[Buddha-l] Abhidharma vindicated once again

[Zelders.YH]

Dan wrote :
> I gave my honest answer. "another try?" Is this like poking the oracle, so
> if a different answer spills out the second time.
>
Poking the oracle produced at least one interesting presupposition.
> What little I know of tukdam [...] it is a
> special meditative condition that certain very adept practitioners engage in
> AFTER death, its significance being that instead of continuing to be
> recycled through the bardos and eventual rebirth, one exits by a sidedoor
> into a great light (which frightens less prepared mortals), or at least gets
> to bathe in the Dharmakaya for awhile.
>
AFTER death, you say. You even capitalize the word. Do we know precisely 
what - or rather when - death is, then ?  When an ex Ganden Tripa died, 
or "died", in 2008 and entered tukdam, the Dalai Lama ordered his body 
to be wired up - surely the first time such an experiment was carried 
out - and after a few days some faint brain activity was registered. So 
the man wasn't really dead according to our most commonly used clinical 
definition of death ; total absence of brain activity.

Now 'nirodha-samapatti' is a pre-death state. You explained earlier 
that  "nirodha-samapatti is a (nearly?) comatose state in which the 
majordifference -- according to some of the earliest texts -- between 
someone innirodha-samapatti and a corpse is that nirodha-samapatti still 
retains life-force (jivatendriya) and body heat, while a corpse does not."
That would fit the many descriptions of bodies of people in tukdam.

You also explained earlier that "[n]irodha-samapatti [...] is 
soterically effective, leads to anuttara-samyak-sambodhi [and] makes 
high level meditations and rebirths possible".
Wouldn't that make 'nirodha-samapatti' the ideal final pre-death 
meditation for serious practitioners ?

I think I will leave it there. I hardly know what I am talking about 
anyway. I'm sure that some Tibetan scholars and some Tibetologists would 
be able to tell us whether 'nirodha-samapatti' could be equated to 
'tukdam', but I don't know where they are hiding.

Regretfully,I haven't found much useful references to the case of the 
Ganden Tripa's tukdam. I first heard of it while viewing a lecture by 
the Dalai Lama on the 'Nature of Mind' at the University of California 
Santa Barbara Events Center on April 24th, 2009. : 
http://www.youtube.com/user/gyalwarinpoche#p/c/B99B861CCA727058/4/gO7RQi55asY 
, at about min. 31:30 .
Later I found one tantalizingly vague article : 
http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?article=Former+Ganden+Tripa+Stays+on+%27Thukdam%27+for+18+Days&id=22935 
<http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?article=Former+Ganden+Tripa+Stays+on+%27Thukdam%27+for+18+Days&id=22935> 
.
There must be more information out there.

Thank you, Dan, for bringing up an interesting topic, and for your 
encyclopedic reply ; I wonder : where do you find the time.

Herman Zelders