Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

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fckw
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Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by fckw »

I just felt inspired by another thread where someone was interested in "destroying" scientific materialist thought. This is an interesting study: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 99190/full

In brief, 13 deceased study subjects supposedly in a tukdam state did not show the slightest sign of brain activity. Hence, if there exists such a thing as tukdam other than in Buddhist lore and myth it does not show in post-mortem brain activity - or it only shows in activity that could not be detected with available means. Obviously, it could also show in different ways that science has not yet detected, but well, not in brain activity detectable with standard equipment, which is commonly taken by modern medicine to be a good indicator of whether someone is actually alive or dead. Stated differently, from a scientific position these test subjects were simply dead. And by the way, this research was backed by HHDL.
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heart
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by heart »

fckw wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 7:53 pm I just felt inspired by another thread where someone was interested in "destroying" scientific materialist thought. This is an interesting study: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 99190/full

In brief, 13 deceased study subjects supposedly in a tukdam state did not show the slightest sign of brain activity. Hence, if there exists such a thing as tukdam other than in Buddhist lore and myth it does not show in post-mortem brain activity - or it only shows in activity that could not be detected with available means. Obviously, it could also show in different ways that science has not yet detected, but well, not in brain activity detectable with standard equipment, which is commonly taken by modern medicine to be a good indicator of whether someone is actually alive or dead. Stated differently, from a scientific position these test subjects were simply dead. And by the way, this research was backed by HHDL.
People in tukdam are dead. Thet don't breath, their hearts don't beat. So it would be very weird if there was any brain activity.

I think also maybe you would know by now that the mind is not the brain.

/magnus
"We are all here to help each other go through this thing, whatever it is."
~Kurt Vonnegut

"The principal practice is Guruyoga. But we need to understand that any secondary practice combined with Guruyoga becomes a principal practice." ChNNR (Teachings on Thun and Ganapuja)
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

When my time to die comes, I plan to go into deep meditation and remain in a state of thukpa
(that’s Nepali for noodles).
I don’t know that I can attain rainbow body.
Noodle body might be something I can handle.
Thukpa
Thukpa
4CC08A83-9227-4916-A6E4-E59650C11138.png (103.16 KiB) Viewed 1514 times
EMPTIFUL.
An inward outlook produces outward insight.
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

fckw wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 7:53 pm I just felt inspired by another thread where someone was interested in "destroying" scientific materialist thought. This is an interesting study: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 99190/full

In brief, 13 deceased study subjects supposedly in a tukdam state did not show the slightest sign of brain activity. Hence, if there exists such a thing as tukdam other than in Buddhist lore and myth it does not show in post-mortem brain activity - or it only shows in activity that could not be detected with available means. Obviously, it could also show in different ways that science has not yet detected, but well, not in brain activity detectable with standard equipment, which is commonly taken by modern medicine to be a good indicator of whether someone is actually alive or dead. Stated differently, from a scientific position these test subjects were simply dead. And by the way, this research was backed by HHDL.
There’s no brain activity in jellyfish either. But it doesn’t mean they are dead.

Nor in spermatozoa, yet they have an attraction to the chemicals produced by the ovum, and intentionally swim towards it.

Not to mention a lot of the folks in Washington…
EMPTIFUL.
An inward outlook produces outward insight.
Malcolm
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by Malcolm »

heart wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:02 pm
People in tukdam are dead. Thet don't breath, their hearts don't beat. So it would be very weird if there was any brain activity.
But they do breathe, while in Thukdam, the inner respiration has not ceased.
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heart
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by heart »

Malcolm wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:36 pm
heart wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:02 pm
People in tukdam are dead. Thet don't breath, their hearts don't beat. So it would be very weird if there was any brain activity.
But they do breathe, while in Thukdam, the inner respiration has not ceased.
I don't think that breath is physical.

/magnus
"We are all here to help each other go through this thing, whatever it is."
~Kurt Vonnegut

"The principal practice is Guruyoga. But we need to understand that any secondary practice combined with Guruyoga becomes a principal practice." ChNNR (Teachings on Thun and Ganapuja)
PeterC
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by PeterC »

PadmaVonSamba wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:17 pm When my time to die comes, I plan to go into deep meditation and remain in a state of thukpa
(that’s Nepali for noodles).
I don’t know that I can attain rainbow body.
Noodle body might be something I can handle.

4CC08A83-9227-4916-A6E4-E59650C11138.png
Are we talking egg noddles or buckwheat noodles? Hopefully not instant noodles surely. We have to be careful about which of the six noodle realms we take rebirth in.
Tenma
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by Tenma »

PeterC wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 1:27 am
PadmaVonSamba wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:17 pm When my time to die comes, I plan to go into deep meditation and remain in a state of thukpa
(that’s Nepali for noodles).
I don’t know that I can attain rainbow body.
Noodle body might be something I can handle.

4CC08A83-9227-4916-A6E4-E59650C11138.png
Are we talking egg noddles or buckwheat noodles? Hopefully not instant noodles surely. We have to be careful about which of the six noodle realms we take rebirth in.
Excuse me, but instant ramen noodles have been a beneficial, affordable method for college students (especially graduate ones!) to make a living! How dare you say that instant noodles are of an inferior rebirth!
འ༔ ཨ༔ ཧ༔ ཤ༔ ས༔ མ༔
PeterC
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by PeterC »

Tenma wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 5:11 am
PeterC wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 1:27 am
PadmaVonSamba wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:17 pm When my time to die comes, I plan to go into deep meditation and remain in a state of thukpa
(that’s Nepali for noodles).
I don’t know that I can attain rainbow body.
Noodle body might be something I can handle.

4CC08A83-9227-4916-A6E4-E59650C11138.png
Are we talking egg noddles or buckwheat noodles? Hopefully not instant noodles surely. We have to be careful about which of the six noodle realms we take rebirth in.
Excuse me, but instant ramen noodles have been a beneficial, affordable method for college students (especially graduate ones!) to make a living! How dare you say that instant noodles are of an inferior rebirth!
From generation to generation, one thing remains constant: students eat shit food. Because they’re young, so it won’t kill them too quickly, because they’re short of money, and because they don’t know better. We’ve all been there. But it definitely does accrue negative health karma which you will have to deal with sooner or later.
fckw
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by fckw »

heart wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:02 pm People in tukdam are dead. Thet don't breath, their hearts don't beat. So it would be very weird if there was any brain activity.
Well, if they are dead, how does anyone know they are in tukdam?

The standard answer seems to be: By observing that their bodies don't decease.

If their bodies decease, then that's - as far as I understood - by definition exactly not tukdam. But these were test subjects that were believed by the Tibetan community to be in tukdam.

If their bodies don't decease, then there must be some physical correlate, because "body not deceasing" means nothing else than "has physical correlate". And if there is, it should be - in principle - detectable by scientific investigation. Hence, the experiment makes actually a lot of sense. It would also make a lot of sense to put them into an MRI, to X-ray them, to take tissue samples from various body parts, to measure their body temperature etc. (Yet those procedures might be unethical to perform, that's a problem.)

And if none of those method would reveal anything, according to Occam's Razor the closest conclusion would be to assume from a scientific standpoint that tukdam is just a myth people tell each other, a story to inspire, but nothing to be taken seriously by anyone scientifically inclined. And that in turn should be very unsettling for any practitioner, because it means that what our lineage masters have told us is not reliable from a scientific perspective.
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heart
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by heart »

fckw wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:15 am
heart wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:02 pm People in tukdam are dead. Thet don't breath, their hearts don't beat. So it would be very weird if there was any brain activity.
Well, if they are dead, how does anyone know they are in tukdam?

The standard answer seems to be: By observing that their bodies don't decease.

If their bodies decease, then that's - as far as I understood - by definition exactly not tukdam. But these were test subjects that were believed by the Tibetan community to be in tukdam.

If their bodies don't decease, then there must be some physical correlate, because "body not deceasing" means nothing else than "has physical correlate". And if there is, it should be - in principle - detectable by scientific investigation. Hence, the experiment makes actually a lot of sense. It would also make a lot of sense to put them into an MRI, to X-ray them, to take tissue samples from various body parts, to measure their body temperature etc. (Yet those procedures might be unethical to perform, that's a problem.)

And if none of those method would reveal anything, according to Occam's Razor the closest conclusion would be to assume from a scientific standpoint that tukdam is just a myth people tell each other, a story to inspire, but nothing to be taken seriously by anyone scientifically inclined. And that in turn should be very unsettling for any practitioner, because it means that what our lineage masters have told us is not reliable from a scientific perspective.
As far as I know, I never seen it myself, the practitioner is dead in every scientific way. However there is a slight warmth in the heart region. That is how they know. The body also don't smell bad during tukdam or enter rigor mortis. I have several Dharma friends that seen people in tukdam, they are convinced.Personally I don't care what the scientific perspective on tukdam is.

/magnus
"We are all here to help each other go through this thing, whatever it is."
~Kurt Vonnegut

"The principal practice is Guruyoga. But we need to understand that any secondary practice combined with Guruyoga becomes a principal practice." ChNNR (Teachings on Thun and Ganapuja)
fckw
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by fckw »

heart wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:39 amPersonally I don't care what the scientific perspective on tukdam is.
So, do you not care whether achieving tukdam is the outcome of a systematic process of practice that can be called scientific in the sense that it is reliably repeateable and leads to same outcome when done properly, or do you not care whether achieving tukdam can be described and understood by scientific materialist investigation?

I assume you were only referring to the latter, not the former.

If that's the case, then the question arises: Why do we place trust in lineages and teachers if they are not aligned with scientific materialist thinking? I find this a very interesting question, because of the underlying assumptions it challenges that were raised elsewhere, both assumptions on how the scientific process supposedly works and also on how Buddhist training supposedly works. At least to me it seems, neither side has properly understood the method the other one uses.
Natan
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by Natan »

fckw wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 7:53 pm I just felt inspired by another thread where someone was interested in "destroying" scientific materialist thought. This is an interesting study: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 99190/full

In brief, 13 deceased study subjects supposedly in a tukdam state did not show the slightest sign of brain activity. Hence, if there exists such a thing as tukdam other than in Buddhist lore and myth it does not show in post-mortem brain activity - or it only shows in activity that could not be detected with available means. Obviously, it could also show in different ways that science has not yet detected, but well, not in brain activity detectable with standard equipment, which is commonly taken by modern medicine to be a good indicator of whether someone is actually alive or dead. Stated differently, from a scientific position these test subjects were simply dead. And by the way, this research was backed by HHDL.
Death by Western medicine is defined as no heart or brain activity.
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by Natan »

fckw wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:15 am
heart wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:02 pm People in tukdam are dead. Thet don't breath, their hearts don't beat. So it would be very weird if there was any brain activity.
Well, if they are dead, how does anyone know they are in tukdam?

The standard answer seems to be: By observing that their bodies don't decease.

If their bodies decease, then that's - as far as I understood - by definition exactly not tukdam. But these were test subjects that were believed by the Tibetan community to be in tukdam.

If their bodies don't decease, then there must be some physical correlate, because "body not deceasing" means nothing else than "has physical correlate". And if there is, it should be - in principle - detectable by scientific investigation. Hence, the experiment makes actually a lot of sense. It would also make a lot of sense to put them into an MRI, to X-ray them, to take tissue samples from various body parts, to measure their body temperature etc. (Yet those procedures might be unethical to perform, that's a problem.)

And if none of those method would reveal anything, according to Occam's Razor the closest conclusion would be to assume from a scientific standpoint that tukdam is just a myth people tell each other, a story to inspire, but nothing to be taken seriously by anyone scientifically inclined. And that in turn should be very unsettling for any practitioner, because it means that what our lineage masters have told us is not reliable from a scientific perspective.
They do not experience rigor mortis. They remain warm and flesh soft.
Tata1
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by Tata1 »

fckw wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 11:25 am
heart wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:39 amPersonally I don't care what the scientific perspective on tukdam is.
So, do you not care whether achieving tukdam is the outcome of a systematic process of practice that can be called scientific in the sense that it is reliably repeateable and leads to same outcome when done properly, or do you not care whether achieving tukdam can be described and understood by scientific materialist investigation?

I assume you were only referring to the latter, not the former.

If that's the case, then the question arises: Why do we place trust in lineages and teachers if they are not aligned with scientific materialist thinking? I find this a very interesting question, because of the underlying assumptions it challenges that were raised elsewhere, both assumptions on how the scientific process supposedly works and also on how Buddhist training supposedly works. At least to me it seems, neither side has properly understood the method the other one uses.
Why would I base y trust in teachers on what materialist think? Materialism is more or less opposite to buddha dharma
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AmidaB
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by AmidaB »

fckw wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 7:53 pm I just felt inspired by another thread where someone was interested in "destroying" scientific materialist thought. This is an interesting study: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 99190/full

In brief, 13 deceased study subjects supposedly in a tukdam state did not show the slightest sign of brain activity. Hence, if there exists such a thing as tukdam other than in Buddhist lore and myth it does not show in post-mortem brain activity - or it only shows in activity that could not be detected with available means. Obviously, it could also show in different ways that science has not yet detected, but well, not in brain activity detectable with standard equipment, which is commonly taken by modern medicine to be a good indicator of whether someone is actually alive or dead. Stated differently, from a scientific position these test subjects were simply dead. And by the way, this research was backed by HHDL.
Tashi delek to all of you.
Please reread the article's 'discussion' and 'challenges and limitations' section especially the second half of the former. For general interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroen ... advantages
Malcolm
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by Malcolm »

heart wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:43 pm
Malcolm wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:36 pm
heart wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:02 pm
People in tukdam are dead. Thet don't breath, their hearts don't beat. So it would be very weird if there was any brain activity.
But they do breathe, while in Thukdam, the inner respiration has not ceased.
I don't think that breath is physical.

/magnus
Of course it is physical, since it involves the element of air.
Malcolm
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by Malcolm »

fckw wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:15 am
And if none of those method would reveal anything, according to Occam's Razor the closest conclusion would be to assume from a scientific standpoint that tukdam is just a myth people tell each other, a story to inspire, but nothing to be taken seriously by anyone scientifically inclined. And that in turn should be very unsettling for any practitioner, because it means that what our lineage masters have told us is not reliable from a scientific perspective.
Occam's razor might also tell us that modern science is not up to the task of explaining the death processes of people who have mastered a serious level of samadhi.
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heart
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by heart »

fckw wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 11:25 am
heart wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:39 amPersonally I don't care what the scientific perspective on tukdam is.
So, do you not care whether achieving tukdam is the outcome of a systematic process of practice that can be called scientific in the sense that it is reliably repeateable and leads to same outcome when done properly, or do you not care whether achieving tukdam can be described and understood by scientific materialist investigation?

I assume you were only referring to the latter, not the former.

If that's the case, then the question arises: Why do we place trust in lineages and teachers if they are not aligned with scientific materialist thinking? I find this a very interesting question, because of the underlying assumptions it challenges that were raised elsewhere, both assumptions on how the scientific process supposedly works and also on how Buddhist training supposedly works. At least to me it seems, neither side has properly understood the method the other one uses.
I don't trust scientific materialist thinking, if you study the history of science it is quite clear that is totally wrong at least as often as it right.

/magnus
"We are all here to help each other go through this thing, whatever it is."
~Kurt Vonnegut

"The principal practice is Guruyoga. But we need to understand that any secondary practice combined with Guruyoga becomes a principal practice." ChNNR (Teachings on Thun and Ganapuja)
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heart
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Re: Scientific study on brain activity of practitioners in tukdam

Post by heart »

Malcolm wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 3:13 pm
heart wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:43 pm
Malcolm wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:36 pm

But they do breathe, while in Thukdam, the inner respiration has not ceased.
I don't think that breath is physical.

/magnus
Of course it is physical, since it involves the element of air.
Well, dead people don't breath so it indicate some other kind of movement.

/magnus
"We are all here to help each other go through this thing, whatever it is."
~Kurt Vonnegut

"The principal practice is Guruyoga. But we need to understand that any secondary practice combined with Guruyoga becomes a principal practice." ChNNR (Teachings on Thun and Ganapuja)
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