Always Be Prepared – to Die

Everyone will face death, it’s just a question of death, whether it comes in the next 80 seconds, or not for another 80 years. Our attitude to death brings all sorts of choices… and we all know that the decisions we make today constrain our choices tomorrow. So how to live with a perfect balance between the long-term view and the short-term view?

This is based on what I heard from my spiritual master, His Grace Sriman Sankarshan Das Adhikari

When we are prepared to die at every moment, every moment is a perfect moment, a moment of perfect consciousness – every moment becomes a thrill!

Sankarshan Das Adhikari

When I reflect on these words, I see how true they are, whether for good or for bad – for example, a lot of people do stupid things because they think they can get away with it – after all, things are changing all the time, I may never see that soul again, so what does it matter how I treat them? Whether it is relationships, business, work, or just random acts of unkindness, this short-term view causes a lot of problems.

And then there are the fools who think they are pleasing God by dying in the process of killing others. There are no bigger fools, unfortunately, they are going to another place, not to the Kingdom of God.

However, the very same attitude, when applied to transcendence, gives a powerful sense of urgency, an impetus to act for the highest spiritual benefit.

Be prepared to die in the next 80 seconds, or live for the next 80 years.

Sankarshan Das Adhikari

On the other hand, someone who is too focused on the short term, but not the longer term, ends up in trouble as well. They may spend too much time in avoiding what needs to be taken care of, like a leaky tap or a broken tile… This also results in excessive sense gratification, or postponing important things that must be done diligently… as in the proverbial tale of the hare and the tortoise… the rabbit and the tortoise once had a race, the rabbit quickly bounded off and gained a big lead… he saw that the tortoise was far behind, so he decided to rest and relax and fell asleep. The tortoise meanwhile, kept going, and ended up winning the race by the time the rabbit woke up.

How to maintain that balance of paying attention to the short-term details while still keeping that longer term focus?

Well, first of all, know that you are eternal, you will never die, you may change your covering, your dress, your vehicle, your residence, but you will never die. So the consequences of all your actions will be seen, sooner or later. So that will surely avoid the temptation to be short-sighted.

न त्वेवाहं जातु नासं न त्वं नेमे जनाधिपाः ।
न चैव नभविष्यामः सर्वे वयमतः परम् ॥ १२ ॥

na tv evāhaṁ jātu nāsaṁ
na tvaṁ neme janādhipāḥ
na caiva na bhaviṣyāmaḥ
sarve vayam ataḥ param

Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.

https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/2/12/

And the other side? How to avoid being so long-term focused on the future that we ignore the here-and-now?

Remember that the here-and-now is what will take us to our destination – and the choices we make in the moment affect the choices that we have access to in future.

इति ते ज्ञानमाख्यातं गुह्याद्‍‍गुह्यतरं मया ।
विमृश्यैतदशेषेण यथेच्छसि तथा कुरु ॥ ६३ ॥

iti te jñānam ākhyātaṁ
guhyād guhya-taraṁ mayā
vimṛśyaitad aśeṣeṇa
yathecchasi tathā kuru

Thus I have explained to you knowledge still more confidential. Deliberate on this fully, and then do what you wish to do.

https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/18/63/

Srila Prabhupada dives deeper in his wonderful purport…

Here the words yathecchasi tathā kuru – “As you like, you may act” – indicate that God does not interfere with the little independence of the living entity. In Bhagavad-gītā, the Lord has explained in all respects how one can elevate his living condition. The best advice imparted to Arjuna is to surrender unto the Supersoul seated within his heart. By right discrimination, one should agree to act according to the order of the Supersoul. That will help one become situated constantly in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the highest perfectional stage of human life. Arjuna is being directly ordered by the Personality of Godhead to fight. Surrender to the Supreme Personality of Godhead is in the best interest of the living entities. It is not for the interest of the Supreme. Before surrendering, one is free to deliberate on this subject as far as the intelligence goes; that is the best way to accept the instruction of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Such instruction comes also through the spiritual master, the bona fide representative of Kṛṣṇa.

His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, in the purport to https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/18/63/

Here are three questions you can ask yourself repeatedly, every time you have a choice to make:

  1. Based on the instructions of the spiritual master, what is the best use of my time right now
  2. How best may I serve the instructions of the spiritual master with what I have at this moment?
  3. Am I following the principles “better late than never” and “something is better than nothing”?

In this connection, my spiritual master often says:

Your attitude, and not your aptitude, determines your altitude.

His Grace Sriman Sankarshan Das Adhikari

If we reflect and act in this way, our life will be perfect, and death becomes immaterial, whether it comes in the next 80 seconds, or in the next 80 years.

तदोत्तानपद: पुत्रो ददर्शान्तकमागतम् ।
मृत्योर्मूर्ध्नि पदं दत्त्वा आरुरोहाद्भुतं गृहम् ॥ ३० ॥

tadottānapadaḥ putro
dadarśāntakam āgatam
mṛtyor mūrdhni padaṁ dattvā
ārurohādbhutaṁ gṛham

When Dhruva Mahārāja was attempting to get on the transcendental plane, he saw death personified approach him. Not caring for death, however, he took advantage of the opportunity to put his feet on the head of death, and thus he got up on the airplane, which was as big as a house.

https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/4/12/30/

Go ahead. Transcend death! Why wouldn’t you?

Slaughtered in moments on the 401

Death can come at any moment. We experience death regularly, whether of a fish that just got caught, or a person who died in a car accident, or someone who had a heart attack. Animals, birds, fish and insects can’t do anything about their death. But as humans, how can we prepare for death? How can we transcend it altogether?

My current office is near the waterfront. Some days when I can take a walk along the waterfront, especially in summer, I see these birds diving into the water. They look like Cormorants, but I’m not a bird expert.

The birds dive into the water and surface after a little while. Sometimes, they have a writhing fish in their beaks, which they then promptly swallow.

Cormorant with a fish in it’s beak

The fish was probably happily swimming around enjoying its fish life, until, out of the blue comes death. Of course, the fish can’t really do much about this, when death comes, death comes.

One summer day a couple of years ago, early into the pandemic, we were driving west on what is one of the busiest highways in the world, the Ontario 401. Suddenly, my map instructed me to take the next exit and took me a detour, which I followed… as we re-entered the highway at another point, I saw some vehicles on the empty stretch of highway behind me, they were stopped, and covered with tarpaulins.

Later in the afternoon, on my way back, I saw the vehicles still at the same spot, still covered with tarps. Clearly it had been a bad collision.

I continued to follow the incident, and found out it was an incident involving three cars. One eastbound car, for some reason, lost control and hit another eastbound one in the fast lane, which caused this second car to jump the barrier and land in the westbound lane – resulting in a head-on collision with a westbound car travelling in the fast lane.

Three people lost their lives in that collision, and death was almost immediate. The first responders had no chance, and had to cut open the cars to extract the mortal remains. It was surely gruesome.

I read about the people, a man in his forties in one car, and a woman in her thirties and her father-in-law in his sixties in the other car. I cannot imagine any of them expected to lose their lives on the 401 that morning.

Do we think any meal could be our last meal?

I wondered how their mornings were… did they have their breakfast their morning and say bye to their loved ones? What did they go through during those fatal moments? Did they feel a lot of pain? Did they have family members who were grieving for them? Did they have unfinished business? Maybe an incomplete project?

Death can come at any moment. No ordinary soul can predict the exact moment of their death. And when death comes, everything that was so important until the moment before ceases to matter. It’s just like when I live in an apartment with noisy neighbours and then move to another apartment, the noise in my previous apartment ceases to matter. What happens after death?

Death can come at any moment

Some say that we are just a bunch of chemicals, and nothing more significant than a halt of the electrochemical reactions in the body. Or in other words, after death, there is nothingness. But that logic is faulty on so many levels, after all, a bottle of chemicals doesn’t care about itself and other bottles of chemicals don’t lament it’s loss.

The logic that some combination of material elements somehow develops consciousness is faulty, as I wrote about Descartes’ ignorance about consciousness. His “cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am) should have been something like “sum ergo cogito” (I am, therefore I think).

Actually, the law of momentum applies to us all – just like my baby body is “dead”, my child body is gone too. I still have memories of when I was a baby or a child, even though every single cell of my body back then is dead, this means that I transcend my body, more about that in detail another time.

Beyond Birth and Death. I am not this body.

But anyways, while the fish cannot do anything about their death, us, as human beings, with our highly developed sense of consciousness, can. We can inquire into our true nature, we can inquire into the Supreme Absolute Truth, indeed, human life begins only when we reach that stage of inquiring beyond eating, sleeping, mating, and defending, or rise above the animal propensities.

This stage is called “athāto brahma-jijñāsā“.

The human form is meant for the understanding of Kṛṣṇa consciousness (athāto brahma-jijñāsā), for inquiring about the Supreme Brahman. In the human form, everyone has a chance to understand the Supreme Brahman. The so-called leaders of human society do not know the real aim of human life and are therefore busy with economic development. This is misleading. Every state and every society is busy trying to improve the quality of eating, sleeping, mating and defending. This human form of life is meant for more than these four animal principles. Eating, sleeping, mating and defending are problems found in the animal kingdom, and the animals have solved these problems without difficulty. Why should human society be so busy trying to solve these problems? The difficulty is that people are not educated to understand this simple philosophy. They think that advancement of civilization means increasing sense gratification.

https://vedabase.io/en/library/cc/madhya/19/159/ purport

In fact, accidental or not, death awaits everyone who has taken birth… so, if we are sure to die, then we can at least prepare for it. How?

आयुर्हरति वै पुंसामुद्यन्नस्तं च यन्नसौ ।
तस्यर्ते यत्क्षणो नीत उत्तमश्लोकवार्तया ॥ १७ ॥

āyur harati vai puṁsām
udyann astaṁ ca yann asau
tasyarte yat-kṣaṇo nīta
uttama-śloka-vārtayā

Both by rising and by setting, the sun decreases the duration of life of everyone, except one who utilizes the time by discussing topics of the all-good Personality of Godhead.

https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/2/3/17/

The moment of death, in fact, is quite significant. We can reach any destination by adjusting our consciousness at the moment of death.

यं यं वापि स्मरन्भावं त्यजत्यन्ते कलेवरम् ।
तं तमेवैति कौन्तेय सदा तद्भ‍ावभावित: ॥ ६ ॥

yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ
tyajaty ante kalevaram
taṁ tam evaiti kaunteya
sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitaḥ

Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, O son of Kuntī, that state he will attain without fail.

https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/8/6/

The moment of death is actually a great opportunity, a rare portal through which we can escape birth and death altogether!

अन्तकाले च मामेव स्मरन्मुक्त्वा कलेवरम् ।
य: प्रयाति स मद्भ‍ावं याति नास्त्यत्र संशय: ॥ ५ ॥

anta-kāle ca mām eva
smaran muktvā kalevaram
yaḥ prayāti sa mad-bhāvaṁ
yāti nāsty atra saṁśayaḥ

And whoever, at the end of his life, quits his body remembering Me alone at once attains My nature. Of this there is no doubt.

https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/8/5/

If I were to live every moment thinking that it could be my last, then certain longer-term things could not reasonably be done, but on the other hand if I don’t think about death then it will surely take me by surprise.

So how to live? My spiritual master gave me the perfect instruction in this regard.

My spiritual master
His Grace Sriman Sankarshan Das Adhikari

He said, live as if you could die in the next 80 seconds or live for the next 80 years. And his life is a living proof of his instructions, so I choose to follow in his footsteps.

I remind myself that this life of mine can end at any moment, but I work diligently in Krishna Consciousness as if I have another 80 years to go.

Would you like to learn how? Drop me a line!

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