The Fear Of Death (The Exhortations of Vedanta)

By Staff

Wednesday, August 5, 2009, 11:24

Death is an inescapable and inevitable reality. To ignore it is utter foolishness. To avoid it is impossible. To hope for physical immortality is absurd. Vedanta exhorts in this regard as follows:

(a) Make death a part of life by understanding that life without death is incomplete. As soon as we are born, we begin to die. Life is sacred and so we cannot afford to squander it in daydreams, fantasies, and false hopes. Life without death, pleasure without pain, light without darkness, and good without evil, are never possible. We must either accept both or rise above both, by overcoming embodiment through the Knowledge of the Self. Death is certain for all who are born. As the Bhagavad Gita says: For to that which is born, death is certain, and to that which is dead, birth is certain. Therefore you should not grieve over the unavoidable.

(b) Develop immunity against death by practising meditation and dispassion. In meditation we try to reach our true identity, the deathless Self, by crossing over the three states of consciousness—waking, dream, and deep sleep—and becoming videha, or bereft of body-consciousness. In this practice, we partially and temporarily die in our physical and mental existence. Along with meditation, practise dispassion, which is knowing that nothing material will accompany us when we leave this earth, and that nothing in this world can be of any help to us to overcome death.

(c)Build your own raft. Vedanta compares this world to an ocean, the near shore of which we know, while the far shore remains a mystery to us. The ocean has bottomless depth, high winds, fearful currents, and countless whirlpools. Life is a journey, an attempt to cross this ocean of the world and reach the other shore, which is immortality. No one can take us across this ocean. Vedanta urges us to build our own raft by practising meditation on our true Self. No practice of this self-awareness is ever lost.

As we go on with our practice, all our experiences of self-awareness join together and form a raft of consciousness, which the Upanishads call the 'raft of Brahman'. Sitting on this raft of Brahman, a mortal crosses the ocean of mortality: The wise man should hold his body steady, with the three [upper] parts erect, turn his senses, with the help of the mind, toward the heart, and by means of the raft of Brahman cross the fearful torrents of the world.

The word Brahman in the verse signifies Om. Repetition of the word and meditation on its meaning are prescribed for this practice. Vedanta asserts that Self-Knowledge, or Knowledge of Brahman, alone can rob death of its paralyzing fear. So long as this Self is not cognized and realized, life will be shadowed by death and the world we live in will be the world of sorrow and suffering.

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About the author

Swami Adiswarananda

Swami Adiswarananda, the Minister-in-charge of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Centre, New York, USA, is a senior monk of the Ramakrishna Order. He is a well-known thinker and contributes articles to various journals.

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