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Presence in Death

rubinmuseum.org

31–36 of 36 posts

Re: Presence in Death

#31

Interesting thing I learned: Once you die the biome in your intestines massively contributes to processes that breakdown your body. That’s why decapitated heads are often in much better shape then the remaining body, especially if the surrounding environment is generally conserving the body, such as is the case in dry mountains or bogs.

From my understanding of the Buddhist process described here, the ritual often begins days or weeks before death, and includes exclusive consumption of substances like plant tars that dramatically reduce the presence of gut bacteria, and that this effect rather than anything supernatural is what most attribute to the most significant decay processes being temporarily inhibited - there's no gut bacteria left to decomp…

This is completely incorrect. The process of Tukdam has nothing to do with diet.

I can’t say what the actual process involves with too many details because it’s not appropriate to share with outsiders, but it involves meditating through sleep, which is considered a similar process to death.

The people doing this are good enough to practice through the night that they recognize a certain part of the death process and temporarily abide in it. When they stop, they die for real and their body decomposes.

Re: Presence in Death

#32
post #10

Some of these esoteric states are really weird, and it seems crazy to me that we are only now investigating them. This isn’t just “energy” woo that can’t be measured, there are clear physical phenomena. Another good one is Niroda Samapatti (cessation) where advanced meditators can momentarily cease awareness https://awakeningdharma.org/havard-study-on-nirodha-samapatt...

Humans have been researching alternative states of mind since beer was invented, at least. With great interest and investment.

Re: Presence in Death

#33

I have been studying and practicing tibetan buddhism for a little over a year now, particularly dream yoga, but branched into some of the other practices. I'm always a skeptic but it is fascinating some of the stuff they can do. There is scientific evidence they can raise and lower their body temperatures through meditation, withstanding great heat/cold and deprivation conditions. I've played around with deprivation…

Do you have some literature resources on where to start reading on that stuff?

Re: Presence in Death

#34
post #10

Some of these esoteric states are really weird, and it seems crazy to me that we are only now investigating them. This isn’t just “energy” woo that can’t be measured, there are clear physical phenomena. Another good one is Niroda Samapatti (cessation) where advanced meditators can momentarily cease awareness https://awakeningdharma.org/havard-study-on-nirodha-samapatt...

Humans have been researching alternative states of mind since beer was invented, at least. With great interest and investment.

Of course, I should have been more clear, I meant that we are only now investigating these states with modern scientific rationalist/empiricist approaches.

Eg the example I gave has apparently never been measured before the last couple years, despite being known in the Buddhist tradition for thousands of years.

Perhaps not known to Westerners though, it could just be that more esoteric states are only recently being described in English.

Re: Presence in Death

#35

I have been studying and practicing tibetan buddhism for a little over a year now, particularly dream yoga, but branched into some of the other practices. I'm always a skeptic but it is fascinating some of the stuff they can do. There is scientific evidence they can raise and lower their body temperatures through meditation, withstanding great heat/cold and deprivation conditions. I've played around with deprivation…

Do you have some literature resources on where to start reading on that stuff?

the translation of their texts is widely available, I started with tibetan yoga and secret doctrines by evan-wentz. There’s a lot of lore and tradition you need to understand for some of it but the gist is there.

Re: Presence in Death

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

curious where you learned this. can’t seem to find anything in a quick google and LLM search about ingesting plant tar for tukdam

There are references to it in https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1dzrho6/til_... but I cannot trace to a more authoritative source There is also an interesting comment >I'm in the seafood business and work with dead fish all the time... I see varying length of shelf life depending on how the fish was harvested. Whatever the metabolic state is when we die is what will be in the system when you die. High s…

very interesting points thanks for the links !
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