I've encountered several people in the Kagyu and Nyingma traditions who say, "Oh, we, you know 'tukdam,' yeah, people go in 'tukdam,' "but it's like, you know, not that big a deal. It's, we don't care that much." Part of the reason they don't care that much is that the idea that you need to go into this completely, kind of, a state where there's no phenomenal content— that's just a pure clear light mind— actually is something that many of the contemporary practitioners and teachers in those lineages don't agree with.

it's said that you can get there by doing like philosophical analysis, but this is using basically physiological techniques to get to the same place phenomenologically. So that's what "tukdam" is theoretically

So the concept here is that you're actually no longer even capable of thinking, you're no longer capable of seeing, you're no longer capable of hearing, and so on. All that's left is just this kind of sheer consciousness itself, which doesn't even have a subject-object structure. So for the Gelugpas that lack of subject-object structure is not really relevant. For the other traditions it's extremely relevant, because it's said that if you're going to understand the nature of the mind, the fundamental distortion in the mind is precisely that subject-object structure. So you have to cultivate a non-dual awareness,

And how one is gonna do that, one is gonna become not you. You're gonna become somebody else—specifically, you're gonna become a fully enlightened tantric deity, right? And you, with a sense of what's called dignity or pride, right, the, the... "lha’i nga rgyal," the "pride of being the deity."

Unexcelled Yoga Tantra

So what's the first thing to do? It's to stop being ordinary. So they say, "tha mal gyi rtog shes spang ba," "abandon ordinary thoughts and ordinary attitudes," ordinary experience.

There are different forms of energy, five primary forms and five secondary forms of energy, and they flow in channels in the body. And at the time of death, there, there's a certain kind of configuration of those energies that occur and you can actually, you can, in a sense, force those energies— maybe that's not the right term, but some people would agree with that metaphor— you can force those energies to enter into that configuration through various forms of yogic practices.

The simulation, however, requires a high degree of control over the winds— "rlung" in Tibetan or "vāyuḥ" in Sanskrit, not "prāṇa," but "vāyuḥ" in Sanskrit—that are involved in the death process.

To rehearse that moment, essentially what one does, is you induce a simulated version of this clear light mind.

We wanna get down in a sense to the foundational state of mind, a most fundamental form of mind, and that occurs at death.

the body of a practitioner in tukdam does not decompose uh in the same way that a body of a normal person who is not in tukdam does and so uh we've had cases up to 38 days uh inam where the body remains quite preserved uh fresh uh without any smell uh and um with the skin still very pliable and no um Rigamortis

his Holiness um uh his Holiness uh made the request that we investigate tokam and I believe that one of uh his interests his Holiness his interest in studying took down is because this represents a real challenge to Western science because uh uh the suggestion in the traditional Tibetan texts is that there is a subtle quality of awareness that is still present even after the conventional Western definition of death after the heart has stopped beating after the breathing has stopped there they're said to be uh this subtle quality of awareness uh this clear light stage that is still present

when we die we go through eight stages according to the buddhist understanding and each of those stages the first four the elements the sort of solidity if you will i we know they're 01:16:07 not solid but from a conventional perspective the solidity elements the liquidity elements the thermodynamic elements the movement the kinetic elements those all dissolve as we die in 01:16:19 the first four and when that fourth one happens there's no more circulation of blood or of air so we don't breathe we have no circulatory you know blood pressure so we're declared clinically dead but 01:16:30 there's four more stages we go through and those are when the mind becomes successively subtler and those are when we get into the non-dual minds that are the most subtle minds and the last 01:16:43 eighth stage it's called worser in tibetan and we translate that as luminosity or clear light it's not light it's not you know but it's the most utter clear clear mind 01:16:57 and that mind if it goes on if we don't die if we meditate on that luminosity and sustain it through our meditation infinitely we can become a buddha and that's why the buddha is 01:17:09 sometimes called a buddhism an enlightened buddha is a deathless state because you don't actually die so those would be the non-conceptual and non-dual minds and just for completeness 01:17:23 those last four minds are called these are technical terms so it won't make much it won't have much give you much understanding white appearance red increase black near attainment and then this worst air this 01:17:35 luminosity so that's kind of the the the road map if you will for for mine and it's not the brain now on the gross level of thinking in our sensory minds there's a very close 01:17:48 connection with you know meant with the brain okay but when you die the brain is supposed to be dead and you're still alive okay and so these more subtle minds 01:18:01 are not related actually to the brain so we could really say that mind is experience it's awareness it's knowing not knowing something but 01:18:12 the act of knowing so the qualities of mind the most important qualities are awareness and clarity so that gives you just some rough idea of the buddhist understanding of mind or consciousness