Glimpses of the Bardo

To illumine what it is like to cross the threshold of death and what we may meet on the other side, I have translated and retold some of the amazing stories in Tibetan Buddhist literature about meditators who leave their physical bodies for days at a time to travel through the invisible world.

These meditators, known as delogs, or those who “return from death,” would then come back to their bodies and record their extraordinary journeys, which could span the lowest rungs of hell and the sublime pure lands.

Pure lands are ineffably joyful and peaceful paradises that the buddhas, the enlightened ones, manifested through their compassion so that devotees might take rebirth there without needing to be highly realized.

Being reborn in a pure land is not the same as attaining enlightenment. But once there, we will make continuous progress toward enlightenment.

Some delogs tell of visits to pure lands, where they receive teachings from the buddhas. Other delogs spend more time describing the bardo, with its court of judgment and the various realms where ordinary beings may be reborn, such as realms of hungry ghosts or gods.

Delogs’ accounts are deeply moving. Most delogs are profoundly religious people and were sent back to our world by enlightened beings to tell us about what lies ahead and how to prepare for it.

Each tale is a gift, for by opening a window into the vastness of our futures beyond this current life, delogs broaden our perspective and inspire us to improve our lives.

Through delogs’ eyes we become privy to the sorts of things that will matter in determining where we will be reborn. We witness the power of spiritual practices to cleanse negative deeds and thoughts. We realize the power of prayer to help the dead secure better rebirths. We observe how devotion – which is in reality a skillful way to open up our minds – allows the lamas and blessed ones to intercede on behalf of beings in the bardo and lead them to pure lands.

Most delogs bring back messages from departed loved ones to friends and relatives. These personal pleas reinforce the basic message to change our lives while we are alive in human form and have the chance.

In the West, people who were revived from clinical death sometimes had “near-death experiences” (NDEs). Although NDEs share many similarities with delog experiences, they may last only a few minutes or so, whereas delog experiences usually last many days.

Delogs also seem to penetrate much further into the after-death realm.

Many delog texts came into my hands. However, due to space limitations, I could include only small parts of them in the book [Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirt: A Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook]. The accounts generally date from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century (dating was not available for all the texts). Delogs are not a modern phenomenon, however. Nor are they exclusively Tibetan. They are discussed in the teachings of the Buddha.

As you read the accounts, some of you might wonder why the tales are tinted by Tibetan and Tibetan Buddhist culture and iconography. How come the delogs keep meeting Tibetan acquaintances? Why do the judges resemble those in Buddhist iconography?

The main answer is that the terrain that unfolds before us in the bardo is a reflection of our habits and emotions. Whatever we see and experience after death accords with the way our culture and belief system have shaped our thinking. All of us – whether child or adult, pious or atheist, communist or capitalist – are immersed in acquired habits of perceiving.

Since the delogs were all Tibetan Buddhists, or familiar with Buddhism, they perceived things from that perspective. However, while the details of our habits differ across cultures, we all share – regardless where we’re from – a mentality of seeing the world in terms of rewards and penalties for right and wrong. We constantly bounce between hope and fear under the all-seeing eyes of some imagined higher authority or judge. Our perceptions are soaked in this judgmental mentality. That is why, when we have been unvirtuous, we fear being judged, and after death we will perceive a judge handing us a harsh sentence.

In reality, there is no external judge. There is no sentence. Our after death experiences are simply the dividends we earn from our own mental and emotional investments.

That is why the great Indian master Shantideva said about the hell realms:

Who constructed all those burning iron grounds [of hell]?

Where did those flames come from?

“All of them are [mere reflections of] your unvirtuous mind,”

The Buddha has said.

All of us might well see some higher power in the bardo. Its form will correspond with our habits. Tibetan texts describe a courthouse presided over by the Dharma King and his assistants, the Lords of the Dead.

Other cultures and religions envision the judgment seat of a divine being, a book in which virtues and sins are recorded by an angel, or the weighing of deeds on a scale.

Western near-death experiencers often describe “life reviews” in which they are encouraged to judge their own lives. Common to all, however, is the universal law that positive habits and deeds result in joy, while negative ones lead to suffering.

Source: Thondup, Tulku. Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth: A Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook. Shambhala. Kindle Edition.

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