How to be free from the fear of death?

Last night a man breathed his last. Today people mourn at his door.

At such moments a memory of an event in my childhood arises in my mind. It was my first visit to the burning ghats. The funeral pyre had been lit, and the people were chatting in small groups.

The village poet said, "I am not afraid of death. Death is a friend."

Since then I have heard this same assertion in different forms from different people. I have also looked into the eyes of those who say this and have found that these fearless words arise from fear.

Nothing changes just by giving death beautiful names. In fact, the fear is not of death, the fear is of the unfamiliar. What is unknown creates fear in us. It is necessary to become acquainted with death. This acquaintance brings one to fearlessness. Why? Because it is through acquaintance that one comes to know that there is no death to what is.

It is only the personality, which we have taken to be our "I", that shatters, that dies. It shatters because it is not. It is only a combination, a union of a few elements. As this union disintegrates, the personality shatters. This is what death is. Hence, as long as personality is taken to be one and the same as the true self, there is death.

Move deeper from the personality, and as you arrive at the true self, the deathless is attained.

The path of this journey, the penetration from the surface of personality to the core of the self, is religion.

It is in samadhi, enlightenment, that acquaintance with death happens. Just as darkness ceases to exist the moment the sun rises, so does death when samadhi is attained.

Death is neither an enemy nor a friend, it simply does not exist. One needs neither to fear it nor not fear it. One has only to know it.

Ignorance of it is fear, knowing it is fearlessness.

If you want to attain the divine, learn to die

Someone went to visit a Baul mystic. He was absorbed in singing his song. Neither his eyes seemed to be seeing this world, nor did it feel as if his soul was present. He was somewhere else - in some other world, in some other form. When his song stopped, and it seemed his consciousness was returning, the visitor asked, "How do you feel liberation can be attained?"

The sweet-spoken mystic said, "Only by means of death. "

I said this to someone yesterday. He asked, "By death?" I said, "Yes, by death while living. Only one who dies to everything else, awakens and becomes alive to the divine."

There is no art greater than learning to die while living. I call that art: meditation. One who lives as if he is dead will certainly know whatever is essential in life.

If you want to attain the divine, Learn to die. Have you not seen that when the seed dies, it becomes a tree?

Know the strong fort inside you

A sadhu was asked by his friends, "If wicked people attack you, what will you do?"

He said, "I will go sit inside my own strong fort."

This conversation reached the ears of the enemies. Then one day the enemies surrounded him while he was alone and said, "O sadhu! Please tell us, where is your strong fort?"

The sadhu began laughing and then, placing a hand on his heart, said, "This is my fort. No attack can ever be made on it. The body can be destroyed, but that which is inside cannot be. This is my very fort. My only security is to know my way there. "

The person who doesn't know this strong fort his entire life is insecure. His life is surrounded by enemies every moment. Such a person has not yet found a shelter for peace and security. And those who search outside for that shelter, search in vain, because it is inside.Only by being established in your being does the real acquaintance with life happen, because the periphery which is outside this center is created by death.

One finds life only from knowing that which is inside one's being. One who doesn't know this is surrounded every moment by death and the fear of death.

The monkey way of thinking

In the BOOK OF AMU DARIA there is an old Sufi tale:

Once upon a time there was a monkey who was very fond of cherries. One day he saw a delicious looking cherry and came down from his tree to get it, but the fruit turned out to be in a clear glass bottle, so he had to put his hand into the bottle to get it out. As soon as he had done so he closed his hand over the cherry but then he found that he could not withdraw his fist holding the cherry
because it was larger than the internal dimensions of the bottle's neck.

Now all this was deliberate because the cherry in the bottle was a trap laid by a monkey hunter who knew how monkeys think. The hunter, hearing the monkey's whimperings, came along and the monkey tried to run away, but because his hand was, as he thought, stuck in the bottle. He could not move fast enough to escape. But as he thought he still had hold of the cherry he consoled himself.

The hunter picked him up and tapped the monkey sharply on the elbow making him suddenly relax his hold on the fruit. The monkey was now free - but he was captured. The hunter had used the cherry and the bottle and he still had them.

This monkey-way of thinking is the mind-way also!

And in the end when death, the hunter, comes everyone is found caught in his own bottle. Remember, before the hunter comes make sure your hand is out of the bottle!

Do not cling to anything, to any idea, because clinging is the bondage. Even if one is clinging to the idea of liberation - moksha or nirvana, one will be in bondage. With clinging meditation is impossible because clinging is mind - the bondage, and no-clinging is meditation -the freedom.

The death deception

I have heard about a ninety-year-old man who got into a bitter argument with his shoemaker
as to how a pair of shoes should be made.

See here, said the shoemaker, What's the idea of doing so much yapping You are past ninety and there is little chance of your living long enough to wear these shoes out.

The old fellow looked sternly at the shoemaker and said: Apparently you are not aware that statistics prove that very few people die after ninety years of age!

Death is everywhere but everyone deceives himself that it is not for him; this is the greatest and the deepest deception the human mind is capable of; and unless one is constantly aware of this fact
one is bound to be a victim of this deception - because the mind goes on giving very beautiful and logical rationalizations up to the very end.