In the bardo, most of us will feel that we are traveling through narrow paths or tunnels, traversing a desert, crossing bridges over turbulent rivers, being judged by the Lords of the Dead, perhaps persecuted by executioners, and dispatched to hellish regions, higher realms, or heavenly pure lands.
All these encounters are reactions of our own (1) physical, (2) cultural, (3) mental, and (4) emotional habits that we have fostered in the past.
We may feel as if we are squeezing out of a narrow, dark tunnel as our consciousness exits the dying body. At the end of the tunnel, we might see a door or a window with light shining through. This could be the cranial aperture or any of the nine openings of the body.
Until we can clear the deeply rooted habits that we are harbouring and find the exit to total liberation, we will go around in a cycle without end, like a bee trapped in a room.
In the bardo, many beings experience similar kinds of world systems together, because they are all reaping the effects of similar karmas that they produced in the past. But in some cases, the experience will be a purely subjective perception of the deceased person, with no actual participation by others, even though the deceased may feel as if many beings are sharing the experience with him or her.
For example, as Tulku Thondup shares in Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth, the delog Do Khyentse felt that his sister and others were accompanying him during his visit to the pure lands, but in fact she was alive and busy studying at Yarlung Monastery.
If we are highly realised meditators who have attained enlightenment in life or while in the passage of ultimate nature, we may have no need to go through the bardo.
If we have accumulated a great deal of merit and achieved some meditative experiences, we will go through the bardo, but with little sense of fear and suffering. By the power of our merits and meditative realisations, we will be able to take rebirth in a spontaneously manifested pure land, or at least in one of the happy realms of the world.
If our mindstream is filled with karmic traces of evil deeds, we will not be able to see the ultimate nature and will be terrified by natural sounds and the visions of lights, rays, and images. We might not even dare to look at the visions, nor will we understand them to be expressions of our own true nature.
Instead we will struggle with them as mental objects in the form of conflicting forces. Such negative perceptions of conflict and struggle could lead us to the experience of a hell realm as our rebirth.
In the bardo, our consciousness is totally separated from our body. Our mind has left our cherished form behind as a corpse with no warmth, no breath, and no movement.
Our consciousness will be floating around without any gross body to anchor it. We will be able to see without benefit of sunlight or moonlight. We will assume a mental body, most likely imagined according to our past habits.
Some texts, however, describe it as a subtle body of soft light. But still we might be thinking we have our previous body and are still alive. We may go through the following experiences:
(1) We will have no sense of stability, as our feelings and the circumstances around us will change from moment to moment, according to the changes in our thoughts and the influences of our karmic forces.
(2) We will find ourselves with any person or in any place that comes to our mind, unless the place is beyond our karmic range. If we think of New York City, we will be there instantly, without spending any time or effort to travel there, since our body is a mental, not a physical, one.
(3) Being able to travel is not our problem, but stability is. It is hard for us to stay in one place and to focus on any thought, as we are always moving, flickering, floating, and being driven about. We are constantly running, flying, and moving, like a feather in a storm, with no endurance.
(4) Our mind will be much sharper than it was in life. We will see and hear from many others who, like ourselves, are wandering in the bardo.
(5) We will enjoy some degree of clairvoyance, knowing other people’s thoughts, but we will have less reasoning or analytic power, owing to the lack of mental focus.
(6) From moment to moment, our mind may swing through many changes of happiness and suffering, hope and fear, peace and pain.
(7) Sometimes we might feel in danger from the force of the elements, as if we were buried under houses, caves, or collapsed earth; falling and sinking in water; burning in a wood fire or in flaming houses; and being blown about in strong, stormy winds — experiences that are perhaps similar to the dissolutions of the passage of dying, only here they are more naked and direct.
(8) If we see our dead body, we might behold it clearly, as it actually is, and become protective of it. Or we might hate it and not want to look at it. We might not see or recognise our corpse at all.
(9) Many times, mysteriously, we might see it in a different form, such as the body of a dog or a snake. Seeing our body might help us realise for a moment that we are dead, but immediately afterward we might have no recollection of that, since there is so little strength of focus for remembering. That is why it can take a long time before we really understand that we have died. We have little reasoning power in the bardo. So one moment we will realize that we’re dead, but the next moment we’ll forget and resume our habit of feeling alive.
(10) We might be seeking food all the time, but we are unable to enjoy any food unless it is offered to us spiritually or dedicated in our name.
(11) We will mostly be able to enjoy the smell of food rather than the food itself. That is why many texts refer to beings in the bardo as the “odour-eaters.” (In the Tibetan tradition, this is the very reason why the smoke of burning food is ritually offered to a deceased person for many weeks after his or her death.)
(12) We may feel lonely and insecure, ever searching for shelter and stability.
(13) Tired of being swept about by karmic, mental, and emotional storms, we will be so desperate for the steadiness of a body that we may care little about what kind of future situation we trap ourselves into.
(14) Some people relive their dying experiences, exactly as they went through them, on every seventh day after their death, again and again, especially if it was a tragic death. That is why every seventh day is observed by survivors with prayers and dedications.
(15) We might approach our friends, but to our surprise, they will ignore us.
(16) We might sit down at the dining table, but no one will offer us a chair or serve us any meal.
(17) We might ask people questions, but no one will answer us. That might make us sad, thinking that everyone is angry at us and no one cares for us.
(18) Maybe we will see others going through our personal belongings and taking whatever they want, and we might angrily conclude that they are robbing us. At such a juncture, the worst thing we could do for ourselves would be to succumb to negative emotions such as anger. So we should learn about the signs of death while we are alive and remind ourselves, thinking again and again, “At the time of death I will not get into negative emotions.”
Source: Based on the following book — Thondup, Tulku. Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth: A Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 2005.
In the bardo, our consciousness is totally separated from our body. Our mind has left our cherished form behind as a corpse with no warmth, no breath, and no movement.
Our consciousness will be floating around without any gross body to anchor it. We will be able to see without benefit of sunlight or moonlight. We will assume a mental body, most likely imagined according to our past habits.
Some texts, however, describe it as a subtle body of soft light. But still we might be thinking we have our previous body and are still alive.
(Thondup, Tulku. Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth)