What do the living need to learn?
The content of the text, connected at first glance primarily to the concept of physical death and reincarnation, presents the so-called bardo teachings that speak of bardo states or bardo realms. The Tibetan term bar-do literally means “between two” and signifies a transitional, transient, or uncertain state through which human consciousness passes during life and after death.
The basic idea is that a person’s consciousness passes through various worlds or states, through a series of continuous changes in reality, in which they experience different experiences that are meant to serve their spiritual development.
Thus, in the existence of a human being, various situations or states can arise. The following are the bardos states to be forged:
The common characteristic of all these states is the continuous change in perception of reality, and this change is symbolically referred to as death in Tibetan teachings.
In each bardo, consciousness is given the opportunity to confront experiences it needs to recognize its true nature and liberate itself from its own illusions. Therefore, the bardo states are interpreted as favorable opportunities for the liberation of consciousness, and the most sublime opportunity for this is the moment of death.
In Tibet, the teachings on death are the key to understanding life because life and death are parts of the same. Translating Croatian to English:
jeline. The whole life is a process within which stages called life and death alternate, but actually represent changes in human consciousness.
Buddhist teachings say that a person starts dying from the moment of birth, because something dies for them every day, and something new is born. One day dies, and a new one is born; childhood and youth die, and maturity is born; one state of consciousness dies, and another is born.
A person constantly goes through changes in which they have to leave something old and continue with something new until the next change occurs… Each change means the death of the previous stage.
Physical death is just one of many deaths a person goes through, a form of change from which life continues again.
What connects all the changes, all the “deaths” and “lives”, the entire life of a human being?
It is consciousness. It is the creative principle that connects all dimensions of existence, or what “ensures continuity between lives”. However, there are different levels of consciousness. One of them, mysterious and hidden, creates a connection with its special energy. In the Bardo Thödol it is called the primordial Clear Light, and Buddhists interpret it as the true source of consciousness. For a human being, this source represents the primordial foundation of the human mind’s nature.
The purpose of every human being’s life is to develop consciousness to the extent that it “reaches” the Clear Light, to recognize it as one’s own true nature or, as Buddhists say, as Buddha nature within us.
However, this dimension is hidden from humans, and they cannot perceive it in ordinary life circumstances. Nevertheless, there are special moments for human consciousness within ordinary circumstances, where it gets a chance. These are bardos, moments when a certain kind of perception “dies” for human consciousness and enters a “new reality.”
Within each bardo state, typical experiences of a specific bardo alternate, aiming to provoke a change in the center of consciousness. This change is described as the death of illusions. libna, štetnih i tamnih dijelova. To znači da kroz odbacivanje svega što nije u skladu s njenom istinskom prirodom, svijest postaje slobodna i otvorena za nova iskustva.
Prema tibetanskim učenjima, trenutak odbacivanja ili smrti je ključan. Tada se pročišćena svijest može povezati s Jasnim Svjetlom, dimenzijom koja nije podložna smrti. Međutim, ako svijest ne doživi promjenu u svom središtu, ako samo djelomično odbaci ili ne prepozna vlastite otrove, slijede novi bardo i nova prilika za transformaciju.
Tibetanska knjiga mrtvih poručuje da se život nastavlja nakon smrti. Smrt nije kraj života, već samo promjena koja je potrebna kako bi se čovjek približio svojoj suštini. Postoje velike i male smrti, odnosno velike i male promjene koje nam pružaju mogućnost oslobođenja svijesti od otrova. Yes, ignorance is a burden of transience. Therefore, one of the great and important deaths, the abandonment of the physical body, is a blissful and solemn moment of life.
Small deaths are the possibility of gradually freeing consciousness from its harmful and dark parts, the ones that cause pain. It is a purification and easing of consciousness from burden. These small deaths are changes or new steps that a person takes consciously.
That is why the bardo of everyday life is important because it is a world of small steps that depend on the individual. In everyday life, a person needs to consciously use life as an opportunity for gradual liberation of consciousness: attachment to matter must gradually die. A person must be the initiator of their own small deaths in which they will abandon greed, hatred, ignorance, selfishness, envy… bitter poisons that distance the human being from its true nature. The discerning consciousness of a person must discern what is unnatural within it and realize that it is a burden that needs to be discarded. The purpose of everyday life is for a person to learn. To live, to “learn to live means to learn to let go”.