Bardos

Life in Transition

The word bardo comes from the Tibetan term bar ma do, literally, “between two.”

Our human life is just one bardo, between birth and death. In it there are four main bardos—childhood, youth, adulthood, old age. And in all of these there are many more. Every year is a bardo, every month, every week, every day, every hour, every minute, and every second.

Relocating is another kind of bardo. Having lived in Massachusetts for most of my life, with brief stints in Vermont, we’ve resettled on the West Coast. Our move was catalyzed by a health crisis last fall. I am fine now. Realizing that as we advance into our elder years, we needed to take the opportunity to move while we were relatively young enough deal with the stress of relocating and downsizing.

We’ve moved from the the gentle, rolling green hills and hardwood forests of western Massachusetts to a perch on the steep slope of a ridge that overlooks a state park with a redwood forest in the rugged valley of Big Sur. Our place is off Highway 1 to the west, two miles up a narrow private road lacking guardrails, with six hundred foot drops around every corner, looking out over the Pacific, which is about a mile away as the crow flies.

Big Sur is a dramatic place, its mood changes constantly. The people who live here are friendly and welcoming, perhaps a result of the fact that the main industry here is hospitality. It’s a sensitive place, given the landslides after heavy rain. The local people all maintain it takes a certain kind of person to live here: used to isolation, unfazed by weather, ready to lend a helping hand in a pinch. Given that I’ve lived in rural areas most of my life, and that I spent three years in solitary retreat, I do not think the isolation will be an issue.

Having spent several months in the moving bardo, we are presently flooded with all the projects we had planned before the move and had to put on hold. We are expecting the drafts from the Sound Tantra from our publisher, other manuscripts new and old will occupy our attention, and of course, we will begin the next in our series of translations of the 17 Dzogchen Tantras and their commentaries.

Our new location is perfect for work and practice, with unobstructed views of the sky and a climate moderated by the coolness of the Pacific.

It’s a pretty good perch in samsara, all things told.