We must be in 'Sidpa Bardo'. - How else can we explain this madness?

Gurvinder Singh
Jul 13
3 min read

Yama - Lord of Death and Justice, coming to claim a soul

During World War II, the Allies captured many prisoners from the German army in France.

Among the many captives detained at Château Ervance in France were two strange Russians. They did not speak German or Russian or any other language that was known either to their captors or their fellow prisoners. They could, in fact, only converse with one another.

A professor of Slavonic languages, brought down from Oxford, could make nothing of what they were saying. Then it happened that a British sergeant who had served on the frontiers of India overheard them talking and recognised their language, which he could a little. It was Tibetan! After some questioning, he managed to get their story out of them.

They were peasants hailing from Gyêgumdo who some years earlier got lost in a snowstorm. They were captured by bandits who were heading towards the north to join the Chinese Communist army at Yan'an and forced to be their slaves. They managed to escape and somehow strayed over the frontier into the USSR.

The Tibetans fell into the hands of the Soviets near Tashkent and were forcibly conscripted into a labour battalion.

They were subsequently sent to western Russia when the war with Germany broke out. They were captured by the Germans and taken prisoner. They were sent to North Africa; later they were sent to France to man the defences in Normandy. When the Second Front opened, they were taken prisoner by the British.

All this time they had been able to speak to nobody but one another, and had no notion of what was happening or who was fighting whom.

Speaking only to one another, they had no idea what was happening and why. They believed they were dead and caught in sidpa bardo, a Tibetan Buddhist concept of the netherworld, a place between death and rebirth, where they must learn and experience many things in preparation for their next birth. They usually experience death and destruction all around them in this state of being.

After their debriefing by the British, they were asked if they wanted to return home.

They declined and had no interest in returning to Gyêgumdo. They felt their journey was to provide them a valuable lesson to prepare them for their next life. Having learnt that secret, they did not want their experience and learning to have been in vain.

When they were asked if they had any questions.

They asked, "Can you please explain to us why were all these people trying to kill each other?"

After 80 years, most of humanity is asking the same question and yet to find an answer.

ps. Each one of us lives by a reference frame. A kind of window through which the individual looks at and perceives the world.

The two Tibetans, being devout Buddhists, believed in 'Ahimsa' (not causing deliberate harm), foreswore violence. All this killing does raise the possibility that we are collectively existing in sidpa bardo.

Written and posted by: Gurvinder Singh on 13th July 2026 - Pune, India.

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