Embracing the Bardos of Everyday Life: a Study of the Power of Transition
by Melissa Moore
Tibetan Buddhism offers us a language and maps to navigate the multiple states of existence that continually occur between death and rebirth. These states vary in length and texture, but they entirely mirror our attitudes and conduct in everyday life. Just consider your life in the time frame of a single day; we get up usually having morning rituals to help us enter the day with composure, and then we enter the stream of experience, which varies wildly according to where we are, what we are doing, and whom we are interacting with. It's like the water in a river, constantly flowing through the same channel, but never the same water or experience. We notice several heightened moments in the transition flow, called the Bardos of everyday life.
In the upcoming class Embracing the Bardos of Everyday Life, we explore and befriend life's transitions through the contemplative lens of loving-kindness and compassion. In a sense, we are always preparing for our death when we study the Bardos, but we are preparing for death with kindness, openness, and awareness. As a young 24-year-old student at Naropa University (then Naropa Insitute), I was told by one of my esteemed professors, “The entire reason we practice meditation is to prepare for our death.” At the time, I felt insulted to be discussing death; I thought I was too young to be subjected to such tortuous contemplations. My reaction turned out to be my Midwestern cultural conditioning, where death is not a polite topic for everyday conversation.
The study of the Tibetan Book of the Dead brings to awareness how we live our lives now and its relevance to our inevitable death. This teaching heightens our relationship to impermanence and change – our habits of navigating groundlessness, change, and death and illuminates our conditioning around these lifescapes. I’m someone in my late 60s, which brings old age and death much closer into focus. I constantly ask myself if the topic or issue that is irritating me at the moment – will matter at the moment of death. Or if I could simply leave it alone, as I’m continually instructing my dog to do on walks. That is what we are practicing during meditation: to leave alone the torrential stream of distracting thoughts and relate to what we are experiencing in the moment.
Bardos are part of our psychological makeup, but we often miss the bardo-like experience unless we are paranoid or groundless. Like losing our phone or car keys, a suspended moment of panic will wake us to where we are and what we are doing. Learning to navigate these moments of groundlessness is actual preparation for our death.
The Six Bardos include The Natural Bardo of this Life, where we all find ourselves now. The Bardo of Dying occurs when we receive a diagnosis of a fatal illness up until the moment we are dying, which, of course, doesn’t happen to everyone, as we can go instantly. Then there is The Bardo of Dharmata, which occurs once we have entirely passed away, and then The Bardo of Becoming, when we are on our way to being born. The other two crucial bardos we explore are The Bardo of Meditation and The Bardo of Dreaming. Each bardo offers a unique opportunity for complete realization, recognizing our true nature. All of the bardos are significant opportunities to wake up! Thus, learning more about transitions can widen our minds and hearts and increase awareness. Also, first and foremost, we understand that how we live is how we will die; with the help of Pema Chodren’s book, we deeply dive into the bardos in everyday life.
Please join me for seven 2-hour sessions every other week ONLINE. Tuesday evenings beginning January 7 through April 1, 2025, with a final 3-hour Grieving Ritualon Saturday, April 5, 2025.
We are offering 7 CEs for attending the entire course, and each class will be recorded should you need to miss the live session. In between courses, we offer you a channel on the Circle format membership site to discuss your experience with the Bardo with prompts.