PATIENT
Bardo Thodol
SCHOOL
Nyingma, a terma (treasure text)
ATTRIBUTED TO
Padmasambhava, 8th century
REVEALED
By Karma Lingpa, 14th century
CHIEF COMPLAINT
What happens at death, and what can a living person do now to be ready for it?
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS
A Nyingma Buddhist text attributed to Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche), the 8th-century master who brought Vajrayana Buddhism to Tibet. According to tradition he composed it and hid it, and the treasure-discoverer Karma Lingpa revealed it in the 14th century. It is designed to be read aloud to a dying or recently deceased person at the moment the veils of ordinary consciousness are thinning. The guide reads it on three levels at once: as liturgy, as a contemplative map for the living, and as a psychological document. All three are valid and reinforce each other.
REVIEW OF SYSTEMS
THE THREE BARDOS
Dying (the clear light), the nature of reality (peaceful and wrathful deities), and becoming (moving toward rebirth). Each is an opportunity for recognition.
CLEAR LIGHT
At the moment of death the ground luminosity dawns: vast, open, empty, brilliantly clear. Recognizing it as your own nature is liberation.
DEITIES
Forty-two peaceful deities over seven days, then fifty-eight wrathful deities over days 8–14. Identical in nature: the display of your own mind.
SIX REALMS
Dull lights lead toward rebirth in the gods, demigods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts and hell realms. They feel comfortable because they match habit.
PREPARATION
The bardos map onto daily life: dreamless sleep, dreaming, and waking. Dream yoga trains recognition in the easier version.
PHYSICAL EXAM — STYLE & STRUCTURE
- —Rigpa is pure awareness, the mind's primordial nature: empty, luminous, unobstructed.
- —The five poisons recognized as awareness are the five wisdoms. Not recognized, they are the causes of wandering.
- —The text is not magic. It cannot liberate someone with no practice as reliably as someone who has trained.
- —Jung wrote the psychological commentary for the Evans-Wentz translation in 1935 and read it as a process of individuation.
- —Structurally parallel to other traditions in the library: the Upanishads on dissolution into the Atman, the Phaedo on philosophy as practicing death.
ASSESSMENT & PLAN
Read the orientation, then the clear light, then the Three Bardos of Living, before the long middle sections. Treat it as a map you are being given in advance, and read it while you are healthy. It is a non-denominational reference guide, and a book about death is useful to the living. The full guide recommends Chögyam Trungpa and Francesca Fremantle (Shambhala), Sogyal Rinpoche's The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying for contemporary context, and Robert Thurman for scholarly apparatus.