Bardo
The concept of antarābhava, an intervening state between death and rebirth, was brought into Buddhism from the Vedic-Upanishadic (later Hindu) philosophical tradition.
According to Tibetan tradition, after death and before one's next birth, when one's consciousness is not connected with a physical body, one experiences a variety of phenomena.
These usually follow a particular sequence of degeneration from, just after death, the clearest experiences of reality of which one is spiritually capable, and then proceeding to terrifying hallucinations that arise from the impulses of one's previous unskillful actions.
For the prepared and appropriately trained individuals, the bardo offers a state of great opportunity for liberation, since transcendental insight may arise with the direct experience of reality; for others, it can become a place of danger as the karmically created hallucinations can impel one into a less than desirable rebirth.
Metaphorically, bardo can be used to describe times when the usual way of life becomes suspended, as, for example, during a period of illness or during a meditation retreat.
From the records of early Buddhist schools, it appears that at least six different groups accepted the notion of an intermediate existence (antarabhāva), namely, the Sarvāstivāda, Darṣṭāntika, Vātsīputrīyas, Saṃmitīya, Pūrvaśaila and late Mahīśāsaka.
André Bareau's Les sectes bouddhiques du Petit Véhicule provides the arguments of the Sarvāstivāda schools as follows:[7] The intermediate being who makes the passage in this way from one existence to the next is formed, like every living being, of the five aggregates (skandha).
As for the heinous criminal guilty of one of the five crimes without interval (ānantarya), he passes in quite the same way by an intermediate existence at the end of which he is reborn necessarily in hell.Deriving from a later period of the same school, though with some differences, Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa explains (English trs.
Similar arguments were also used in Harivarman's *Satyasiddhi Śāstra, and the Upadeśa commentary on the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, both of which have strong influence from the Sarvāstivāda school.
Those who have not practiced during their lived experience and/or who do not recognize the clear light (Tibetan: 'od gsal) at the moment of death are usually deluded throughout the fifth bardo of luminosity.
In the translation of Walter Y. Evans-Wentz in 1927, the description of the bardo was an "esoteric" view of rebirth as an evolutionary system in which regression to the brutish realms was impossible.
Almost four decades later, in 1964, Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert saw the intermediate states as being really about life, profitable as an account of an eight-hour acid trip.
Two years later Robert Thurman (1994) interpreted the bardo, which is described originally as a Nyingma text, from a Geluk frame.
There was considerable dispute over this theory during the early centuries of Buddhism, with one side arguing that rebirth (or conception) follows immediately after death, and the other saying that there must be an interval between the two.
Later Buddhism expanded the whole concept to distinguish six or more similar states, covering the whole cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
[14] However, as has been noted by various modern scholars like Bhikkhu Sujato, there are passages in the Theravāda Pali Canon which support the idea of an intermediate state, the most explicit of which is the Kutuhalasāla Sutta.
[16][15] East Asian Buddhism generally accepts the main doctrines of the Yogacara tradition as taught by Vasubandhu and Asanga.
This includes the acceptance of the intermediate existence (中有, Chinese romanization: zhōng yǒu, Japanese: chūu).
The doctrine of the intermediate existence is mentioned in various Chinese Buddhist scholastic works, such as Xuanzang's Cheng Weishi Lun (Discourse on the Perfection of Consciousness-only).
