Death and Happiness: Exploring the Temporalities of the Meditated Death and Everyday Life in Tibetan Buddhist Practice of Tukdam.
Culture, medicine and psychiatry May 21, 2025 Tenzin Namdul 1 citation
Tibetan Buddhist practitioners believe that meditating on death is key to well-being in daily life. Based on an 18-month ethnographic study, this article explores how the concept of tukdam—a meditative state entered while dying that involves resting in extremely subtle consciousness—informs Tibetan communities beyond just accomplished adepts, framing how death and dying are conceived. The article asks why Tibetans see death meditation as central to day-to-day happiness and how the temporality of meditated death relates to ordinary life. It proposes that practices culminating in tukdam symbolize an 'ideal' death that guides approaches to dying for oneself and others, offering a moral heuristic for transforming orientations to self and others and cultivating compassion and resilience.