Mind-work of the Most Fallen # 2

Or On Saving Loved Ones

Worse than you yourself dying would be the dying of your loved ones. Most of us suffer great anxiety over this matter. This morning while I was sitting in my usual spot in the garden, chanting on my beads, my daughter's death passed my mind. I wondered whether I can handle the loss. On other times, when a thought like this would disturb me, I would say to myself repeatedly that it won't happen yet, sooner or later but not yet. That morning, I realized how futile and helpless such positive thinking was. Death will come anytime--either to me, my daughter, my wife, friends, anyone.

It will hit us beyond our imagination, beyond any pain we have ever experienced. It will hit the dying and those surrounding him with suffering. But no matter how inevitable this occurrence is, (and we know, but we deny it) we try with all our might to rebel against dying. But what can we really do? About death...nothing; but at the time of death, there is one thing you can do to help yourself or the ones you love to ease them or yourself from much suffering and bewilderment when you and they are leaving your and their body/ies.

Remember God. Take shelter in God. Surrender all your mind's and body's struggles to control, to make the pain go away, to counteract the fear of the unknown. I do not pray that my parents, my brothers, my wife and daughter to live forever, rather I pray that I'll be at least there when they are splitting from their material shell, for I to at least sing to them the Names of Krishna, or read to them a passage from Bhagavad Gita assuring them that there is no need to fear death, for death will come only to the body, but not to the self...that no one can help them, not medicines, not their bank accounts or their PH. D.s no one not even the love of the persons who care for them, but God alone Who is the true shelter.

I believe that our forgetfulness of our body's demise makes it possible for us to enjoy the world and forget what really matters. In every wake and burial, people would say he (referring to the dead) could have done something more...or she could have done something other than working like a mule...etc.

A friend told me he's "sorta" trapped in a life he wanted to "taste" first before surrendering to God. And I wish for him Lord's mercy, which in my case was in a form of my crippling disease of anxiety. Like Queen Kunti, a great devotee of God, who prayed for more suffering to constantly make her take shelter in Krishna, I accept my case as God's bite of comfort. He promised in the Gita that all those who surrender unto Him will go to Him, without fail. Another favorite example would be from the pastime of Jesus Christ and the good thief, who asked Lord Jesus to give him shelter after he leaves his body. Our mood of surrender should resemble this thief's, who felt he is unworthy, lower than a straw in the street. In such a state of mind we can chant the Holy Names of the Lord constantly, and secure for us and our loved ones God's protection in the time of death. If you don't believe in God, lie to them, but be honest with what you can't do. Don't give them the false promise that you can give them shelter. Haribol Krishna!