The OG Self-Help Guide
A Monk's 1300-Year-Old Guide to Life and Life Beyond Death
You know what’s been on my mind? It’s not the last post on my social media feed. Or the financial planning challenge of my daughter’s upcoming college admissions.
It's this ancient Tibetan book that basically wrote the user manual for dying. I first got to know about it from a YouTube video (where else). And then I went down the rabbit hole of watching more videos, podcasts and reading whatever I could find on it for the next hour or so.
Bardol Thodol (derived from Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State) is attributed to Padmasambhava, an eighth-century Tibetan monk who was probably the world's first exit strategy consultant. Though he might have a tough time finding any clients today.
While we're reading "5 Steps to a Better Morning Routine," this dude dropped the ultimate guidebook. If he were a self help guru writing today, it would probably be titled: Right, You're Dead: Now What?
Padmasambhava and his fellow Tibetan masters were the original USX designers. That’s User Soul Experience for those of you wondering. So what if I just coined it.
Anyway, in Bardol Thodol, Padmasambhava breaks down the whole death experience. In the hope of guiding those near death to moksha, nirvana, freedom from samsara - call it what you will. A last ditch opportunity to find release from the cycle of rebirth and suffering.
Now, my understanding of the book is not enough for me to write a long treatise on it. But I’ll try and break it down in the way I understood it.
The book talks about three stages – a spiritual Uber ride post death, if you will. First, you've got Chikhai Bardo, or what I call the ‘Oh Shit, This Is Really Happening’ moment. It’s that instant when a soul is released from the boundaries of the physical reality.
Next comes the Chonyid Bardo, the vision stage. Think of the most realistic dream or nightmare ever, but it’s your life’s karma playing back to you. The equivalent of scrolling through your entire life backwards on a social media timeline. Except every cringe moment feels real. Shivers!
Finally, there's the Sidpa Bardo – the rebirth phase for those who can’t find resolution or enlightenment yet. This is where your past life karma comes in again and guides you to a new body. Where you’re born is a function of the lessons you’re yet to learn, fears and conflicts you have yet to resolve.
Most of us remain trapped in this endless cycle of being born, suffering through life and then dying. Only to be reborn and then repeat it all over again. If that’s not a nightmare, I don’t know what is. Yet, we still can’t see through the illusions of the many lives we’ve led.
In my hour long stumble into this ancient guidebook for the afterlife, Padmasambhava pulled the ultimate inception move. He gave us the original life hack:
"Hey, while we've got you thinking about death, maybe consider how you're living?"
While we're out here optimising our LinkedIn profiles and counting steps, this eighth-century monk dropped the truth bomb: you want to understand your life? Start by understanding your death.
Think about it – we spend more time planning our Instagram grid than contemplating our mortality. We've got death right there in our KRAs: Dead-lines, anyone? But mention death at a dinner party, and suddenly everyone buries themselves in their phones. Or needs a loo break.
If you’re still reading, here’s your reward. Scroll to the end for link to the video that started it all for me.
The real genius of the Bardo Thodol isn't that it tells you how to die – it's that it shows you how to live. While being fully aware that you're going to die.
Padmasambhava knew what he was talking about – centuries before we started putting "Live, Laugh, Love" on our walls. He wrote the original manual for both living and dying.
Great one MM!