The central orienting view in the Tibetan tradition of “thanatology” (the study of death and dying) is that of the bardos. This Tibetan word “Bardo” is translated as “gap, interval, intermediate state, transitional process, or in between” and usually refers to the gap between lives. According to the Tibetan teachings, there are three death bardos: the painful bardo of dying, the luminous bardo of dharmata, and the karmic bardo of becoming.

Not Everyone Goes Through the Bardos the Same Way
Only a few teachers assert that the journey is universal. Most teachers say that cultural differences and personal idiosyncrasies generate a variety of experiences. Why would a Christian or Muslim, with very different beliefs, experience death the same way as a Buddhist? Carl Becker writes: “ . . . the heavens, judgments, and ghostly scenarios described by other religious traditions have equal claims to validity; the afterlife is culturally relative insofar as its imagery is projected by the perceiver, and the perceiver has been conditioned by the culture in which he was educated.”

While the Tibetans have breathtaking resources that easily translate from their tradition into our own, modern Tibetan masters admit to instances of cultural insularity and peculiarity. The issue of universal truth vs. cultural vicissitude is present anytime teachings migrate from an ancient and foreign culture into a modern one. This is something each reader has to wrestle with as they plunge into the bardo literature.

With that said, below is a brief overview of the three after death bardos.

The Journey Through the Bardos is a Journey Through the Mind
The religious scholar Huston Smith says, “Everything we experience in the Bardos is a reflection of our own mental machinations.”In the Buddhist view, the essence of mind is the same for all sentient beings. But the surface structures that cover that essence are different. Hence the journey through the surface structures (bardo of dying), into the essence of mind (bardo of dharmata), and then out of it (bardo of becoming), is not the same. But the general pattern of this three-stage process is universal.

Any meditation that allows you to become familiar with your mind will prepare you for death. In the bardos we’re “forced” to relate to our mind simply because there’s nothing else. Outer world is gone, body is gone, so mind becomes reality. Through insight meditation we discover that whatever arises in the bardos is just the display of our mind. That recognition sets us free.

So by exploring the depths of our mind in meditation, we are preparing for what happens after death. In many ways, the spiritual path is just death in slow motion. We can summarize it thus: if you die before you die, then when you die you will not die. If you spiritually die, or transcend your false sense of self before you are “forced” to do so at death, then when you physically die at the end of this life you will not die, because you are already “dead.