The Bardo: Tibetan Teachings on the Between-State

The bardo is a central concept in Tibetan Buddhist teaching, describing the intermediate state between death and rebirth and the series of experiential phases through which consciousness passes in that interval. The word comes from the Tibetan bar (between, intermediate) and do (two, island). While the term has a broader usage referring to any transitional state of consciousness, it is most familiar in its application to the post-death experience, where it serves as one of the most detailed descriptions of what happens after physical death available in any spiritual tradition.

The teaching of the bardo is not merely theoretical. In Tibetan Buddhist practice, understanding and internalizing the bardo teachings serves a practical purpose: the states that are encountered after death are understood to be substantially the same as states accessible in certain forms of meditation, in the dream, and at the moment of falling into deep sleep. By practicing recognition in these accessible states during life, the practitioner prepares to recognize and navigate what would otherwise be an overwhelming and disorienting post-death experience.

History and origins

The most famous bardo text is the Bardo Thodol, commonly rendered in English as the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It is classified as a terma, a hidden treasure text, and is attributed to the Indian tantric master Padmasambhava, who is said to have hidden it in Tibet in the eighth century for discovery when the time was right. It was discovered by Karma Lingpa in the fourteenth century and subsequently became one of the most widely copied and studied texts in Tibetan Buddhism.

The text was introduced to Western readers through Walter Evans-Wentz’s 1927 English translation, “The Tibetan Book of the Dead,” which included a commentary by the Jungian psychologist Carl Jung who interpreted the bardo experiences as maps of the unconscious. This framing, while influential, represents one interpretive layer among many; Tibetan practitioners understand the text in the context of a living tradition of practice and teacher-student transmission rather than as a psychological metaphor.

Subsequent translations include those by Chogyam Trungpa and Francesca Fremantle (1975) and Sogyal Rinpoche’s extensive commentary in “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” (1992), which has become the most widely read introduction to the subject for general Western audiences.

The bardo teaching is not exclusive to the Bardo Thodol. Related teachings appear throughout the Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, and Gelug traditions, and the older Bon tradition maintains its own extensive parallel framework. The specific details of each lineage’s teaching vary, but the core structure is consistent.

The six bardos

Tibetan teaching distinguishes six bardos, of which three pertain specifically to the death-to-rebirth transition and three to the living state.

The three bardos of life:

The bardo of this life (kyenay bardo) refers to the entire span of ordinary waking experience from birth to death. It is a bardo in the sense that ordinary life itself is a transitional state between other modes of existence.

The bardo of sleep and dreaming (milam bardo) refers to the nighttime states of deep sleep and dreaming. Dream yoga works directly with this bardo, developing the recognizing awareness that will be needed in the post-death bardos.

The bardo of meditation (samten bardo) refers to the altered states accessed in deep meditative practice, where analogues of the post-death luminosities can be directly experienced.

The three bardos of death:

The bardo of dying (chikhai bardo) begins at the onset of the death process. As the physical body ceases to function and the subtle energies withdraw, the practitioner encounters the clear light of dharmata in its most brilliant and open form. The teaching holds that this is the moment of the greatest opportunity for liberation: if the dying person can recognize this clear light as the nature of their own mind and rest in it without grasping or fear, liberation is achieved directly, without entering the further bardos. For those who do not recognize it, it arises again in subtler form, and then the transition into the next bardo occurs.

The bardo of dharmata (chonyid bardo) follows if liberation has not occurred at the first opportunity. In this bardo, consciousness encounters what the texts describe as the peaceful and wrathful deities: fifty-eight deities in their wrathful forms and forty-two in their peaceful forms. These appear in vivid, brilliant colors and sounds that can be terrifying in their intensity. The teaching is that all of these beings are projections of the deceased’s own mind and that recognizing them as such allows for liberation. The “deities” in this context are understood not as external beings but as the natural luminous energies of one’s own awareness taking form.

The bardo of becoming (sipai bardo) is the final phase before rebirth. Consciousness, not having recognized liberation in the earlier bardos, moves through this state, drawn by karma toward conditions for rebirth. The text provides guidance for choosing a favorable rebirth if liberation remains beyond reach.

In practice

Within Tibetan tradition, the bardo teachings are not abstract philosophy but the basis for a systematic practice curriculum spanning the Six Yogas of Naropa, dream yoga, phowa (consciousness transference), and various forms of meditation. The practitioner prepares for death through an entire lifetime of practice aimed at cultivating the recognition that will be needed in the critical moments of the bardo.

For practitioners outside the Tibetan tradition, the bardo teachings offer one of the world’s most elaborated maps of post-death consciousness, and engaging with them thoughtfully and respectfully within their own context is valuable. Reading the primary texts alongside authorized commentaries gives the richest understanding.

The teaching’s deepest message, applicable to practitioners of any tradition, is that the quality of awareness cultivated during life directly shapes the quality of experience in any state of consciousness, including and especially the states encountered in dying. A lifetime of practice developing stable, clear, compassionate awareness is the most reliable preparation for whatever comes after death.

In myth and popular culture

The Bardo Thodol, rendered in English as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is among the most widely read texts from any non-Western spiritual tradition in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Walter Evans-Wentz’s 1927 translation introduced the text to Western readers alongside a commentary by Carl Jung, who interpreted the bardo stages as a map of the unconscious mind. Jung’s framing, while distinctly different from the Tibetan tradition’s own self-understanding, made the text accessible to readers without a background in Tibetan Buddhism and contributed significantly to its influence in Western psychology and counterculture.

Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) adapted the Bardo Thodol as a guide for LSD experiences in “The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead” (1964), treating the stages of the dying process as analogous to stages of a psychedelic session. This adaptation was widely read in the 1960s counterculture and influenced several generations of psychedelic researchers and practitioners. The interpretation is distant from the Tibetan tradition’s own context, but it carried knowledge of the bardo teaching into circles that might not otherwise have encountered it.

Sogyal Rinpoche’s “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” (1992) became one of the most widely read books on death and dying in the contemporary Western world, introducing the bardo teachings to a general audience in a format that balanced doctrinal accuracy with accessibility.

Myths and facts

Several misconceptions about the bardo teaching appear frequently in Western discussions.

• A common assumption is that the bardo refers only to the state after death. In Tibetan teaching, bardo refers to any intermediate state; the dream state, the meditative state, and ordinary waking life are all described as bardos. The post-death bardo is the most commonly discussed, but it is one of six.
• Many Western readers assume that the Bardo Thodol is the central or authoritative text on death in Tibetan Buddhism generally. It is a significant and widely used text within certain Nyingma lineages, but bardo teachings appear across all four Tibetan Buddhist schools and in the Bon tradition, each with their own framework. The Bardo Thodol is one document among many.
• The idea that the bardo teaching describes a literal journey through an external landscape populated by real deities is a simplification. The teaching explicitly states that the beings and lights encountered in the bardo are projections of the deceased’s own mind. The tradition is careful to distinguish between conventional description and the ultimate teaching about the nature of those appearances.
• Timothy Leary’s adaptation of the bardo as a guide to LSD experiences is sometimes mistaken for a Tibetan-approved interpretation. It is a creative cultural appropriation that Tibetan teachers have consistently described as a significant departure from the tradition’s actual meaning and context.
• Some readers of the Tibetan Book of the Dead assume that knowing its contents intellectually prepares one adequately for the bardo. The tradition itself is clear that intellectual familiarity with the text, while useful, is no substitute for stable meditative practice developed over years. Recognition in the bardo requires the same recognition cultivated in meditation during life.