Bardo

The word bardo literally means "an interval between two things". 'Bar' means 'interval' and 'do' means 'two'. We can think of this interval in a spatial or temporal way. If there are two houses, the space between them is a bardo. The period between sunrise and sunset, the interval of daylight, is a bardo. A bardo can be of long or short duration, of wide or narrow expanse.

The bardos as encountered in the Tibetan Book of the Dead describe the passings between various stages of consciousness, e.g. falling asleep and waking up, going in and out of a trance during meditation, and of course dying - the passing from life to death.

Bardo is also the name of the unique discipline of the vampiric bloodline known as the Children of Osiris in the Vampire: The Masquerade role-playing game. It confers abilities which circumvent most of the normal curses of being a vampire, such as having to drink blood from humans or succumbing to the Beast through lowering your Humanity rating. The ninth and highest level of this discipline confers the ability to walk around in the daylight -- the only vampiric discipline to allow this other than the Level 10 Thaumaturgy ritual Invulnerable Weakness.