Bardo is the word

Bardo is the word for today. I've always been more of a Theravada than a Tibetan Buddhist. I mean, with Theravada Buddhism there is a relatively limited body of texts you can acquainy yourself with that at least purport to be the words of the Buddha. In Mahayana, there are just too many texts going off in too many directions for my limited brain to get a handle on, and Tibetan Buddhism is, as a friend of mine put it, way too busy. For one thing, more gods than you can shake a stick at, if that's your idea of a good time. Don't get me wrong. I love the Dalai Lama. And the notion of a bardo state--the state between dying and entering the next life that is discussed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. And I have been thinking about it as of late, not knowing what to make of it or drawing any profound concluisons, just recognizing that is where I was, when today I had an experience that drove this point home in a profound fashion

I ran into an ex-colleague today while hanging around my ex-university town waiting to finish up some paperwork necessary for the Peace Corps, trying to keep a very low profile. And the conversation we had was just bizaare. I mean, we talked like everything was normal except it wasn't. It reminded me of the conversation you someimes have with someone who has cancer. It was just like the cancer conversation in which you talk about everything else but the cancer, just so my current position or lack thereof was never mentioned. Instead, we talked like nothing had happened, like it was every other conversation for the past fifteen years and I would see him on campus tomorrow and maybe go hiking this weeking. Except I wouldn't do either. Hell, if all goes well I may leave in a few days so will probably never see him again. So it was just strange having a conversation like everything was the same when everything was so different. My life here is dead. But of course, leaving here in a day or a week is not going to change that. The old, "wherever you go..." line. It is just so much more obvious being here that my past life is dead and that at the moment there is nothing to take its place. And that, my friends, is bardo.