by Viswanathan Subramanian
[box]Death is an idea which has gained most prominence because of the reality status allotted to things that are perceived by us as individuals. Viswanathan Subramanian examines the reason behind our fear of death.[/box]There is a wail early in the morning – a distant cry that woke me up from the blurred awareness between sleep and wakefulness.
An ambulance van arrives and goes. Soon after, another one carrying paraphernalia of tent. A few minutes later, a tent gets erected duly encroaching the public road. Supreme chairs are in place to seat the visitors trickling in. Death has solidly arrived. Chronologically, a 70 year old with one-year history of kidney ailment and continual hospitalization. The body has arrived and is still and chill!
The process has now begun. Death – why is it numb, shocking, depriving, scary? Is it the unwelcome ending of all that we have known?
The brain, which spews out thoughts, creates a web of expectation, possessiveness, past, present and future notions. Death of somebody (physically) is the abrupt stop to the tangible link we had all these years to that personality, that somebody.
Death, however, simply implies the continuation of the past into the present and future. It is an ideation of the concept of time. When time itself is an imagination existing only in consciousness, where is the reality of death?
Jiddu Krishnamurthy used to raise the question “Can you die every minute?”
Here comes the beauty and subtlety of the process called dying. It is dying which rejuvenates. It is dying which energises. All the miseries we talk about are the result of not dying to the past and carrying it over in memory. There is neither past nor present or future. So, Jiddu was referring to living with due perception of the concept called death – which of course, when taken as real, creates a barrier to being. Death stagnates life if it is imagined to be real. But when this reality is correctly perceived and understood as a play of memory, it is a part of being – like leaves and ripe fruits of a tree falling to the ground on their own, even while the tree lives.
Death is an idea which has gained most prominence because of the reality status allotted to things that are perceived by us as individuals.
Yes, I see so many individuals, multiple things around me. You, me and they. Built on these are ideas, desires, expectations, disappointments, every other quality you can imagine.
There comes the edifice of an idea of prominence for attachments and possession of things and people. Thus, multifarious tiers of things get imagined around ‘me’. ‘Me’ is scared of losing all this paraphernalia. Hence, this is what death is. A big unknown leap into the dark.
Then what is transcendence of death? Well, it is clearly the perception of the unreality of what is around us, that these are but transient. There is only incontrovertible, indisputable, undying, everlasting consciousness which is ever pure and blemish-less and peaceful!
Viswanathan Subramanian was a banker for over 35 years. In his new retired life, he loves poring over business newspapers and journals and making notes. Spirituality also interests him, and so a good number of Sri Ramana Maharishi’s and Jiddu Krishnamurthy’s books find space in his bookshelf. He is extremely passionate about movies and music too. You are sure to find some good old English movie DVDs and an enormous collection of old mp3 Hindi and Tamil songs at his place!
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