Bardo

views updated May 18 2018

Bardo (Skt., antarabhāva, ‘intermediate state’). In Tibetan Buddhism, the state after death and before rebirth. A distinction is made, however, in the Nyingma, Kagyü, and Sakya traditions (which follow the Tibetan Book of the Dead) between six bardos, three of life and three of death. The subject experiencing these bardos is not an unchanging soul (which concept does not exist in Buddhism) but the constantly changing continuum of consciousness which, according to spiritual advancement, becomes either sharpened or bewildered after disjunction from the body.