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“If we learn to navigate the continual flow of transitions in our present life, we will be prepared for our death and whatever may follow, no matter what worldview we subscribe to.” Pema Chödren
- Seven 2-hour sessions every other week ONLINE
- Every Other Tuesday Evening, 6 PM - 8 PM MT, beginning January 7 through April 1, 2025
- One final 3 hour Grieving Ritual, 9 AM - 12 PM MT, on Saturday, April 5, 2025
7 CE’s for attending the entire course
Please note that this course is designed to welcome participants of all experience levels, no prior knowledge is required.
A simple definition of Bardo: a Tibetan word pointing to the liminal state of in-between-as in the transitions between death and rebirth.
This online course studies transitions from the perspectives of Tibetan Buddhism and Contemplative Psychology. We will explore the six bardos as presented in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Bardo's experience points to the transition between death and rebirth and includes all the transitional intermediate states of heightened experience transmitted through a sense of groundlessness.
The study of impermanence and change and how we navigate change are what we are leaning into in the course. The Bardos becomes a living experience versus a philosophical view. This course focuses on the Tibetan Buddhist understanding of death and dying and how, in meditation, we are preparing for our death.
We learn how to rouse our heart potency, something called Bodhicitta, and then step into the open space of not knowing, accompanied only by our basic sanity. The course highlights many Karuna Training methods, specifically the importance of embracing grief and then learning to transmute grief into deep gratitude for life.
What we will study:
- The Bardo experience is part of our everyday psychological experience and makeup. Bardos happen constantly. We usually only notice them in moments of paranoia and uncertainty in everyday life.
- An overview of the Bardos as they are outlined in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
- An overview of the entire Bardo system as a process of what happens when we die and how that journey is a lifelong undertaking.
- This class consolidates these ancient teachings and directs the learning toward examining death in every moment.
- The course explores methods for refining the experience of meditative states of mind, discerning consciousness states, and moments of wakefulness—both on and off the meditation cushion. It is meant to inspire more meditation practice.
- Explore dreaming and dream time as ways we unconsciously interpret reality—full of conjured-up projections, as in a dream. From a Buddhist perspective, the bardo studies are a portal into the Buddhist notion of emptiness, unbound openness, the dharmakaya, or our true nature. What happens when we drop into and experience ‘nothingness?’
- Through deepening in meditation, we can glimpse the gaps in everyday life and befriend groundlessness.
- Understanding our interdependence with the world and its inhabitants helps us further glimpse the notion of emptiness, dissolve implicit biases, and confront our dualistic binary right and wrong mental conditioning. We begin to open and see through exchange with the worlds—as a portal to nondual compassionate exchange—and this openness of heart and mind is a practice of trusting in the cleansing nature of grief.
- Explore the role of the elements and their dissolve order in our death; how earth element dissolves into water, water dissolves into fire, fire dissolves into air, air dissolves into space, and when space and consciousness dissolve into the central channel, there is a sense of eternal wakefulness. The experience of the dissolution is also where grasping develops, and from there, we are back to the Six Realms and its intensification. Understanding this continual play of the elements and psychological realms is a big part of the class goals. Much of this deepens what has been covered in KTB1, 2, and 3.
What to Expect:
- Participants will personally discuss their grief and learn how grief requires a witness; thus, we will share in small group exchanges.
- Participants will also explore their denial of death. When and where do we refuse to acknowledge death's presence and inevitability?
- Participants will explore how to be with death when it is happening around them, how to navigate complex issues of death and others' habitual emotional reactions in everyday life, and how to see one’s emotional habituation through the lens of the six realms.
- Meditation will be in every class to ground and bring ourselves present in the material.
- An introduction to the Tonglen: Sending and Taking practice is designed to open our hearts and directly meet our own and others' pain and loss.
- Participants will work in dyads doing guerilla tonglen to touch on emotional aspects of our exchanged experiences and rouse the potency of the heart to transmute suffering into love and compassion.
- The practice of Compassionate Exchange will be introduced and practiced with other participants.
- The experiential explorations will include an embodied component for each of the six bardos, as embodiment is a core practice of Contemplative Psychology.
- An opportunity to respond to prompts on a private channel in an online membership site called KARUNITY built on the Circle platform - only classmates and faculty can read this.
Instructor:

Melissa J. Moore, Ph. D., has been a Lead faculty member and Karuna Training North America Executive Director since 2014. She co-founded Karuna Training in Germany in 1996. She has a Master's in Contemplative Psychotherapy from Naropa University and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Integral Studies in Psychological Anthropology. Melissa has trained and certified students in Contemplative Psychology for over thirty-five years in nine Countries. She has been a Buddhist practitioner for over 40 years.