Mystical systems
Bardo Thodol
Direct answer
Bardo Thodol: The Bardo Thodol, Liberation through Hearing in the Between, is a Tibetan Buddhist text read aloud to the dying and the newly dead, known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
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At a glance
- Also called
- Tibetan Book of the Dead, Bardo Thödol, Liberation through Hearing, Bardo Todrol
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Bardo, Samsara, Reincarnation, Ars Moriendi
The Bardo Thodol, Liberation through Hearing in the Between, is a Tibetan Buddhist text read aloud to the dying and the newly dead, known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
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What is the Bardo Thodol?
The Bardo Thodol is a set of instructions addressed to a person who is dying or has just died. A lama or a friend reads it aloud at the bedside and for days afterwards, calling the dead person by name and describing what the tradition says they are meeting: first a clear light, then peaceful and wrathful figures, then the pull toward rebirth. At each stage the listener is told that what appears is their own mind, and that recognising this frees them.
Bardo Thodol belongs to a much larger cycle of teachings of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. The title Tibetan Book of the Dead is Western, chosen in 1927 to echo the Egyptian Book of the Dead, with which it has little in common but the name.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Death and what follows.
What sets Bardo Thodol apart
The Bardo Thodol is addressed to the dead person and not to the mourners or to a god, which is rare among the funeral texts of the world. It assumes that hearing continues for a while after death and that instruction can still help. Its method is repetition: at every stage the same point is made, that the lights and figures are one's own mind. It is one part of a larger cycle, and Tibetans know it by the name of that cycle or as the Great Liberation through Hearing.
- Title: Bar do thos grol: liberation through hearing in the between
- School: Nyingma, with wide use beyond it
- Revealed by: Karma Lingpa, fourteenth century, by tradition
- First English edition: Kazi Dawa Samdup and W. Y. Evans-Wentz, 1927
- Complete translation: Gyurme Dorje, 2005
Often mistaken for something else: The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a set of spells for the dead person to speak; the Bardo Thodol is guidance spoken to the dead person by the living.
The story behind Bardo Thodol
Tibetan tradition holds that Padmasambhava composed the teaching in the eighth century and hid it, and that Karma Lingpa found it in the fourteenth. Walter Evans-Wentz published the English version of Kazi Dawa Samdup in 1927. Translations by Francesca Fremantle with Chögyam Trungpa in 1975 and by Robert Thurman in 1994 followed, and the complete version of Gyurme Dorje in 2005.
Why Bardo Thodol matters
Bardo Thodol is the best known account anywhere of dying told from the inside, and it speaks to the dying person as someone who can still be guided and comforted.
How to read Bardo Thodol
In Tibetan communities it is recited for the dying and the dead; Western readers have also taken it as a guide to facing fear in life.
Bardo Thodol in practice: an example
A reader who expects a book of spells finds a patient voice telling someone, again and again, not to be afraid of what they see.
Where readings of Bardo Thodol go wrong
Bardo Thodol is a rite of a living religion, done with a teacher. The edition of 1927 added ideas of its editor that the Tibetan text does not hold.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- Tibetan Book of the Dead, Bardo Thödol, Liberation through Hearing, Bardo Todrol
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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More in Mystical Systems
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Common questions
What is the Bardo Thodol?
It is a Tibetan Buddhist text of guidance for the dying and the dead, read aloud at the bedside. Its name means Liberation through Hearing in the Between.
Why is it called the Tibetan Book of the Dead?
The editor of the first English edition, Walter Evans-Wentz, chose that title in 1927 to recall the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Tibetans do not call it that.
Who wrote the Bardo Thodol?
Tradition names Padmasambhava, the eighth-century teacher, as its author, and Karma Lingpa as the one who found it in the fourteenth century. Historians date the written text to that later period.
