Padmasambhava’s teachings on death are set down, shaping Tibetan Buddhism

Story: 800 C.E.  |  Last updated: January 13, 0001

Somewhere in the Gampo hills of central Tibet, a set of teachings on dying, consciousness, and what lies beyond was committed to writing — and then hidden. According to Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the master Padmasambhava had spoken these words in the 8th century C.E., and his closest student, Yeshe Tsogyal, preserved them as a terma: a treasure text, buried to be found when the world was ready. When the Tibetan terton Karma Lingpa unearthed them around the 14th century C.E., the world received what would eventually be known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

What the tradition tells us

• Bardo Thodol: The full Tibetan title, bar do thos grol, translates as “Liberation through hearing in the intermediate state” — a guide for the consciousness navigating the interval between death and rebirth.
• Terma tradition: The text belongs to a larger cycle called the Profound Dharma of Self-Liberation through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones, part of the Nyingma school’s practice of concealing teachings for future discovery.
• Padmasambhava’s role: Tibetan tradition credits the 8th-century C.E. master with composing the text, though its written form emerged through the terma system centuries later — making this a case where authorship, time, and transmission are understood differently than in Western literary tradition.

A map of consciousness after death

At its core, the Bardo Thodol is a detailed guide to what the mind experiences after the body dies. It describes three distinct bardos — intermediate states — that a consciousness passes through between death and the next rebirth. The first is the moment of death itself, when the fundamental luminosity of awareness is said to dawn. The second involves encounters with peaceful and wrathful deities, understood in Tibetan Buddhism as projections of the mind’s own nature. The third is the phase of seeking a new existence.

The text was designed to be read aloud to the dying or the recently dead, guiding consciousness toward liberation or, if liberation was not achieved, toward a more fortunate rebirth. In this sense it functions less as a theological document and more as practical instruction — a kind of navigation chart for the most disorienting transition a being faces.

The framework also extends the concept of bardo beyond death. Any state of consciousness between other states qualifies: dreaming, meditation, even ordinary waking life. This makes the text as much a guide for living as for dying.

Yeshe Tsogyal and the hidden lineage

The story of the Bardo Thodol cannot be told without Yeshe Tsogyal, the Tibetan Buddhist master and consort of Padmasambhava who is traditionally credited with writing the teachings down. Her role in preserving, encoding, and hiding the terma cycle is central to how this tradition understands transmission of sacred knowledge.

Yeshe Tsogyal is one of the most significant figures in early Tibetan Buddhism — a teacher, practitioner, and lineage holder in her own right. Her contribution to the Nyingma canon is immense, and the Bardo Thodol is among the most visible examples of her role in shaping what Tibetan Buddhism would become. In mainstream retellings, Padmasambhava receives most of the attention. Her authorship of the physical text is rarely foregrounded with equal weight.

How it reached the world

The Bardo Thodol remained within Tibetan Buddhist practice for centuries before any translation reached a Western audience. In 1927 C.E., Oxford University Press published an English edition prepared by Walter Evans-Wentz — one of the first examples of either Tibetan or Vajrayana literature to appear in a European language. The translation itself was largely the work of two Tibetan lamas who spoke English, Lama Sumdhon Paul and Lama Lobzang Mingnur Dorje, whose contributions were not always adequately credited.

Evans-Wentz’s framing introduced significant distortions. His interpretation drew heavily on Theosophy and Vedanta rather than on Tibetan Buddhist understanding, and scholars have since noted that his edition presented a version of the text that was “fundamentally neither Tibetan nor Buddhist.” Carl Jung later contributed a psychological commentary to a revised edition, applying his framework of collective unconscious and archetypes — an influential reading that nonetheless filtered the text through a distinctly Western psychological lens.

In 1964 C.E., Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert adapted the Evans-Wentz translation as The Psychedelic Experience, a guide for LSD sessions. The Bardo Thodol had traveled far from the Gampo hills — and not always faithfully.

Lasting impact

The Bardo Thodol’s influence on how human beings think about death, consciousness, and the nature of mind has been extraordinary. Within Tibetan Buddhism, it remains a living practice text — used in rituals for the dying and the dead, studied by meditators as a map of advanced states of consciousness, and treated as among the most important works in the Nyingma literary canon.

Beyond its religious context, the text prompted serious cross-cultural inquiry into the phenomenology of dying — the subjective experience of death — that anticipated modern palliative care’s interest in the psychological dimensions of dying. Researchers studying near-death experiences have drawn on its descriptions. Psychologists and neuroscientists have found its account of the dissolution of consciousness at death surprisingly resonant with contemporary findings.

Perhaps most enduringly, the text insists that the moment of death is also a moment of profound opportunity — a chance for recognition, clarity, and liberation. That idea, emerging from the mountains of 8th-century C.E. Tibet, continues to shape contemplative practice around the world.

Blindspots and limits

The traditional attribution of the Bardo Thodol to Padmasambhava cannot be verified by historical methods — the terma system of concealment and revelation operates within a framework of sacred transmission that lies outside documentary evidence. Early Western translations introduced serious distortions that shaped how millions of readers understood the text. The Tibetan Buddhist communities who hold this tradition most deeply have not always been centered in the conversations their text generated.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Wikipedia — Bardo Thodol: Origins and dating

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