How to overcome

FEAR OF DEATH

 

            A bright-eyed boy in the kindergarten looks forward to school every day, for there he has children of the same age-group to play games and chant rhymes with. However, one particular morning he is glum and listless from the time of waking up; he becomes more and more depressed as the minutes go by and when the bell of the tricycle-rickshaw to take him to  school is heard, he lets out a wail and declares he would not go. Has the boy been scared of the school all these days, Sirs. No, the fear is only for the day. It is certainly not dread of the school but the reprimand in store for him there because he had failed to do his homework on the previous evening. And, why did he omit the assignment. Because an uncle had come to visit with them and the guest had brought a set of new fangled electronic toys for the boy, enchanted with which the lad had been sporting with them till late in the night and the thought of the impending homework had totally receded form his memory. If only he is allowed to miss school for one day, he would certainly catch up with the homework and be ready for the rickshaw on the next day.

 

Our predicament is no way different from the errant schoolboy's. The Totality of Nature, called variously as God, the Almighty, Brahman, Meiporul or merely "the Word" in the Scriptures, had fitted out our life-energy with hands and feet and eyes and ears and mind so that we may engage ourselves in the task of purging the soul of the dross it had accumulated on itself through countless generations. But we chose to ignore the homework and instead have been gambolling and gallivanting with sense-objects spread out in the world. These wasteful and life-squandering activities continued unremittingly even during our forties and fifties. With the approach of our sixties we hear the inevitable bell tolling for us at a distance and it cannot be wished away by ostrich-attitude. Naturally we are in a dither as the tumbril nears our door. This, in short, is the Fear of Death, Sirs, don't you agree?

 

How on earth is one to overcome this Fear of fears is the next question. The answer is simple, Dr.Watson, as Sherlock Holmes would put it. Gird up your loins and get down to the postponed task of fulfilling the purpose of life without tarrying further. What is the way to do this, you ask. Resolve to adopt the path of uncompromising Virtue by not causing any harm or hurt to any living being through deed, word or thought. This would result in not adding to the load of adverse imprints deposited on your soul, which burden I referred to as "the dross" earlier. As the necessary next step put your mind on the Absolute that is your source and origin and destination, wherein you live and move and have your being. It is your forgetfulness and your abysmal ignorance of your own history that has landed you in your present impoverishment. Could any state be sadder than this, O humans ?

 

Having paid the price and learnt your lesson, would you at least now lend ear to the clarion-call of the Saviour of humanity, Jesus the Christ : "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul"

 

Sage TGN

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