After Life

Following death, according to Tibetan Buddhism, the spirit of the departed goes through a process lasting 49 days that is divided into several stages called “bardos”.   At the conclusion of the bardo, the person either enters nirvana or returns to earth for rebirth.

 Stage one of the Bardo begins at death and extends from half a day to four days. This is the period of time necessary for the departed to realize that they have dropped the body. The consciousness of the departed has an ecstatic experience of the primary "clear light" at the death moment. Everyone gets at least a fleeting glimpse of the light. The more spiritually developed see it longer, and are able to go beyond it to a higher level of reality. The average person, however, drops into the lesser state of the secondary "clear light."

In stage two, the departed encounters the hallucinations resulting from the karma created during life. Unless highly developed, the individual will feel that they are still in the body. The departed then encounters various apparitions, the "peaceful" and "wrathful" deities, that are actually personifications of human feelings and that, to successfully achieve nirvana, the deceased must encounter unflinchingly. Only the most evolved individuals can skip the bardo experience altogether and transit directly into a paradise realm.

"When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. When you die, you rejoice, and the world cries." - ancient Tibetan Buddhist saying

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