Traveling in Bardo

A thoughtful guide to navigating transition and impermanence rooted in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of bardo

In a world where nothing lasts forever, how do we live? Life is perpetually, endlessly filled with change: new jobs and new loves, unfamiliar places and faces. And woven into that change is loss: loss of what was or is or what could have been. In the midst of this shifting landscape, Traveling in Bardo invites readers to embrace impermanence in a powerful way, rooted in ancient wisdom.

Over the course of forty years of writing and speaking about her Tibetan-American heritage and the relevance of Buddhism in Western society, author Ann Tashi Slater came to see how Tibetan bardo views on impermanence can transform the way we live. In Tibetan belief, bardo is the intermediate stage between death and rebirth. It also refers to liminal periods in life when the reality we know comes to an end and, more broadly, it means the interval between birth and death.

Interweaving discussions of bardo in relation to marriage and friendship, parents and children, work and creativity with stories of Slater's Tibetan ancestors and the Buddhist teachings on the transitory nature of existence, Traveling in Bardo explores what the bardo teachings have to tell us in the modern day, relaying vital wisdom from Tibetan culture, and offering readers a new framework to negotiate these inevitable moments of change and impermanence.