Location: Online
Open To: General Public
Admission: Free
Description: A one-day mini-conference over Zoom bringing together scholars from multiple fields to consider the porous nature of death in Tibetan traditions
Co-hosted by the ISM and the Council on East Asian Studies, MacMillan Center
What is death? How do reincarnation and the transmigration of consciousness complicate our understanding of death? What role does the body play in the process of death? How have various traditions understood the post-death experience? How are death and life inextricably linked? Using textual analysis, historical excavation and ethnographic inquiry, scholars will present research considering the ways in which death and rebirth are parts of a complex continuity. Rather than thinking of death as a permanent state, a one-way border, this conference seeks to examine the ways in which death is a tactical concept, with ever-changing boundaries and definitions.
Download Abstracts and Speaker Bios
Schedule
9–10:30 am | Session I
- Introductory Remarks and Welcome
Kati Fitzgerald, Yale University - Death or No Death: The Ambiguity of the Deloms in Bhutan
Françoise Pommaret, National Centre for Scientific Research & Royal University of Bhutan - Perception towards Death, Dying with Dignity, Preference of End-of-life care and Medical Aid in Dying among Asian Buddhists Living in Montreal, Canada
Nidup Dorji, Khesar Gyalpo University of Medical Sciences of Bhutan - When the Death Process Reverses: At What Point Are the Dead Truly Dead?
Alyson Prude, Georgia Southern University - Memories of Birth, Echoes of Death: The Entwining of Life and Loss in Mustang Women’s Reproductive Histories
Sienna R. Craig, Dartmouth College
10:45 am–12:15 pm | Session II
- Death as Moral-Heuristic Ground: Paradigms of Generating Resilience and Cultivating Compassion among Tibetan Buddhist Practitioners in South India
Tenzin Namdul, University of Minnesota - Evoking Death and the Dead in Tibetan Secular Songs: Teachings, Devotion, Commemoration
Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy, Laval University - Coping with (Un)timely Deaths and Extending One’s Life Span: Reflections on Ethnographic Research among Tibetans in Darjeeling, India
Barbara Gerke, University of Vienna - What is the Lifespan of a Tibetan Incarnation?
Gray Tuttle, Columbia University - Buddhism and Organ Donation: The (Dead) Body Multiple
Tanya Zivkovic, University of Adelaide
Lunch Break
2–3 pm | Keynote Address
- Mystery, Meaning, and Nature of Death: A Tibetan Buddhist Perspective
Dr. Thupten Jinpa, McGill University
3:30–5 pm | Session III
- The ‘Das Log: Revenant Experience in the Khandro Chodzo Chenmo
Padma ‘tsho (Baimacuo) , Southwest University for Nationalities - The Miracle of Yama’s Little Helpers: Problems and Practices of Bodiless Transference in the Kalacakra Tantra
Michael Sheehy, University of Virginia - Modes of Liberation in Tibetan Buddhist Death Practices: Purificatory, Didactic, and Yogic Approaches
Rory Lindsay, University of Toronto - Ontological Realities and the Biocultural Nexus of Life in Suspension with Death: Perceptual Cues and Biomarker Diagnostics for the Tukdam State
Tawni Tidwell, Ph.D., M.D., Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison