Within Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo is understood as the intermediate state between death and rebirth, a transitional process rather than a fixed location. It is described as a sequence of mental experiences in which consciousness, no longer supported by the physical body, encounters luminous clarity and then increasingly complex, dreamlike visions. Peaceful and wrathful deities, brilliant lights, and powerful sounds are regarded as manifestations of one’s own mind and its karmic imprints, not as external entities in the ordinary sense. This period is traditionally said to last up to forty‑nine days, during which the momentum of past actions and habits strongly influences what is perceived and how one moves toward a new existence. Because of this, the bardo is seen as a particularly charged opportunity: confusion can deepen entanglement in cyclic existence, while clear recognition of these appearances as mind’s own display can lead to liberation or at least a more favorable rebirth.

Preparation for this passage is woven throughout the entire path of practice. Ethical conduct and the accumulation of merit create wholesome tendencies that support clarity and reduce fear when the familiar supports of life fall away. Systematic meditation—such as calm abiding to stabilize attention and insight into emptiness—trains the practitioner to recognize all experiences, including those of the bardo, as insubstantial and conditioned. Mind‑training teachings cultivate compassion and loosen self‑clinging, so that even intense or terrifying visions can be met without panic. In this way, the habits formed in life become the inner guidance system in the intermediate state.

Vajrayāna methods add a further, highly specific preparation. Through deity yoga, practitioners repeatedly familiarize themselves with enlightened forms, so that similar visions in the bardo can be recognized as expressions of their own Buddha‑nature rather than as something alien. Guru yoga and devotion to the spiritual teacher are cultivated so that the memory of guidance and blessing can arise even amid the instability of death and its aftermath. Practices such as dream yoga use the dream state as a training ground for maintaining lucidity in shifting, illusory environments, directly analogous to the bardo’s fluid visions. All of these methods aim at the same point: stable recognition of the mind’s nature when ordinary reference points dissolve.

At the time of death itself, and in the period that follows, more focused techniques are brought to bear. Phowa, the transference of consciousness, is trained in advance so that awareness can be directed at the crucial moment toward a pure realm or toward liberation. Rituals and recitations, including readings from bardo guidance texts, are performed for the dying and the recently deceased to remind consciousness to recognize appearances as its own projection. Teachers and community members may continue prayers and offerings for up to forty‑nine days, supporting a clear and auspicious transition. In this vision, preparation for the bardo is not an isolated practice reserved for the end of life but the natural culmination of a lifetime of ethical discipline, contemplative training, and devotional engagement.