Today didn’t start spectacularly, but it may end so.
For the last few weeks I’ve been in between worlds, with one end of the old world disappearing (relentlessly helped by me, finishing commitments one after the other), and the other end, of the new, emerging world, not yet appearing, stubbornly staying elusive, uncatchable.
In simpler worlds, I’m switching countries and I’m in between flats, all my belongings in boxes.
In Tibetan, this situation is called “bardo”. You may be familiar with this word if you’ve read the book “The Tibetan Books Of The Dead”, which is nothing more than a tutorial for those leaving this world, and entering the next one – or, how we phrase this around here, for those who are dying. The word “bardo”, though, may be applied to anything that’s an “in between”, not only to the space between this life and the next one.
Being in a “bardo” is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s not necessarily a good thing either. As a matter of fact, “good” or “bad” don’t apply to a bardo, because there are no fixed rules there, there’s nothing to which you can create a rapport to, there’s no reference point. And that’s an experience we ‘re not aware of very often. The very core of the “living” process is to try to make sense of the world around us. To create reference points, systems, space coordinates, distances, beginnings and endings.
In a “bardo”, by definition we’re not belonging to any coordinate system. We’re preparing to engage in a new one.
As much as I don’t enjoy being in this situation, I find it extremely useful. It’s a good preparation. As Chogyam Trungpa said:
The bad news is you‘re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.
The more I think about this, the more I realize that all the coordinates that we create are fragile. They will eventually disappear. Everything is a bardo, and everything is just a free fall.
