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Some people undergo clinical death. If left alone, that would be it. It’d be a permanent death.
However, with modern technology we are able to revive some of these people.
When the clinical death happens, why doesn’t the individual immediately undergo a rebirth? Why does revival bring them back as they were?
“Clinical death” in modern medicine means that the patient’s heart and breathing stop. Before the development of rapid CPR, defibrillation, etc., clinical death simply meant death.
Nowadays it doesn’t; instead, it’s brain death that now means death, since from this there is no coming back. At least not with current medical technology.
“Death” in the Buddha’s teaching is defined with reference to a being’s life-faculty (jīvitindriya). For example, in the Vinaya’s third pārājika rule, “kills” is defined:
jīvitindriyaṁ upacchindati uparodheti santatiṁ vikopeti.
cuts off the life faculty, brings it to an end, interrupts its continuation.
Given that some “clinically dead” patients can be revived, it follows that the cutting off of the life-faculty (whatever that might mean) certainly cannot be equated with clinical death, and so the question of why the person hasn’t been reborn doesn’t arise.
Not sure a categorical answer can be provided to this question.
However, while the Theravadin tradition tends to assume an immediate rebirth, many other traditions do not. Some speak of antarābhava, an in-between state after death. This could account for why a person “brought back” from a death-like state was not reborn immediately.
Also, it could account, possibly, for the experiences of NDEs reported by thousands of people who “died.” While not being reborn into another life, the NDEs could be experiences of antarābhava.
But this is speculative.
What is commonly understood by death is only the death of the phisical body. When mental body separates from the physical it may take some time until such creature will enter in to the next womb. Stevenson’s reincarnation research shows sometimes a few years break before one dies and is born again as child who remembers the past life.
Thank you so much for you reply!
Aren’t there cases of patients who had zero brain activity as measured by our medical instruments? Some people who had near-death experiences were like this but they were revived.
Taking that state, if left alone it would be indistinguishable from permanent death in terms of it’s features. The only change is our own medical intervention. This is to the best of my knowledge at least.
So I understand what you’re trying to say but given that these two states are functionally the same, wouldn’t they collapse into the same category of “end” and therefore this explanation wouldn’t work?
Thank you very much for your response!
I do think an intermediate state accords well with what we see in NDEs but as far as I know, this is not something ever explained or featured in Early Buddhist Texts. That’s why I was hesitant to just accept it.
Thanks for your answer!
But where does the mental stream persist if it’s apart from the body and not yet rebirthed in some other realm? There is a time when the patient is dead for all intents and purposes and then they get revived with the same mental stream. Why didn’t it rebirth and continue elsewhere?
I agree. It remains speculative.
From the data available, NDEs mostly appear to support consciousness as not being limited to the physical body and brain.
Just going from memory, I don’t think that the EBTs supply any kind of empirical criteria by which the average person could know with certainty the moment that a person has died. Rather, its’s depicted as something knowable only to those with supernormal powers, e.g., Anuruddha at the Buddha’s parinibbāna. The average person can only be sure when, say, the body has started to rot or been cremated.
That being so, doctors in Buddhist countries will just go along with whatever is the prevailing medical lore of their day. A few decades ago that would have meant identifying “the cutting off of the life-faculty” with clinical death. Now it means identifying it with brain death. If medical technology should ever advance to the point where even the brain-dead can be revived, then who knows what it will be identified with? Perhaps they’ll just have to wait to see if the body rots.
But the point is, if a supposedly dead person can be revived, then by definition, their jīvitindriya had not yet been cut off and so it’s meaningless to enquire as to why they weren’t reborn.
The intermediate state (antarābhava) brought up by some posters doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the question, for the schools that posited this didn’t hold that it was a state from which one could come back; rather, it’s a post-jīvitindriya-cutting-off state.
Your question seems to refer to out-of-body experiences (OBE) and near-death experiences (NDE). There are some topics already opened about the theme; here is one example:
I believe that when the stream of consciousness cannot get sustenance from an operating body (as in the case of a cardiac arrest), it enters a state called “sustained by craving” (SN44.9) until it is established in a new name-form (mind-body) complex. While sustained by craving, there cannot be phenomena like out-of-body experiences, because without a body there are no sense bases to provide such experiences. If an individual is deemed likely to be reborn as a deva or peta immediately after clinical death, it is possible that the new bodily structures in formation linger near the former body for a few moments and may even experience some sensory contact. However, if the organic body is reanimated, this new body in formation would vanish, and the stream of consciousness would be reestablished in the reanimated body. This could be a possible explanation for NDE phenomena, though I do not know of any monk who confirms such a theory.
It seems that modern science, quantum physics, consciousness studies, and the EBTs are intersecting at a very interesting time. I do think that some of the “speculation” has been mitigated by credible scientists and experiencers now coming forward to try to explain what has happened with NDEs, and the departure of one’s consciousness from the human skinbag to connect with a unified consciousness. Some people that experienced NDEs suggested that after their physical “death,” they did not want to return to the human realm, but were instructed by guides that they needed to return to their bodies. So, there seems to be some support for the hypothesis that the string of consciousness migrates to the universal consciousness for some period of time.
All of this may sound a bit farfetched, but there are now some very credible scientists and medical professionals (some who experienced this themselves) testifying to their own NDEs and discussing how they have discarded their materialist positions in favor of one that embraces a consciousness that is outside of the brain and body; one that with given prompts allows us to connect and experience.
This question probably falls outside the handful of leaves (SN 56.31) and into the realm of speculation on the origin of the poisoned arrow (MN 63). You’d probably have to become a Buddha or paccekabuddha to directly know the mechanics of the peri-death (or peri-birth) time period for beings.
I’d avoid this phrase as a Buddhist as it suggests a more Hindu conception of reincarnation. Ajahn Suchart uses the phrase “the spirit world” in English fwiw.
I don’t know what do you mean by mental stream. Do you think about yourself as “mental stream”? Or rather magic_mahau? Where do you persist right now?
Actually after the death of phisical body nothing changes, just your body will be more subtle. Some creatures live their entire lives in such realm, some are just waiting for the proper rebirth, according to their actions.
When I hear the notion of a “universal consciousness” I fail to see how this is compatible with the Dhamma of the Buddha.
My wild guess would be, it varies a lot, there are times when the mind leaves the body pretty much straight away and there are times when the mind lingers on for quite a while even after the brain death is declared and the body’s systems are allowed to stop slowly by getting less and less support from a ventilator, medications etc. Why that lingering on happens, if indeed it does, I have no idea, perhaps some kind of attachment.
I can share just my observations and conclusions based on how I perceive each death. I’ve had some really weird experiences, having seen death quite regularly on the operating table and in the ICU. Sometimes I have the feeling that the person is still there, in Buddhism we would call it the mind of a person, even though they are declared brain dead, we are already closing their eyes, covering their face with a sheet and putting them in a bag to be transported to the morgue. On the other end of the spectrum, there have been many more cases when a patient is being kept alive for days and I have an overwhelming feeling that they are long gone even though they haven’t been declared brain dead yet.
As real as these experiences feel to me, this is all just a speculation on my part, I’m not claiming to have any direct knowledge or understanding on how it all actually works.
Bhante thank you for this comment. In my response post I was only detailing some of the explanations of professionals that study NDEs . Phra Suchart’s description is certainly a decent one. I appreciate that the Buddha rejected aspects of a universal consciousness. It’s just interesting to me that many aspects of Buddhist teaching are starting to find alignment with modern consciousness studies, neuroscience, and the like . Dhamma is quite compatible… more than as with some other religions or philosophies where developing modern science would have strong reason to reject these dogmas. And with Buddhist training, I always leave room for the idea that science may offer better explanations for certain ideas than were available in the fourth century BCE.
Some speculation is still possible, as long as the limits set by the Buddha are respected. One of these limits excludes the conception of a being that transmigrates from one existence to another. Another limit excludes the conception of a disembodied spirit or mind that can have sensory experiences without a body—even if such a body is subtle (sukhuma) and invisible, like the bodies of devas and petas.
Beyond that, only those with advanced meditative attainments can be somewhat certain of these matters. Regular people, however, without such powers cannot claim certainty about such things, but should instead admit that these theories are based on faith in those who “proclaim this world and the next,” as well as reasoning and wise analysis of phenomena (even in scientific contexts).
Even those with advanced meditative attainments cannot be certain about these matters if they have not truly freed themselves from desire and fear.
Upon freeing themselves from desire and fear, they will find a way to examine the trustworthiness of their perception. Having done so, they will very soon realize the subjectivity of what they see. Realizing this subjectivity, they will begin to question the very nature of seeing itself, asking: Why do I see this?
At that point, they no longer care about the phenomena they see, but about the principle of seeing.
Only then does the true exploration begin.