Title: The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol) Author: Attributed to Padmasambhava; revealed as terma (hidden treasure text) Creation Date: 8th century CE composition; 14th century CE discovery attributed to Karma Lingpa Location: Tibet
Summary
The Bardo Thodol ("Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State") is a guide for the dying and the recently dead. It describes in vivid, precise detail the experiences consciousness undergoes after death: first, the "bardo of the moment of death," when a dazzling clear light appears — the fundamental luminosity of mind itself. If the dying person recognises this light as their own nature, liberation is immediate. Most do not. Consciousness then enters the "bardo of reality" (chonyid bardo), where it encounters a series of peaceful and wrathful deities — radiant, terrifying, beautiful — that are projections of its own mind. Again, recognition means liberation; failure to recognise means descent into the third bardo, the "bardo of becoming," where karmic hallucinations drive consciousness toward rebirth. The text is meant to be read aloud to the dying and dead, functioning as a guidebook for navigation through the landscape of post-mortem consciousness.
Why This Book Matters
The Bardo Thodol presents one of humanity's most elaborate maps of consciousness at the boundary of life and death. Its central insight is extraordinary: the terrors and wonders encountered after death are projections of the mind's own nature, and liberation consists in recognising them as such. The mind generates its own reality, and suffering arises from the failure to recognise this. The text has profoundly influenced Western psychology (Jung wrote an extensive commentary), psychedelic research, and contemporary end-of-life care. It represents one of the most sustained attempts to confront death not as an ending but as a cognitive event that can be navigated with training and awareness.
Historical Context
The Bardo Thodol belongs to the terma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism — texts said to have been composed by the 8th-century master Padmasambhava and hidden for later discovery when the world was ready. The text was reportedly discovered in the 14th century by the tertön (treasure-revealer) Karma Lingpa. This literary conceit of concealment and revelation mirrors the text's own content: truth is always present but hidden by the mind's failure to recognise it. Tibetan Buddhism synthesised Indian Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism with indigenous Bon religious practices, creating a distinctive tradition that placed extraordinary emphasis on the process of dying and the nature of consciousness. The text belongs to the broader Nyingma school tradition and reflects centuries of accumulated meditation practice and death-preparation ritual.
Literary Significance
As literature, the Bardo Thodol is hallucinatory, architecturally precise, and ritualistically powerful. The descriptions of the deities — peaceful figures radiating coloured light from every pore, wrathful figures drinking blood from skull cups and wearing garlands of severed heads — combine the specificity of a painter's manual with the intensity of visionary poetry. The text's structure is recursive: the same message (recognise, recognise, this is your own mind) repeats across three bardos with escalating urgency, creating a rhythm of opportunity and missed opportunity that functions as both liturgy and narrative. The direct address to the dead person ("O nobly born, listen without distraction") gives the text a dramatic immediacy rare in religious literature. It is simultaneously instruction manual, prayer, prose poem, and philosophical argument — a genre unto itself.
Research Notes
The Gyurme Dorje / Graham Coleman translation (2005) is the first English version based on the complete Tibetan cycle rather than excerpts, and includes the Dalai Lama's commentary. The earlier Evans-Wentz version (1927), while historically important, is heavily filtered through Theosophical assumptions and should be used with caution.
The Reading
Homage to the assembly of the peaceful and wrathful deities. Homage to the lama who has shown the face of awareness. Here is set down the Bardo Thodol, the Liberation Through Hearing in the Intermediate State, drawn from the cycle called the Profound Dharma of Self-Liberation Through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, concealed in the eighth century by the master Padmasambhava and brought out from the rock by the treasure-revealer Karma Lingpa in latter days. Let the reader take it up beside the dying. Let the words be spoken into the ear of the one whose breath is failing, and into the air above the corpse when the breath has failed, and into the empty room where the consciousness still wanders for nine-and-forty days. The instruction is one instruction, and it is shouted into the dark until the dark answers. Recognise. Recognise. What rises before you is the radiance of your own mind. Do not be afraid.
The Preliminaries
The hour of death is not the hour to begin. Train now, while the breath is steady. Meditate every day upon impermanence. Death will certainly come. The hour of its coming is not known. Wealth will not save you. Kin will not save you. The body that you have washed and oiled and fed for so many years will not save you. Only the practice undertaken in this life will go with you across the threshold, as a shadow goes with a body. Therefore turn the mind toward the dharma, and learn the stages of dissolution while there is still time to learn them, and study the visions that will arise when the senses have ceased to report.
And let the friends of the dying person be instructed also. When the signs appear, let the room be made quiet. Drive out the wailing relatives, the small dogs, the noise of the household, for any disturbance at the threshold may drag the consciousness down into a lower realm. Lay the body upon its right side in the posture of the sleeping Buddha, the right hand beneath the cheek, the left arm along the flank. Let a lama or a qualified reader sit at the pillow. Let him bend close, and let him begin to read before the last breath has gone, and let him continue to read for days afterwards, because the consciousness does not depart when the breath departs. It lingers. It hears. It needs a voice it knows.
The Bardo of the Moment of Death — Chikhai
Now the elements begin to dissolve, one into the next, as they have done at the close of every life since the world was made. Earth dissolves into water: the body grows heavy, the limbs cannot be lifted, and there is the sense of being pressed down beneath a great weight. Water dissolves into fire: the mouth and the nose run dry, the tongue cleaves to the palate, thirst comes that no cup can answer. Fire dissolves into air: the warmth withdraws from the extremities and gathers at the heart, the colour leaves the face. Air dissolves into consciousness: the breath gathers in long ragged draws, then in short ones, and then in a single long sigh that is the last. With it goes what the world will call the life. Within, the inner signs unfold for the one who is going: a mirage shimmering as on a summer plain, a smoke as of burning juniper, a swarm of fireflies in the dark, the flame of a butter lamp guttering and steady and guttering again, and at the last a sky-like clarity without cloud, without centre, without edge.
O nobly born, listen. The outer breath has ceased. The inner breath has not yet ceased. Now, in this narrow door between them, the ground luminosity is dawning before you. It is called the mother luminosity, the clear light of the dharmata, the nature of reality naked and unadorned. It is not a light such as the sun gives, or the moon, or any lamp. It has no source and no end. It does not come from outside. O nobly born, your own awareness in this moment, void and luminous, clear and empty, without centre or boundary — this very awareness is that luminosity. This is the buddha-mind itself. This is what you have been, always, beneath every thought you ever had. Recognise it. Rest in it. Do not look away.
If recognition comes here, the matter is finished in a single instant. The wheel that has turned through countless births stops. The dying one is liberated into the dharmakaya as a pot is shattered and the small sky within it is joined to the great sky without. There is nothing further to undertake. There is nowhere further to go.
But for most, recognition does not come. The light is too vast. The habits of a lifetime rise up and refuse it. Fear stirs at the edge of the awareness, and turns it away as a hand turns from a flame. The mother luminosity fades. The consciousness, severed now from the body, begins to drift. It enters the second bardo.
The Bardo of Reality — Chönyi
For fourteen days — though days here are not the days of the world, and the consciousness will reckon them differently — visions will arise of a precision such as no waking eye has seen. Hear them named, one by one, before they come, so that when they come they may be recognised.
On the first day, from the centre of a sky-blue space, the Lord Vairocana shines forth, white as the conch-shell, seated upon a throne borne by lions, embracing his consort the Queen of the Vajra Space, holding the wheel of the dharma in his hand. From his heart a light streams that no eye can sustain — a sharp, scintillating blue, the wisdom of the dharmadhatu, the radiance of the sphere of reality itself. Beside it shines a second light, softer, whiter, almost kind, almost familiar — the dull light of the realm of the gods. O nobly born, do not be drawn toward the soft light. It will lead you back to birth. Look without flinching at the sharp blue light. It is your own wisdom. Recognise it.
On the second day, Akshobhya the Unshakeable shines forth from an eastern field, dark blue as the night sky, seated upon a throne borne by elephants, his consort about him, and from his heart streams a light white as snow upon a sword — the mirror-like wisdom, in which all things appear as they are without distortion. Beside it the smoke-dim light of the hell realms creeps in, soft and forgiving as a familiar sorrow. O nobly born, do not flee toward the smoke. Recognise the mirror.
On the third day, from the southern field shines Ratnasambhava the Jewel-Born, yellow as ripe barley, upon a throne borne by horses, and from him streams the yellow light of the wisdom of equanimity, that knows no preference between self and other. Beside it the soft blue light of the human realm calls, familiar as a remembered house. Do not be drawn to what you know. Recognise the wisdom.
On the fourth day, from the western field shines Amitabha of Boundless Light, red as the setting sun, upon a throne borne by peacocks, and from him streams the red light of discriminating awareness, that knows each thing distinctly without grasping at any. Beside it the soft yellow light of the hungry-ghost realm seeps in, the realm of unsated craving. Do not crave. Recognise.
On the fifth day, from the northern field shines Amoghasiddhi the Unobstructed, green as the leaf of a young pine, upon a throne borne by garudas, and from him streams the green light of the all-accomplishing wisdom, that brings every action to its completion. Beside it the soft red light of the realm of the demigods, jealous and warring, comes near. Do not take up the spear. Recognise.
On the sixth day, all five together — Vairocana, Akshobhya, Ratnasambhava, Amitabha, Amoghasiddhi — appear in a single mandala, ringed by their consorts and their attendant bodhisattvas and the male and female gatekeepers, forty-two peaceful deities in all, each with his colour and his throne and his hand-gesture and his particular ornament of bone or jewel or silk, and from their hearts together stream the five wisdom-lights joined into a single radiance more brilliant than ten thousand suns. Across that radiance the six dim lights of the six realms shine also, gentle, beckoning. O nobly born, these who appear before you are not coming from somewhere outside. They are not gods sent against you. They are the natural radiance of your own mind, taking the form your mind has prepared. Recognise them. Rest in their light. This is the moment.
If even now there is no recognition, the peaceful deities withdraw. Their radiance turns. What comes next is harder.
On the eighth day the wrathful forms begin. The peaceful Vairocana returns as the great Heruka, dark brown as a thundercloud, with three heads and six arms and four legs braced wide, wreathed in flames that crackle to the ten directions, holding a skull cup brimming with blood, wearing a garland of freshly severed human heads about his neck, his consort wrapped about him offering the skull to his lips. His body blazes with light. Each of his three heads bears three eyes that gaze with terrifying expression. His eyebrows flash as lightning. His fangs gleam as polished copper. He cries out the sound HUM, and PHAT, and the piercing whistle that splits the air. So he comes, and after him the wrathful Akshobhya, and the wrathful Ratnasambhava, and the wrathful Amitabha, and the wrathful Amoghasiddhi, each in his form of terror, with his consort and his attendants.
Then the animal-headed goddesses pour out from the eight directions and the four quarters of the compass — a wolf-headed one gnawing at a corpse, a vulture-headed one tearing flesh from a bone, a scorpion-headed one cupping poison in her palm, a tiger-headed and a snake-headed and an ape-headed, fifty-eight wrathful deities in all, filling the whole of consciousness with their fire and their noise and their appalling beauty.
O nobly born, do not be terrified. Do not flee. Do not fall down before them and beg. They will not be appeased, because there is no one to appease. The wolf-headed one is your own old anger, taken at last the form it always had. The blood in the skull cup is your own desire. The piercing whistle is the raw energy of your own awareness, that you spent a lifetime pressing flat and small. These are not demons. They are the wisdoms of the peaceful deities turned to face you in the form your fear has dressed them in. Recognise them and be free. Flee them and be driven onward into the third bardo, where the way back is hard.
The Bardo of Becoming — Sidpa
If the luminosity was not recognised, and the peaceful deities were not recognised, and the wrathful deities were not recognised, then the consciousness, exhausted and frightened, enters the bardo of becoming. Now the visions grow personal. Now karma — the residue of every act undertaken in the former life — begins to dress the world.
The consciousness in this bardo wears what the texts call a mental body. It can pass through walls and through mountains as freely as thought passes through thought. It can travel to any place merely by wishing to be there. It is, for a time, more agile than any living body ever was. But it is not free. It sees its own corpse laid out, and the relatives weeping around it, and the cloths being arranged. It tries to speak to them and they do not hear. It tries to enter the body it has just left and finds no door. The grief of this moment, the texts warn, is one of the great traps. Do not linger over the corpse. Do not pull at the sleeves of the mourners. They cannot feel you.
The karmic winds begin. They are not winds of air but winds of habit, of accumulated thought, of every action you took in the body and never finished. Great gales of karma, unbearable and terrible, will drive you from behind. Do not be afraid. These are your own projections. The consciousness is blown over precipices. It hears the sound of avalanches in narrow valleys. It hears floods rising. It hears the trampling of pursuers behind it, and looks back, and sees figures with weapons, and runs, and is overtaken, and runs again. None of these things has been sent against it. All of them are its own.
O nobly born, meditate upon your teacher. Meditate upon the deity to whom you prayed in life. Meditate upon compassion for all sentient beings, who have all, in some former birth, been your mother. Do not grasp at the visions. Do not flee from them. Look at them and know that they have arisen from yourself.
As the days of this bardo lengthen, the consciousness is drawn toward rebirth. It begins to see, in the distance, couples joined in the act of love. These are the parents from whom the next body will come. If, in looking at them, you feel desire for the woman and aversion for the man, you will be born as a boy. If you feel desire for the man and aversion for the woman, you will be born as a girl. The texts call this the opening of the womb-door, and they instruct you to close it. Visualise yourself in the form of the deity. Hold the view that the couple and the womb and your own mind are equally empty of substance. Withdraw the desire. Let the door fall shut.
If you cannot close the door — if the karmic pull is too strong, if the practice of the past life was not deep enough — then choose at least carefully. Seek a land where the dharma is taught. Seek a human body, not the body of an animal or a hungry ghost. Seek parents who will let you study, who will not bind you to the lower trades. Even in the failing, the instruction does not stop. Even at the gate of the new birth, the voice is reading.
The Root Verses
Carry these verses in the heart, for the day will come when no reader sits beside you, and the only guide will be what was learned by rote in life.
Now when the bardo of dying dawns upon me, I will abandon all grasping, yearning, and attachment, enter undistracted into the clear awareness of the teaching, and eject my own consciousness into the space of the unborn; as I leave this compound body of flesh and blood, I shall know it to be a transitory illusion.
Now when the bardo of reality dawns upon me, I will let go of all fear and terror, I will recognise whatever appears as my own projection, and know it to be a vision of the bardo; now that I have reached this critical point, I will not fear the peaceful and wrathful deities, my own projections.
So they are spoken. So they are memorised by the practitioner in the strength of his years, and so they rise up of themselves in the bewilderment of the bardo, when the body is gone and the room is gone and the breath is gone, and only what was learned remains.
The Last Word
The instruction is finished. The reader closes the cycle and lets the silence settle over the corpse, or over the place where the corpse lay before it was carried away, or over the empty cushion where the dying one is no longer to be found. Forty-nine days are counted from the hour of the last breath. On each of those days, if the family can be gathered, the relevant passages are spoken again, because no one knows at which gate the consciousness has paused, or which vision now stands before it.
The promise of the Bardo Thodol is not that liberation is easy. The structure of the text is a long cascade of missed chances — the mother luminosity not recognised, the peaceful deities fled, the wrathful deities misunderstood, the karmic winds taken for real winds, the womb-door not closed in time. Most who pass through these stages will pass on into another birth, and the wheel will turn once more. The text knows this. It reads on anyway. It reads to the dying, and to the dead, and into the empty air. It calls into the dark, O nobly born, listen, listen, recognise, not because it expects the dark to answer every time, but because at any instant in any bardo the recognition may dawn, and one being more may be set free.
That is why the book exists. That is why it is read aloud. The compassion does not give up on anyone.
This post is part of Civilisations, a 149-book chronological journey through world literature. See the full collection →
The Gyurme Dorje / Graham Coleman translation (Penguin, 2005) is the first complete English rendering of the full Tibetan cycle, with introductory commentary by the Dalai Lama — an essential scholarly edition. The earlier Evans-Wentz version (1927) has historical importance but is heavily filtered through Theosophical assumptions.
Translated by Gyurme Dorje, edited by Graham Coleman and Thupten Jinpa, with commentary by the Dalai Lama. The first complete English translation — definitive and essential.
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