In the great epic, the Mahābhārata, the demigod Yamarāja asked a wise king, “What is the most amazing thing within this world?” The king replied, “The most amazing thing in the world is that hundreds and thousands of living beings meet death at every moment, but a foolish person, even after seeing friends and relatives pass away, nonetheless lives as if they won’t die and does not prepare for death.”
It’s true: we usually think of death as . . . something we don’t want to think about.
Or if we think about death at all, it inspires fear. And fear of death is the fifth obstacle to the experience of yoga (Yoga-sutra II.3).
One way to overcome this obstacle is by re-thinking the way we think about death.
And the best way to start is to look at what the yoga wisdom tradition has to say about it.
The Bhagavad-gītā presents death as the departure of the eternal spirit soul from the temporary material body, not as the cessation of our existence or the dissipation of individual consciousness into the totality of matter.
More specifically, the Gītā defines death as the transition of the eternal individual soul from one temporary material body to another.
If we accept the proposition that we are imperishable spiritual beings experiencing life through the medium of ephemeral material bodies, then we can reframe any reflexive anxiety we have about death as a symptom of illusion: a misidentification of the body as the self and a corresponding forgetfulness of our true spiritual identity.
And when we re-frame death as an unnatural phenomenon arising from a combination of spiritual amnesia and material misidentification, we can flip the script: instead of thinking about death as a dark cloud to be pushed out of our minds so we can focus on enjoying life, we can think about death as a source of motivation to live a purposeful life that moves us in the direction of real freedom.
So let’s do it: Here are six great things about death:
- Death brings clarity: Not sure what’s really important in your life? Ask yourself what you would do today if you knew you would die tomorrow. That will clear things up.
- Death helps us prioritize: Remembering that death can come at any moment, and will surely come sooner than we’d like, can make it easy to put what’s really important at the top of our ‘to-do’ lists.
- Death promotes a sense of urgency: It’s a lot harder to waste your time when you maintain an awareness of the fact you’ll never get a single second of your time back once it runs out.
- Death encourages humility: Everyone bows down when death arrives. Cultivating an awareness of death as an irresistible force brings our egos back down to earth.
- Death puts things in perspective: Fear of death is the ultimate fear. By comparison, all of our other fears are insignificant. Remembering death can help us rise above all of our other fears.
- Death is life affirming: An awareness of inevitable death can be a source of motivation to live the most meaningful life we can imagine right now.
Rather than live in fear of the inevitable, let’s make death something that inspires us to live in such a way that every moment of our lives is filled with meaning and purpose.
Do you have any thoughts about how you can reframe death as a source of motivation and inspiration rather than as a source of apprehension and lamentation? If so, I’d love to hear from you about it.