5. The Four Bardos

5.1 FOR THOSE OF MIDDLING ACUMEN: INSTRUCTION ABOUT LIBERATION IN THE BARDO

IF WE ARE unable to learn through extensive study of the scriptural tradition that

holds the precepts of the Dzogchen view, meditation, and action, there are simple
secret Dzogchen precepts consistent with our varying constitution and powers.
Such profound instruction, which is unknown in the lower tantra vehicles, can be
manifested by a person who attains buddha in a single lifetime. We can read
innumerable simple precepts in Omniscient Longchenpa’s The Heart-Essence of
Vimalamitra, for example. About this special Dzogchen teaching, which of course
is not found in other prosaic sources, Mipham Rinpoche in his Beacon of Certainty
says,

It goes without saying that the special Dzogchen teaching,

The practice of simple direct Dzogchen precepts,

The extraordinary superior crux, broad and deep,

Categorized as mind, space, and secret precept,

This Dzogchen with its origin in tantra,

Cannot be found in any other scripture.

Introducing the nature of mind in accordance with the aspiration of the
individual, the way to practice with body, speech, and mind is then shown. This
method is unlike ordinary tantra in which the body is visualized as a deity, speech
is transformed into mantra, and mind is a samadhi, and neither is it the method of
cutting attachment of body, speech, and mind directly as in outer, inner, and
secret liberating rushen practices. Rather, it comprises the sundry precepts
concerning substances, consorts, and dark retreat, for instance, which can give us
buddha in one lifetime. Consider the case of the eighty-year-old Mipham Gompo to
whom Bairotsana introduced pure presence over a cup of tea, providing him with
a meditation belt and a chin rest, and who then attained a rainbow body and
buddha.
So those who hunger for the scriptures containing the precepts of the immediate
“here and now” Dzogchen but are unable to study deeply or extensively should roll
over into the various secret precepts that facilitate liberation, such as those relating
to the bardos.
Conventionally there are six bardos. But in the uncommon supreme Dzogchen
root tantra Beyond the Sound, four bardos are named: the bardo of life, the bardo
of the death process, the bardo of reality, and the bardo of becoming.