Bardo Thodol
The Bardo Thodol (Tibetan: བར་དོ་ཐོས་གྲོལ, Wylie: bar do thos grol
), Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State, is a text from a larger corpus of teachings, the Profound Dharma of Self-Liberation through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones, revealed by Karma Lingpa (1326–1386). It is the best-known work of Nyingma literature, known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The Tibetan text describes, and is intended to guide one through, the experiences that the consciousness has after death, in the bardo, the interval between death and the next rebirth. The text also includes chapters on the signs of death and rituals to undertake when death is closing in or has taken place.
Etymology
Bardo thosgroll (Tibetan: བར་དོ་ཐོས་གྲོལ, Wylie: bar do thos grol
):
bar do, Sanskrit antarabhāva: "intermediate state", "transitional state", "in-between state", "liminal state". Valdez: "Used loosely, the term "bardo" refers to the state of existence intermediate between two lives on earth." Valdez: "[The] concept arose soon after the Buddha's passing, with a number of earlier Buddhist groups accepting the existence of such an intermediate state, while other schools rejected it."