All just my thoughts, Kyu reminded himself, feeling fear rise in his throat. This realm was like the dream world, but more solid; more solid even than the waking world of his just completed life; everything trebly stuffed with itself, so that the leaves on the round ornamental bushes (in ceramic pots!) hung like jade leaves, while the jade throne of the god pulsed with a solidity far beyond that of stone. Of all the worlds the bardo was the one of the utmost reality.

The white Arab face in the black forehead laughed and squeaked, 'Condemned!' and the huge black face of the Lord of Death roared, 'Condemned to hell!' It threw a rope around Kyu's neck and dragged him off the dais. It cut off Kyu's head, tore out his heart, pulled out his entrails, drank his blood, gnawed his bones; yet Kyu did not die. Body hacked to pieces, yet it revived. And it all began again. Intense pain throughout. Tortured by reality. Life is a thing of extreme reality; death also.

Ideas are planted in the mind of the child like seeds, and may grow to dominate the life completely.

The plea: I have done no evil.

Agony disassembled into anguish, regret, remorse; nausea at his past lives and how little they had gained him. In this terrible hour he sensed them all without actually being able to remember them. But they had happened. Oh, to get off the endless wheel of fire and tears. The sorrow and grief he felt then was worse than the pain of dismemberment. The solidity of the bardo fell apart, and he was bombarded by light exploding in his thoughts, through which the palace of judgment could only be seen as a kind of veil, or a painting on the air.

But there was Bold up there, being judged in his turn. Bold, a cowering monkey, the only person after Kyu's capture who had meant anything at all to him. Kyu wanted to cry out to him for help, but stifled the thought, as he did not want to distract his friend at the very moment, of all the infinity of moments, when he needed not to be distracted. Nevertheless something must have escaped from Kyu, some groan of the mind, some anguished thought or cry for help; for a gang of furious four armed demons dragged Kyu down and away, out of sight of Bold's judgment.

Then he was indeed in hell, and pain the least of his burdens, as superficial as mosquito bites, compared to the deep, oceanic ache of his loss. The anguish of solitude! Coloured explosions, tangerine, lime, quicksilver, each shade more acid than the last, burned his consciousness with an anguish ever deeper. I'm wandering in the bardo, rescue me, rescue me!

And then Bold was there with him.

They stood in their old bodies, looking at each other. The lights grew clearer, less painful to the eyes; a single ray of hope pierced the depth of Kyu's despair, like a lone paper lantern seen across West Lake. You found me, Kyu said.

Yes.

It's a miracle you could find me here.

No. We always meet in the bardo. We will cross paths for as long as the six worlds turn in this cycle of the cosmos. We are part of a karmic jati.

What's that?

Jati, subcaste, family, village. It manifests differently. We all came into the cosmos together. New souls are born out of the void, but infrequently, especially at this point in the cycle, for we are in the Kali yuga, the Age of Destruction. When new souls do appear it happens like a dandelion pod, souls like seeds, floating away on the dharma wind. We are all seeds of what we could be. But the new seeds float together and never separate by much, that's my point. We have gone through many lives together already. Our jati has been particularly tight since the avalanche. That fate bound us together. We rise or fall together.

But I don't remember any other lives. And I don't remember anyone from this past life but you. I only recognize you! Where are the rest of them?

You didn't recognize me either. We found you. You have been falling away from the jati for many reincarnations now, down and down into yourself alone, in lower and lower lokas. There are six lokas; they are t e orlds, the realms of rebirth and illusion. Heaven, the world of the devas; then the world of the asuras, those giants full of dissension; then the human world; then the animal world; then the world of pretas, or hungry ghosts; then hell. We move between them as our karma changes, life by life.

How many of us are there in this jati?

I don't know. A dozen perhaps, or half a dozen. The group blurs at the boundaries. Some go away and don't come back until much later. We were a village, that time in Tibet. But there were visitors, traders. Fewer every time. People get lost, or fall away. As you have been doing. When the despair strikes.

At the mere sound of the word it washed through Kyu: Despair. Bold's figure grew transparent.

Bold, help me! What do I do?

Think good thoughts. Listen, Kyu, listen – as we think, so we are. Both here and hereafter, in all the worlds. For thoughts are things, the parents of all actions, good and bad alike. And as the sowing has been, so the harvest will be.

I'll think good thoughts, or try, but what should I do? What should I look for?

The lights will lead you. Each world has its own colour. White light from the devas, green from the asuras, yellow from the human, blue from the beasts, red from ghosts, smoke coloured from hell. Your body will appear the colour of the world you are to return to.

But we're yellow! Kyu said, looking at his hand. And Bold was as yellow as a flower.

That means we must try again. We try and try again, life after life, until we achieve Buddha wisdom, and are released at last. Or some then choose to return to the human world, to help others along their way to release. Those are called bodhisattvas. You could be one of those, Kyu. I can see it inside you. Listen to me now. Soon you'll run for it. Things will chase you, and you'll hide. In a house, a cave, a jungle, a lotus blossom. These are all wombs. You'll want to stay in your hiding place, to escape the terrors of the bardo. That way lies preta, and you will become a ghost. You must emerge again to have any hope. Choose your womb door without any feelings of attraction or repulsion. Looks can be deceiving. Go as you see fit. Follow the heart. Try helping other spirits first, as if you were a bodhisattva already.

I don't know how!

Learn. Pay attention and learn. You must follow, or lose the jati for good.

Then they were attacked by huge male lions, manes already matted with blood, roaring angrily. Bold took off in one direction and Kyu in another. Kyu ran and ran, the lion on his heels. He dodged through two trees and onto a path. The lion ran on and lost him.

To the east he saw a lake, adorned with black and white swans. To the west, a lake with horses standing in it; to the south, a scattering of pagodas; to the north a lake with a castle in it. He moved south towards the pagodas, feeling vaguely that this would have been Bold's choice; feeling also that Bold and the rest of his jati were already there, in one of the temples waiting for him.

He reached the pagodas. He wandered from one building to the next, looking in doorways, shocked by visions of crowds in disarray, fighting or fleeing from hyena headed guards and wardens; a hell of a village, each possible future catastrophic, terrifying. Death's home town.

A long time passed in this horrible search, and then he was looking through the gates of a temple at his jati, his cohort, Bold and all the rest of them, Shen, I li Dem his mother, Zheng He, Psin, all of them immediately known to him – oh, he thought, of course. They were naked and bloodied, but putting on the gear of war nevertheless. Then hyenas howled, and Kyu fled through the raw yellow light of morning, through trees into the protection of elephant grass. The hyenas prowled between the huge tufts of grass, and he pressed through the knife edges of one broken down clump to take refuge inside it.