[Buddha-l] Abhidharma vindicated once again

[Dan Lusthaus]

Herman, my friend, arguing with/against me won't create facts on the ground.

The "after" death issue: This is the way most sources, including the clip 
from HHDL, speak of it.

I called it a liminal space between life and death.

There is a normative description of what is SUPPOSED to happen, and every 
effort is made for that to take place, or to "see" exactly that.

If vital signs (temperature, breathing, pulse, blood pressure, brain 
activity, electrical activity on the skin or elsewhere in th body, etc.) 
continue, then the body is not dead. If all those are absent, then the 
person is dead.

It remains unclear whether the claim of HHDL about the rinpoche whose death 
was monitored involved a "faint" continuance of some vital signs, or an 
extended flatline period followed by some fluctuations. In the first case, 
the person would not be dead (and thus nothing strange about retaining body 
heat and brain activity, and thus no decay -- if the heart is not 
functioning at that time, THAT would be strange, but not unprecedented --  
more on this below). If all vital signs are absent for an extended period 
(several days), and then a flicker crosses the machines, one might do well 
to search for causes (anyone near the body with any battery-powered devices? 
etc.).

Until there are clearly established studies laying out whether either of the 
above scenarios takes place -- and not just stereotyped anecdotes which, by 
their nature, are designed to confirm faith and expectation, not explore 
alternate explantions or focus on anomalies, the question of tukdam remains 
open and healthy skepticism is not unwarranted.

If tukdam takes place while someone is still alive, then it's nothing 
special. If it takes place after death (of the body), then it is something 
special (but impossible to verify).

Cake and eat it too time.

> Or take this sentence from the description of Chogye Trichen Rinpoche's
> tukdam :  "The high lamas commented that

Second hand hearsay won't cut it. What would you EXPECT them to say?

>rosy cheeks.

There are only two ways to get rosy cheeks: (1) extra blood flows to the 
cheeks (that would require a beating heart and a vascular system that is 
still functioning), or (2) artificially (makeup, etc.). Get it?

> Oh, you're being funny ! But you must have overlooked my point.

No, you've ignored mine, which is that nirodha-samapatti has NOT been used 
in that way in Buddhist literature for the last 2500 years, which should 
tell you something (if you are listening).

> Let's find something simple to agree on ; it would be very nice to have
> some thorough reports of careful case studies of people in tukdam.
> Don't you think so too ?

"Case studies"? If anecdotal, breathless descriptions of "miracles," no. 
There seem to be plenty of those already and they clarify nothing except a 
strong propensity to confirm prior belief and validate the stereotype. If 
carefully monitored by non-credulous observers, well versed in the sorts of 
things documented in the Justin Ritzinger
and Marcus Bingenheimer piece and the sources they cite, then we might have 
something to talk about it.
http://buddhistinformatics.ddbc.edu.tw/~mb/publications/Ritzinger-Bingenheimer%28buddhistMummies%29.pdf

As for what counts as "death," the simplest definition would be the absence 
of any discernible vital signs from which the person does not awaken.

This is an area of great interest to doctors, scientists, etc., and the 
"medical" definition of death I gave (called the Harvard Medical Definition 
of Death) has been one of the standard ones used by MDs and hospitals for 
several decades, stipulating the 24 hour period because there were cases of 
people flatlining and then rescusitating. It has become routine in hospitals 
around the world to bring back people who flatline, with various means 
(paddles [you see that on tv all the time], adrenaline injected directly 
into the heart [Pulp Fiction], cpr, etc.). That raised the question of how 
long could someone lack vital signs and still be rescusitate-able? And if 
flatlined for a long time, could they be rescusitated with no permanent 
damage, or would the lack of oxygen, etc. leave irreversible damage?

For the nomenclature problem, the people who flatlined and then rescusitated 
were said to have undergone nde (near death experience), and if they hadn't 
gone 24 hourse without brain waves they were not considered to have been 
clinically dead.

Brief history of thanatological detection.

Life used to be associated with breath (God breaths life and a soul into 
Adam in Genesis; the discourse on prana in India, Qi [ch'i] in China; pneuma 
in the hellenic and hellenistic worlds, etc). No breath, you're dead. So 
placing a finger or mirror by the nostrils would be used to detect if 
someone was dead. No condensation, dead. But MANY people rescusitated 
spontaneously -- some on the embalmer's table just in time, some sadly awoke 
in coffins 6 feet under (when dug up, their remains clearly indicate they 
were trying to claw their way out).

So breath as the sine qua non of life was clearly inadequate. With the 
advent of stethoscopes, ekg, etc., attention shifted to the heart. Many 
cases where breath stopped but the heart continued, if faintly, were 
discovered. So no heartbeat, dead. But with the advent of cpr, paddles, 
etc., rescusitating someone whose heart stopped became routine, so that was 
no longer adequate. Attention shifted to the brain (and eeg, etc. 
facilitated that shift).

Commonly the heart stopped but the brain kept going... for awhile.

It became clear that people could flatline (both heart and brain) and yet 
rescusitate. Declaring such people dead while flatlined would be premature. 
So the question became (and to some extent still is): How long can you go 
without any vital signs and come back with a chance of being healthy? 
Initially they thought three to five minutes without heart beat would allow 
vestigial oxygen in the brain to keep brain tissue from dying, but if any 
longer, brain tissue would be irreparably damaged (die), so if rescusitated 
such a person would be severely handicapped (raising other sorts of ethical 
questions). Then some cases of prolongued absence of ekg and eeg appeared, 
most tellingly drowning cases (typically in winter in freezing water) in 
which some children were clinically without vital signs for 24 hours or so 
(though being given artificial life-preserving measures) and then awakening, 
with little or no detectable brain damage -- the preservation of the tissue 
being attribute to the cold (cold prevents decay).

The Harvard medical definition -- 24 hours of flat brain waves -- was meant 
to cover reasonable cases. Note that hospitals and doctors usually do NOT 
strap eeg machines on dead patients and wait 24 hours to declare time of 
death (TOD), but usually declare TOD when someone is obviously "gone". The 
technical definition and eeg, etc. only comes into play in ambiguous cases, 
like certain types of comas (to know when to turn off the machines). Have 
any cases been documented where someone rescusitates beyond the 24 hour 
period? Yes, but very few. So the definition is always up for revision.

So either tukdam is something that occurs while someone is still alive --  
heart beating keeps the cheeks rosy, the body warm, etc. -- or all the vital 
signs cease -- no heart, brain, etc. -- in which case nothing would show up 
on any machines. The former is unremarkable, the latter unverifiable.

Dan