-Reminder of our Mortality

 

Photo Credit: Maria Erving

Reminder of our Mortality

Right now, it takes a lifetime for people to understand that they are mortal. When we are young, we think we are immortal. As the body starts creaking a little bit, we start to realise that the earth is calling. This body is a loan from this planet. The very body that we are is just the food that we have eaten. The food that we ate is just the earth. So, we are just a piece of earth. The earth is calling us all the time but when we are old, we hear it very clearly.

We need to celebrate and enjoy every moment of our life because life is ticking away; it does not wait for us for even a moment. Especially because we are mortal, it is extremely important that we make this into a joyful and fantastic process. If we were immortal, we could enjoy a hundred years each of depression, anxiety, madness and misery, and then on the 500th anniversary, we could become joyful. But it is not so; we are mortal and life is ticking away. There is no time for frustration, depression, anxiety or anger; there is no time for any unpleasantness in this life.

If we are constantly reminded that we are mortal, this whole life process will want to experience everything; it will become super alert. If we know we are going to die in the next one hour, we would notice every little bit of life. We will not miss anything. If every human being structures their psychological and emotional framework around the most fundamental fact of their life – their mortality, if we accept death as a process of life – constantly, moment to moment – our values of life would be completely different. Like a flower which blooms in the morning and dies in the evening, if we knew that we are also very much the same process – right now we are blooming, tomorrow morning we may be dead – then we would not miss a single flower on the road. We would become extremely life-oriented and our life will unhinge itself from the physicality and look for something beyond, naturally. The spiritual process will become a natural process of growth for us.

Living every moment like it is our last, without any desires, regrets or expectations, facing life as a witness helps us accept the final moment in a sense of void, a sense of nothingness, this ensures that re-birth does not happen with the Guru’s grace.