What happens when death knocks, but the soul does not respond?

And what happens when the breath comes cool, the blood chills, the heart swells to stop?

But there is a shadow, perhaps, in the curled crevices of skin and saffron?

It is a mystery, older than science, kinder than logic, and fearsome in its calm, and it is as real as ever there was a human heart that knew what it was. It is in the mist-clad monasteries of Tibet and northern India. It is referred to as Tukdam. And it does not yell at you. It just sits there, half-closed eyes, smiling a bit, with all the death itself at the gate, confused.

The Peace after the Final Breath

They term it as tukdam, the meditative darshan, death, and their monk is clinically dead and yet not dead.

The palpitations disappeared. The respiration is halted. All the machines flash: flatbed.

But body - it fades not.

No sick stench of corruption.

No disintegration of flesh.

No rigor mortis.

Nothing vacant in the face.

Rather: a calming candescence. Warm skin. A well-bent smilelet. Then… a sitting attitude so straight it stays that way days without being disturbed, because the soul is composing meditations in it.

The others are for three days. The other seven, and in the most surprising cases, twenty-five days.

No embalming. No refrigeration.

And yet no putrefaction.

The body did not remember to die.

The Silence That Caused The Shiver Of Scientists

A team of researchers based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been recording this spooky tranquillity starting in 2014 on the spiritual encouragement of the Dalai Lama. They were not pursuing miracles but the pursuit of meaning. One said that it was not a miracle, but a stay on going away. An interest of the world.

Machines were not able to see what was there.

However, something was.

They were not, although they were inscribed on monastery walls. Bodies in rooms were--breathing once, but now breathless, still not empty.

The Dalai Lama, quietly curious and ceaselessly inquiring, challenged scientists to examine this; to place science as arbiter of the candles, in the light of spiritual mysteries. Va something lingers, whispered he. Some consciousness, some shy awareness.

After witnessing a tukdam state, one Western doctor whispered:

As it were, death came-and the monk bid it wait.

There was a deafness in their silence even among the skeptics. That something sacred which was happening in that room could not be caught by any of their instruments--because it was going on there.

Their Departure Preparations

It is not just these monks who die.

They decide to release them.

Decades, decades, they think about impermanence, emptiness, compassion, ego-dissolution. They are not afraid of death. They prepare to respond to it consciously.

And, when their time rolls on, they sit trembling upon their knees... slowly leading their consciousness towards the centre... breathing softly, until the consciousness becomes misty as the sunbeams.

But they do not fall sideways... they stay.

Still.

Present.

According to the monks, during tukdam, the subtlest part of the mind, which they describe as the clear light of death, remains within the body briefly and finishes the last phase of dying, not in fear… but in concentration.

They do not die with a banshee.

They die observing.

And the most frightful part of it all? They pass on without resistance. No gasping, no fear, no resistance. Only surrender.

Only stillness.

Only… peace.

And then, Something Goes.

It takes place unobtrusively. The 3rd day or the 7th, or perhaps the 21st.

The chest warmth is eliminated.

The body starts cooling.

The skin lastly turns grey.

The little smile dies away.

And the monks who take care of them, in maroon robes, chant and hum, know.

And now he is gone, they say. He is dead.

Not because there is a machine that tells them about it.

But that something intangible, something such as presence, has crept away like a wind.

A monk once remarked that whenever a candle goes out, the room does not forget the light immediately.

That is tukdam.

Western Eyes Eastern Souls

Western scientists bring notebooks, EEG machines, and questions when they arrive.

But they depart with something: an asperity of quietness.

“How?” they want to know.

How to make this body not severe?

What does a dead man have to give peace?

The guesses are there: Maybe it is slowed metabolism. Perhaps Incident warmth. Perhaps, it is subconscious autosuggestion.

However, even he who is a nonbeliever falls to silence when he stands next to a frozen monk who speaks only of sandalwood and silence.

Decay, to most of us, is death.

But in the very depths of the Himalayas, death is nothing but… a door.

And the soul, as always, is polite, walks through her time.

One time, an elderly monk remained in tukdam for 26 days. Scientists attempted every way of analyzing it. Yet when they went out of the room, none of their gadgets described what they experienced, the density in the air. It was as though something sacred needed to breathe.

How they took their leave: The Lesson

Perhaps, tukdam is not something that should be explained.

Perhaps that it is there to say something other: to the frightened, anxious, dashing, towards life, or life away:

Gone is the necessity of death to be a dreadful act.

It is possible to have a peaceful mind when the body perishes.

It is not death that is the enemy; it is forgetfulness.

The monks do not make attempts to escape death.

They easily adopt it.

They practice it.

And when it does, they take it in, and stay with it-as an old friend-and ask it to tea.

That is perhaps the lesson:

Who lived deep enough, grew conscious enough to see his own death, that when he died/ He should not go, but stay and be his own epitaph.

Perhaps even death will stand outside the door, waiting with a deferential demeanour.

And in that time, that slow breath about the time we die, there all the gibberish we were too frightened to inquire is answered.

.    .    .