Death and Dying

The Transition Called Death: Each of us must ultimately confront our mortality. For Hindus, this is not a fearsome prospect. We know we have been born and died before, and karma and reincarnation make the inevitable seem natural. One saint consoled, “Death is like falling asleep, and birth is like waking from that sleep.” Simple. Other sages speak of death joyously as release from bondage, as return to our Source. The soul, the Vedas declare, is immortal. Still, we are attached and must cope, find understanding that will make death acceptable. Our Insight this month speaks traditionally of this personal, exalted and potent experience crowning life.

Our faith guides our transition from this world, offering solace to the suffering and those facing the foreboding certainty of death.

“Lead me from darkness to light, from death to immortality.” This famed Vedic prayer proclaims the human urge to survive, to conquer death and to know the joys of illuminated consciousness. People often pilgrimage to an isolated place in expectation of a vision, be it a jungle of fauna and foliage or cement and glass. Every person is on a vision quest. But for all souls, at the time of the great departure, mahaprasthana, a vision comes as a tunnel of light at the end of which are beings of divine nature. more