bardo

The First Twelve Days of the Bardo
through logical reasoning. If anything contradicts these
two, then one needn’t believe in it.
The third kind is called “extremely concealed or hidden
meaning” which is something you can’t perceive nor
deduce. An example for this is the teachings on the bardo
and the deities. One can’t find that they exist nor that they
don’t exist due to the statement alone. There is no ground
for believing in their existence. But you also can’t prove it
isn’t a lie since the meaning is extremely obscured and
concealed from our knowledge. How can we verify these
teachings? We can’t look at the content of the teachings
itself, so we must look at who is giving the teachings and
examine him instead. So if one looks at the Buddha and
asks, “Is this a person who tells the truth, is he someone
who actually knows what he is talking about?” one comes
to the conclusion that the Buddha then “although there is
no way of proving it the one way or other, but since he
taught it, I believe it!” That’s the third approach.
Question: Who taught these teachings and where were they
first revealed? Were they from the historical Buddha or
from the Tibetan tradition?
Rinpoche: These are Tibetan teachings, but the source of
these teachings is found in the tantras. In the tantras you
can find the 42 peaceful and 58 wrathful deities. You can’t
find this complete teaching in the tantra though, but you
can recognize deities in specific tantras and know about
what is held in the hands and all contents of this teaching.
That was taught by the Buddha.
Question: By developing superior insight in meditation,
which we can do if we try hard enough, can we with
clairvoyance observe these facts? Does the mind naturally
experience it as a day or is it just for a designation purpose
from our point of view?
Rinpoche: The days are measured in terms of our time of
days. Individuals in the bardo do not experience a day
because there is no sun or moon. They don’t have a day
that accords with the length of lime the sun rises and sets
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