Mind Beyond Death: The Bardo of This Life
We now move on to the second chapter of the book, Mind Beyond Death. This chapter covers the Bardo of this life. Yes, believe it or not, this life in which we are now living is a bardo state, existing between birth and the conditions that will lead to our death. Previous articles on this book are linked here Intro and Chap1. Other articles on death linked here DeathFascinating and EightStages.
The author, Dzogchen Ponlop Rimpoche defines the Bardo of this Life as,
“The teachings on the natural bardo of this life are concerned with how to make our life meaningful and transform its circumstances into the path of awakening.”
In the Buddhist view, whenever a being takes birth; an individual consciousness takes birth. It is a temporary traveler in a body. It’s as if our mind and body have made a contract and when the contract is finished, and we don’t know exactly when that is, the mind must vacate the body.
When we do leave, we could be heading to a place worse or better than we are now. How we live this life determines which of those two possibilities comes to fruition.