1. Have an Interesting Snippet to Share : Click Here
    Dismiss Notice

When the Swan sings..

Discussion in 'Cheeniya's Senile Ramblings' started by Cheeniya, Sep 28, 2013.

  1. satchitananda

    satchitananda IL Hall of Fame

    Messages:
    17,880
    Likes Received:
    25,953
    Trophy Points:
    590
    Gender:
    Female
    Dear Cheeniya sir,

    First of all let me convey my deepest condolences to Kamala and to Viswamitra and his wife for their individual losses. No words can make up for the loss of a near and dear one, but the knowledge that there are people around us who care for us and who are there to hold our hands should hopefully bring some comfort.

    Now coming to the topic of death and fear of death, it is the taboo that is associated with this topic that is cause for the fear and vice versa. Let's say it is a vicious circle. I am scared, so I do not talk about it; I do not talk about it, so I harbour a fear of the unspoken in my mind.

    The common practice of protecting young children from death is something that does not make sense to me. If death is a part of life, should not children be made familiar with it to whatever extent they can understand? I remember when my neighbour passed away - I was 7 years old at that time. My parents had gone to their house for the final prayers before the funeral. I wanted to go, but was not allowed to. I remember how curious I was about what was going on. I perched myself on the window sill and watched as the body was taken out. That was my first introduction to death. "Doctor" as that neighbour was called was very fond of me and was a staunch supporter of mine whenever my parents chose to discipline me. It was a feeling of loss; I wanted "doctor" back. I was also upset because a picnic organized that day in the school run by them was cancelled (I went to that school). Two things dear to my heart were taken away from me. My picnic and doctor. I was told he had gone to God and would not return.

    The fear of death stalked me all my life - not for myself, but the fear of losing my parents. I would go with them wherever they went, just to be with them all the time in case anything happened to them. Somewhere around the time I was 16/17, my dad took me along to a lecture by Swami Chinmayananda. From there started my journey of spiritual study. Imbibing that knowledge and trying to rationalize my fears in the light of what I had learned helped to a great extent, so that I was at least somewhat mentally prepared to face the loss of my dad. Well, not a loss - as he did not go anywhere. He just shed his worn out body.

    As for the swan song, as others have said, it is necessary to start off young and to inculcate good thoughts, habits and the like from the time one can think for oneself, so that these get deeply imbibed into the psyche. Waiting till retirement to pick up the Geeta does not help. Who knows whether we will still have our minds intact at that age to even be able to read the written word or to understand the spoken word at that age? Here I can't help mentioning some of the elderly inmates at the home where my mom is. They might well be struck by Alzheimers and many of these patients keep repeating words in a staccato manner. There is a lady who keeps repeating "Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram, Patita Pavan Sita Ram" all the time, beating her hand on her leg to keep rhythm. Every Saturday evening they have prayers and some people from the AOL come and sing bhajans. Yesterday before they arrived, the mikes were being set up and a couple of other patients sang the entire bhajan to tune. Unless these people had this ingrained in their minds they would not have been able to sing these prayers now. There is an old Christian lady who is so religious and keeps reading her Bible all the time. This comes of a life time of doing so.

    I had heard somewhere that whoever has the name of God on their lips at the moment of death attains Nirvana. There is no rebirth for them. I don't know how far it is true, but I would surely like to take my chance on that. Whenever I travel by auto, I make sure to keep saying my prayers. Who knows? It might turn out to be my swan song!

    Oops! I guess I have been rambling as usual, but I hope you will forgive me for taking the liberty of rambling on in the "ramblings" section!
     
    5 people like this.
  2. PriyaKathiravan

    PriyaKathiravan Silver IL'ite

    Messages:
    90
    Likes Received:
    128
    Trophy Points:
    83
    Gender:
    Female
    Sir,
    I have never understood the desire to be remembered after death. For one who has vacated this world, this body, this name and this mind, what difference would it make whether (s)he is remembered by others or not ? It's just our Ego that causes such a desire. Ofcourse names of hallowed personages like Gandhiji and Mother Teresa are immortal , but that is only for the living to draw some inspiration from. Harsh critiques are also in circulation about them . To the dead, praise or slander is equally immaterial .


    Striving to become a better person only for the sake of gaining immortality seems to me rather pointless, because, even in life, we cannot control the impression we create in another's mind . How we are percieved has as much , or more, to do with the mental make up of the perceiver as with actual fact . It is much better to live by the ideals dictated by ones heart and mind than trying to impress the world in the hope of winning fans, in life or in death.


    I have ambivalent thoughts about the concept of life hereafter and rebirth. To me death seems a finality. We have this one life to experience and living it wisely , responsibly and usefully is more than enough . If a person has been careless about it for most of his life, there is no harm in his trying to reform late in the day . Better late than never !


    Sorry to hear about the bereavement suffered by two members of our community. My condolensces.
     
    2 people like this.
  3. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

    Messages:
    12,626
    Likes Received:
    16,903
    Trophy Points:
    538
    Gender:
    Male
    Dear Manju
    I must tell you something about ‘Smasana Vairagyam’. Yes, it is a pattern as you have rightly observed but how long the effect of it lasts depends on a person’s age. Death has no significance for children and they have no idea at all about it. During youth, it creates small ripples like a pebble thrown in a tranquil pond. It is a bit stronger in middle age and may last a couple of days depending upon how close the departed soul is to us. When you are 70+ like me, it is like Tsunami particularly when the dead one was our peer. We tend to look at it from various angles, physical, spiritual and the least of all material. We get curious about it. We try to understand the subject in greater detail. We have more than academic interest in the performance of obsequies. Do you know that the Babylonians believed that a man carried a core element which kept him alive, even after death? This element continued to live invisibly and demanded food and drink from the kith and kin of the dead. If they failed to satisfy the craving of the element, it caused a lot of trouble for them.

    There was a time, perhaps a decade back, when I used to be absolutely scared of death. A cerebral hemorrhage and a MI cured me of that. To consolidate my new-found courage, I have started reading about the last moments of famous people and the words that they uttered. Things like Socrates telling ‘Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?’ and Archimedes shouting ‘Don’t disturb my circles!’ give me a greater perspective about dying. Fear was slowly replaced by awe and now it is just plain curiosity. But I am very firm on one thing. There should be no bad-mouthing about me after I am gone! I have on several occasions told you all that I am committed to ‘live respected and die regretted’. But you have a point in saying that ‘the evil that men do lives after them’. Virtue does not leave a lasting effect like evil. Otherwise why should we be having so many stories about Hitler and his concentration camps than about Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King? But being good is a very satisfying feeling. It is effusive and acts like an elixir on an aging mind.

    Yes I have heard this Ayyo story before. It is because of this, people started naming their children after gods! Vanaprastha of yore was not meant for rectification of a ‘lifelong poverty of virtue’ but to merely arrest the trend of becoming poorer. The Frostian ambiance of the dark and lovely woods probably gives us a clear head which refuses to go after the erstwhile unfinished agenda. We give greater freedom to the mind to dwell on such sublime thoughts which may make the final hour comfortable.

    We are not talking about immortality and punyam as the ‘must have’ for our final journey. What Raimundo Panikkar says in ‘The Vedic Experience’, ‘To live the whole life span allotted to us, to squeeze out the elixir of life to the last drop, to exhaust all the possibilities and seize all the opportunities that life presents to us, before we become light- this is the Vedic ideal and an injunction of the Vedic revelation to the modern man’ may appeal to those who are not there yet but not for me!
    Sri
     
    3 people like this.
  4. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

    Messages:
    12,626
    Likes Received:
    16,903
    Trophy Points:
    538
    Gender:
    Male
    My dear Syamala
    If we go by ‘Bhajagovindam’ of Adi Sankara, birth and death are not the beginning and the end. He talks of ‘Punarapi jananam, punarapi maranam punarapi janani jatare sayanam’. I do not want to go into that aspect of the soul’s continuum here. I am talking of the ‘after life’ for the sole purpose of getting further insight into the subject. No journey undertaken beyond the body, can in some sense, be independent of the journey one goes through in life. In other words, the ‘other world’ is intimately connected with this world and for this reason, not only does human life on earth condition and shape the life in the other world, but also the last rites, the blessings for the journey and also the climactic moment of death are all of supreme importance.

    The greatest mystery of death is not where it transports us to but when it will come. Scriptures tell us in great detail about where it will take us to but the uncertainty of its arrival is what that makes it awesome. As you rightly say, it does not follow any pattern as it did in Satya Yuga and Tretha Yuga. Highly evolved souls like Adi Sankara and Vivekananda were aware of the very limited time at their disposal and that foreknowledge helped them to organize their lives perfectly in the service of mankind.

    I am struck with awe with your take on ‘immortality’. Everyone can be immortal to someone is a new thought. It would never occur to me. There can be no two opinions about living our life well and it is in that context that the sobering effect of the possibility of death has to be considered. Even when it is very clear that we all have to leave this world one day, how many atrocities are committed round the clock? The tendency to err is probably arising out of our false notion of permanency of existence.
    Sri
     
    1 person likes this.
  5. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

    Messages:
    12,626
    Likes Received:
    16,903
    Trophy Points:
    538
    Gender:
    Male
    My dear BT
    Thanks a lot for sharing the awesome piece of writing by Samuel Scheffler. A profound line of thinking. It is the kind of subject that pays well to speculate on. It would be nice if I could interview a wide strata of people and get their replies to get an insight on how the human mind works!
    Sri
     
  6. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

    Messages:
    12,626
    Likes Received:
    16,903
    Trophy Points:
    538
    Gender:
    Male
    My dear Satchi
    The psychology behind the fear of death is always very intriguing. We see people queuing up to book their one-way ticket to Mars when the living conditions there are as mysterious as they are in the land of the dead. I should say I have developed a healthy and cheerful view of death after reading the likes of Khalil Gibran. This one sentence of him cleared my mind of all the misconceptions about Death:
    “For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?”

    Shielding children from observing the ritual of the dead is probably out of the fear of our own inability to clear the doubts that may arise in a young mind when we ourselves grope in the dark. The stock reply that a child gets for its questions on death would only be that the dead man has gone to God. A convenient way of circumventing the problem and to some extent true too! If the child asks a question like Nachiketas asked Yama, what would the poor parents do?

    Fear of the dead is essentially and basically the fear of the unknown. I find in our community the questions that young brides raise about settling down in a far away country. I can sense their apprehension about the new place and new people to live with. It is quite natural and understandable. The key to the solution of this fear lies in your own take about your dad’s demise- ‘Not a loss-as he did not go anywhere. He just shed his worn out body.’ And that knowledge came to you through your exposure to the spiritual lectures of learned people.

    My mention of the term ‘Swan Song’ was not to imply that the self purification activity should start on the death bed. Nothing can be more ideal than starting it at childhood. But the inspiration for this should come from the elders. If they are going to be involved deeply with ‘no holds barred’ games of material success in life, we cannot expect the children to pursue higher ideals in life. Not everyone can be a Prahlada!
    Sri
     
    1 person likes this.
  7. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

    Messages:
    12,626
    Likes Received:
    16,903
    Trophy Points:
    538
    Gender:
    Male
    My dear Priya
    Why don’t you look at it this way? If a person restrains himself from indulging in unholy acts because of his desire to be remembered as a good man even after his death, it is something to be encouraged. If sticks and carrots fail to yield the desired result, there is no harm in trying an alternative. If ego can stop a person from being bad, such ego needs to be encouraged!

    I must clarify here that this rambling of mine is the result of my own reflections upon death. At a personal level, for every one of us, death is mysterious and unfathomable. We see so many people die and do not connect death with our own lives. Not that we think we can escape. We try to keep it away from our thoughts physically, we try to postpone it by adopting measures to improve our health and increase our longevity. But death stares at us all the time. When suddenly something happens next door that is least expected, and we come face to face with death, we are struck as if by a bolt from the blue. We begin to think that death is as real as life and that it is worthwhile to contemplate upon it, to see its ramification, to note the sphere of its operations and see where we fit in. The earlier this understanding starts the better for our peace and equanimity.

    Let us for a moment set aside the issue of immortality. I only mentioned it as an incentive for being good. If a person is able to live by the ideals dictated by his heart unaided by any external props, I am all for it. After all I am not even into heaven and hell. I firmly believe that all our actions must ultimately be tested at the altar of our own self convincing conscience. The lure of heaven or fear of hell cannot be the deciding factor of our conduct through life. When I was young and ambitious, I had no time for all that. Success was my goal, not the heaven. But as I am getting older and more infirm and when I have no material purpose in going on with this existence, I ruminate on my higher calls and what awaits me there. Hereafter, it is going to be my lone voyage. Whatever I sought while I was young is falling by the wayside as I progress slowly in my journey.

    The Vedic attitude is very clear. It does not trivialize the place of death in human life. Life is of great value. Indeed, if properly understood, it is of the highest value. It seems to be the task of death to help us realize the value of life, enhance it and give earthly existence all the value it deserves.
    Sri
     
    2 people like this.
  8. BharadwajThiru

    BharadwajThiru Silver IL'ite

    Messages:
    185
    Likes Received:
    212
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Gender:
    Male
    Dear Cheeniya sir,
    This thread for some reason keeps drawing me back to it! Perhaps I am intrigued about death in some way!

    A colleague at work introduced me to the 4 types of Karma several years ago. It made an impression on me and regardless of whether I believe in afterlife and rebirth, the mathematics of these types of Karma's has always intrigued me.

    Here is a link that explains it better than I ever can.
     
  9. iyerviji

    iyerviji Finest Post Winner

    Messages:
    34,587
    Likes Received:
    28,749
    Trophy Points:
    640
    Gender:
    Female
    My dear Anna

    My deepest condolences to Viswa and his wife and Kamala and her family for the great loss. After reading your thought provoking and everyone's informative post I dont what to write and how to write. But still I want to share my experience. When people die suddenly that worries their family more and they are not able to live without that person. But if a person suffers a long time if that person dies then they dont feel much because they dontwant that person to suffer. I have seen many deaths in our family. In my dh's family his three nephews, niece's husband and his brother's wife all died immediately after they completely 50 yrs. Their family is missing them very much. One nephew's and my brother in law's children are married so not much problem. The others children are yet to be married and since the nephew's wives are working so it is ok.

    I was also there during the last days of my father, mother and grandmother's death and had the opprotunity to serve them. Its their blessings that I am leading a good and healthy life. Both my father and grandmother (mother's mother) suffered from cancer and those days there was not cure for cancer. My father died when I was 18 yrs old and I missed him very much after his death especially during the time of marriage. My grandmother told me you pray for yourself that you should get a good partner and with her blessings I got my husband who is from her native .My mother did not suffer much and died after being in the hospital for four days and one day before my dh told me your mother wont live long and I felt very bad about it. and right enough next day my mother was not there, the doctor told me to go and tell my brothers and sister and my husband had the opportunity to be with her when she died.Also I feel my mother has come back as my third daughter. So I feel happy that she is always there with me

    I am not worried of death because it is already planned by God and whenever it comes I have to accept it. But only thing I feel that I should know in advance and should die a peaceful death without any health problems . Also its better if I die after my husband so that he wont have any problems because I know he will miss me a lot.

    I feel as long as we are alive to do all the good we can , because good things only come with us when we leave the world.

    After reading everyone's fbs I feel whether I have written apt fb. So sorry if I have gone away from the topic .

    For death is but a passing phase of Life;A change of dress, a disrobing;A birth into the unborn again;A commencing where we ended;A starting where we stopped to rest;A crossroad of Eternity;A giving up of something, to possess all things.The end of the unreal, the beginning of the real.
    EDWIN LEIBFREED, "The Song of the Soul"

    Death is not the greatest loss in life. Loss is when life dies inside you while alive
     
    4 people like this.
  10. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

    Messages:
    12,626
    Likes Received:
    16,903
    Trophy Points:
    538
    Gender:
    Male
    My dear BT
    The Karma theory explains the many inexplicable things that keep happening in our life. 'Why me?' is the question that can only be answered by the Karmic operations. I refer to you a thread posted by our senior and venerated member Chitvish in the Religious Forum years back that will address all your doubts on this. You may find it here:
    http://www.indusladies.com/forums/c...5-three-types-karma-important-understand.html
    Sri
     
    1 person likes this.

Share This Page