Bardos

[Rebecca Kalamata]

When Jesus hung himself on the cross he knew that it was going to hurt. In a place in the Philippines they practice putting on a passion play once a year. Nikos Kazansakis wrote a book (the name of which I can't remember), about how the coming passion play affected the lives of the villagers who selected the various roles for the next year's play. As far as I recall the normal way it's done in places that do this, the actors are chosen right after Easter for the following year. Anyway, here in Greece they don't actually nail the man to the cross, they just tie him on. In the Philippines they nail him on exactly like the Romans did when crucified their criminals.

Now me, I ask for no nails and no flames please. A bullet? I'll take one for you. My body will jump in front because I have trained my mind to do that. A knife? Same thing.  YEAH THOUGH I WALK THROUGH THE VALLEY OF DEATH I WILL FEAR NO EVIL. Nails and flames though? As a tiny girl I decided that I'd have a hard time with either of those.

So I picked up a book from my shelf that I bought decades ago and never read. "The Tibetan book of Living and Dying." Oh well, not the "Tibetan Book of The Dead", it was a long time ago and what did I know then? My mom is 86 and has Parkinsons. I thought that I might read it to her. I hope I get the chance if she has to lie in bed for months before she dies. I came here to Greece before I got much passed the beginning in which I was introduced to the concept of the Bardos.

"Bardo is a Tibetan word that simply means a “transition” or a gap between the completion of one situation and the onset of another. Bar means “in between,” and do means “suspended” or “thrown."

The different bardos can be categorized into four or six:

The Four plus two Bardos

1. The natural bardo of this life which begins when a connection with a new birth is first made and continues until the conditions that will certainly lead to death become manifest.

2. The painful bardo of dying which begins when these conditions manifest and continues until the 'inner respiration' ceases and the luminosity of the dharmakaya dawns.

3. The luminous bardo of dharmata which lasts from the moment the dharmakaya luminosity dawns after death and continues until the visions of precious spontaneous perfection are complete.

4.The karmic bardo of becoming which lasts from the moment the bardo body is created and continues until the connection with a new rebirth is made.

5. The bardo of meditation (Skt. samādhyantarābhava; Tib. བསམ་གཏན་གྱི་བར་དོ་, Wyl. bsam gtan gyi bar do)

6. The bardo of dreaming (Skt. svapanāntarābhava; Tib. རྨི་ལམ་གྱི་བར་དོ་, Wyl. rmi lam gyi bar do)

(These last two bardos are part of the natural bardo of this life.)

OH