self,

A well-defined identity is really similar to the Bardo of Becoming.

Especially in the beginning of that Bardo state,

We feel as though we should still be that old person that we were.

And part of what's really difficult about leaning into the in-between stage of transitions is that it really is about letting go of who we used to be,

Who we feel that we should be still.

And depending on the transition that you're going through,

There might be more or less of that sense of having lost an identity and trying to just get solid ground under our feet again.

But I do think that it's an important characteristic of that period in a transition.

Finally,

In that in-between stage of a transition,

If we can recognize that it's a temporary stage,

That there's benefit we can get out of it,

But also that if we sort of lose consciousness,

So to speak,

We're going to miss an opportunity,

It can really help us to take advantage of that in-between state.

It can help us grow by realizing our discomfort with not having a solid sense of identity around us.

It can honestly help us get rid of some old pieces of our identity that maybe we should have already gotten rid of a long time ago.

But because something else has fallen out of our life,

Suddenly it opens up the space and the opportunity to evaluate everything else in our life and kind of give us an opportunity to rebuild part of ourselves from the ground up.

So I hope it's helpful to get a little bit of an overview of this Bardo of Becoming and then also some ideas on how we can connect the teachings on the Bardo of Becoming to an in-between state in the process of transition,

If that's where we are right now.

So I hope that if you take away nothing else from this episode,

You'll remember that this in-between state,

Whether it's the Bardo of Becoming or in the process of transitions,

Represents a big opportunity.

It can be scary,

It can be unsettling,

But it's also a chance to be deliberate,

To make some conscious choices about who we want to be going forward.

And at the end of the day,

It can be a space of tremendous freedom,

Especially if we can remember that that's what's going on and it's not going to last forever.

Thanks for coming along for today's exploration of the process of letting grow.

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Please share it.

And subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts so you're always in the loop.

For links to more content related to today's episode,

Please see the show notes.

See you again next week.

Reviews

Very interesting, thanks for sharing ☺️

Quite applicable considerations for our life as it continues before death. Additionally, simple, direct, considerations dealing with seemingly complex confusing transitions elsewhen.

Thank you so much for that such clarity you offered 🙏

Insightful and easy to understand. Thank you 🙏✨️💕

Wow! This was so much content and little fluff. Thank you so much for sharing. I am new at learning about Buddhism and all entails, and this was a fantastic layout in regards to Bardo of becoming. Even bought the suggested book. Look forward to listening to more!

Stunning reflections on the bardo of becoming - heartfelt thank you 🙏 🙏 🙏 💜

Thank you 🙏