Facilitating an ideal death : Tibetan medical and Buddhist approaches to death and dying in a Tibetan refugee community in south India

Author/Creator:

Tenzin Namdul, author

Publication/Creation:

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2020

Resource Type:

Book

More Details

Additional/Related Title Information

Full Title:

Facilitating an ideal death : Tibetan medical and Buddhist approaches to death and dying in a Tibetan refugee community in south India / Tenzin Namdul

Related Names

Additional Author/Creators:

Shore, Bradd, 1945-, degree supervisor
Emory University. Department of Anthropology, degree granting institution

Subjects/Genre

Genre:

Electronic dissertations
Academic theses

Description/Summary

Summary:

The Tibetan cultural conceptualization of death and care for the dying are informed and shaped by the intersection of Tibetan medical and Buddhist practice. In Tibetan culture, death is generally seen as a process of transition from one life to another through reincarnation, as well as a critical opportunity for adept practitioners to emerge into full enlightenment. In a Tibetan refugee community in south India, the care for the dying is a culturally orchestrated process involving Tibetan doctors, Tibetan Buddhist monks, and family members of the dying person. While Tibetan doctors assist in promoting a peaceful death through herbal remedies and counseling, Tibetan monks facilitate a smooth transition from one life to the next. Employing a variety of ethnographic methods-participant observations, unstructured and semi-structured interviews, and surveys-this dissertation examines how Tibetan doctors, monks, and family members collaborate in facilitating an ideal death; and how these collaborators understand and negotiate their roles in caring for the dying person. Importantly, through this nexus of cultural actors supporting the dying in this universal existential moment, the dissertation explores the central question: what constitutes an ideal death in Tibetan Buddhist culture?This dissertation focuses on how the Tibetan medical paradigm, structurally integrated with the Buddhist cultural model, offers family members the freedom to seek medical and spiritual care concurrently and to seek guidance from both Tibetan doctors and monks. My research demonstrates how Tibetan doctors, incorporating philosophical and psychological features of Tibetan Buddhism in their practices, employ personalized care to dying persons based on their "constitutional nature" (Tib. rang bzhin). This enables Tibetan doctors to provide more holistic care that addresses not only biophysiological, but also psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of their patients. I propose that the inextricable integration of Tibetan medicine and Buddhism during end-of-life care addresses the overall needs of the patient.Finally, this work challenges the suitability of a descriptor such as "dying well" based on the binary of a good and a bad death understood in the modern biomedical and palliative/hospice care. Instead, I argue that it would be more fitting to refer to a good death as an "ideal death." In so doing, any particular way of dying does not have to be labelled as good or bad, rather it could be viewed as an appropriate death in its own context. 

Language:

English

Language Note:

English

Physical Type/Description:

1 online resource (329 pages)

General Note:

Source of abstract: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 81-09, Section: B.
Advisors: Shore, Bradd ; Committee members: Peter Brown; Robert Paul.
Keywords: End-of-life care; Tibetan medicine; Tibetan Buddhism; Thugs dam; Biopsychosociospiritual; Death and dying

Local Note:

ProQuest digital dissertation copies of Emory dissertations may be downloaded free of charge by Emory faculty, students, and staff unless the author has chosen to embargo the work.

Additional Identifiers

Catalog ID (MMSID):

9937181514702486

ISBN:

9781392692288