Tibetan Buddhist Concepts of Death and Bardo

The text discusses how Padma Sambhava wrote this text and then hid it along with other texts in anticipation of political upheavals and Buddhist persecutions that would afflict Tibet shortly after. According to tradition, Padma Sambhava hid and scattered sacred writings throughout Tibet, waiting for someone to recover the tradition he had concealed after the political and religious upheavals. In particular, this Book on Bardo or intermediate state was found by the great "treasure discoverer" Karma Lingpa in the 14th century.

Tibetan Approach to Life and Death

First of all, to understand the meaning of this text, it is necessary to understand the spirit with which Tibetans related to life and death. The Tibetans of the 8th and 15th centuries lived in very different conditions from ours and with mental conceptions very distant from ours. For example, they didn't have cell phones, computers, internet, they lived in a place distant from the world that inclined them to reflection, internalization and spiritual meditations.

The first fundamental concept for understanding the Tibetan mentality towards death is that in the Tibetan perspective, anyone can die at any moment. Every day, for reasons unknown to us, could be the last and therefore in their perspective this life and this reality is not as solid and firm as in our culture. This life with this state of consciousness does not have preponderance over other states or Realms of Existence, it is not more real than other states of consciousness.

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, this world with this state of consciousness is recognized by the characteristic fact that the sky is blue and there is the sun with shining stars. While in other states of consciousness, for example, the sky can be green, leaden, or iridescent with the evanescent colors of the rainbow. For example, to make the deceased aware of being dead, in a passage from the book, the guide to the intermediate world tells the deceased to look at the sky with its five colors and says: "Here the sky is deep blue" to allow him to notice the difference.

Therefore, ordinary life does not have the absolute value or character that it has in the West. Death can strike at any moment and when death strikes, all earthly occupations, problems, infinite affairs that must be settled, accumulated goods, everything suddenly disappears. It no longer makes sense, loses meaning. Everything you have, that you have built in the world, that you have cared for as external to you, disappears. It no longer has any meaning. Everything you have, you must be ready to let go in an instant and remain with what you are. Everything loses meaning because it never had real meaning, it was all just an illusion, like a dream from which one awakens and which a moment later no longer makes sense.

Here then, for Tibetans, death assumed a very important meaning, central to their lives. The purpose of life in a certain sense was preparation for a good death because only at the moment of death was it possible, according to Tibetan belief, to abandon the world of Samsara, that is, "the fiery wheel of life" of beings imprisoned by Hatred, Craving and Ignorance and definitively transfer to the world of Nirvana where spirits live who feed only on Wisdom, Power and Love.

Phenomenology of Death

Let us briefly describe what happens at the moment of death according to Buddhist tradition. For the Buddhist tradition, at the moment of death the soul abandons attachment to every form and consciousness withdraws into itself no longer mitigated by the body. Here everything appears in the form of symbols, the forces that swim and live in the individual's consciousness or subconsciousness appear as symbolic forms similar to a dream state and can be luminous forms, dazzling lights and angels in relation to supernatural and transcendent forces that illuminate consciousness or they can be dark forms, opaque lights and demons for telluric states and forces.

Oh, noble being, the Great Glorious Watcher-Heruka, emerges from your own brain and shines vividly upon you; he is dark brown in color; with three heads, six hands and four feet firmly planted; the right face is white, the left, red, the central one dark brown; the body emits radiant flames; the nine eyes are wide open in a terrifying gaze; the eyebrows trembling like lightning, the teeth protruding, gleaming and overlapping; he emits violent cries and penetrating hisses; the hair is reddish-yellow, straight and radiant; the heads are adorned with dried skulls; with sun and moon; he has black serpents and a garland of freshly severed human heads around the body; the first right hand holds a wheel, the middle one, a sword and the last an axe; the first left hand, a bell, the middle one, a skull cap and the last a plowshare; [...] Do not fear this. Do not be frightened. Recognize this as the incarnation of your own intellect. Since it is your tutelary deity, do not be seized by terror.

All these visions, however, are visions dictated by the projection of telluric forces present in one's consciousness.

When the Changing Experience of Reality arises upon me, may every thought of fear or terror or dread for everything stand aside, may I recognize that whatever apparition is the reflection of my own consciousness, may I recognize that they are of the same nature as the apparitions of the Bardo: in this fundamental moment to achieve a great end, may I not fear the hosts of the Peaceful Deities and the Wrathful Deities, who are only my thought forms.

Although the apparitions are therefore subjective, it is also true that -as every individual to come to the world has passed through phases of formation and development of the physical body that have in some way dominated the first years of his life, in the same way the first...