The-Tibetan-Book-of-Living-and-Dying

THE BARDO OF BECOMING 295
comes the longing for a physical body, and yet we fail to find
one, which plunges us into further suffering.
The whole landscape and environment is molded by our
karma, just as the bardo world can be peopled by the nightmarish
images of our own delusions. If our habitual conduct
in life was positive, our perception and experience in the
bardo will be mixed with bliss and happiness; and if our lives
were harmful or hurtful to others, our experiences in the
bardo will be ones of pain, grief, and fear. So, it was said in
Tibet, fishermen, butchers, and hunters are attacked by monstrous
versions of their former victims.
Some who have studied the near-death experience in detail,
and especially the "life-review" that is one of its common features,
have asked themselves: How could we possibly imagine
the horror of the bardo experiences of a drug baron, a dictator,
or a Nazi torturer? The "life-review" seems to suggest that,
after death, we can experience all the suffering for which we
were both directly and indirectly responsible.
THE DURATION OF THE BARDO OF BECOMING
The whole of the bardo of becoming has an average duration
of forty-nine days and a minimum length of one week. But
it varies, just as now some people live to be a hundred years
old, and others die in their youth. Some can even get stuck in
the bardo, to become spirits or ghosts. Dudjom Rinpoche used
to explain that during the first twenty-one days of the bardo,
you still have a strong impression of your previous life, and
this is therefore the most important period for the living to be
able to help a dead person. After that, your future life slowly
takes shape and becomes the dominant influence.
We have to wait in the bardo until we can make a karmic
connection with our future parents. I sometimes think of the
bardo as something like a transit lounge, in which you can
wait for up to forty-nine days before transferring to the next
life. But there are two special cases who don't have to wait in
the intermediate state, because the intensity of the power of
their karma sweeps them immediately on to their next rebirth.
The first are those who have lived extremely beneficial and
positive lives, and so trained their minds in spiritual practice
that the force of their realization carries them directly into a
good rebirth. The second case are those whose lives have
been negative and harmful; they travel swiftly down to their
next birth, wherever that might be.