Martyr's Day Wisdom
Acharya Prashant: When it becomes absolutely clear to you, that death is a fact and nobody can avoid it, that it is there, no point thinking about it, no point analyzing. It is there, right in front. Then death is no more an object to think about. When death is settled, then you can talk about life.
Till the point you are somehow trying to fight death, you will keep on being busy with death. And in being busy with death, you will keep on missing life. What is a bigger loss? That you didn't think enough about death, or that you didn't live deeply enough? What is a bigger loss? But we think that we must think. And think about what? Death, the unthinkable. Every second that you are spending in thinking about death is a second lost from life, living.
You know, when you're asking that there are so many things, and what is it that needs to be done, I'm reminded of the time when Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa to India. And he had been in South Africa at the center of a civil movement for quite a while, almost two decades, more than two decades. In between, he had kept coming to India to attend Congress sessions and to visit these things, but there was not much depth in those visits.
So finally, when he left South Africa for good and landed in India in the middle of the second decade of the last century, Gopal Krishna Gokhale told him, “No public life for you for at least one year. Yes, you have been an outstanding leader in South Africa, and you had victories, and you have the capability to mobilize people and rally them behind you, but no public life in India for you for at least one year. Just abstain, observe, watch, travel, Know.
First of all, read this country, because there are just too many things at too many places. You cannot blindly rush into anything. At the same time, you cannot wait for long Gandhi, you are already in your 40s, and you are well equipped to do something. The kind of experience, the repository that you have, cannot be allowed to go waste; it must be put in the service of the nation. But it cannot be immediately rushed. So have some kind of a sabbatical for one year.”
The one who has to go will go, and remember, you too are in the queue. The one who is not in the queue can probably sympathize with the others.
Who is not in the queue?
So only dead men can sympathize with the living. Only they are out of the queue. We are all going in the same direction. A journey towards death. If there is anything that ends, it is the thing that took birth. And the thing that took birth must end. Birth guarantees that, right? Just as birth is a certainty, similarly death is an inviolable certainty. What will thoughts give you? In fact, if you want to make it more certain, start assuming that you are already dead.
Sometimes you say, “I’ll face bullets and let this body die, but let the psychic self prevail.” I would be called a martyr, or I would have proven a point.
Death is already happening moment by moment, why think that it is there somewhere in the future?
And kindly be kind enough not to think that only a few people are gone. When you think that somebody is gone, also know that you too are gone. There was a time when they were not there, and you were not there. And there would soon be a time when they would not be here, and you too would not be here.
We have had a mystic who said that death should be celebrated. Please understand what he meant. He said you cry not at the fact that somebody died, but at the fact that life was not lived fully. You cry over the moments that you lost, the opportunities that went a-begging. Don’t let those opportunities go away. There would be no reason to cry; death can be celebrated.
He used to tell his people, when there is a death, “Let’s sing and dance and rejoice.” No, that cannot merely be a custom, that has to arise from the heart. But that can arise from the heart only when life has been full of song and dance and celebration. When everything about this man was joyful, how can his death be painful? And if the entire life was painful, that cannot be anything other than pain.
Look at your face while you are alive, most of us do. Do you think when you die, your face will have a different expression?
