Bardo Journey

Close your eyes, as death comes upon you. 

You who are made of the five elements, the earth element begins to dissolve its form upon you. Gravity feels heavier, you feel heavier, harder to get up, harder to move, like a heavy weighted blanket lying on you. Warm, heavy, easy, comforting, soft. Relax into this, allow it to happen. Your sight grows dim, warm soft darkness surrounds you.

Now the water element begins to dissipate from your form. There is sound like a rushing river in the distance, vision like looking through a curtain of rippling water, your mucous membranes, your mouth, your eyes, lose their moisture. Thirst may be felt briefly, but then it passes.

The fire element begins to dissipate, feet feel cold, the cold creeps up, the hands feel cold, the warmth retreats into the center of your body, what little there is left. There is a vision of sparks, like throwing a log on a campfire on a moonless night, thousands of little red dots fleeing upward and outward, becoming fewer and fewer and fewer. 

The sound of a crackling fire dims, the sound of wind, the sound of your own breathing as the air element absorbs, begins to dim itself. Hard to breathe in, easy to breathe out, gather you breathe out, gathering the energy to breathe in again, sound of wind, feeling of sensation of vertigo, swirling, detached, breathe in, breathe out, rest, breathe in, breathe out, rest, until the final rest. But no need for in-breath, the sensations of the elements fade, no sense of here, no sense of there. 

Without location, without center or edge, infinite, vast, and luminous, you rest. Clear light there is, but not in a place, all pervading, and there is no seer of this that is you, nor this to be seen that is not you, just this, the first bardo of luminosity. 

The color of the light before dawn, clear, luminous, and you are that, and you always were that, and you always will be. Relax beyond time and space, here in the bardo of luminosity.

But some people, inexperienced at tregchöd, unfamiliar with maha-ati and mahamudra, become restless here, wish to be, to do, to see, to feel, unsatisfied as the bliss of emptiness. 

And so they coalesce into the illusion of being an entity, and enter the second bardo. Here, it is as if you wake up from a dream, and you are standing in your place, your home. Everything is as it was, only you are not. 

You feel as if you were, you feel the same body you had, standing there, but no one can see you, and you cannot touch anything. 

Here is where it is important to notice that you are dead.

If you do not notice you are dead, you can easily enter a compulsive ghost state. Unfortunately, many, when they notice they are dead, are stricken by grief, for the life they have lost, and the loves they have lost. And they walk away in despair, for they cannot reassure their crying family that they are okay.

Here in this state, your karma has not coalesced upon you yet, like a bird that has flown into the sky. Although it will again inevitably need to land and come together with its shadow, its shadow is not there in the sky with it. 

So, in the second bardo, you have a moment of free will. If you remember your practice, here, since you can go anywhere you think of, anywhere you imagine, there is great ease to enter a pure land. 

Dewa Chen is an easy one. Here, in the second bardo, simply think, oh light beyond compare, fire element of the western direction, love beyond subject and object, bodhicitta, amitabha, Ӧpagmé, incomparable brilliance.

Simply remember the mantra: OM AMI DEWA HRIH or OM MA TRI MU YÉ SA LÉ DU

And you will be transported instantaneously to marble fountains, and blooming flowers of gentle streams, and trees of fruit, not made of ordinary matter, but responsive to the wishes of the denizens of the inhabitants. There are no genders here. Everyone is the same gender. There is no need to procreate, for beings are born spontaneously within lotuses, which on their blooming release them into full inhabitant ship of this land.

And there are no tribes and no territories and no wars. It is smooth and kind. Relax, for you have arrived at a place of safety, where dharma is heard in the tinkle of the fountains, in the wind through the trees. And you may rest here and slowly practice, or quickly practice, or simply play, if you are tired of strife and striving. 

But some people, in their despair at discovering themselves dead, either do not remember or do not choose a pure land, but go forth in despair following their whims from place to place, faster, until they are moving so fast they get dizzy and pass out, waking next in the next bardo. It is dark and smooth, but there comes towards you something from the distance.

It shimmers, you hear it roaring, the sound coming towards you louder and louder. You feel emotions about it, desire, aversion. You fear it. You want it. 

Intensity, blue in color, the most brilliant blue imaginable, arises surrounding you, roaring with blueness. Tasting so blue that your mouth cannot take it. Smelling of utter blueness, of space, of emptiness. Tactilely, every sense, every one of your six senses engaged in this loud, overwhelming blue.  But look over there, a dim white, soft clouds. Don’t run from the big blue, from the loudness, the roughness of the texture, the slipperiness, the taste or the smell or the emotions. Let it encompass you. Let it shake your core loose. Let it eat you and dissolve you. Let go. Let the blue have you.

Next arises white, so bright you cannot look at it, so loud you cannot listen to it. Every sensation of whiteness. Don't run to the soft smoke, off to the side, don't. Let the white eat you. Let it consume you. Let it destroy you. Let it overwhelm you without running. 

Yellow is next. Again, overwhelming in its yellowness, in its roar, in its sound, in its loud.

The emotions are here, an emotion with each one. With the blue, it is overwhelmedness. With the white, it is terror, anger at the same time. With the yellow, it is want, hungry hunger. 

After the yellow comes red and then green. The red burns your skin until there's nothing left.

The yellow surrounds you and strangles you. The white drowns you. The blue overwhelms you with its size.

The green blows you away. All together they dance. Do not anchor to the side for the little dim bits you see off to the edge of your vision.

Don't run there. Don't try to get away. Let it take you.

Let it dissolve you. Let it be as it is. 

But if you have not been able to do that, if you ran from the blue into the soft white clouds, or you ran from the white into the soft smoke, or from the yellow into the pastel blue tones, or from the red into the soft golden blankets, or from the green into the soft, smoky, warm red, if you run from any of these or all of these and do not let them have you, destroy you, eat you, encompass you, if you run from the sound and the sight and the color and the shape and the texture and the taste and the smell and the feelings, then again you will enter the next bardo.

It will fade. You will be in soft colors, which will also fade into dark. And then there will arise, shouting and laughing, moving towards you the 42 peaceful archetypes of the fourth bardo.

In their five families of five groups of colors, in full complexity and here, here is where you tantrikas will be saved, will have the chance to save yourself, for among the 42 peaceful and the 58 fierce, and the half and half ones of the throat chakras as well, among these you will recognize your yidam. These are all the herukas, the herokais. Here you have the yidams dancing complete with their protectors. Here you have Purba, Kurukuli, Tara, Chenrezig. Here you have Hayagriva, Bhadrayogini, Agmo, Palmo. And all the other forms dancing complete with their retinues and their mandalas in the infinite complexity as complex as seeing every leaf on every tree in the entire world. And they dance. 

And those with weapons threaten you with weapons. And those which are peaceful motion you to come forward and try to embrace you and they're so big and so bright and if you feel yourself nothing before them and run oops don't run recognize your yidam as the personification of yourself just as in the sadhanas run towards them embrace them and let them become you become them and you will be enlightened in the fifth bardo.

But if you do not do that if you do not recognize your yidam among these monstrous shapes and colors, discs like flapping cloths not recognized here you will fall into the last bardo which is the bardo of becoming. Wild winds blow you have no weight you are a thistle down here you don't have free will here, your karma is upon you fully now you will be born in the six realms it's only a matter of where all you can do here is not cower and try to hide if you go this far then it's just chin up and tits to the wind fly, fly until you land somewhere and live the life you are given to the best of your ability. 

Gently slowly stretch, take a little break you can get up and walk around get a glass of water to drink.