Death and dying in Buddhist Ladakh

Abstract

This paper focuses on the nature of cultural practices and belief systems related to death and dying in Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhism. Based on ethnographic and psychological fieldwork conducted in a Buddhist society located in the western Himalaya, it explores how the monks and laypersons of Ladakh approach the hour of their death. The paper includes a discussion of the Bardö T'ödröl, also known in the west as the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It concludes by giving some pointers to western counsellors who may be asked to interact with Buddhist clients in the wider context of death and bereavement. You are a house of bones Flesh and blood for plaster Pride lives in you And hypocrisy, decay and death. The glorious chariots of kings shatter So also the body turns to dust. But the spirit of purity is changeless And so the pure instruct the pure… [I have] beaten out desire And now my mind is free. Siddhartha Gautama Man says: Time passes. Time says: Man passes. Tibetan proverb If you want to know about living, study Confucianism; If you want to know about death and dying, study Buddhism. Chinese saying The geographic focus of this paper is Buddhist Ladakh, a part of Kashmir tucked away high up in the western Himalaya and the Karakorum range. Although politically a part of India, the central and eastern areas of Ladakh border on Tibet, People's Republic of China, and many of its people have for many centuries endorsed the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism together with various associated cultural customs. At the time of my fieldwork there in 1980 and 1981, Ladakh had just been opened up to western tourists and researchers, and its religious heritage and culture had not yet been transformed by the forces of globalisation and its accompaniment, pervasive culture change. Indeed, the Leh District of Ladakh is an area where many of the age-old traditions of Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhism continue to be practised to this day. Buddhism, it is sometimes stated, is a death- oriented religion: traditional Tibetans, Chinese and Japanese have looked to Buddhism as the religion that can best teach us how to die while preparing ourselves for the journey to ‘the other shore’. According to tradition, the Buddha became a renunciant after he had encountered old age, illness and death. Furthermore, Buddhist teachings are singularly focused on the nature of mind. Consequently, Buddhist attitudes towards death are inextricably interwoven with Buddhist conceptions of what the mind is, what it is not, and how to train it. Buddhism is simultaneously philosophy, religion and psychology—with various individuals emphasising any one, or a combination of those strands according to their understanding and preferences. Buddhist teachings on the nature of mind and on death-related practices should therefore be of special interest to the multicultural counsellor and to the cultural psychologist, who after all has staked out a rather similar territory when trying to understand how thoughts, feelings and cultural practices coalesce in shaping a person's approach to basic questions of living, suffering, minimising distress and dying. In this paper I explore the nature of Vajrayana Buddhism, death related belief systems and practices prevailing in Ladakh, and the central role of the Bardö T'ödröl in these practices. The paper concludes by outlining some general ideas that western counsellors might find useful when interacting with Buddhists who are approaching death, are bereaved or have loved ones close to death. Such Buddhists may come from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds.