bardo

Literally meaning between two, bardo refers to an intermediate state between death and rebirth, recognized in many Buddhist scholastic traditions. In Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo is elaborated as a series of transitional experiences that may include visions of peaceful and wrathful deities and is traditionally said to last up to forty-nine days. In Western contexts, the concept became widely known through the early-20th-century translation of Tibetan funerary texts commonly called the Tibetan Book of the Dead.