>HH KKS: Sukadeva Goswami was such a spiritual master that came to tell Pariksit Maharaja what the duties are of a man who is about to die….SANSKRIT… a man who is about to die…and well everybody is about to die….this is the nature of the material existence that everyone is about to die and exactly when it’s going to happen …we don’t know …but it can happen any time.When my grandfather died my father took me to the cemetery for the first time ..it was eeery …walking there along a cemetery…so I was certainly excited. Looking around.i was five years old and I could read those days so I was reading the tombstones and I saw some tombstones of people who lived shorter than me …who were born after me and who died before me. I saw that..and I thought Wow!…this was more interesting then the grave of my grandfather where we went to put some flowers…that he had died that was to be expected…after all he was really old. He was very very old and he was overweight as well so it was not at all suprising that he died. He infact had such a big belly that he could not see his own feet. For years he never saw his own feet…..Huge!…I don’t look like that particular grandfather…I’m from the other side! But whatever might be..he left… didn’t impress so much .....to be honest…but when I had walked there and saw that people had died who were younger than me …I really thought about that for a coulple of days!
It is a fact that death is always there and Srimad Bhagavatam points out that one starts dyings from the very moment one takes birth. You can not say at the time of death ..and now it has started…where does it start ..the time of death? Does it start three days before death? One week before death? One month before death? One year before death? Ten years before death ?…When does it start the time of death ?…it’s just some biased decision to say when it starts….. But Bhagavatam points out that it starts at the time of birth!
Fortunately we are not so depressed about it because we see death as a transition and nothing more…we don’t see it as …the curtain drops..the end…right…the final performance …it is over!!….I remember the British comic Tommy Cooper who used to do all kinds of acts with a Turkish hat on …and it is said that Tommy Cooper being a comic had a heart attack on stage and he was ..flapping and dying ..on the stage and rolling around …..and the audience was just cracking up!!! …they were rolling of their seats!! and they thought it was the best act that he had ever made! ….he actually died like that ….. I guess that is what he always wanted …I guess..being a comic ,,,but that is how he died …everyone was shocked when they found out he was really dead!< Oh well…one can leave his body anytime anyplace …in the most amazing situations …in the most unexpected in the most undangerous situations…the most tame, the most safe …and one may survive the most risky ones so many times and then you die in something stupid!…Something really safe and secure and there you slip and manage to do it …drown in three centimeters of water or whatever…!
Whatever may be ….. ..a devotee is never concerned about that …a devotee is learning…practicing to get in the mood that ….whatever comes ..comes…..Not from maybe this …watch out! Extra security here! …Ward off death in so many ways!
This is not our occupation to: Get all kinds of insurances…all kinds of security to somehow or other every possible sort of inoculation ..just to make sure we are not falling prey to that terrible thing.. death ..and postpone it for long as possible…..
