Bardo Thödol

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The Bardo Thödol or Livre of dead the Tibetan is a text of the Bouddhisme Tibetan describing the states of conscience and the perception S following one another for the period which extends from dead to the rebirth. The study of sound living or the recitation of the principal chapter by a LAMA at the time of the anguish or after death is supposed to help with the release of the cycle of the reincarnations, or at least to obtain better a Réincarnation.

Thödols

The name of the work, or rather that of its principal part, only translated until 2005, composed of bardo (intermediate state), of thö (to hear) and of fraud (to release), means release by hearing during the intermediate stages death and the rebirth . To hear the text recited or to know it by heart can be enough indeed - theoretically to release the late one of the will samsara. The name of thödol applies to various texts whose recitation with deaths has the capacity to release from the rebirths. There exists for example a book of dead associated with the Bonpo: the lamp which illuminates the release by the listening during the bardos (sNyan brgyud bar C thos grol gsal sgron chen Mo), which resembles the book of dead the Tibetan and could have preceded it two centuries.

Origin

This work belongs to the school Nyingmapa, whose tradition sees in the crowned texts of the redécouvertes by Tertön S of hidden works (Terma) prestigious authors. It is the case of Bardo Thodol, allotted to Padmasambhava, founder of the school, and " découvert" on the Gampodar mount by the 15 years old son of Master Nyida Sangye, Karma Lingpa (~1350). The work, composed by Padmasambhava, was written by his wife, Yeshe Tsogyal.

The work contains the description of the transformations of the conscience and perceptions during the three intermediate states which follow one another of dead the rebirth, as well as councils to escape the reincarnations, or at least to obtain a better reincarnation:

the chikhai bardo or stage of the demise, following death immediately: an extremely brilliant light appears which is the true nature of the spirit; the person sufficiently advanced on the spiritual level will recognize it and be able to melt herself with it, and to thus escape the rebirths definitively. In the contrary case, its conscience grows blurred completely during seven days until the following stage.
the chonyid bardo or stage of the experiment of reality: it occurs seven days after the preceding stage. The conscience awakes and perceives a Mandala of 42 deities in their peaceful form; after seven other days it is replaced by a mandala of 58 courroucées deities. If the late one can recognize them like forms of reality of the conscience and the " to take for mères" , it can still avoid carrying on its way towards the rebirth, or preparing with a better reincarnation.
the sidpa bardo or stage of the rebirth: after a certain number of days, the late one acquires a mental body equipped with the 5 directions; it can see its family, to circulate in the world while crossing the obstacles. It has then the vision of its good and ill deeds counted respectively using white and black stones. Then Yama is seized of him and body by body to the bones devours it. Finally arrives the moment of the reincarnation, unless a technique of last spring, known as " obturation of the entry of the matrice" , the arrival in the world does not avoid. This one can be done in one of the six following states: deity, lower deity, human, animal, avid spirit, tortured spirit. In the case of a human reincarnation, the conscience is attracted by the vision of the parental couple engaged in the sex act.

In the text three others are also described bardos which are not specific to death, but belong to the experiment of the alive ones: that of the ordinary state of consciousness, that of the dream, that of the Meditation.

The work mentions the ritual ones to observe and the 4 prayers recited by spangled. If the body is not present, an effigy on paper of late, called the jangbu , is attached to a stick and is placed on the furnace bridge. At the conclusion of the ritual, the LAMA burns it, thus releasing the heart of its faults; this one réincarne at once.

The integral version contains moreover of descriptions of the various signs announcing a close demise, and how possibly to push back the expiry of it.

The unit testifies to the experiment of the formation and the dissolution of the various state of consciousnesses, obtained thanks to the meditation. A parallel was made between the chikhai bardo and the Expérience of imminent death. One also recognizes the influence of the beliefs and pre-Buddhist practices called Bön and of the popular traditions.

Translations, interpretations and loans

The fame of Bardo Thödol in Occident goes back to discovered its principal part, the stages of the bardo, by the theosophist American Walter Evans-Wentz, which translated it by the LAMA Kazi Dawa-Samdup (Zla wa bsam). Jung made a psychoanalytical interpretation of it.

In the years 1960, Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner were inspired some to write The Psychedelic Experience on the effects of LSD. John Lennon drew Tomorrow Never Knows from it.

Sogyal Rinpoché wrote for the first time a work introducing perpsective the spiritual Buddhist based on the comprehension of the bardos, the Book Tibetan of the life and dead the .

The first integral English version was published in 2005, was translated by Gyurme Dorje and was revised by Thupten Jinpa, official translator of the Dalaï Lama, and Graham Coleman.

It is while being inspired, enter others, of Bardo Thödol, that the Italian esoterist Tommaso Palamidessi (1915-1983) wrote his Christian Livre of Dead the . The Christian Livre of Dead the is at the base a collection of prayers and exhortations which the officiant must read with regular intervals after the death of assisted, to direct its spirit in beyond and to thus help it to be delivered cycle of the reincarnations.

Antoine Volodine (born in 1949) wrote a formed novel of seven accounts around Bardo Thödol, which was published for the first time in 2004.

Extract

Beginning of the recitation: the chikhai bardo extracts from Textes new Tibetans translates by Alexandra David-Néel:

did you receive the teaching of the wise guru initiated with the mystery of the bardo? If you received it, it recalls to your memory and does not let any to you distract by other thoughts. Preserve your lucid spirit firmly. If you suffer, does not absorb you in the feeling of the suffering. If you test one resting numbness of spirit, if you feel to be inserted in a calm darkness, one alleviating lapse of memory, does not give up you there. Remain alert. The consciences which were known as being (name of dying) tend to disperse. Retain them plain by the force of Yid kyi namparshéspa. Your consciences separate from your body and will enter Bardo. Call upon your energy to see them crossing of it the threshold in your full knowledge. The fulgurating clearness of the Light without color and vacuum goes, faster than the flash, to appear to you and wrap themselves. That fear is not made move back and lose conscience. Plunge yourself in this light. Rejecting any belief in an ego, any attachment with your illusory personality, dissolved its Non-being in Being it and would be released. Not very many is those which, not having been able to reach the Release during their life, reach it at this time so fugitive that it can be known as without duration. The others, under the effect of the fear felt like a mortal shock, lose consciousness.

See too

Rebirth (Punarbhava), Coproduction conditioned
various consciences, Viññāṇa-kicca, according to the Theravada

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