Theme

Death

The contemplation the Buddha called the supreme remembrance. Not morbidity but clarity — what is born must die, and the seeing of it sets practice in motion.

Knowledge4

Sites2

Teachings2

Products0

Knowledge

Tibetan manuscript pages of the Bardo Thödol on display

TextsVajrayana

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

A 14th-century Tibetan terma text revealed by Karma Lingpa — instructions to be read aloud to the dying and the dead, guiding consciousness through the bardo states between death and rebirth.

ConceptsVajrayana

The Bardo

In Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo is the intermediate state between death and the next rebirth — but more broadly, any transitional state. The Bardo Thödol maps these states as terrains of practice and recognition.

A stone Buddha head at Wat Mahathat, Ayutthaya, entwined and reclaimed by the roots of a Bodhi tree

Core Teachings

The Three Marks of Existence

Three characteristics belong to all conditioned phenomena: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and non-self. To see them clearly in one's own experience is the precondition of liberating insight.

Antique ink drawing of the Bhavacakra — the Wheel of Life — held by Yama, Lord of Death, from the Wellcome Collection

Concepts

Samsara

The beginningless round of birth, aging, death, and rebirth, driven by ignorance and craving. Samsara is the predicament from which the dharma offers release.

Sacred Sites

india arc

Kushinagar

The Parinirvana.

nepal core

Ramagrama

The Undisturbed Relic.

Teachings

Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche

The Ten Non-Virtuous Actions

A teaching on the ten unwholesome deeds — three of body, four of speech, three of mind — and what it means to renounce them in a modern Nepali life.

dhammapada

The Dhammapada in Daily Life — Episode 04

The fourth episode. The Dhammapada read slowly enough that one verse can fill a day.

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Awakening9 Compassion14 Concentration4 Dependent Origination6 Devotion7 Doubt2 Effort3 Emptiness10