The Bardo Thodol is a Tibetan Buddhist funerary text from the Nyingma school, traditionally recited aloud to guide the dying and deceased through the forty-nine-day interval between death and rebirth. You can download a public-domain English translation within minutes. Learning what it actually means and how it is used takes longer.
What Is the Bardo Thodol, Exactly?
The Bardo Thodol is a Tibetan Buddhist text from the Nyingma school, the oldest of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Its full title in Tibetan is བར་དོ་ཐོས་གྲོལ (Bar-do thos-grol). Bar-do means “intermediate state”; thos-grol means “liberation through hearing.” The premise is stark: if a person hears this text recited at the moment of death and during the forty-nine days that follow, they can recognize the nature of reality and escape the cycle of rebirth.
The text describes three bardos:
- Chikhai Bardo: the bardo of the moment of death, where the Clear Light of reality appears.
- Chönyi Bardo: the bardo of experiencing reality, where peaceful and wrathful deities manifest.
- Sidpa Bardo: the bardo of seeking rebirth, where the consciousness searches for a new womb.
Each stage offers the deceased an opportunity to recognize what is happening as a projection of their own mind. If they fail, they fall back into conditioned existence.
Where the Text Comes From
The Bardo Thodol belongs to a class of Tibetan literature called terma (hidden treasures). According to tradition, the 8th-century master Padmasambhava concealed the text in the hills of central Tibet, knowing it would be discovered at the right time. Karma Lingpa, a tertön (treasure revealer), revealed the terma in the 14th century, likely around 1350. He wrote it down from visionary experience, and the text was transmitted orally and in manuscript form within the Karma Lingpa lineage.
For five centuries, the Bardo Thodol remained almost unknown outside Tibetan Buddhism. That changed in 1919, when an American-born anthropologist named Walter Evans-Wentz obtained a copy of the text while traveling in the Himalayas. With the help of Kazi Dawa Samdup, a Sikkimese scholar and translator, he produced the first English translation. Evans-Wentz titled it The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Oxford University Press, 1927), deliberately echoing the Egyptian Book of the Dead to make it marketable. The translation was heavily edited and presented through a Theosophical lens.
The arrival of this translation in the West had consequences Evans-Wentz could not have predicted. Carl Jung wrote a psychological commentary for the 1935 edition, interpreting the wrathful deities as archetypes of the unconscious. Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) adapted the text into The Psychedelic Experience (1964), a guide for LSD trips. The Bardo Thodol became a counterculture manual, stripped of its funerary context.
Symbolism and Meaning: What the Bardo Thodol Actually Describes
The core symbolism of the Bardo Thodol rests on the idea that death is not an end but a transition. The forty-nine days are divided into seven weeks, each with its own set of appearances. The peaceful deities appear first: five male buddhas in five colors, each associated with a wisdom and a klesha (affliction). Then the wrathful deities arrive: fifty-eight blood-drinking herukas with animal heads, skull crowns, and flames. The text tells the deceased not to fear them. They are your own mind appearing as external forms.
The central symbol is the Clear Light (ösel in Tibetan), described as a radiant, empty awareness that dawns at the moment of death. If the deceased recognizes it, they are liberated instantly. The Bardo Thodol emphasizes that even a person who has not meditated can be saved by hearing this text.
For the living, the symbolism works as a memento mori and a meditation aid. The bardos are not only after death. In Tibetan Buddhism, the waking state, dream state, and deep sleep are also considered bardos. The text trains practitioners to recognize the nature of mind while alive, so they can recognize it at death.
How the Bardo Thodol Is Actually Used
The Bardo Thodol is not a book to be read silently in a library. It is a ritual script, recited aloud by a qualified lama or a learned layperson at the bedside of the dying or next to the corpse. The recitation ideally begins as death approaches and continues every day for forty-nine days. In practice, shorter readings are common.
A lama will hold the text and speak directly to the deceased, addressing them by name: “O son of noble family, do not be distracted.” The voice is steady, unhurried. The text instructs the lama to recite certain sections at dawn, dusk, and during the night. Family members and friends may join the chanting, but the lama is the primary conduit.
The physical object of the book itself is treated as a sacred object. In Tibetan homes, a copy may be kept on the family shrine, wrapped in silk, and brought out only for ceremonies. The woodblock pages are not printed for sale. They are ritually printed and distributed.
Comparisons and Cross-Cultural Echoes
The Bardo Thodol is often compared to the Egyptian Book of the Dead (the Book of Coming Forth by Day). Both are funerary texts that describe a journey through an afterlife populated by gods and demons. But the resemblance is superficial. The Egyptian text is a collection of spells and utterances meant to guide the soul past obstacles. The Bardo Thodol is a psychological map: liberation depends on recognizing the emptiness of the appearances, not on reciting the correct formula.
A closer comparison may be the Christian Ars Moriendi (the Art of Dying), a 15th-century Latin text that gave practical instructions for a good death. That text also emphasizes the dying person’s state of mind. But the Ars Moriendi focuses on resisting demonic temptations in the final hour, while the Bardo Thodol describes a postmortem process lasting weeks.
Carl Jung’s commentary on the Bardo Thodol is one of the most influential Western treatments. He saw the book as a guide for psychological integration: the peaceful deities represent conscious aspects, the wrathful deities represent the shadow. Jung wrote, “The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or the Bardo Thodol, is a book that belongs to the same class as the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Ars Moriendi.”
Common Misconceptions
The most persistent misconception is that the Bardo Thodol is a “book of the dead” in the sense of a manual for the afterlife that applies to all humans. It was written within a specific Mahayana Buddhist framework that assumes the reality of rebirth and karma. A person who does not accept those premises will still find the text fascinating, but it cannot work the same way.
Another mistake is assuming the Evans-Wentz translation is authoritative. His edition rearranged sections, added headings, and included a long introduction colored by Theosophy. Later translations, such as those by Francesca Fremantle (based on the work of Chögyam Trungpa) and Gyurme Dorje (with a critical edition of the Tibetan), are more accurate.
Finally, the phrase “Liberation through Hearing” does not mean that simply hearing the text once will save you. The hearing must be accompanied by recognition. The text is a tool, not a charm.
FAQ
Is the Bardo Thodol public domain? Yes. The original Tibetan text is centuries old, and the 1927 Evans-Wentz translation is in the public domain. Later translations under copyright require purchase.
How long is the Bardo Thodol? A standard English translation runs about 150–200 pages, but the full Tibetan text with commentary is longer.
What is the best translation for study? Gyurme Dorje’s The Tibetan Book of the Dead: First Complete Translation (Penguin, 2006) is the most comprehensive. Fremantle and Trungpa’s The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo (Shambhala, 1975) is reliable and well-footnoted.
Where to Go from Here
A downloaded PDF will give you the words. Understanding where they came from and what they do requires the context of Tibetan Buddhist views on death, karma, and rebirth. If you want to place the Bardo Thodol inside that framework, start with our guide to karma and reincarnation, then explore the concept of the bardo in the glossary. For a deeper look at related funerary symbolism, read our entry on death rituals in Tibetan Buddhism.