The Bardo

   

Subject: The Bardo

In Buddhist terms, that place after death where the departing spirit lingers before moving on to become something else. A sort of clearing house for Spirits.

This question of Spirits and the world they occupy has a fascination brought on by growing old. The God story is too neat, too simple, too comprehensible. It encompasses our need to be cared for, to receive protection, to be loved. It builds on a story which if it were fiction would be a good read but explained as fact is over the top in at least one sense, it places too much emphasis on us as human beings when all around us the power of the universe makes us seem so puny. 

The simple time line that in 50 billion years the sun will implode, having used up it'd hydrogen and the lights will go out in a very spectacular way. This event alone makes a mockery of the few thousand year time line the Worlds religions have been around. The story of the Bible or the Koran are folk driven with mankind being placed naturally in the centre. Mankind is after all writing the story, prompted, it is suggested by god who having created everything on such a vast scale wishes to install some social norms and ideas on how we should all get along.

It is argued that the concepts of love and respect are religious ideals but of course they stretch back much earlier and were discussed philosophically by the Greeks and before them in even greater antiquity. The socialising of mankind picks up its thread in the Agrarian development seen in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East 10.000 years ago, long before the concept of a monotheistic god but for many reasons, the idea of a one, all powerful, Father figure took hold and we are where we are today. 

The idea of a spirit world is much older and dealt with the problems of death and our relationship to it. The essence of our lives lives on and is not destroyed by our death.

Of course it too is fanciful, other than in the philosophical sense that our good lives on in others, as for that matter so does our bad. We visualise an 'ether', a void into which our thoughts can tumble as entities in themselves when we die since it is difficult to imagine ourselves as not having any purpose or value other than what we do on earth in the short time we are here. 

Surely our ego tells us we are worth more than that. Worth more than a piece of wood which decays as we do. It seems our minds have contrived this immortality for us, where we continue to live in state, alongside our maker, like the prodigal returning home, all forgiven.

"There was a door to which I found no key

There was a veil through which I could not see

Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee

And then no more of Me or Thee".