Dying Practices and Bardo Navigation: The Art of Conscious Death

The Last Great Adventure

Every spiritual tradition agrees on one thing: how you die matters. Not in a moral sense — not heaven for the good and hell for the wicked — but in a practical sense. The moment of death is understood across traditions as the most potent opportunity for spiritual liberation, and the quality of consciousness brought to that moment determines the quality of the transition.

Modern culture treats death as a medical failure, an enemy to be defeated, a topic to be avoided until it is unavoidable. Ancient traditions treated death as the culminating practice of a lifetime — the final examination, the great initiation, the doorway through which consciousness passes into whatever comes next. They developed technologies for navigating this passage with awareness, skill, and grace.

These technologies are needed now more than ever. Not only for the dying, but for the living — because learning to die well is inseparable from learning to live fully.

The Six Bardos: Tibetan Buddhist Mapping of Consciousness

The Bardo Thodol — commonly translated as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, though a more accurate translation is “Liberation Through Hearing in the Intermediate State” — was composed by Padmasambhava in the 8th century and concealed as a terma (hidden treasure text) to be discovered when the world was ready for it. It was rediscovered in the 14th century and translated into English by W.Y. Evans-Wentz in 1927.

The text describes six bardos — intermediate or transitional states — that encompass all of experience, not just the period after death:

Bardo of Living (Kyenay Bardo)

The bardo you are in right now — from birth to death. This entire life is an intermediate state between the previous death and the next. Recognizing this dissolves the illusion that ordinary waking life is solid and permanent. The practices for this bardo include meditation, ethical conduct, study, and cultivating awareness — everything that builds the capacity to remain conscious through transitions.

Bardo of Dreaming (Milam Bardo)

The state entered every night during sleep. Dream yoga — the practice of becoming lucid (aware that you are dreaming) within the dream state — is considered essential preparation for the after-death bardos, which share many qualities with dreaming: reality is fluid, responsive to thought, and shaped by habitual patterns.

If you can remain conscious during the dream state, you have a better chance of remaining conscious during the death state. The Tibetan teaching is explicit: the bardo of dreams is the rehearsal room for the bardo of dying.

Bardo of Meditation (Samten Bardo)

The state entered during deep meditation — when the ordinary sense of self dissolves and awareness rests in its own nature. This is the direct experience of the clear light of mind, the fundamental luminosity of consciousness that is normally obscured by thoughts, emotions, and sensory experience. Familiarity with this state is the single most important preparation for death, because the clear light also appears at the moment of death — and recognizing it is liberation.

Bardo of Dying (Chikhai Bardo)

The process of death itself — from the onset of the final illness or injury through the cessation of breath and the dissolution of consciousness from the body. This bardo has a detailed internal structure:

The outer dissolution: The physical elements dissolve in sequence. Earth dissolves into water (the body feels heavy, vision dims). Water dissolves into fire (fluids dry up, hearing fades). Fire dissolves into air (body heat withdraws to the core, smell ceases). Air dissolves into consciousness (the last exhale, the breath ceases).

The inner dissolution: Three stages of increasingly subtle consciousness. A white luminosity (the “white appearance” — energy from the father descending from the crown). A red luminosity (the “red increase” — energy from the mother rising from the navel). Darkness (the “black near-attainment” — the two energies meet at the heart).

The clear light of death: After the darkness, the ground luminosity appears — the fundamental nature of mind, naked and radiant. This is the supreme moment of opportunity. If the dying person recognizes this light as their own nature — which they can do if they have practiced meditation extensively during life — liberation is immediate and complete.

For most people, this recognition does not occur. The clear light is too bright, too vast, too unfamiliar. Consciousness recoils from it into habitual patterns, and the next bardo begins.

Bardo of Dharmata (Chonyid Bardo)

If the clear light is not recognized, consciousness enters a visionary state lasting approximately two weeks (in the traditional reckoning). Peaceful and wrathful deities appear — brilliant, overwhelming, magnificent, and terrifying.

The critical teaching: all of these visions are projections of your own mind. The peaceful deities are the luminous nature of your own wisdom energies. The wrathful deities are the same energies in their fierce aspect. If you recognize them as self-arising, as your own nature, liberation occurs.

If you do not recognize them — if you flee from the wrathful visions or grasp at the peaceful ones — you are swept into the next bardo by the force of habitual patterns.

Bardo of Becoming (Sipay Bardo)

If neither the clear light nor the visionary display has been recognized, consciousness enters the bardo of becoming — a dream-like state in which the mental body is driven by karmic winds toward the next rebirth. The mental body in this bardo can travel anywhere instantaneously, pass through solid objects, and perceive scenes of the living world. It is buffeted by emotions — desire, fear, anger, confusion — that correspond to the six realms of Buddhist cosmology.

The Bardo Thodol provides specific instructions for this stage: techniques for directing consciousness toward a favorable rebirth, avoiding the pull of desire and aversion, and — even at this late stage — recognizing the nature of mind and achieving liberation.

Phowa: Consciousness Transference

Phowa (also spelled powa) is the Tibetan Buddhist practice of ejecting consciousness from the body at the moment of death through the crown of the head — the gate to the higher realms.

The practice, typically given only after extensive preliminary training and empowerment from a qualified teacher, involves:

1. Visualization of a central channel (corresponding to the sushumna nadi) running from the perineum to the crown
2. Visualization of a luminous sphere (representing consciousness) at the heart center
3. Repeated mantra (typically “HIK” on the exhale) that propels the consciousness-sphere upward through the central channel
4. The sphere exits through the crown (the “brahma aperture” or fontanelle) into the presence of the Buddha Amitabha (or one’s chosen deity/teacher)

Advanced practitioners of phowa can demonstrate physical signs that the practice is working: a small amount of blood or lymph at the crown of the head, a blister or opening at the fontanelle, and the ability to insert a stalk of grass into the aperture. These signs are well-documented in the Tibetan tradition and have been witnessed by Western observers.

Phowa is considered a practice of last resort — for those who have not achieved liberation through the more direct methods of meditation and recognition. But it is also considered one of the most accessible practices for ordinary people, and in Tibetan culture, phowa practitioners are called upon to assist the dying.

Sogyal Rinpoche: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Sogyal Rinpoche (1947-2019) published The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying in 1992, and it became the most widely read book on the Tibetan approach to death, with over three million copies sold in 34 languages.

Sogyal’s genius was translation — not just linguistic but cultural. He made the bardo teachings accessible to Western readers by weaving them together with personal stories, hospice care practices, scientific findings on near-death experiences, and practical advice for the dying and those who care for them.

Key teachings from the book:

The practice of dying is the practice of living. Every moment of letting go — releasing attachment to a thought, an outcome, a relationship, an identity — is a small death that prepares for the great death. Meditation is rehearsal for dying.

The essential teaching is recognition of the nature of mind. Sogyal called it rigpa — the pure, pristine awareness that is our fundamental nature, normally obscured by the constant activity of thinking. Meditation practice gradually reveals rigpa, and familiarity with it is the best possible preparation for the moment of death, when it appears as the clear light.

Practical care for the dying. Create a peaceful environment. Reduce medical interventions that cause suffering without benefit. Speak gently and truthfully. Give the dying person permission to let go. Read spiritual texts or prayers that are meaningful to them. After the breath stops, maintain silence and awareness — consciousness may linger in the body for some time after clinical death.

(Note: Sogyal Rinpoche’s legacy was complicated by credible allegations of sexual and physical abuse that surfaced publicly in 2017. As with other teachers whose personal conduct contradicted their teachings, the challenge is to honor the genuine wisdom transmitted while acknowledging the harm caused.)

Villoldo’s Death Rites

Alberto Villoldo, drawing from Q’ero traditions and his own shamanic practice, describes a death rite process that parallels the Tibetan bardos but uses the language and imagery of the Andean medicine tradition.

The Recapitulation (Life Review)

Before or during the dying process, the person reviews their life — not as judgment, but as completion. Every significant event, relationship, and turning point is witnessed and released. Unfinished business is acknowledged. Forgiveness is given and received. The threads of attachment that bind the soul to the physical life are consciously untied.

This parallels the life review reported in near-death experiences (researched extensively by Raymond Moody, Kenneth Ring, and Pim van Lommel) — a panoramic, non-judgmental replay of one’s life, experienced from the perspective of both self and others.

Permission to Die

The living give explicit permission for the dying person to go. This is often the hardest part — family members, clinging to their own need, unconsciously hold the dying person in their body through the force of grief and attachment. The permission ceremony releases this hold: “We love you. We will be okay. You can go.”

Hospice workers consistently report that dying people often wait — sometimes for days past what medical science can explain — until a specific person arrives, or until that person gives verbal or energetic permission for the death to occur.

Releasing the Seven Chakras

The shaman or healer works with the dying person’s energy body, sequentially closing or releasing each of the seven chakras — from the crown downward. At each center, any remaining attachments, imprints, or dense energies are cleared. This parallels the Tibetan dissolution sequence but works from above downward rather than below upward.

Illumination of the Departing Soul

The healer performs an illumination of the entire Luminous Energy Field — flooding it with light, burning off the hucha (heavy energy) that would otherwise travel with the soul. This is understood as a final gift: sending the soul into its next journey as clean and light as possible.

The Great Spiral

The soul is guided upward through the eighth chakra (Wiracocha) and outward along the Great Spiral — the luminous pathway that connects individual consciousness to the cosmos. The healer holds sacred space as the soul makes its journey, offering prayers and blessings.

Villoldo teaches that the soul has a period — approximately two weeks, echoing the Tibetan timeline — to complete its transition. During this time, the living can continue to support the departing soul through prayer, ceremony, and the burning of offerings.

The Art of Sitting with the Dying

Beyond techniques and traditions, the most fundamental dying practice is presence — the willingness to sit with someone who is dying and not flee.

Frank Ostaseski, founder of the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco and author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully (2017), distilled decades of sitting with the dying into five principles:

1. Don’t wait. Life is too short and too uncertain for postponement.
2. Welcome everything, push away nothing. The dying process includes beauty and horror, peace and agony, sacred silence and bodily indignity. Welcome all of it.
3. Bring your whole self to the experience. Do not hide behind professionalism or spiritual posturing. Be real. The dying can detect pretense instantly.
4. Find a place of rest in the middle of things. You do not need to fix anything. You need to be present.
5. Cultivate don’t-know mind. No one knows what happens after death. Approach the mystery with humility rather than certainty.

Tonglen for the Dying

Tonglen — the Tibetan Buddhist practice of “giving and receiving” — is particularly powerful when performed for the dying.

The practice: On the inhale, breathe in the dying person’s suffering — their pain, fear, confusion, grief — as thick, dark smoke. Let it enter your heart. On the exhale, send them whatever they need — peace, comfort, light, love, freedom — as bright, warm light.

This reverses the self-protective instinct to withdraw from suffering and instead trains the capacity to meet it directly. Pema Chodron, the American Buddhist teacher, has written extensively about tonglen as a practice that transforms both the practitioner and the recipient — though the mechanism of benefit for the recipient is debated, the benefit to the practitioner in terms of compassion development is well-documented.

When sitting with a dying person, tonglen can be practiced silently and continuously — a way to be fully present with suffering without being overwhelmed by it.

Death as Initiation

In shamanic traditions worldwide, the healer’s training often includes a death experience — literal or symbolic. The Siberian shaman is dismembered by spirits and reassembled with new organs. The Native American vision quester fasts alone on a mountaintop until the old self dies. The Amazonian ayahuascero drinks the medicine and passes through a death so vivid that the body’s autonomic systems respond as if death were actually occurring.

Alberto Villoldo describes the “death of the old self” as a necessary station on the medicine wheel journey. The Jaguar archetype — associated with the West, the setting sun, and the death of the ego — presides over this territory. The shaman learns to die before dying, so that when physical death comes, it is familiar territory.

This is not morbidity. It is preparation. Every tradition that takes death seriously as a spiritual event teaches some form of death practice during life:

• Memento mori in Christian tradition — “Remember you must die.” The Trappist monks greet each other: “Remember death.”
• Maranasati in Buddhist practice — contemplation of one’s own death as a meditation object.
• The death meditation in Stoic philosophy — Marcus Aurelius reflecting nightly on his own mortality.
• The fire ceremony in Villoldo’s tradition — burning what no longer serves, practicing the release that death will require.

Preparing for Your Own Death as Spiritual Practice

You do not have to wait until you are dying to practice dying. The traditions suggest:

Practice letting go daily. At the end of each day, review what happened and consciously release it. The day is over. Let it go. This small death — the death of today — trains the larger release.

Meditate on impermanence. Sit with the fact that everything you love will pass. Not to create despair but to sharpen appreciation. The Japanese concept of mono no aware — the poignant beauty of impermanence — arises from this contemplation.

Write your ethical will. Not your financial will, but the legacy of your heart — what you learned, what you valued, what you want those who survive you to know. This practice clarifies what matters.

Complete your relationships. Say what needs to be said. Forgive what needs to be forgiven. Make amends where amends are due. Do not leave these for the deathbed.

Become familiar with the clear light. Meditate. Not to gain special experiences, but to become acquainted with the ground of consciousness — the awareness that remains when thoughts, sensations, and identities fall away. This is the light you will meet at death. Let it be a familiar friend rather than a blinding stranger.

Sit with the dying. Volunteer at a hospice. Attend to dying relatives without flinching. Each encounter with death is an initiation — a chance to practice presence, compassion, and the recognition that the boundary between living and dying is far more porous than you imagined.

The Tibetan teacher Padmasambhava said: “Those who believe they have plenty of time get ready only at the time of death. Then they are ravaged by regret.”

If you knew — not as an abstraction but as a felt reality — that your consciousness will pass through the clear light at the moment of death, and that your capacity to recognize it depends entirely on the quality of your awareness practice now, how would you spend this evening?