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MAY 2013
PRABUDDHA JIVAN
31
Thus Spake Death :
All of last week, death seemed to be the central Going about life, trying to not be insignificant, to theme as I attended a series of 'baithaks' following the become popular, just to find meaning- it is our way of deaths of people I knew well. I found myself forgetting about death for a time. preoccupied with thoughts of and on death.
"Every man must do two things alone; he must do What is Death? We Jains have it slightly easy since his own believing and his own dying." the very fundamental of birth and death does not exist.
Martin Luther German priest and scholar. Je shaashvat chey ae martu nathi, ane je marelui chey
Potani shradha and maran is our own journey only. ae mareluj rahe chey. So there is nothing to think of
No matter how much love, attachment we might have death because one, it does not exist and two, if it does
for another person, our faith and our death cannot be (intellectually), then it is as is.
helped by anyone else. But this piece is for all those who perhaps cannot
"At my age I do what Mark Twain did. I get my daily fully grasp it like me). this piece is for them. So I am
paper, look at the obituaries page and if I'm not there / going to quote some of the brilliant thinkers who have
carry on as usual." analysed death threadbare and who might offer us some relief simply by putting our thoughts and fears into
Patrick Moore. their crystal clear words.
Humour is always the best thing that works, through Let us take a look:
life and through death. "When we are young we are often puzzled by the
My favourite is also Raja Bharathari, who questions fact that each person we admire seems to have a
our obsession with breath. different version of what life ought to be, what a good Morn after morn dispels the dark, man is, how to live, and so on. If we are especially Bearing our lives away; sensitive it seems more than puzzling, it is Absorbed in cares we fail to mark disheartening. What most people usually do is to follow
How swift our years decay; one person's ideas and then another's depending on who looms largest on one's horizon at the time. The
Some maddening draught hath drugged our souls, one with the deepest voice, the strongest appearance,
In love with vital breath, the most authority and success, is usually the one who Which still the same sad chart unrolls, gets our momentary allegiance, and we try to pattern Birth, old age, disease, and death. our ideals after him. But as life goes on we get a
Bharathari in his "Against the desire of worldly perspective on this and all these different versions of truth become a little pathetic. Each person thinks that he has the formula for triumphing over life's limitations
Now that we have read and thought about death, and knows with authority what it means to be a man let us try and embrace it and really live our life with a and he usually tries to win a following for his particular
constant awareness of its transience and live and act patent. Today we know that people try so hard to win
as if it was our last day. converts for their point of view because it is more than
RESHMA JAIN merely an outlook on life: it is an immortality
The Narrators formula."
Mobile: 9820427444 Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
e different versions of
things"
Death is not the enemy of life, but it's a friend, for it is the knowledge that our years are limited which makes them so precious.It is the truth that time is but lent to us which makes us, at our best, look upon our years as a trust handed into our temporary keeping.
Joshua Loth Liebman
