Just for those of you who don't know, in Tibetan Buddhism they speak about a Bardo stage, it is kind of in-between your dying period and your next birth. As far as Theravadin Buddhism is concerned generally everybody gets automatically reborn to wherever you are supposed to be reborn. It is just automatic, the minute you die, puff, you are going to be reborn somewhere else, you are going to be in a brand new womb somewhere, or in a heaven realm or wherever it is. However, in Theravadin Buddhism there is also a kind of state that you might get stuck in and I don't know if there is a proper term for it other than a type of ghost realm. They don't use the term "Bardo", and I don't know what other term they might use, but I understand it to be a kind of temporary state for a person who is too attached to the body they had or to the people they left behind.
I'll give you an example. This is a story from one of our Thai teachers and he claims it was true. Take it for what you want. As a young man he had very good meditation, very good concentration. He could even see invisible beings in his deep states of concentration, he could even see being on other planes of existence. Now, he was working in a monastery with an old man and they were building toilets for the monastery. It was before he became a monk. He was working on building toilets with this old man, and the old man was a very good man, a man who always kept his practice of meditation, kept the five precepts and other things. According to Buddhism he had been a very good lay practitioner. As they were working on the toilets the old man died. Well, he had lived a very good life, everyone was happy for him, but after he died and they burnt the body, our teacher said that he sat in meditation that night and he wanted to see where the old man had been reborn. He claimed he had the power to see such things. So he went into a deep concentration state and he started looking for where the old man was, and lo and behold, the man was a spirit floating around the bathrooms. He was stuck in this state of attachment to his past life, and our teacher evidently communicated with him and asked, "What is going on? You should have been reborn in a heaven realm or another good human body, why are you in this ghost realm hanging around the bathrooms?" The old man simply said back to him, "The bathrooms are not done yet!"
Our teacher was so shocked that he immediately blew his meditation and came out of it. He was amazed that the old man had been so attached to these bathrooms getting done that he couldn't get reborn. As soon as morning came, the teacher told everybody in the monastery and in the village what he had seen in his meditation. They all came and worked to finish the toilets on that day. He went into meditation that night and tried to find the old man. He found the old man smiling above the bathrooms and said, "Thanks!" Then he disappeared and got reborn. You can take it for what you like, however Theravadin Buddhism does teach that this can happen.
This is one of the reasons why when somebody dies in Theravadin Buddhism, there is virtually no one crying at the funerals. In fact, they make donations in the person's name, they do more goodness for them, they wish them well, because it is taught that if you have grief for let's say your father who has died, and you are all sad, then it could be that your father is stuck, looking down and going, "Oh, my daughter, my son, they don't want me to die." And they can get stuck that way. So Theravadin Buddhism does teach that a person who dies might get stuck because they are attached to either their body or to the job they were doing or to the people they left behind. So to wish Compassion and Lovingkindness for whoever has died, to send them good wishes, to cheer them on for a new rebirth and in that way if they do happen to be hanging on in that state, then they won't stay for very long because they know, "Oh, everybody is ok, I can go." So this is a teaching in Theravadin Buddhism.