When I was studying in high school, we read an essay in our Hindi textbook which spoke of death as an art and an opportunity. The lesson made a deep impression on me and it has stayed with me all these years. Oddly, even today I remember verbatim many of the statements in that essay. Death is often an unpleasant subject and hence skirted around by most people. Luckily for me, the essay created in my heart not a neurotic obsession but a healthy space to reflect on the reality of death.
The basic premise of the essay was simple. Die everyone must, sooner or later. Death is the one certain thing among all the uncertainties of life. We plan for so many things that may or may not happen, do we have any plan for our death? The essay asked:
“Don’t you feel that the person who plans to pluck mangoes from a tree is more intelligent than one who plans to pluck the stars from the skies?”
In other words, rather than making futile plans for what is clearly beyond our control, it is better to focus our energies on what is within our reach. Most things in life include factors over which we have minimal or no control. The one thing that is fully within our reach is our own way of thinking, our perceptions, our attitudes.
Our time is limited and our energy resources are limited. To make the best use of these in accomplishing what is truly worthwhile is the only practical and wise thing to do. The essay then proceeded to give a few examples of people, Socrates among them, who had done just that, converting their deaths into an art-form, using the opportunities that came their way to die a heroic death. They died and yet they didn’t die. They continue to “live” today in a more intense way than when they were physically alive.
Death comes in various forms and people respond to it variously. Some die with a smile on their face, others with fear in their eyes. Some seem ready to go, others are dragged away kicking and screaming. Some die suddenly without any time to prepare for it, others die a slow death. Some seem alive even after death, others die in spirit and hope even before their physical death.
If I am not afraid to reflect on death, I have to confront the question: How do I want to die?
None of us knows the exact moment we transition from being awake to falling asleep. The same is true of death. I don’t know when I will transition from being alive to being dead, and I don’t know how the death will come, and what my reaction to my last moment will be. Because of this uncertainty, the time to prepare for death is now. It is not something that can be postponed. The preparation won’t be over in a day, but it makes sense to begin today, and even better, now. Tomorrow might be too late.
What do I need to remember and what do I need to do in order to die well? First, the things to remember:
What is most obvious (and yet often willfully ignored) is that everyone dies sooner or later, so it’s not something only I have to face. Nature is perfectly democratic. It treats everyone equally. If I were not born, I wouldn’t die. But I was, so I will. Birth and death go hand-in-hand (Gita, 2. 27). No one is exempt from death. We are all on death row. Death is not an event, it is merely the completion of a process that began the moment I was born. Which is why I cannot live well until I’ve figured out how to die well.
The options to choose when we will die and under what circumstances are not on the table. Again, this is true for everyone, so I have no reason to complain. The only thing I can choose is how I wish to prepare myself to face death, which is sometimes personalized in Vedanta texts as Yama, or Yamarāj. When the time is up (and no one knows when that will be), Yama will show up on the doorstep or to wherever I am. How am I going to face him—with a smile or with a terror-stricken face?
Even when I begin to prepare myself for death, I am really preparing for the death of my body, which is not my self. I don’t die. I cannot die. Before the body gives up and Yama comes to claim my mind, I have to experience once and for all that this body is not me, this mind is not me. If they are not me, who cares when the body goes and how? Who cares what happens to the mind? If I do care, I am stuck. Then there is truly much to worry about. Otherwise I can smile and welcome Yama to take away whatever he can. He can take my life, he cannot take me. The real me is beyond Yama’s reach.
Remembering these things is fine, but that would mean little unless I do something more than just sit in an armchair and merely “remember” these things. Among the things I can do are:
I can try to begin every day with the thought that it could be the last day of my life—and try to live as if it were the last day. It’s unbelievable how liberating this feels! For, it frees me from clinging to places, persons and things, and helps me to focus on the Imperishable. I wrote about this practice in an earlier post a little over a year ago. Here is the link to it.
I can try to remind myself as often as I can that I am more than just this body and this mind. Everything I see is perishable but not the real me (ātman). The more my identity as the ātman is reinforced, the clearer my priorities in life become—and the easier it gets to make the right choices and take the right decisions, the kind that I won’t regret later. Related to this is the recognition that every person I encounter is the ātman too. This revolutionizes all relationships and brings much fulfillment.
I can try to intensify my spiritual practice. For all I know, the prayer, worship and meditation I am doing at this moment could be my last one! Surrender comes more easily when I recognize the supreme urgency and the vital importance of the practice.
If I can remember and practice these ridiculously simple and obvious things, I will “die” without really dying when the time comes. I will kill death before it kills me. Dying becomes an art when I transform what is inevitable into an opportunity to be free forever.