bardo

See also: Bardo and bardò

English

WOTD – 2 December 2017

Etymology

Folios 35 and 67 of a manuscript of the Bardo Thodol (Liberation through Hearing during the Intermediate State), often known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The text is intended as a guide through the after-death experiences that a person’s consciousness has in the bardo.

Borrowed from Tibetan བར་དོ (bar do), from བར (bar, “interval”) + དོ (do, “two”), in the sense of an interval between two states.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈbɑːdəʊ/

• Audio (RP)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈbɑɹdoʊ/
• Hyphenation: bar‧do

Noun

bardo (plural bardos)

1. (Tibetan Buddhism) The state of existence between death and subsequent reincarnation.
   • 1863, Emil Schlagintweit, “Details Characteristic of the Religion of the People”, in Buddhism in Tibet: Illustrated by Literary Documents and Objects of Religious Worship. With an Account of the Buddhist Systems Preceding It in India. [...] With a Folio Atlas of Twenty Plates and Twenty Tables of Native Print in the Text, Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus; London: Trübner & Co., →OCLC, page 109:

     According to the belief of the Tibetans, that is considered an untimely death, which, in opposition to the ordinary course of nature, is accelerated by evil spirits, such as Sringan, Dechad, Jungpo, and others. As a consequence of premature decease, the "Bardo," is prolongated. This is the middle state between the death and the new re-birth, which does not follow immediately, but there exists an interval, which is shorter for the good than for the bad. The prolongation of this intermediate state is considered as a punishment caused by evil spirits who have only power over sinful men.

   • 1996, Victoria LePage, “The Perfection of the Shortest Path”, in Shambhala: The Fascinating Truth behind the Myth of Shangri-La, 1st Quest edition, Wheaton, Ill.: The Theosophical Publishing House, →ISBN, page 95:

     The soul's gradual progress to God in terms of a spiralling pathway up the side of the cosmic mountain, from one spiritual station to the next, is an image common to almost all of the world's mystical systems; but few mention the direct path from the base of the mountain straight up to the summit. Even the Bardo Thodol mentions the direct path only once, and then glancingly, confining itself solely to a description of the soul's circuitous afterlife journey through the heaven-worlds. The shortcut for heroes that bypasses the heaven-worlds or bardos and takes them straight to the divine world—in one lifetime, so it is said—is so well guarded in religious literature that the relevant Tibetan Buddhist texts are written in the "twilight language," a cipher that can be understood only with the help of revelation.

   • 1998, Susanne Paolo, “Prologue”, in Bardo (The Brittingham Prize in Poetry), Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, →ISBN, page xiii:

     The bardo in Tibetan means an intermediate state, most specifically the one after death when your soul wanders through the heavens and hell, trying to avoid rebirth into samsara—the realm of the material—and achieve nirvana or Buddhahood. […] Like everything the bardo journey takes place both inside you and outside. Like everything it's both a metaphor and not. I was born in the fifties in a nation suspended in the bardo state between a war a decade over and the hellsmoke light of a new war pulling in the East.

   • 2014, C. J. Cala, “Babble On”, in Four Different Faces, [s.l.]: C. J. Cala, →ISBN, page 151:

     Possessing both omniprescence and omniscience, they now stared beyond the abyss of astral space—beyond the six bardos of Tibetan Buddhism—spreading their karmic seeds across the infinite coordinates of the cosmological Minkowski continuum.

   • 2015, Evan Thompson, “Dying: What Happens when We Die?”, in Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy, New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 292:

     "Bardo," as noted, means in-between state. So whenever we're in between two states, no matter what the scale, we're in a bardo state. These two states could be living and dying or being awake and being asleep, but they could also be the just-past moment of thought and the moment to come. Thus "bardo" includes the gap between the cessation of one moment of thought and the arising of the next moment.

   • 2015 January, Jan Jarboe Russell, “The All-American Camp”, in The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America’s only Family Internment Camp during World War II, New York, N.Y.: Scribner, →ISBN, page 233:

     For internees the war was experienced in exile. The Buddhists in Crystal City understood it as a bardo state—a provisional period between the lives before their confinement, and the dream of freedom after the war.

Translations

state of existence between death and subsequent reincarnation

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 中有 (zh) (zhōngyǒu), 中陰／中阴 (zh) (zhōngyīn)

• Czech: bardo
• Dutch: bardo
• Estonian: bardo
• Finnish: bardo (fi)
• French: bardo (fr)
• Galician: bardo (gl) m
• German: Bardo (de)
• Japanese: 中陰 (ja) (ちゅういん, chūin), 中蘊 (ちゅううん, chūun), 中有 (ja) (ちゅうう, chūu)
• Korean: 바르도 (bareudo), 중유 (ko) (jung'yu)
• Lithuanian: bardo
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: bardo

• Polish: bardo (pl)
• Portuguese: bardo (pt)
• Russian: бардо́ (ru) n (bardó), ба́рдо (ru) n (bárdo)
• Slovak: bardo
• Spanish: bardo budista
• Swedish: bardo
• Thai: please add this translation if you can
• Tibetan: བར་དོ (bar do)
• Vietnamese: trung hữu

Further reading

• bardo on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• B road, Board, Borda, Broad, Broad., Broda, Dobra, abord, adorb, board, broad, dobra

Esperanto

Etymology

Ultimately from Latin bardus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbardo/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: bar‧do

Noun

bardo (accusative singular bardon, plural bardoj, accusative plural bardojn)

1. bard

Galician

Etymology 1

From a pre-Roman substrate of Iberia .

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbaɾðo̝/

Noun

bardo m (plural bardos)

1. hedge; fence

   Synonyms: barda, bardal, sebe

Etymology 2

From Irish bard.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbaɾðo̝/

Noun

bardo m (plural bardos)

1. poet (of a certain rank); bard

   Synonym: vate

References

• “bardo” in Dicionario de Dicionarios da lingua galega, SLI - ILGA 2006–2013.
• “bardo” in Tesouro informatizado da lingua galega. Santiago: ILG.

Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbar.do/
• Rhymes: -ardo
• Hyphenation: bàr‧do

Etymology 1

From Latin bardus, from Gaulish, from Proto-Celtic *bardos, from Proto-Indo-European *gʷerdʰh₁ós, derived from the root *gʷerH- (“to praise”).

Noun

bardo m (plural bardi)

1. bard (ancient Celtic poet and singer)
2. (by extension) poet

   Synonyms: aedo, cantore, poeta, rapsodo, (literary) vate

Derived terms

• bardito

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Verb

bardo

1. first-person singular present indicative of bardare

Further reading

• bardo in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Anagrams

• borda, brado, broda, rabdo-

Latin

Etymology 1

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈbaːr.doː/, [ˈbäːrd̪oː]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈbar.do/, [ˈbärd̪o]

Adjective

bārdō

1. dative/ablative singular masculine/neuter of bārdus

Etymology 2

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈbar.doː/, [ˈbärd̪oː]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈbar.do/, [ˈbärd̪o]

Noun

bardō m

1. dative/ablative singular of bardus

References

• bardo in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “bardo”, in William Smith, editor (1854, 1857) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, volume 1 & 2, London: Walton and Maberly

Lower Sorbian

Etymology

From Proto-Slavic *bьrdo.

Noun

bardo n

1. comb (in a loom)

Further reading

• Muka, Arnošt (1921, 1928), “bardo”, in Słownik dolnoserbskeje rěcy a jeje narěcow (in German), St. Petersburg, Prague: ОРЯС РАН, ČAVU; Reprinted Bautzen: Domowina-Verlag, 2008
• Starosta, Manfred (1999), “bardo”, in Dolnoserbsko-nimski słownik / Niedersorbisch-deutsches Wörterbuch (in German), Bautzen: Domowina-Verlag

Old Polish

Etymology

Inherited from Proto-Slavic *bьrdo.

Noun

bardo n

1. reed, weaving comb
2. hill

Descendants

• Polish: bardo

Polish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbar.dɔ/

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ardɔ
• Syllabification: bar‧do

Etymology 1

Inherited from Old Polish bardo, from Proto-Slavic *bьrdo. Cognate with Czech brdo.

Noun

bardo n

1. reed, weaving comb

   Synonyms: grzebień tkacki, płocha, przybijaczka

Declension

Declension of bardo

	singular	plural
nominative	bardo	barda
genitive	barda	bared
dative	bardu	bardom
accusative	bardo	barda
instrumental	bardem	bardami
locative	bardzie	bardach
vocative	bardo	barda

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Tibetan བར་དོ (bar do).

Noun

bardo n (indeclinable)

1. (Tibetan Buddhism) bardo (the state of existence between death and subsequent reincarnation)

Further reading

• bardo in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• bardo in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin bardus, from Gaulish, from Proto-Celtic *bardos.

Pronunciation

 

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˈbaʁ.du/ [ˈbaɦ.du]

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˈbaʁ.du/ [ˈbaɦ.du]
  • (São Paulo) IPA^(key): /ˈbaɾ.du/
  • (Rio de Janeiro) IPA^(key): /ˈbaʁ.du/
  • (Southern Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˈbaɻ.do/

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /ˈbaɾ.du/ [ˈbaɾ.ðu]

• (Gaúcho) IPA^(key): /ˈbaɾ.do/

Noun

bardo m (plural bardos)

1. bard

   Synonyms: menestrel, escaldo, rapsodo, trovador, vate, músico, poeta, cantor

Spanish

Etymology

From Latin bardus, from Gaulish [Term?], from Proto-Celtic *bardos.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbaɾdo/ [ˈbaɾ.ð̞o]
• Rhymes: -aɾdo
• Syllabification: bar‧do

Noun

bardo m (plural bardos)

1. bard
2. conflict

Further reading

• “bardo”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014