Dying: What Happens When We Die?
A Selection from Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy
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Publisher Description
In the ancient Indian epic, Mahabharata, the Lord of Death asks, "What is the most wondrous thing in the world?", and his son answers, "It is that all around us people can be dying and we don't believe it can happen to us." This refusal to face the inevitability of death is especially prevalent in modern Western societies. We look to science to tell us how things are but biomedicine and neuroscience divest death of any personal significance by presenting it as just the breakdown of the body and the cessation of consciousness. The Tibetan Buddhist perspective stands in sharp contrast to this modern scientific notion of death. This tradition conceives dying not as the mere termination of living processes within the body, but as a rite of passage and transformation of consciousness. Physical death, in this tradition, initiates a transition from one of the six bardos ("in-between states") of consciousness to an opportunity for total enlightenment. In Dying: What Happens When We Die?, Evan Thompson establishes a middle ground between the depersonalized, scientific account of death and the highly ritualized notion of death found in Tibetan Buddhism. Thompson's depiction of death and dying offers an insightful neurobiological analysis while also delving into the phenomenology of death, examining the psychological and spiritual effects of dying on human consciousness. In a trenchant critique of the near-death experience literature, he shows that these experiences do not provide evidence for the continuation of consciousness after death, but also that they must be understood phenomenologically and not in purely neuroscience terms. We must learn to tolerate the "ultimate ungraspability of death" by bearing witness to dying and death instead of turning away from them. We can learn to face the experience of dying through meditative practice, and to view the final moments of life not as a frightening inevitability to be shunned or ignored, but as a deeply personal experience to be accepted and even embraced.
Customer Reviews
Death and dying: no easy answers, but understanding with heart
In 2012 I organized a small meeting to discuss the scientific study of thukdam, a Tibetan Buddhist tradition of "incorruptibility" in great masters who die in meditation. Evan Thompson was one of the distinguished panelists, and when I read this chapter, which includes his account of the meeting, I was humbled by the breadth of insight he had summarized from it, and the context he places it in. There is a large, ongoing discussion in our society about the meanings of death, life, mind and spirit. The most interesting authors and scholars in this discussion tend to fall into extremes: Mind is a product of matter; or it isn't; and it's very important to them one way or the other. Almost everyone has an axe to grind. But Evan is unusual in his ability to present a thorough awareness of a range of perspectives, to understand them clearly, and yet not be invested in any of them. This leaves the door open to the reader to understand widely as well; in addition, it leaves the door open for the narrative to inspire much more personal and meaningful inquiry about our own experience and growth. Evan is able to go deeply into the brain and yet come out with the heart intact.