Copyright
Essential Philosophy: Live Before You Die
By Raja Sharma
Copyright@2011 Raja Sharma
Smashwords Edition
All Rights Reserved.
Chapter One
We generally take this life for granted, without ever pausing to think what is actually happening to us in the physical form of a human. Such is the lure and dazzle of life that it blinds us and continues to keep us blind till we realize that there are only few breaths left and we are about to leave for the unknown.
There was a learned scholar in India. He was on his deathbed and his wife and children were crying. The scholar was lost in his thoughts. Suddenly, he heard the cries of his wife and he said with a smile, “Why are you crying, my dear? I have spent my entire life just to learn how to die and even now I am not sure about my learning.”
We talk about things in schools, colleges, family, and in our respective societies but we rarely talk about life and death as topics. We deliberately, perhaps with fear, try to postpone these two subjects, thinking that these subjects are not in our course of study. What I have concluded is nothing new to the thinkers and active participants in the discussions about these two topics.
Life is here and now: it is in living. Life is definitely not a thing: it is an uncertain and unpredictable process. If you want to know the absolute truth of your life, you must live it, for it can’t be achieved in any other way. You have to plunge into the flowing stream of life to be one of the experiencers.
Philosophers, religious preachers, social pundits, and the others like them try to impose their own beliefs about life but you will never find the meaning of life in ancient teachings, philosophic lectures, religions, and theologies. If you fall prey to them and think that you are doing something highly divine, you are wrong and you will miss the train of life. You have to board the train of the life to feel the jolts, feel the whispering breeze of passing time, and see the panorama of changing years. Just continue to live your life in the way you have decided to but with a warning that there is no room for blame or regret because the life which you have chosen to live is your own choice and even if you are not satisfied, you have no right to regret or curse others. I am quite optimistic and positive in my thoughts because I believe that even in your failures you have a chance of gaining something and knowing a little more about life.
Generally, people postpone their present for the unseen future, and they think that life is somewhere waiting for them. It is not so. Life is happening in you and you are very much experiencing it but instead of concentrating on it, you are allowing your mind to drift away somewhere else with a false hope that life will meet you at the next corner. Don’t you ever realize that being alive is the most significant sign that life is happening in you, it is present in your breathing, it is in every part of your body, it is present in the beating of your heart, it is growing in your mind, it is gaining more with the progression of time. Never try to digress from whatsoever you are in your life. Most of the people seem to be dissatisfied and annoyed because they are looking for life somewhere else.
I would like to make it clearer through this anecdote:
A man lost a coin in the darkness along the road. He continued to walk. Suddenly, he realized that his coin was not in his pocket. He stopped under a lamp post and began to look for his lost coin. He continued his search for hours but without success.
What I mean to say that light has to be brought to the darkness to look for the lost coin but we are being attracted to the distant lights and want to find our lost coins. You have misplaced your life somewhere inside you but you are trying to find it somewhere else. It has happened for centuries and it is still happening. We have made temples, churches, gurudwaras, mosques, and many other places like them and we find many grave looking people attached to these so-called religious places to teach us what life is. I personally feel that I don’t want to find my coin there because I know that my coin is somewhere inside me and if I ever find it I will find it within my own existence.
The modern education and centuries of progress in the academic field has definitely pushed concepts to a very high place. Everyone talks about concepts and it is ridiculously noticeable that concepts have become very important. In the process of giving undue importance to concepts, the real has been missed and literally forgotten. We are blind to the present and all that which is already there because there are innumerable rationalists ready to teach us through their realizations.
There was a very rich American businessman. He got tired of his busy life and he wanted to seek the meaning of life. He went to the Church but he was not satisfied. He tried to read the ancient scriptures but nothing satisfied him. Someone told him that he should go to India and Nepal to seek the help of the Hindu gurus.
The businessman sold all his property and set out for the unseen and unknown. In the Himalayas, he met many holy men and religious preachers but he was not to be satisfied. Finally, he came to know that there was an old sage in the mountains. The place was about one hundred kilometers away from Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. The rich American had to change many buses before he could begin his ten day journey on foot to reach the learned guru.
Finally, he was sitting in front of the guru. The holy man did not open his eyes for more than four hours. The rich American was getting restless.
Finally, the guru opened his eyes and said, “Yes, what can I do for you?”
“I have come from America to know the meaning of life, guru?” the rich American folded his hands before the guru.
The guru smiled and said, “Life is a journey towards unknown. I am still in the process of knowing it.”
“I have come all the way from USA to hear this. Is it some kind of joke?” the American was obviously annoyed.
“I have spent sixty two years and I have come to know that I am in the process of knowing,” the guru smiled.
The American thought for a while and got up. He thanked the guru and wanted to give him some money as offering.
The guru smiled and said,” These currency notes are important in your way of life. Deal carefully with them and think what you are really doing with your life. To me these dollars are just like pieces of paper because my life does not need them.”
The American had learned a great lesson and he immediately went back to America and started his business again. Now he had a smile on his face and he continued to smile till his very last breath.
I am sure that we miss some precious moments of our lives in such stupid quests, trying to find the meanings somewhere else. Just open your eyes and see around you and you will see that everything is happening around you and you don’t need to find the meaning of life anywhere else.
Chapter Two
There cannot be any generalization of the term ‘life’ because the meaning of life has to be yours; no one can give you the meaning of your life. You are the one who is experiencing your life, so how someone else can give you the meaning of life. You don’t need gurus or philosophers to guide you along the path that will lead you to the true meaning of life. If they say they can, they are definitely fooling you and adding to their monetary achievements. It is their life to sell all that which is in demand and they are very much successful because they know the meaning of their lives. If you don’t buy their philosophical products and don’t load them with gifts and donations, they will definitely change their lifestyle and they will be so much disturbed without customers that they could be found working in a roadside hamburger stall or a coffee shop.
The mystery will definitely be revealed but you will have to live your life. If you are in quest of the meaning of life, you will find many guides waiting to trap you with their own explanations. The religious scriptures have their very clever explanations, philosophers have their rationalizations, scientists and biologists have only material and physical explanations because their field of knowledge does not suffer them to wander beyond what has been stuffed into their minds. Your elders in your society and family will come up with their moral explanations. But, all these explanations will lead you away from life and beguile you. You will be moving in circles, without ever reaching your destination.
Knowledge is an almost inevitable part of the process of life and knowingly or unknowingly you keep on gaining knowledge, but this very knowledge becomes a burden if you don’t use what you have and keep on searching for more. First of all, you will have to learn to use all that you have and then give some time to any other adventures.
I have very first and last formula about my life: life is here and now and it is nowhere else. I don’ want to look for life anywhere else. I see my life happening in me. I like doing what I am doing and I am trying to bring more perfection in all that I am doing. I have no time to waste on concepts and explanations. I am a man alive and I am only because of this life in me.
I can never forget the face of my venerable teacher. He was on his death bed and I was sitting on the floor, close to his bed.
“Son, I am about to close this book of my life. My whole life I have taught you a lot about Physics and Chemistry but I could never teach you anything about life. You know why? I did not know what life was! Now, I have a little idea about my life but it is useless to you because the meaning of your life is hidden in you, and one day you will be here in my place, telling your children and disciples about your life. Never try to teach others what life means because if you try to teach them, I will be disturbed somewhere either in heaven or hell because I know you can’t teach anyone about life.”
My master closed his eyes very quietly and he seemed to have really found the meaning of his life. I realized that that was also a part of the meaning of life: the final meaning of life, living culminates in death.
I must warn you that death is not the end of life because we don’t know what happens next. One who knows the meaning of his or her life is never afraid of death. Why should we be afraid of death? If it is the end forever, it is the fate of every living being. If there is reincarnation, it must be experienced, and if it is the way to the God, it has to be celebrated. Don’t you visit temples and shrines to find God? I pity those people who go from holy place to holy place in search of their god and peace but if I tell them they will meet their god after the end of this physical life, they look angrily at me. They don’t want to talk to me. I realize that they are already dead, I mean, mentally dead, and they have lost of power of thinking about themselves. Such people are the destroyer of life because they try to trespass into other people’s lives, sometimes by religious authority and sometimes by the power of their superiority.
I believe that death and life emanate from the same energy. It is like the movements of planets, like day and night, like the tide and the ebb, like the change of seasons. Death and life are neither opposites nor contraries. They complement each other so beautifully. I say beautifully because I give my meanings to the phenomenon before me and I don’t beg my meanings from others.
How can I give any meaning to death? I would be befooling you if I tried to give any meaning now. If I dared to attempt, the explanations would either be borrowed from the earlier thinkers or merely hypothecation. So sorry, folk, I can’t give any explanation of death here and you should also not try to find any because whatever you get after your quest will be false. The truth will only be disclosed when you experience it after the completion of the process called life.
Chapter Three
After all I am also a human being like you and I can’t refrain from trying to give my colour to the topic of death, though in the concluding line of the former chapter I had told you that it would either be false or merely a hypothecation. Still, I feel that I must tell you about all that I have concluded about death, thinking about it from multiple angles.
Death alone can’t exist because life has to be there if death is to be experienced or seen. Death is an integral part of life. Shall I call it a process of renewal? I see people dying and babies being born but I am not sure whether it is the process of renewal.
Right from the moment a child is born it begins to die. You breathe in and life happens: you breathe out, death happens, at least partial death. We are habitual to living with metaphors and proverbs because they are the only consolation, since we don’t have any control over this unanimously hated death.