Bar do thos grol

Front matter

How this edition was made, who it stands on, and what it does not claim.

To the scholars known and unknown

To Karma Lingpa, who revealed the cycle in the mountains of southern Tibet in the fourteenth century, and to the terma tradition that carried it.

To the monastic copyists — generation after generation of them — who kept a manuscript lineage alive by hand, in cold rooms, for six hundred years.

To Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup, who first turned it into English, and to W. Y. Evans-Wentz, who published it in 1927 and put it in front of readers who had never heard of a bardo.

To the Tibetan and Western scholars, translators and teachers of the century since, whose work made a modern rendering possible and whose corrections made it honest.

And to the far greater number whose names were never written down — the readers at bedsides, the reciters, the copyists whom no colophon records — whose hands kept the text alive so that it could reach this page.

Known and unknown. This book is theirs before it is anyone's.

How this edition was made

This is an original work, not a translation and not an adaptation. The root text — the Bar do thos grol cycle revealed by Karma Lingpa in the fourteenth century — is long out of copyright, as is Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English translation published in 1927. Where either is quoted, it is in short passages, cited each time, for commentary and criticism. Nothing in this book is adapted from, or reproduces any part of, a modern in-copyright translation such as the 2005 Penguin Classics edition; those are cited as references only.

Each chapter carries three commentary tracks, called lenses. The Living lens is secular: impermanence, letting go, dying well, with nothing required of the reader in the way of belief. The Clinical lens is written for practitioners who sit with dying patients and their families. The Traditional lens presents the six bardos as the text itself has them, with the deities read the way the tradition reads them — as projections of mind.

The lenses are not three opinions about one passage. They are three different jobs. A reader who stays in one lens from beginning to end has read a complete book; a reader who moves between them has read a deeper one.

What this book does not claim

Where the tradition makes a claim about what occurs after death, this book reports the claim. It does not assert it as a finding, and it does not argue against it either. Readers who hold the metaphysics and readers who hold none should both be able to use the text without being told they are wrong.

The Clinical lens stays inside scope of practice throughout. It covers comfort, presence, communication, family support and referral. It does not suggest that acupuncture, herbal medicine, or any other intervention alters the course of dying or the outcome of a terminal illness, and no such claim should be read into it.

Nothing here is medical advice, and nothing here is religious instruction. Decisions about treatment, prognosis and care planning belong with the patient's treating team.

No outcome claims, no testimonials, no ratings — consistent with AHPRA advertising requirements.
Prognosis, medication and care planning are referred back to the treating team every time.
The tradition is named and credited, not stripped for parts.

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Sources and citation

Quoted lines from the 1927 rendering are given in the footnotes of the chapter in which they appear, with the bardo and the section named. Tibetan terms are given in script with Wylie transliteration on first use.

To cite a chapter of this edition: Doran, D. The Modern Bardo, chapter [n]. Medi-Chi, Ocean Shores NSW. Retrieved from medichi.online.

Ready to read? Head to the chapter index — chapters 1, 2 and 4 are free to read.

Medi-Chi · medichi.online

The Modern Bardo — front matter