A new beginning

Death is something we all have to confront at some point in our lives. If there is anything certain about life on this earth, it is that it will end. And yet we all prefer not to think about death at all - to such an extent that when it does touch someone close to us, we are shaken, moved to the very core of our being. Why, I wonder, does society train us to live like this? There is a very telling story from the Mahabharata which hits exactly on this aspect of human behavior. It goes as follows: During the Pandavas' exile, They are staying at a ashram with some sages along with their wife Draupadi. One day the arani(firesticks) is stolen by a deer. On hearing about this, the Pandavas go in search of the firesticks deep into the jungle.

Soon all the five brothers, Yudhishthira, Bhim, Arjun, Nakul and Sahadev get tired and thirsty. Yudhishthira instructs his brothers to look for a source of water and one of the brother climbs a tree and sees a pond in the distance. Sahadev goes to fetch water from the pond, while others take rest. When Sahadev reaches the lake, he is suddenly confronted by a Yaksha, a celestial being, who challenges him to answer his questions before he can take any water from the pond. On failing to do so, Sahadev is struck in a dead faint. A similar fate affects the rest of the brothers who follow Sahadev, until Yudhishthira arrives there and acquiesces to the Yaksha's request. He then proceeds to answer all of the Yaksha's questions with his infinite wisdom. One of the questions is these - "What is the most surprising thing in the world?" - to which Yudhishthira answers - "The most surprising thing in the world is that in spite of hearing of the death of near ones, and knowing that death will one day, inevitably, knock on his door, every human being continues to live as if he will live on this earth for all eternity."

Quite true, isn't it? Nothing could be further from our minds than death, as we go about our daily activities. And yet, I wonder, if there was that awareness of the finitude of material life at all moments, how differently would we behave? Would we then be more careful of our every action, be more efficient in our work, not spend that extra hour lazing in bed? Would we try to make the most of the limited, and oh, so precious, life we have? Or would we live every day in constant fear, awaiting our death like the goat awaits the fall of the butcher's knife? Hopefully not! What the realization of finitude should give us is a sense of responsibility and action, not one of fatalism or despair. Death is the end of a lifetime on this material plane - but it is not the end of everything, not the end of "us". The eternality of the human soul is a concept described in detail by every stream of religious thought. It is in fact one of those common underlying threads that runs through every religion. Of course, many of these conceptions have lost their philosophical depth over time, with much being interpreted literally. And so we have the concept of a heaven and a hell as places somewhere in the universe, of a satyrical Satan waiting with glee to grab hold of your soul and put you to work in the burning fires of hell forever, of precisely 14 levels of existence (also someplace in the universe) between which our soul shuttles based on its Karma (with the earth somewhere in the middle) - and so on. Much of these concepts seem to arise from fairly literal interpretations of texts. I prefer to think of death as a new beginning - a new beginning on that never-ending quest to get closer to God, to attain that ever-elusive spiritual perfection. Heaven and hell seem to be not so much places as states - of closeness and distance from God. Abdu'l-Bahá says:

"When they [men] are delivered through the light of faith from the darkness of these vices, and become illuminated with the radiance of the sun of reality, and ennobled with all the virtues, they esteem this the greatest reward, and they know it to be the true paradise. In the same way they consider that the spiritual punishment ... is to be subjected to the world of nature, to be veiled from God, to be brutal and ignorant, to fall into carnal lusts, to be absorbed in animal frailties, to be characterized with dark qualities ... these are the greatest punishments and tortures..."

So really, all hell is, is being separated from God. The raging fires are really in one's own heart. Darkness is but an absence of light - it is not a being in itself. Every soul attempts to get closer to God, to shed the veils shrouding it from the light of God's grace - and the extent to which it is able to achieve that defines its own heaven/hell for itself.

Once seen in that light, things become clearer - the purpose of life on this planet, once we realize our finitude, is not to sit and despair and await the inevitable - but rather, to rise up and seize the moment, and take every opportunity to further our spiritual growth, so we may be that tiny bit closer to God. What our impending death should give us is a sense of urgency to achieve this. It should also enable us to handle the deaths of our near and dear with greater equanimity, with a sense of hope and prayer for their souls as they progress on their own spiritual journeys, as opposed to one of sorrow and loss.