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    3. Chapter index

    Chapter index

    Twenty-four chapters across the six bardos, all published.

    Working through it? The 24-day companion practice guide pairs a daily exercise and meditation with each chapter.

    Part 1 · This lifeསྐྱེ་གནས་བར་དོ།

    The bardo we are in right now — birth to death. Impermanence, attachment, and the habits that will still be running when everything else stops.

    1What a bardo actually isBar do means gap — the space between one situation ending and the next one settling. The book is about six of them, and you are standing in the first.
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    2Impermanence, without the posterEveryone agrees that everything changes and almost nobody lives as though it were true. The gap between the two is the subject of this chapter.
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    3Attachment is not loveThe text treats grasping as the thing that makes transitions hard. Distinguishing it from love is most of the work — and it matters enormously at a deathbed.4Your habits are the thing that carriesWhatever the tradition means by continuity, the observable part is this: under pressure, you do not rise to your intentions. You fall to your habits.
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    5Rehearsing the gap while the stakes are lowSmall endings happen constantly. The tradition treats them as the training ground for the large one — and closes Part I with how to use them.

    Part 2 · Dream and meditation

    The two rehearsal bardos. Sleep and stillness as the places where letting go can be practised while the stakes are low.

    6The bardo of dreamSleep as the nightly dissolution, and what the tradition asks you to notice in it.7Lucidity without the gadgetryDream practice stripped of the self-improvement industry that has grown around it.8The bardo of meditationStillness as the third rehearsal — the deliberate gap.

    Part 3 · Dyingའཆི་ཁ་བར་དོ།

    The dissolutions, the moment itself, and what the text asks of the people in the room.

    9The outer dissolutionEarth, water, fire, air: what the tradition says goes first, and what is actually observable at a bedside.10The inner dissolutionThe stages the text describes after the senses have gone — appearance, increase, attainment.11The ground luminosityThe moment the whole cycle is built around, presented exactly as the tradition presents it.12What to say in the roomThe reader's instructions — the oldest working part of the text, and easily the most practical.13When it is not peacefulAgitation, terminal restlessness, and the honest limits of anyone's framework.14Afterwards, in the first hoursWhat the tradition asks of the room once breathing has stopped, and what a modern household can reasonably do.

    Part 4 · Realityཆོས་ཉིད་བར་དོ།

    The visions of the chönyid bardo, read the way the tradition itself reads them — as mind, not as visitors.

    15Entering the chönyid bardoThe visions begin. The instruction, from here to the end of Part IV, is one word: recognise.16The peaceful deitiesRead as the tradition reads them: not visitors, but the mind's own clarity in a form it can recognise.17The wrathful deitiesWhy the frightening images are said to be the same mind wearing a different costume.18The lights and the coloursThe dull light and the bright light, and the choice the text describes at every stage.19RecognitionWhat the whole of Part IV has been asking for, said once, without ornament.

    Part 5 · Becomingསྲིད་པ་བར་དོ།

    Rebirth, continuity, and the long work of grief for those left behind.

    20The bardo of becomingThe srid pa bardo: the pull toward the next situation, and why the text says it is nearly irresistible.21GriefFor those left behind. The longest chapter in the book, and the least metaphysical.22ContinuityWhat the tradition claims carries forward, and what can honestly be said without claiming it.

    Part 6 · Using it today

    Daily practice, and bedside practice. What to actually do.

    23A practice you can actually keepEverything in this book reduced to something that fits in an ordinary week.24Closing: a book for the livingWhat this edition claims, what it does not, and the dedication it was written under.
    Front cover of The Modern Bardo — jade and gold typographic cover with the Medi-Chi mark

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    The Modern Bardo — chapter index

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