when is death ? - path to salvation is Sriman Narayana !!

what is life ! - when is death ? - path to salvation is Sriman Narayana 

 

What is life ? – what is death ! – when life ends ! – what constitutes death ! – Death is the final cessation of all activities including stoppage of heart and brain !!  -    death is  perceived as the greatest evil: not merely because it sets an end to our life, but because it renders all we do meaningless.

Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including the brainstem, and  brain death is sometimes used as a legal definition of death.  The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose shortly after death. Death is an inevitable process that eventually occurs in all organisms.   Figuring out when someone is dead has been a problem. Initially, there was the definition of death when breathing and the heartbeat ceased.  However, the spread of CPR no longer meant it was irreversible.  Brain death was the next option, which fractured between different definitions. Some people believe that all brain functions must cease. Some believe that even if the brainstem is still alive, their personality and identity are dead, so therefore, they should be entirely dead. 

Yaksha Prashna is the famous incident in  Mahabharata. It is found in the Aranya Parva.  Ignoring and failing to answer the question of Yaksha and trying to drink water from the pond, Nakula, Sahadeva, Arjuna and Bhima are killed, but are restored to life when Yudhisthira answers the questions correctly.

மஹபாரதம்  மஹாகாவ்யத்தில்  வனபர்வத்தில்  யக்ஷனின் கேள்விகளும் யுதிஷ்டிரனின் பதில்களும் சிறப்பானவை.   யக்ஷன் -  ஓ! குந்தியின் மகனே {யுதிஷ்டிரா}, முதலில் எனது கேள்விகளுக்குப் பதிலளித்துவிட்டு, நீ விரும்புமளவுக்கு {நீரை} எடுத்துச் செல்!”  என - யுதிஷ்டிரன்  “ஓ! யக்ஷா, ஏற்கனவே உனது உடைமையாக இருக்கும் ஒன்றின் மேல் நான் ஆசை கொள்ளவில்லை!  தன்னையே பாராட்டிக் கொள்ளும் ஒருவனை அறம் சார்ந்த மனிதர்கள் அங்கீகரிப்பதில்லை.  உனது கேள்விகளுக்கு எனது புத்திக்கூர்மையினால் பதிலளிக்கிறேன்,  நீ என்னிடம் கேள்!” என்றான். 

அவற்றில் ஒரு கேள்வி :   இவ்வுலகில் - அதிசயமானது எது?  : தர்மரின் பதில் :  நாளுக்கு நாள் எண்ணிலடங்கா உயிரினங்கள் யமனின் வசிப்பிடம் செல்கின்றன. இருப்பினும், மீந்திருப்பவை {உயிரோடு இருக்கும் உயிரினங்கள்} தங்களை இறவாத்தன்மை கொண்டவை என்று நினைத்துக் கொள்கின்றன. இதை விட வேறு எது அதிசயமானதாக இருக்க முடியும்? என வினவினான்.

Human heart is a fantastic machine – it is an electrical system that controls the rate and rhythm of heartbeat.  Stoppage of heart is heart attack – it happens when blood flow to the heart is blocked. Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is a condition in which the heart suddenly stops beating. When that happens, blood stops flowing to the brain and other vital organs.   During a heart attack, the heart usually doesn't suddenly stop beating. With an SCA, the heart stops beating.

.. .. .. the good part of Science is that it defines everything and the difficult part of Science is – it redefines systematically all that was defined earlier !!

On a chilly holiday Monday in January 2020, a medical milestone passed largely unnoticed. In a New York City operating room, surgeons gently removed the heart from a 43-year-old man who had died and shuttled it steps away to a patient in desperate need of a new one.  More than 3500 people in the United States receive a new heart each year. Yet  this case was different—the first of its kind in the country. “It took us 6 months to prepare,” said the surgical head of heart transplantation at New York University (NYU) Langone Health, where the operation took place. The run-up included oversight from an ethics board, education sessions with nurses and anesthesiologists, and lengthy conversations with the local organization that represents organ donor families. Physicians spent hours practicing in the hospital’s cadaver lab, prepping for organ recovery from the donor.  

That’s because this donor, unlike most, was not declared dead because of loss of brain function. He had been suffering from end-stage liver disease and was comatose and on a ventilator, with no hope of regaining consciousness—but his brain still showed activity. His family made the wrenching choice to remove life support. Following that decision, they expressed a wish to donate his organs, even agreeing to transfer him to NYU Langone Health before he died so his heart could be recovered afterward.

In individuals declared brain dead, organs can be recovered before life support is disconnected, as these people have already died; such machinery keeps organs oxygenated and healthy prior to transplant. But for this man the donation process would be altered: Life support had to be withdrawn for death to occur. His heart stopped, and his circulation with it.

As is customary regardless of whether organs will be donated, physicians waited 5 minutes to ensure that the heart didn’t start beating again on its own. It did not, and the man was declared dead. The baton then passed to the organ recovery and transplant team. They clamped blood vessels running from the torso to the brain and reconnected his body to machines that circulated oxygenated blood, causing the heart to begin pumping again.

These two interventions—initiating a heartbeat after death is declared and taking steps to prevent blood flow to the brain—are at the core of a raging debate about the ethics of such donations. To some people, the approach risks disrupting the dying process; to others, it allows that process to continue as the family desires, while also honoring individual or family wishes for organ donation.  The debate touches on the definition of death,   “When the heart stops, we say, ‘time of death, 5:20 a.m.’” But, “The fact of the matter is, death is a process. Death is not a time point.” Cells can take hours to die. Sophisticated machinery can induce a heartbeat hours after death, but does that make a person “alive”?

An expanding number of hospitals and organ procurement organizations (OPOs), which work with donor families, support this novel category of donations, and the number performed in the U.S. is growing.  Yet professional groups have expressed dueling views about the organ donation strategy, and a paper in press urges more research. Some countries are holding off on these organ donations, whereas others embrace them. One OPO says families who welcome donation do so without regard for the organ recovery technique, as such gifts can bring comfort after a terrible loss; another worries that without more research and greater attention to legal and ethical questions, there’s a risk fewer people may volunteer to be organ donors.   

ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION has evolved and flourished from its first success in 1954, when a 23-year-old in Boston donated a kidney to his identical twin. In the years since, the number of transplants has surged, but demand invariably outstrips supply.  The transplant system relies on public trust and the generosity of these families at an excruciating and disorienting time.   In the 1990s, doctors grew interested in another potential category of donors: people who retained some brain activity after a serious illness or accident but who died when their circulation ceased—normally because, like the heart donor at NYU, their families had opted to withdraw life support when there was no hope of meaningful recovery. The lungs, liver, and kidneys, surgeons learned, could be recovered and function after transplant. This became known as “donation after circulatory death,” or DCD donation.  The heart was another story. Circulatory death could severely injure the organ. To address the problem, companies experimented with machinery that would run blood through a heart after it was removed from the body and stimulate its electrical activity.  

ஸ்ரீவைஷ்ணவனுக்கு துயரங்கள் இல்லை.  என் செய்வது என்ற குழப்பமில்லை.   விஷய ஞானப்பற்றறுத்து - எம்பெருமான் ஸ்ரீமன் நாரணனின் திருவடி தாள்களில் வீழ்ந்து அவனுக்கும், அவன்தம் அடியார்களுக்கும் கைங்கர்யங்கள் செய்து அவனையே அடைவதே வாழ்வின் அர்த்தம், முடிவு எல்லாம். 

Here are some photos of Emperuman Sri Parthasarathi taken during pathi ula on day 3 of Chithirai Brhmothsavam on 6.5.2023.

 

adiyen Srinivasa dhasan
Mamandur Veeravalli Srinivasan Sampathkumar
17.5.2023
 
With inputs extracted from article – when does life end from : https://www.science.org/