bardo

From: Reginald Ray, Secret of the Vajra World - The Tantric Buddhism of Tibet

In the bardo retreat, one follows a course of meditation that simulates the experiences of death and the after-death state. (See chapter 14.) The retreat itself is carried out in complete darkness, and because it is considered dangerous, facilities for it were found at only a few places in Tibet. Only those considered sufficiently well prepared both physically and mentally are authorized to carry out the retreat. The very real peril to the practitioner is one of psychosis, of dissociating from ordinary reality.`” A variety of methods and practices are known and employed to bring practitioners “back” when such a psychotic break occurs. A practitioner aspiring to perform yangti yoga needs to be at a most advanced stage of practice and spiritual maturity. Having been accepted for the retreat, he or she then undergoes months of preparation. Even then, one is allowed to enter the retreat only after clear evidence of mental and physical readiness. The retreat cell is specially designed so that all light can be gradually reduced until it is completely dark. The practitioner is taken to the cell and then, over the period of a week, the light is gradually excluded until he or she is in total darkness. Trungpa Rinpoche, who carried out this retreat as part of his training prior to leaving Tibet in 1959, remarks that at first the meditator feels depressed and anxious. In time, however, he becomes accustomed to the absence of light.

Each day, someone visits the retreatant to give meditation instruction and counsel. It is interesting that the instructions are the same as those provided to a dying person. Trungpa Rinpoche remarks that, as the retreat progresses, the daily visits are critically important, for without them the meditator would completely lose touch with ordinary reality. In contrast to other types of tantric meditation, in the bardo retreat no active visualizations are involved in the practice. Instead, the mental imagery associated with death appears spontaneously. An example is provided by the appearance of wrathful wisdom eyes:

The central place of the peaceful tathagatas is in the heart, so you see the different types of eyes in your heart; and the principle of the wrathful divinities is centralized in the brain, so you see certain types of eyes gazing at each other within your brain. These are not ordinary visualizations, but they arise out of the possibility of insanity and of losing ground altogether to the dharmata principle.(48)

Trungpa Rinpoche describes the evolving experience of the retreat. At a certain point, the dualistic notions of light and dark fall away, and everything is seen in a blue light. The meditator’s projections appear as the five buddhas (lower), the five buddha lights (medium), or the five buddha wisdoms (higher). Rinpoche comments that one usually sees the blue light first, then light of one color, then another, following the course of how one broke away from the alaya in the first place.(49) The experiences of the five buddhas manifest not in terms of physical or visual reality but in terms of energy having the qualities of earth, water, fire, air, and space. Trungpa Rinpoche explains:

We are not talking about ordinary substances, the gross level of the elements, but of subtle elements. From the perceiver’s point of view, perceiving the five tathagatas in visions is not vision and not perception, not quite experience. It is not vision, because if you have vision you have to look, and looking is in itself an extraverted way of separating yourself from the vision. You cannot perceive, because once you begin to perceive you are introducing that experience into your system, which means again a dualistic style of relationship. You cannot even know it, because as long as there is a watcher to tell you that these are your experiences, you are still separating those energies away from you.(50)

In characterizing the experience of the five buddha energies, Rinpoche remarks, “It flashes on and off; sometimes you experience it, and sometimes you do not experience it, but you are in it, so there is a journey between dharmakaya and luminosity.”(51) Through the bardo retreat, one is approaching an experience of space that is utterly beyond any interference or involvement by the human person, completely unorganized and undomesticated in any sense. It is totally naked, free-form, and unconditioned. It is naked because it contains not even the most subtle dualistic filter of subject and object. It is free-form because there are no concepts or categories to provide shape or interpretation. And it is unconditioned because it stands alone, not based on causes and conditions or leading to results, simply “as it is,” without any reference to past or future. It is outside of time. This description suggests the danger to the meditator. Out of the anxiety of the “free-fall” of the retreat, one may seek ground in what arises, becoming fascinated by the colored figures, the mental imagery, and the visions that one sees, and begin to fixate, magnify, and indulge in them. According to Tibetan tradition, this kind of fascination can lead to the withdrawal from reality mentioned above. In this case, one mentally creates a world of one’s own and physically enters into a state of suspended animation in which one remains for years, decades, or even centuries.(52) Tenzin Wangyal, who carried out a bardo retreat in the Bon context, provides the following illuminating comments:

I had heard stories and jokes about the problems people encountered while doing dark retreat, in which practitioners had visions they were sure were real. . . . In everyday life, external appearances deflect us from our thoughts, but in the dark retreat, there are no diversions of this kind, so that it becomes much easier to be disturbed, even to the point of madness, by our own mind-created visions. In the dark retreat, there is a situation of “sensory deprivation,” so that when thoughts or visions arise in the absence of external reality testing devices, we take them to be true and follow them, basing entire other chains of thoughts on them. In this case it is very easy to become `submerged’ in our own mind-created fantasies, entirely convinced of their “reality.”(53)

As the meditation proceeds, one passes through the bardo stages, described below in chapter 14. The meditation lasts for a nominal period of seven weeks, but it may in fact vary, depending upon the person. About the fifth week, a kind of breakthrough typically occurs. Trungpa Rinpoche:

Generally around the fifth week there comes a basic understanding of the five tathagatas, and these visions actually happen, not in terms of art at all. One is not exactly aware of their presence, but an abstract quality begins to develop, purely based on energy. When energy becomes independent, complete energy, it begins to look at itself and perceive itself, which transcends the ordinary idea of perception. It is as though you walk because you know you do not need any support; you walk unconsciously. It is that kind of independent energy without any self-consciousness, which is not at all phantasy-but then again, at the same time, one never knows.(54)

At the end of the meditation the light is gradually readmitted, until after a week the windows are completely uncovered and the meditator may leave the cell.

The purpose of the bardo retreat, like other forms of tantric meditation, is to enable the practitioner to touch the primordial reality that precedes the formation of the personality. It enables one to “know” the energies that circulate in the ocean of being, as they are before we structure them through our perception, slot them into recognizable quantities, and filter them through the mechanism of conceptual interpretation. Moreover, one not only touches these energies and knows them, but much more profoundly recognizes them as the ultimate truth of one’s own being and existence. This is, of course, a reality that is utterly free of any notion or movement of “I” or ego. What makes the bardo retreat so unique within Tibetan Buddhism is that its methods are incomparably powerful and effective, and it is able to bring this level of realization about so quickly-that is, for those who are sufficiently prepared and survive it rigors.