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XXI
PASSIONLESS VOLUNTARY DEATH
Birth is an occasion of revelry whereas death is one of mourning. Birthdays are celebrated but death means a gloomy face. Because of enthusiasm for living miraculous development in all fields is visible. Death is a reality which man tends to ignore, perhaps because he cannot embrace a living death. Life and death,however, have a perpetual association. He who is born must die. With birth starts the process of death.
A king was very fat. He consulted Lukamāna, the famous physician of his time. He suggested balanced diet, physical exercises and about four miles' walk everyday to reduce his fat. The king expressed his inability to do any of the three things. The physician then told him of his death in a month, which, he said, was inevitable. Lukmana saw him a month later and observed his emaciated body. On his being asked as to when he would die, Lukamāna said that he would not. It was the fear of death that. worked miracles. There is no fear worse than that of death. Lord Mahavira has corroborated it.
The great artist is one who knows the art of both life and death. A car-driver, ignorant of applying a brake when he needed, is bound to cause some serious accident. Time is the skilled weaver who weaves the threads of both life and death together. When time wraps up the cloth, it means the demise of a person. One who dies smilingly, welcomes death as the great deliverer. Sleep is comforting and death is a long sleep from which there is no awakening. He who is afraid of death dies a hundred times every day. When the mortality of man is an established fact, the fear of death is nonsense. The fear is because one does not live life but clings to it. The resultant forced separation cannot but be painful. A detached living alone can ensure a happy death. If a wayfarer has provision for his journey, he is care-free so long as the food lasts. Every body starts working in the day after a nightlong sleep, but without sleep, how can he work for a long time ? Even a machine has to be timely oiled. It has its wear and tear. Life cannot be imagined without death. The two are inseparable concomitants. In the Mahabharata Karna challenges Asvathāmā because of his being addressed as the son of a charioteer. This means that man is the architect of his own fate. He who lives his present well, ensures a better and brighter future. Pt. Asadhara says that he who has imbibed the art of death has grasped the essence of piety and righteousness. Life is but a halting place and not our
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