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: 

(1) Look into a mirror or water. If you don’t have a reflection, you are dead. 

(2) Walk on sand or in snow. If there are no footprints, you are dead. 

(3) Go into the sun or walk in the light. If there is no shadow beside your body, you are dead. 

(4) 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 are angry with you. It is because you are dead. 

After realising that you are dead, try not to feel sad and shocked, for this will not help and will only hurt. 

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Try to react to death in the three following ways: 

(1) Realise that you are at the most crucial juncture of your life. For the sake of your future, you cannot waste a moment. This is your greatest opportunity to advance. 

(2) Remember and feel happy about whatever spiritual path you have pursued in your lifetime. That will be the great source of peace, joy, and strength for you. 

(3) Remember any one of the following three practices, according to your ability and experience. Then try to stay with that practice without distraction. 

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(a) When you see the forms of male and female beings, as mentioned in Liberation by Hearing, recognise them as male and female buddha families and pure lands. 

Realise them as the reflection of your own buddha-mind. If you try to see them with positive perception, you will find them to be the source of blessings, as they are all mere impressions of the mind in the bardo. 

Remember the feelings of devotion to the buddhas, to your spiritual teachers, and to your meditation. If you have any experience in esoteric meditation, try to realise the oneness of everything that happens, for all happenings are one in their true nature, according to the esoteric path. 

You must try to see and feel that all the peaceful or wrathful forms, sounds, and feelings that you might be encountering are merely the manifestation power of that oneness. See the lights as wisdom-lights, or turn them into lights of wisdom through meditation techniques that are familiar to you. Do not grasp at or struggle against them, taking the attitude of subject versus object; instead, open to them and be one with them. Relax in the awareness of that oneness state. Rest in it again and again. 

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(b) If you are not a realised or experienced meditator, but a spiritual person, first you should try to calm down your mind and be stable. 

Then try to remember your spiritual support, whether it is a divine presence, a master, or a positive experience that is present to you and in you. Try to keep your mental focus on it again and again, instead of being distracted everywhere. 

Try to have compassion for others, instead of pitting yourself against them. 

Try to see all as divine manifestations instead of sources of fear and pain. 

Try to say prayers and mantras and hear all sounds as words of devotion and compassion, instead of lamentations. 

We must try to stay in such a spiritual atmosphere throughout our transitional journey. 

Positive memories, devotional prayers, and compassionate openness will become a source of powerful protection, soothing experience, and wisdom-light that makes the transitional journey a joyful ride. 

Experienced spiritual people are able to perform services for others. 

Through the power of prayers, merit making, devotion, and/or contemplation, they can bring our mind to an image (or an object) and stabilise it. Then they can give us teachings, invoke the compassionate blessings of deities, and bestow empowerments in order to lead our mind to buddhahood or at least to a good rebirth. 

If we have some virtuous karmas as the cause, these meditative services will function as effective conditions, and the service will be most beneficial. Such service could become a real turning point for us in our transitional journey. 

Whatever positive memories or experiences we can muster, they will generate and strengthen the force of peace, joy, devotion, love, pure perception, and wisdom. That force will lead to the attainment of enlightenment or to a better rebirth—just as the force of negative emotions causes us to be born in a hell realm. 

Such a positive force could divert us from the path of rebirth in the hell realms, even if we have been destined for them. 

Whatever spiritual experiences and strength we have acquired in our lifetime will certainly bear their fruit at the right time. 

However, it is prudent to activate the force of our positive karmas instead of giving the negative karmas that we also have the chance to dominate our life. 

Longchen Rabjam advises: 

Although arisings [of the ultimate nature] have appeared in that manner, if you cannot recognise them, 

The bardo of transitional passage, like a dream, will appear. 

Then, by remembering buddha pure lands, and 

Seeking refuge in your spiritual masters and tutelary deities, 

You might take rebirth in pure lands and attain liberation. 

Many, instead, may take rebirth as human beings with sevenfold qualities, and 

The attainment of liberation will be assured in their next birth. 

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(c) You might be going through the delusory hallucinations of the bardo without having had much spiritual and meditative experience. 

If so, you must try to remember not to become angry, upset, or afraid, but strive to see all the appearances as unreal, like a dream. 

No one is putting together a show of these transitional arrangements for your benefit, for they are just illusions imagined because of your own past mental habits, fuelled by afflicting emotions. 

Try to make your mind open, positive, stable, and peaceful, instead of adopting a grasping or negative perception with emotions of hatred, desire, or confusion. 

Try to feel compassion for others who are also being buffeted about in this scary transitional journey. 

If you can generate and maintain such a positive state of mind, purified by the wind of devotional or compassionate energies, your mind will be in great peace, like the immaculate cloudless sky. 

No dark clouds of negative karmic energies will come to cast shadows of confusion or pain. 

Sun- and moonlight-like joy and peace will prevail throughout your experience of whatever phenomena arise, ensuring an abundantly happy journey. 

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In addition to the above three practices, we might also remember how to “reverse” the process of taking birth in inferior realms, if we face any of them. 

If you see indications of an inferior birth—the soft lights and signs, or your future birthplace or parents—the most important thing is not to fall into negative thoughts or emotions, such as grasping, craving, attachment, hatred, jealousy, fear, or confusion. 

Try to see them with a spiritual mind, a mind of peace, oneness, and openness. 

You could try to see them with a peaceful and relaxed mind by realising that they are fabrications of your own mind. 

Or you could try to see them as male and female deities and their pure lands. Pray to the deities and spiritual masters for their blessings and guidance.

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Source: Based on the following book — Thondup, Tulku. Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth: A Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 2005.

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