Living Life Fully - The Nine Bardos

Birth and death are the ‘mothers of experience’. If we try to avoid them, we cannot live life fully, here and now. Opening up to birth and death as they take place in every moment offers a sparkling opportunity for practice – whether we experience it as joyful, painful or disorientating.

The Aro gTér cycle of teachings on the Nine Bardos explores discontinuous experiences such as birth and death, waking and sleep, meditation and action, remembering and experiencing.

Ngakma Déwang Pamo und Naljorpa Trak’thung Dorje introduce thamal-gyi shépa—instantaneous recognition—as the means by which we abandon the illusions of our own continuity and discontinuity through time. Thamal-gyi shépa explodes us into the spacious dimension of who we actually are. Then we discover that this is precisely where we have always been.


“Continuity and discontinuity are the creative play of existence, which move within the womb of space. Death happens. It is not a terrible juncture. It simply happens. Birth simply happens. Birth and death take place magically within every moment. When one discovers birth and death within every moment, it is no longer possible to live a pallid half-hearted life.” Ngak’chang Rinpoche