Live from the American Bardo

On Sunday afternoon, September 14, 2025, an eclectic audience gathered in the low-ceilinged home of Giorno Poetry Systems, at 222 Bowery, in New York City. Affectionately known as “The Bunker” because of its concrete dimensions and lack of windows, this second-floor space nonetheless had an inviting atmosphere. Bathed in ambient pink light, old friends greeted one another, and curious attendees settled into their seats to listen to Tibetan poetry read aloud by Laurie Anderson, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, and two scholars of Tibetan Buddhism. Alongside Martha Mooke’s ethereal music on the electric violin, the event aligned with GPS’s mission of providing a venue for artists supporting other artists. Indeed, the collaborative pieces had seemingly crossed mountains and oceans to be read live—here, in the American bardo. 

A former YMCA building, the Bunker is also, quite literally, a living time capsule. Abstract expressionist Mark Rothko once used an adjacent gymnasium space as his studio in the late 1950s to work on the Seagram Murals. Drips of his signature dark red paint still adorn the floor. One of the Bunker’s side rooms is furnished with the belongings of its onetime resident William S. Burroughs—author of Naked Lunch and godfather of the Beat movement. And, in the entry to the event space, a black phone sits on an otherwise empty desk, adorned with a sticker that reads DIAL-A-POEM. Initiated by John Giorno in 1968, Dial-a-Poem allows participants to call and hear a randomly selected poem from a wide variety of recordings. Their content ranges from the political to the lyrical, including the work of Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, and many others. The original poems can still be accessed at dial-a-poem.org or by calling (917) 994-8949! Against the far wall, a Tibetan shrine is arranged with colorful brocade, water-offering bowls, and numerous ritual objects that speak to the Bunker’s Buddhist history, which began with Giorno’s invitation of Dudjom Rinpoche and other prominent Tibetan lamas. 

The event also included a book launch for Forms of Awakening: Tibetan Art from the Jack Shear Collection, an exceptionally beautiful volume recently published by DelMonico books. Shear was in attendance and spoke eloquently about donating this collection to the Tang Museum, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Loeb Art Center at Vassar. Representatives from these institutions who were present discussed sharing the images as teaching materials, exemplifying the event’s spirit of generosity and collaboration. 

The first performer on the bill was Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, a professor of English at Villanova University, an American immigrant, and the first Tibetan woman to publish poetry in English. Dhompa is the author of numerous poetry books, including In the Absent Everyday and Rules of the House, and the memoir Coming Home to Tibet. Dhompa’s most recent book is The Politics of Sorrow. Laurie Anderson, the longtime New York City resident and multihyphenate artist who often incorporates Buddhist themes into her work, was the event’s headliner. She would be reciting the 13th-century Tibetan instructional poem by Karma Lingpa (1326–1386) titled “The Root Verses of the Six Bardos,” together with professors Benjamin Bogin, of Skidmore College, and Dominique Townsend of Columbia University. These scholars of Tibetan Buddhism had yearned to work with someone who is “gifted in voiced language and has an appreciation for these traditions.” To their delight, Anderson agreed to help them translate Karma Lingpa’s poem.    

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa shared three sets of poems. Before beginning, she acknowledged the presence of Anne Waldman, her mentor and first poetry teacher. The first set of poems invoked the presence of her mother, who encouraged her to “build compassion as a habit” and to avoid “abstracting compassion into an intellectual exercise.” The next poems were in conversation with descriptions of Tibet found in The Unveiling of Lhasa by Edmund Candler, a British journalist who was part of the infamous Younghusband expedition in Tibet. Dhompa used the words of this “scribe in the imperial army” to illustrate “how empires write stories”—describing the landscape of Tibet while largely dismissing its people. The final set of poems shared observations from immigrant life: “In the garden, it is possible to contemplate a future,” and “It was during the first snowfall in Massachusetts that I realized winter’s sun freezes.” Displaced from homeland and its familiar rhythms, “the time of a refugee is a fracture.”

Tibetan authors often compare the refugee experience to a fractured, bardolike state. Tenzin Dickie introduces The Penguin Book of Modern Tibetan Essays (2023) as bardo literature: “It is a literature of interrupted continuities, much like modern Tibetan people.” Tibetan literature has historically bridged temporal gaps, as much of it—including “The Root Verses on the Six Bardos”—is categorized as terma, or treasure texts hidden to be discovered centuries after they were written. But now it must also address ruptures of place. Dickie emphasizes that exile is not only experienced by those living in far-flung countries; even inside Tibet it is “the essential Tibetan condition today.” Modern Tibetan literature, she concludes, is written in this transitory in-between space—the bardo of the refugee. It is no longer meant to conjoin time, so much as point toward the future and bring together the Tibetan diaspora.

Even ordinary appearances are characterized as a type of bardo—the “bardo of life.” According to this model of reality, those of us in the audience listening to Tsering Wangmo Dhompa’s poetry were in the very midst of this bardo.

The Tibetan term bardo literally means an “in-between point.” It is commonly used to describe a visionary array of peaceful and wrathful deities that appear after death. There is more than one bardo, however, each describing a different phase of death and rebirth. These include the “meditation bardo” and the “bardo of dreaming.” Even ordinary appearances are characterized as a type of bardo—the “bardo of life.” According to this model of reality, those of us in the audience listening to Tsering Wangmo Dhompa’s poetry were in the very midst of this bardo. The lighting and dreamlike acoustics enhanced this liminal experience, along with Dhompa’s poems, which were situated between Asia and the United States, centuries-old Tibetan literature and its translation into English, and ancient Buddhist themes and modern immigrant life. 

After Dhompa’s poetry, an interlude was filled with the exquisite music of Martha Mooke’s electric violin. 

The stanzas of “The Root Verses on Six Bardos” were then recited in turn by Laurie Anderson, Benjamin Bogin, and Dominique Townsend, accompanied by Mooke. The poem gives pithy instructions for engaging with each of the six bardos—starting with the bardo of this life and finishing with entrance into the next. The translations were vivid: “When you dream, experiment with shifting forms” and “Recognize everything as your own mind.” The evocative music and recurring enjoinders—“Don’t get lost!”and “Don’t be afraid!”—along with Anderson’s unforgettable delivery of the final verse, entreating the audience to keep these instructions in mind, transformed the event from a poetry reading to a spiritual teaching. 

The bardo is a key element of Tibetan Buddhist cosmology and practice. However, it has been of special interest for Westerners. As discussed by the eminent scholar Donald S. Lopez Jr., in Prisoners of Shangri-La, Western authors have been long fascinated with bardo teachings, interpreting them through psychological lenses and, in one case, as a metaphor for an acid trip. The most famous Tibetan work that discusses these teachings—known in translation as the Tibetan Book of the Dead—has been much more popular in the West than it was historically for Tibetan commentators. In Lopez’s terms, it has “taken on a life of its own” as a spiritual classic.

Indeed, Laurie Anderson’s oeuvre reflects a sustained interest in the concept of the bardo—from the multimedia installation “Forty-Nine Days in the Bardo” (2011), to the film Heart of a Dog (2015),” and the more recent audio project Songs from the Bardo (2019), a collaboration with Jesse Paris Smith and Tenzin Choegyal. Anderson introduces her 2021 Norton Lecture Series “Spending the War Without You: Virtual Backgrounds” as a “strange hybrid of lecture, music, electronics, and imagery.” The disjointed form is somewhat bardolike, and this theme is also discussed in the lectures: Anderson’s disembodied voice wanders through space and time, while shape-shifting bodies are projected in front of ephemeral and recurring virtual backdrops. The bardo clearly resonates with Anderson’s artistic interests. At one point, she even hosted a radio series called “Party in the Bardo.” 

The Norton Lectures were given by Anderson over Zoom during the Covid-19 pandemic, a time when many people were experiencing anxiety and loss. The bardolike structure of the talks mirrored the unpredictable nature of those years. Anderson’s ability to reflect and shed light on what was unfolding, with her cheerful face appearing seemingly from nowhere, helped people feel less alone, virtually joining them across great distances. The event in the Bunker served the same purpose, but in real life—a cross-cultural gathering of artists, patrons, publishers, teachers, and poets. Just as literature can connect the Tibetan diaspora, so, too, can art bring us together in our fractured American bardo, if only for a Sunday afternoon.