Editorial
D
Am I Ready to Leave?
June 2021
eath is amongst us, assailing us in the streets and in our very homes. How to face this death? Facing death has two aspects to it. First is our own death, and second the death of relatives and friends.
The Vedanta Kesari
10
Speaking of death, we use the phrase ‘life and death’ which is a wrong association of facts. It should actually be ‘birth and death’. Life is without beginning and continues until Selfrealisation. Birth and death are two repeatedly occurring related events in life, one following the other as certainly as day and night. Therefore, “it is good to prepare for death.” How? — By the constant practice of thinking of God. The aids to this are japa, meditation, worship, and singing his glories. If we are earnest in these practices — like the woman who while ‘husking the paddy’ keeps 75% of her mind on the pestle — then, even while doing our duties in life and experiencing the joys and sorrows of artha and kama, we can, before “the pestle of death” strikes us, remove the husk and attain the rice — i.e., attain the Reality masked in the manifested world. If this is not achieved, then by the strength of constant practice we should remember the Lord at the moment of death. The Lord assures us in the Bhagavad Gita that we attain whatever we are absorbed in at the final moment of leaving the body. So, even if our mind is still not free from vasanas, if we but give up the body “praying to God and meditating on Him”, then He will take us to his abode — just as the mahut takes the elephant to the stable without allowing it to again smear its body with dust and mud after a bath.
How to console a bereaved friend or relative?
One day as Sri Ramakrishna sat in his room speaking with the devotees, Manimohan Mallick of Sinduriapati, came and sat in a corner looking pale and haggard. He told Sri Ramakrishna that his son died that morning and he was coming directly after finishing the ceremonies of cremation. The devotees poured out hackneyed phrases of consolation. Then, Sri Ramakrishna stood up in an ecstatic mood, and with the pose and energy of a wrestler, struck his left upper arm and sang with great vigour: “O man, prepare yourself for battle / There, see Death entering your house in battle array; / (Therefore) ride on the chariot of great virtue, / Harness to it the two horses of devotion and spiritual practice, / Stretch up the bow of knowledge, / And set the unfailing arrow of the love of God ….” The vigorous singing and the “spirit of heroic renunciation and strength coursing from Sri Ramakrishna’s eyes” raised the devotees’ hearts from the realm of grief and delusion and filled them with a palpable current of wonderful hope and energy. Truly, it is our inner awakening, our calmness, and our spirit of renunciation, that subconsciously assuages the other person’s grief of death born of ignorance. “Day after day countless creatures are going to the abode of Yama, yet those that remain behind, believe that they will live for ever. What can be more wonderful than this?” says Yudhishthira. So, let us engage with this world holding on to the Lord within, worship Him in the people around us with selfless service, and once in a while ask ourselves, ‘Am I ready to leave?’
