The Urban Sherpa - a blog by Christopher DeWan

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Bardo rating=3

January 5, 2007
File under: Boston Sucks, Cogito Ergo

or, Brush Up on Your Buddhism, pt. 1

For no reason, I've been waking around dawn, so that without any planning, I've managed to see the sun rise every day of this new year – the anticipation of the day ready to begin, but not quite. If the day is when things happen, then I've been witness to the time just before.

And that is how I feel.

Buddhism describes a "bardo" as a temporary, transitory state – a time between things. According to this tradition, our entire lives are a bardo state, the Bardo of Existence, followed by the Bardo of Dying and the Bardo of Rebirth. Because, in each of these states, we are not quite at one with our "true nature", a bardo is essentially a time of confusion, a time we spend learning the rules to a changing game that we grow to think of as "reality."

And that is how I feel.

There are bardos within bardos; I am in the Bardo of Boston, during which I form a set of hopes and dreams that will quickly be made irrelevant as I move into another transient place; since we never know when we will move from one bardo to another, all we can do is prepare, and also learn to accept the transience of things, and confusion.

And that, too, is how I feel…

Happy new year.

Bardot

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