Overcoming The Fear Of Death

8 November 2001, 01:04am IST
Sanjna Sijkri.

For a long time to come, september 11 will be synonymous with the macabre reality of death. and yet, for the thousands who lost their lives in the tragedy, death was not even a distant possibility that tragic tuesday morning. incidents like september 11 remind us, albeit shockingly, that despite all our so-called superhuman technological, scientific and industrial advancements, we are still puppets in an unfolding cosmic play. haunting as the thought is, we are no less vulnerable than the smallest creature here on earth. what, then does life and specifically death hold for us? is there some finality about death? the answers to these and many other questions often come from embarking on a personal spiritual voyage. for those in search of such answers, interesting perspectives can be gained from the writings of eknath easwaran. in his book, the undiscovered country: exploring the promise of death, easwaran explains that nothing in life is more important than the fact of death and nothing more urgent than learning how to overcome it in this life itself. easwaran talks of how "in the life of every spiritually aware person, the time comes when he or she questions whether death is inevitable". this is not an intellectual question as much as a spiritual one. as individuals, we have a strange, inexplicable aversion towards death. we are always turning away from "life's last great change". we believe that we will never be called upon to act our roles out in the "theatre of death". this only complicates confrontation with the phenomenon when it finally occurs. the secret to understanding the passage to the undiscovered country as shakespeare termed death is to transcend death in our lives. cruel as it sounds, we must remember that in the midst of life, we are in death. what you call salvation belongs to the time before death, as kabir said. in the process of learning about, understanding and finally accepting death, we learn to sacrifice our less important desires for the important one of searching for our eternal self. we realise that we must rise above any ahamkara, above self will and egotism. we must wake up from the dream of "self-centred separate existence we call living", easwaran exhorts. paradoxically, it is in understanding death that we are able to put our lives in perspective. it is in appreciating its true meaning that we would perhaps live life far more harmoniously and peacefully. a patient who had a near-death experience once said beautifully: "the knowledge that dying is spiritual leads not to a desire to die, but rather to a desire to live life more completely". at a fundamental level then, we are as impermanent and transient as any other living creation. in vipassana, this is referred to as anicca and the buddha rightly says suffering comes from a resistance to the understanding of anicca. this understanding brings a certain perspective to our lives and the many relationships that we develop through our living years. it also allows for a certain emotional equanimity to be subsumed within an overall selflessness. what is ours today might not be there tomorrow. at the physical level, death may appear a final change, or a halt, but in the larger scale of evolution, it becomes the passage for our thoughts, values and aspirations (samskaras) from this life into the next. these samskaras shape our destiny, our future incarnations. as the buddha rightly said, work on what you can take with you. life, therefore, at a more primary level, it is about the way we wear our "jackets": the german philosopher meister eckhart's talked of "going into your ground and learning to know oneself there". similarly, easwaran talks of the process of uncovering and in doing so, finding the many jackets or sheaths that we have, namely the prana (the vital sheath), the mind, the intellect and the ego. meditation essentially is the process of ceasing to identify with the jackets, which are hiding the self. and lastly, we must remember that death does not diminish us. living and dying are integral to any creative process and our lives are but an extension of this universal truth. let us brace ourselves so that when death finally comes knocking, there is not a calamitous ring to it, but rather a spiritual passing into another realm.