Dream Bardo as a Theoretical Model: Consciousness, Habit, and Experiential Cultivation in Tibetan Buddhism

This paper situates the Tibetan concept of the “dream bardo” (rmi lam bar do) not as a subsidiary post-mortem stage, but as a theoretical model of habitually constructed experiential reality. Drawing on Prajñāpāramitā, Yogācāra, and tantric sources, it reconceptualizes consciousness as a trainable domain structured by karmic imprints (bag chags), in which a subtle “habit-body” (bag chags kyi lus) operates. Extending intermediate states beyond death, the dream bardo encompasses waking, meditative, and dream experience as continuous and transformable modes of awareness. It further analyzes the body, temporality, and practices of the dream bardo, where dreaming functions as an epistemology of illusion and a site of cultivation. By proposing bardo as process ontology and intermediate states as liminal thresholds, this framework offers new analytical tools for the study of religion. In dialogue with phenomenology and cognitive science, it challenges reductive models of dreaming and contributes to the decolonization of theoretical discourse.