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Everyday Bardos

Posted October 6th, 2009 by Linda Hollier

“Bardo is a Tibetan word that simply means a ‘transition’ or a gap between the completion of one situation and the onset of another. Bar means ‘in between’ and do means ‘suspended’ or ‘thrown’”. (Rinpoche, Sogyal. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. London, Sydney, Auckland, Johannesburg: Rider, 2008. p.106)

Sogyal Rinpoche speaks of the natural bardo of this life as the first of the bardos. It is the period which spans the whole of our lifetime and is the transition between the completion of birth and the onset of death.

During the course of our lifetime we pass through many miniature bardos. We grow up, we mature, we change schools, we change jobs, we end relationships and begin new ones, and in between these changes there is always that gap, no matter how short or long it may be.

As we evolve we leave behind us previous stages and move into higher ones as we undergo transformation. The quest is on and on, the crossings over sometimes painful and sometimes filled with joy.

We can remind ourselves of life and all it brings, every time we see a door or cross a threshold. We often do not know what is on the other side. At times the appearance of the door gives us some inkling of this and at other times we simply have to enter without any assurances.

The door is the point of transition. We leave behind a room and enter another. We step through the door from the outside to the inside. It is the gap between the past and the future, a strong reminder of the present moment.

My fascination with doors began some years ago as we travelled, and since then I have been photographing doors wherever we go.

Recently on Twitter, I have been posting some of these photos and adding a comment to them.

Today, I uploaded them onto Flickr and you can view them here. My dream has always been to publish a book with such photos and comments, so in a sense I have started this project with an online digital book!

Thanks to Corey for the inspiration to call the series “Everyday Bardos”.

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In slideshow mode - flicker is excellent.

Posted October 6th, 2009 by Ambo Suno

In slideshow mode - flicker is excellent.

ambo

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Bardos

Posted October 7th, 2009 by Scott Marshall

Wow-

yet another portal! In the new Dan Brown book, portal to ancient mysteries! When one door closes, another opens.

From the almighty Wikipedia:

Six Bardos

Shinay bardo (Tibetan): is the first bardo of birth and life. This bardo commences from conception until the last breath, when the mindstream withdraws from the body.
Milam bardo (Tibetan): is the second bardo of the dream state. The Milam Bardo is a subset of the first Bardo. Dream Yoga develops practices to integrate the dream state into Buddhist sadhana.
Samten bardo (Tibetan) is the third bardo of meditation. This bardo is generally only experienced by meditators, though individuals may have spontaneous experience of it. Samten Bardo is a subset of the Shinay Bardo.
Chikkhai bardo (Tibetan): is the fourth bardo of the moment of death. According to tradition, this bardo is held to commence when the outer and inner signs presage that the onset of death is nigh, and continues through the dissolution or transmutation of the Mahabhuta until the external and internal breath has completed.
Chönyid bardo (Tibetan): is the fifth bardo of the luminosity of the true nature which commences after the final 'inner breath' (Sanskrit: prana, vayu; Tibetan: rlung). It is within this Bardo that visions and auditory phenomena occur. In the Dzogchen teachings, these are known as the spontaneously manifesting Thödgal (Tibetan: thod-rgyal) visions. Concomitant to these visions, there is a welling of profound peace and pristine awareness. Sentient beings who have not practiced during their lived experience and/or who do not recognize the clear light (Tibetan: od gsal) at the moment of death are usually deluded throughout the fifth bardo of luminosity.
Sidpai bardo (Tibetan): is the sixth bardo of becoming or transmigration. This bardo endures until the inner-breath commences in the new transmigrating form determined by the 'karmic seeds' within the storehouse consciousness.

"Behind door number # 1" Various Bardos seem to have some relationship to Gross, Subtle, Causal. Or in the form of transition states between Gross, Subtle, Causal.

There should be more to say here. I'll come back to it!

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Two more doors: Lucid dreaming and the moment of death

Posted October 8th, 2009 by Linda Hollier in response to Bardos

Hi Scott

I look forward to your further thoughts on the transition between the gross, subtle and causal states.

You will notice that the second bardo of the dream state is said to be a subset of the first bardo.

Naropa, the Tibetan master, outlined six yogas to harness consciousness during both day and night in order to direct it towards enlightenment. The third of these yogas was Milam which pertains to the control of dreams. “In the Tibetan tradition, the ability to dream lucidly is not an end in itself, but, rather, it provides an additional context through which the illusoriness of all existence is highlighted and grasped by the initiate.” (Dreams and Beyond, p.478)

You might enjoy this discussion with Ken Wilber in the Youtube video entitled, “Lucid dreams and causal body”.

There are so many wonderful doors waiting to be opened and we need to be mindful at that moment when we pass through them.

The second issue I would like to raise in connection with your reference to the bardos is summed up in a sentence in an article I found a link to on Twitter this morning, entitled “Delimiting death”:

“The problem is that death is not a phase transition whereby a person stops being alive and becomes dead in an instant.”

The whole legal and medical dilemma is possibly made more difficult by the fact that we in the West do not possibly fully understand the fourth bardo and the external and internal breath.

Linda

P.S. I have just started reading “The Lost Symbol” so it seems like I will continue to be involved with portals!

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my further thoughts

Posted October 8th, 2009 by Scott Marshall in response to Two more doors: Lucid dreaming and the moment of death

Thanks Linda!

I like the Delimiting death article. It just goes to show that as we understand more about the functions of the exterior of our interior, we must add new facets to our legal understanding of phenomenon. Just like Galileo did, it changes the way in which we interpret phenomenon.

Eighth consciousness: "store-house consciousness" (Tibetan: kun-gzhi rnam-shes; Sanskrit: ālāyavijñāna); " The seed consciousness (bi^ja-vijn~a^na); "the consciousness which is the basis of the other seven.[2] The seven prior consciousnesses are based and founded upon the eighth. It is the aggregate which administers and yields rebirth; this idea may be ultimately traceable to the "luminous mind" of the agamas.

I'd like to focus on the final statement in this definition of the eighth consciousness. "It is the aggregate which administers and yields rebirth; this idea may be ultimately traceable to the "luminous mind" of the agamas. This luminous mind is luminous regardless of the presence of defilements. The always already.

This luminous mind I think of as having a relationship with causal body. Practitioners have stated that the "luminous mind" is pliable or workable. This is again showing up for me conceptually as a portal. This portal opens up as a lens of lumination at causal. Illumination. This pliability or workability is the clarity of this lens portal. Again I strongly suggest that non duality is distinct from the causal body. This causal body is the sense of what Wilber calls "I am-ness" or that witness consciousness. Some form of ego or self/sheath is present at causal.

Using a cartesian plane or xy axis, we could count origin as the present moment. This point of "now" is a point that contains with it data. This data is a connect the dot map of past events and future possibilities. A constellation of the present moment. Coordinate points lining up for diagrammatic signification. Signposts.

Again the portal here is at the present moment. A defining moment of significant seed data pregnant with the future, loaded with the past. That which is jettisoned can be re-integrated.

Thoughts?

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The Doors, Aldous Huxley and William Blake

Posted October 8th, 2009 by Linda Hollier

Thanks to Richard Friedel for pointing out that the band “The Doors”, ‘took their name from the title of a book by Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954). That title was in turn taken from a line in a poem entitled "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" by the 18th-century artist and poet William Blake: "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite"’(Wikepedia).

See the links above as doors. Open them, pause, step through, listen, look inside and experience.

Doors have much to teach us as we encounter them every day.

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Great Doors

Posted October 8th, 2009 by Anne Tyler Lord

--Linda,

It has been great to follow you on twitter and see the doors! You know I love them. They invoke a contemplation in me each time I see one - the differences, the symbolism of the unknown-transitions-and the history, realizing that many of the doors you show are much older than any of us, with so many stories to tell.

Here are a few door quotes for you:

When you follow your bliss... doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else. -Joseph Campbell

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. -Helen Keller

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. -Albert Einstein

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. -Deepak Chopra

The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge. -Meister Eckhart

If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. -Milton Berle

A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of. -Ogden Nash

Anne Tyler Lord
Storytelling from the space of Integral Consciousness
Poetry, Prose, Fiction

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Enter and Exist!

Posted October 10th, 2009 by Mary Linda Landauer

You've done it again Linda. You open the door, (pun intended:) invite us all in to contemplate for a while, then we exist to take something back into the world to share with others.....thank you always.

I love your captured doors in all the different cultures....what an incredible metaphor. We all enter and exist through doors in whatever culture we live......And, as we each walk through the streets of different lands we ask the question, "what is the mystery behind that closed door? Or, maybe, the door is ajar and we can get a glimmer of stirrings, helping us to see images more clearly. But sometimes the door is flung wide open creating a transparency where we can see with perfect clairity......

Like you, openings such as doors, windows, gateways, always hold mystery and fascination. Metaphorically they also hold transformation and transcendence. We come in from the cold to find warmth helps us to survive. We keep the evil spirits out becomes our early myth, We began to see we have choices in our doors to enter at the more rational and plurlistic levels.....then something happens when we cross over and enter a doorway or gateway that no longer serves us in our survival. We become mystics and enter into what Bede Griffiths states so beautifully, "an opening or transparency of the psychophysiological organism to the point of the spirit, a self-transcendence where one is in "communion with the universal spirit" or "spirit of God."

You are a beautiful mystic Linda and I am blessed to experience your wonderful writings and light of soul.

I would like to say to all of you who have responded to this blog that I've enjoyed reading your expressions and feel such a kinship with you.

In soul love,

Mary Linda

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The Door as the Feminine Principle

Posted October 10th, 2009 by Linda Hollier in response to Enter and Exist!

Hi Mary Linda

You have beautifully described the way doors metaphorically hold transformation and transcendence.

I think that you will appreciate this piece of writing I came across in a book entitled, “The Other Half of My Soul: Bede Griffiths and the Hindu-Christian dialogue” by Beatrice Bruteau, Bede Griffiths.

So we have this tradition of the feminine, and in the Tao Te Ching it is marvellously developed. My idea of the feminine is that the feminine is receptive while the masculine is active. The feminine is receptive – it’s an active passivity. In China it is called Wu Wei (“not action”). Again it’s an active passivity; it’s not a dull passivity but passivity that is totally open, sensitivity that has awakened. And that’s what we are seeking – to be awakened. The Taoists compare it to emptiness; there’s a wonderful chapter in the Tao that says. “We take clay and make a pot, but it’s the empty space in the pot which makes it useful. And we take bricks and mortar and wood to make a house but it’s the empty spaces of the windows and the doors that make it habitable.” That is the feminine. It makes things useful and habitable.

It captures the whole concept of agency and communion for me, the yang and the yin, the masculine and the feminine and the need for both to achieve balance.

I had never thought of doors as the feminine principle and so this has given me yet further food for thought.

In kinship

LInda

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