Recognizing Your True Nature in the Bardo Thodol

The Bardo Thodol, or Tibetan Book of the Dead, is a mythological teaching tool, using relative concepts to guide us on our path. It explains the way things work in existence. It guides us through various stages of life, death, and rebirth. It evokes a sense of mystery and awe of the unknown. 

It’s a sadhana, which means it is a text as well as a spiritual practice. It is passed down through transmission and once received, it is said to give a flash of liberation.

It’s a practical guide that shows us how to work with the challenges we face and how they are the same in life as they are in death. It’s a reminder that we can’t escape karma or samsara. We will always face ignorance, attachment, and aversion. “But the message of the bardo is that wisdom is always an option, even though we generally choose confusion.” (Judy Lief, The Lion’s Roar, December 2025, “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”)

The Tibetan Book of the Dead functions as a text someone reads to the dying and recently passed person, trying to facilitate “The Great Liberation Through Hearing,” which is one of the 6 Liberations, or ways of reaching Liberation. The text is broken into 3 parts, or bardos, also referred to as the intermediate or in-between state; The Bardo of Death, The Bardo of Dharmata, The Bardo of Becoming. I will be focusing on the lessons from The Bardo of Dharmata, or is-ness. 

Here, the physical body is gone and the consciousness experiences a new kind of groundlessness. It also faces terrifying visualizations that are the  mind’s own projection. The consciousness is guided, by the reader, through the explanation of what it will experience. It is encouraged by the reader to “remember your practice (of meditation),” to “pay attention,” to recite prayers and supplications to help them take advantage of the opportunities for liberation and to avoid the pitfalls of our neurosis, in an attempt to at least have a favourable rebirth, if liberation is not possible. In the Dharmata, you are visited by 10 peaceful and wrathful deities. Recognizing that you are them is your chance for liberation. 

The essential point of the prayers to be recited is “to recognize, with certainty, that whatever appears, however terrifying, is your own projections,” (“The Tibetan Book of the Dead,” pg. 40, Chogyam Trungpa). If you do not recognize it, you will wander in samsara. If you do recognize the luminosity of your own dharamata, then you will “dissolve into rainbow light and become a sambhogakaya buddha,” (“The Tibetan Book of the Dead,” pg. 42, Chogyam Trungpa).

The peaceful and wrathful deities you encounter are meant to reflect your own inherent wisdom. To show you who you really, already are, a buddha. The encouraging work used over and over again, the essential point of the prayers, is to “recognize” it. Recognize that the visualizations are a projection of your own mind, and do not be afraid. Recognize your fear of the uncertainty and groundlessness of the bardo and your hope to re-solidify yourself through your habitual unconscious tendencies. Recognize the wisdom and compassion of the deities and be attracted to it. 

It is essential to have a meditation practice during life where you endeavor to learn how to “sit down, hold still and watch the movement of the mind, without adding and without commentary. Without grasping, without pushing away, and without ignoring (Sokuzan Brown). During the practice of meditation, we are in a bardo state, sitting in stillness between the non-meditation activities of daily life. Here we are training to receive the uncomfortable feelings of uncertainty and stay with what arises. We observe how we keep pushing away the negative feelings, until we wear the whole thing out and see that it is unreal, and that nothing can fundamentally harm us. By going into the darkness and the places we avoid, we recognize that the apparent solidity of our projections is an illusion and true certainty rests in our ability to be with constant change, uncertainty. 

In the Bardo of Dharmata, you are faced with your True Nature as well as your habituated neurosis and conditioned mind. We have the opportunity in life to pay attention to the mini bardos we experience all the time. These gaps are opportunities to connect with our awareness and we may even receive spiritual insight. These fleeting moments of groundlessness are opportunities to recognize our True Nature and attain liberation. 

Elena Musella