Death and Happiness: Exploring the Temporalities of the Meditated Death and Everyday Life in Tibetan Buddhist Practice of Tukdam.
Tenzin Namdul
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry May 21, 2025 DOI: 10.1007/s11013-025-09914-7 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnographic study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Tibetan Buddhist practitioners and communities |
| Duration | 18-month ethnographic study |
| Topics | Meditation Buddhism |
| Keywords | Tukdam India Tibetan buddhism Tibetan medicine Tibetan-buddhism Death-meditation Mindfulness-practices Spiritual-traditions |
| Citations | 1 |
| Key findings | Tibetan Buddhist practices culminating in tukdam provide a cultural model for an 'ideal' death that guides approaches to dying for oneself and others, and meditating on death is seen as key to well-being in daily life. |
Abstract
Although tukdam-a meditative state entered through various practices resting in extremely subtle consciousness while dying-is seen to only be achieved by adept practitioners, the philosophy and psychology that underpin tukdam inform Tibetan communities beyond just accomplished adepts and frame the very way death and dying is conceived. Based on an 18-month ethnographic study, this article explores the significance of death as a Tibetan Buddhist cultural-reference that offers a moral heuristic ground for adaptive methods in transforming orientations to self and others and in cultivating compassion and resilience. Tibetan Buddhist practitioners emphasize a strong correlation between a true understanding of self and sustained happiness. This article thus asks a dual conceptual question: (1) Why do Tibetans believe that meditating on death is the key to experiences of well-being in their day-to-day life? (2) What is the relation between the temporalities of the meditated death and that of the day-to-day life? Furthermore, the article proposes that Tibetan Buddhist practices that culminate in tukdam symbolize the way death and dying is assumed to be approached more broadly beyond advanced practitioners, and thereby, provides a cultural model for an "ideal" death that guides approaches to dying for oneself and others.
Comparable studies
Other qualitative studies on buddhism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists Western Buddhist meditation practitioners and experts in Theravāda, Zen, and Tibetan... | 2017 | Qualitative study with mixed-methods | |
| A phenomenology of meditation-induced light experiences: traditional buddhist and neurobiological perspectives American Buddhist practitioners | 2014 | Qualitative study | |
| Common Core Thesis and Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Mysticism in Chinese Buddhist Monks and Nuns Chinese Pure Land and Chan Buddhist monks and nuns | 2011 | Mixed-methods study | n = 139 |
| Anger regulation in traumatized Cambodian refugees: the perspectives of Buddhist monks. Buddhist Cambodian monks in Massachusetts | 2011 | Qualitative study | n = 6 |
| The Lived Experiences of Experienced Vipassana Mahasi Meditators: an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Experienced Vipassana Mahasi meditators | 2018 | Qualitative study |
Citations in the library
Cites 3
- No Detectable Electroencephalographic Activity After Clinical Declaration of Death Among Tibetan Buddhist Meditators in Apparent Tukdam, a Putative Postmortem Meditation State Frontiers in Psychology January 28, 2021
- Thanato-technics: Temporal Horizons of Death and Dying. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry June 1, 2025
- Tukdam, Different Ontological Bodies, and Making Tibetan Deaths Visible Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry June 1, 2025