DEATH: THE INEVITABLE EVENT
Prepare When There is Time
EVERYONE seems to be talking non-stop, doing this and that, being busy with all sorts of things, chasing all sorts of dreams. They are all driven with the purpose of trying to fulfil unlimited desires.
They want to acquire all sorts of comforts for themselves and their children. This is the mad race of materialism. But what is the result of it all? Everyone feels that their hopes have not been met, that their desires remain unfulfilled. And so, people are living in terrible despair, bitterness, tension, and frustration. They feel they have been deprived of, or denied, what they wanted. Nobody at all seems content. Their days and nights pass in this sorry predicament. Then one day, the little world of their dreams comes crashing down when death sweeps them away.
Death is the end of the pre-death period of life for the deceased, while for those who are still alive in this world, it is a reminder of their own impending death.
People are busy with things that belong to this temporary world, instead of preparing themselves for the eternal life after death. The life of this world is a test, and hence it is God’s responsibility to provide every one of us with the things that we need to go through this test. But as far as life after death is concerned, God has not taken responsibility for it. Our life after death depends entirely on our actions in this world. There, you will reap as you have sown here, on earth. Yet, despite this, strangely, people are preoccupied doing everything possible for their life in this world and have completely forgotten the life that will come after death. In this world, if you face a shortage of something today, you can make efforts and acquire what you need tomorrow. But in the life after death, you will not have the chance of engaging in any action to make up for any shortage of your deeds on earth.
In this world, we have many things that enable us to survive and flourish. We have our physical bodies, for instance. We have friends and relatives. We have opportunities for work. We have money. There is an amazing life-support system all around us that is finely tuned to sustain life.
All these things are available to us in this world. Consciously or otherwise, we think that we own such things, or that they belong to us.
We imagine that they will remain with us forever. But after a limited span of time, each of us dies, and we are forced to leave all these things behind. We now have to travel, all alone, to an entirely different world. We are confronted with eternity before us, for which we will find that we possess absolutely nothing at all.
Besides the material things of this world, there is something else that we have—our personal status. Each of us makes efforts in whatever way we can to establish a certain position for ourselves. We acquire a status in society. We create a unique ‘history’ for ourselves, which comes to be seen as part of our personality.
This status or position that we establish for ourselves in this world with great effort is also only temporary. Death will suddenly steal this away as well. After we die, we will enter the next world totally bereft of our material possessions as well as the worldly stature that we had so carefully sought to cultivate while on earth.
How many of us care to be mindful of this? To be mindful of this fact, we should learn from the news of death of other people. We should take this as a very valuable learning experience. Someone else’s death should lead us to be mindful of our own impending death. It should compel us to remember that we, too, will have to meet the same fate some day or the other. It should remind us to suitably prepare for our own death, which is on its way.
Death is the end of the pre-death period of life for the deceased, while for those who are still alive in this world, it is a reminder of their own impending death. When a person dies, it appears that someone who could speak has now fallen silent. But his silence is, in itself, a loud announcement to those who remain in this world. It calls out to us: “What had to happen with me has now taken place! It will happen with you, too! And so, prepare yourself for it!”