Bardo

I find myself in a space between two homes. Having moved out of my previous home under stressful and dramatic circumstances, I am now waiting through a two week period before my new lease starts. At first, this seemed like a total drag to me. Moving all my stuff to storage, crashing on someone's couch and living out of a bag are all things I'd rather do if I'm going to be living in a foreign country for awhile. As it is, a two week layover between one south philly house and another seemed to me like all the worst parts of travel and none of the good ones.

And then the idea of a bardo came back to me. Bardo is a tibetan buddhist term - so it's not inherent to my practice (zen buddhism), but I see a parallel here that I can learn from.

A bardo is an "intermediate state", traditionally the term is used to describe the experience in between two incarnations, when one is no longer attached to the previous physical body and not yet born into the new one. During this time, when not in a physical body, the consciousness has the opportunity to directly experience reality or conversely, to be plagued by delusion.

Once I started thinking of this layover in terms of the bardo, I realized how many opportunities there are in life for little bardos. Little times in life when we have the chance to stop after something is completed and try to learn from the experience before running on to the next one. A chance to really clear the slate. Yet we tend to be impatient for the next thing to start immediately and we try to avoid this intermediate place.

It's uncomfortable to be without physical groundedness. I want keys to my own place. I want mail and all my belongings around me. I want to layer myself and protect myself with all the trappings of domesticity. I want to knit, read books, bake cookies and make soup.

Yet in this discomfort, where the objects around me are not echoing 'me', I could take the opportunity to step away from 'me' and focus on something larger.

Here's hoping I come out on the other side wiser and not addled with delusion and fear :)