By Vraja Vihari Dasa
For the one appointment no one can cancel, it pays to be prepared.
Recently a college friend of mine was diagnosed with an incurable cancer; his doctors told him he would live for only another year. The family panicked and consulted a wide range of doctors as well as healers from various alternative fields of medicine. They approached astrologers, prayed to demigods in temples, and even consulted a mystic tantric. Many people keep telling them that a cure may be available that they haven’t yet tried.
I was sad to learn about my friend’s disease. I wanted to help him during his crisis and suggested the Krishna consciousness process of chanting and hearing Krishna’s holy names. But I failed to convince him that, while trying various treatments, he also needed to face reality and prepare for his next life. I was unhappy to see that even his eighty-year-old father was disinterested in the spiritual dimension to life and determined only to save his son.
Death, the Greatest Wonder
I remembered the observation of a devotee friend: “One may be admitted to the best hospital, treated by the best doctors, administered the best medicines, but if he is destined to die, he can’t avoid an appointment with Mr. Death.”
The philosophical writings of Vedic India compare the inevitability of death to the inescapable visit of someone who will get us one day. When Mr. Death strikes, a rich man can’t bribe him to go away; a beautiful lady can’t charm him to excuse her; a strong man can’t wrestle him to submit; a wise person can’t defeat him in a debate. Mr. Death gets us all, with no exceptions.
In the ancient epic Mahabharata, King Yudhishthira is asked what is the greatest wonder in the world. The wise king replies, “Every day thousands are sent to the abode of death. Yet those who are living lead their lives as if death will never happen to them.” These words of wisdom helped me come to terms with the stubborn reluctance of my friend’s family to understand Krishna consciousness, and with their refusal to accept the inevitability of death.
First Lessons in Spiritual Life
One of the first lessons I learned in spiritual life is the inevitability of death. Friends in college ridiculed me for subscribing to what seemed to them the fatalistic philosophy presented in ISKCON teachings. Their taunting made we wonder whether the Hare Krishnas were only pessimistic, but I soon realized that the acceptance of the unavoidable reality of death equips us with an internal fortitude and calmness. The Hare Krishnas were learning to see the world and its fleeting promises in a detached manner.
A devotee of Krishna faces tragedies, including death, with grace and dignity. Still, devotees don’t ignore their bodily conditions or make no attempt to avoid death. A spiritualist cares for the body with a desire to serve God and others. Since the goal is service and not bodily maintenance, the devotee is detached even while caring for the body, and is prepared to face inescapable death.
Teachings of the Vedas
The Vedic tradition explains that our existence doesn’t end with death. We are not our temporary body, but the eternal soul residing within. When the body dies, the soul continues to live, although in a different state of existence. By cultivating Krishna consciousness, we nourish the soul and our consciousness transcends petty material pursuits; we learn to live on the spiritual plane of reality and connect to God, Krishna through spiritual practices. Hearing and chanting God’s holy names helps us attain spiritual happiness, which helps us transcend material happiness and distress. Hearing and chanting also guarantees us a divine journey after death.
The Vedic literature gives many examples of persons whose lives teach us how to prepare ourselves to face death. The Srimad-Bhagavatam begins with the enquiry of King Parikshit on the duty of a person about to die. Cursed to die in seven days, the king happily accepted his fate; he could now immerse his consciousness in remembrance of the Supreme Lord without any distractions. King Khatvanga, another exemplary person, on learning that he had only a moment to live relinquished all his riches and welcomed death.
Srila Prabhupada’s Appeal
Srila Prabhupada taught that life is a preparation for an exam: death. The time of death tests all our cherished values and principles, as well as our attachment to our body and to people and things connected to our body. A devotee of Krishna leads a life centered on service to God and carries out his worldly responsibilities maturely, knowing that the unpleasant vicissitudes of this world can bring the end at any time. Even if the devotee lives a long life, eventually time in the form of disease, old age, or death will threaten to take away all of the devotee’s possessions and positions. But because they have invested their consciousness in remembering and loving God, they are prepared to meet Mr. Death cheerfully.
Srila Prabhupada often quoted a verse from the Srimad-Bhagavatam (10.14.58) that says that in this material world there is danger at every step. Death can come at any moment. He urged his readers and audiences to spend every moment remembering God so that at the eventual moment of death they would be fixed in an inner state of bliss, ready to enter the divine realm of God.
Srila Prabhupada was himself such an example. In October 1977, when he realized that his body would give away soon, he retired to Vrindavan, the holy place of Lord Krishna’s appearance and activities, to engage in exclusive remembrance of God. When he was asked if he had any unfulfilled desires, he calmly said, “I have nothing to desire or hanker for.” Srila Prabhupada led a dedicated life of loving service to Krishna, and when Krishna came to take him back, he was ready.
Facing Death Cheerfully
At a festival of hearing and chanting the holy names last year, I had a sobering educational experience. During the daylong kirtanas and discourses at ISKCON Mumbai, I was seated next to thirty-year-old Rohini Tanaya Dasa, who had been diagnosed with a malignant bone cancer. Like my college acquaintance, he had only months to live. But his response to the crisis inspired all the members of our community. He was absorbed in devotional activities; his face was beaming with happiness springing from a deep internal connection with Krishna.
While sitting next to him during the program, I caught my mind feeling sorry for him. But I soon realized he was in the best state of consciousness, and I wished I had the same faith in the holy names and the process of devotional service. Later we spoke together about chanting the holy names and various aspects of the Krishna consciousness process.
“I welcome this disease,” he said, “and consider it Krishna’s calling. Now my definition of what’s important or irrelevant has changed; I seek to make Krishna my exclusive goal.”
I was humbled and enlivened in his company, and wished my dying college friend and his relatives could take a cue from him.
Rohini Tanaya reminded me that for a sincere spiritual seeker, death is not the end; rather, it’s the beginning of entering into the realm of eternity, knowledge, and bliss. For materialists, death is the end of everything they identify with; therefore they are in great distress at that moment. On the other hand, a lover of God doesn’t mind getting old or nearing death, because he knows that as the body is coming closer to death, the soul is coming closer to its eternal spiritual youthful form. Death for a devotee means joining Krishna in the spiritual world for an eternal life of service and bliss.
The two contrasting experiences, with a college friend and with a devotee, convinced me that the process of devotional service makes a person mature beyond his age. A thirty-year-old with a spiritual connection to God can have sagacity and maturity far beyond the myopic vision of an eighty-year-old bereft of spiritual knowledge.
Postscript
Rohini Tanaya Dasa passed from this world in the loving association of Krishna’s devotees chanting the holy names. He had been living as a resident brahmachari at the ISKCON temple in Nigdi, outside Pune.
During his last moments, Rohini Tanaya desired to be with the deities and devotees, so he was rushed to the temple, a four-hour drive from the hospital. On his arrival, all the resident devotees and more than five hundred congregation members performed an intense kirtana for more than an hour. As the evening arati started and the deities were greeted amidst loud chanting and the blowing of conch shells, indicating auspiciousness, Rohini Tanaya cast his last loving glance at the devotees and, while prayerfully looking upon the deities, departed from his body.
Devotees cried and rejoiced simultaneously, for this was an extraordinary, inspirational departure. Devotees had witnessed that Krishna consciousness is not simply a theory but a practical science. Rohini Tanaya had just shown by his example how a devotee fixed in Krishna consciousness receives Mr. Death cheerfully.
Back to Godhead January/February 2012
In the Samarkand legend, “A servant encounters a woman in the market place and recognizes her as Death. The ominous figure looks into the face of the servant and makes what seems to him a threatening gesture.
Trembling with fear, the servant runs home, borrows his master’s horse, and rides like the wind all the way to Samarkand so that Death will not be able to find him.
Later, the master sees Death and asks her why she had threatened his servant. And Death says, “There was no threat. I was merely startled to see your servant here, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarkand.”
Every one of us has an appointment with Death, no matter what, but most of us do not know the particulars, the when, where and how of it…
This is why, as Srila Prabhupada stated, we have to be ready to leave our body anytime.
Moreover, a devotee welcomes death, for he or she is free from attachment to this material world and is eager to come one step closer to Krishna’s lotus feet…!
In this way, the devotee is abhayam, fearless…!
Mrityu sarva haras caham (BG 10.34) Krishna expresses that He is death as well. Srila Prabhupad would often express that for the atheist, God appears as Death. For the majority of people, they rarely see or witness death and so it has a more profound effect. For those in the medical field or similar professions, death is very common as we take care of elderly, sick, and severely injured people regularly.
More important than death is the realization of “transmigration of the soul”. In essence, such changes of body, or the environment of elements that we are covered by, are incessantly changing. The sober individual, enlightened by the grace of Guru-Gauranga, is not confused by such a constant phenomenon. (BG 2.13). We want to emphasize the true identity of the conscious being as the jiva-atma, distinct from matter in constitution, but confused with matter because of poor choices. We want to become established in real reality…and Krishna will help us…if we will take shelter of Him.
Pusta Krishna das
Regarding #1
It is not Samarkand but Samarra:
It is clearly a tale with many variations. For instance, the place name can be Samarra or Samarkand. The title may also vary.
Here is a version of the story that is over 1000 years old.
“When Death Came to Baghdad” is in the ‘Hikayat-I-Naqshia’ of Fudail ibn Ayad, a ninth century reformed bandit, turned Sufi sage. Although some details differ from the version most widely told today, it is considered to be the ‘same’ story as “The Appointment in Samara”. In the 1960s it was included in an important collection of Sufi teaching stories gathered by a respected scholar, Idries Shah, who traveled extensively in the Middle East gathering material from written and oral sources. The story, from ‘Tales of the Dervishes’ is quoted as follows:
“The disciple of a Sufi of Baghdad was sitting in the corner of an inn one day when he heard two figures talking. From what they said he realized that one of them was the Angel of Death. “I have several calls to make in this city during the next three weeks,” the Angel was saying to his companion. Terrified, the disciple concealed himself until the two had left. Then applying his intelligence to the problem of how to cheat a possible call from death, he decided that if he kept away from Baghdad he should not be touched. From this reasoning it was but a short step to hiring the fastest horse available and spurring it night and day towards the distant town of Samarkand. Meanwhile Death met the Sufi teacher and they talked about various people. “And where is your disciple so-and-so?” asked Death. “He should be somewhere in this city, spending his time in contemplation, perhaps in a caravanserai,” said the teacher. “Surprising,” said the Angel; “because he is on my list. Yes, here it is: I have to collect him in four weeks’ time at Samarkand, of all places.”
from: ‘Tales of the Dervishes’ by Idries Shah.
There is also a suggestion that the origins of the story go back as far as the Babylonian Talmud.
The following story, which we may call “Appointment in Luz,” demonstrates that an individual cannot escape his or her destiny and must inevitably die. The Angel of Death is depicted as simply performing a necessary task, and doing it any way he can.
“There were two Cushites that attended on King Solomon, Elichoreph and Achiyah, sons of Shisha, who were scribes of Solomon. One day, Solomon noticed that the Angel of Death looked sad. Solomon asked him: Why are you sad? He replied: Because they have demanded from me the two Cushites that dwell here. Solomon had servants take them to the city of Luz [a legendary city where no one dies]. However, as soon as they reached the gates of Luz, they died. The next day, Solomon noticed that the Angel of Death was happy. He asked him: Why are you so happy? He replied: Because you sent them to the very place where they were supposed to die (Sukkah 53a). Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived (according to I Kings 3:12), discovered himself outsmarted.”
There are obvious similarities here to the well known “Appointment in Samarra” story, a retelling of which was made famous by W. Somerset Maugham in his play Sheppey. Some scholars assert, however, that the origin of the Maugham tale is “When Death Came to Baghdad,” a ninth century Arabian Sufi story in Fudail ibn Ayad’s Hikayat-I-Naqshia.
This similar story in the Talmud is several hundred years older.” Satan the Accuser: Trickster in Talmudic and Midrashic Literature, by Hershey H. Friedman, Ph.D.
So, we can see that as Srila Prabhupada stated: ” Little knowledge is dangerous!”
Another point which could be raised is whether “Death” is to be personified as “Mr Death” as in the article (which is rather unusual) or rather, as a female personality, such as Ma Kali with her garland of skulls around the neck.
However, the Sufi version of the story depicts Death as an Angel, and we won’t enter into a lengthy discussion about the gender of the angels…!
Yet, Krishna, God, states that He is also Death. Thus, Death can be feared by the athiest or the unrepented sinner (as a mouse in the jaws of a cat), while Death can also be welcome as a Friend, by the surrendered and fearless devotee (as a kitten within the jaws of his mother).
All glories to the glorious and most fortunate passing away of Rohini Tanaya Prabhu.
Thank you for sharing it, Mataji.
Apparently, it is the Bhakta that is abhayam while the rest of us are fearful at every moment.
“Presently we are so dull and foolish that we do not know what is bhayam and tīvram. The word tīvram means “very terrible,” and bhayam means “very fearsome.” We are entangled by a very terrible fear, but we have become so dull due to the spell of māyā that we do not care. At the time of death there are many troubles, and we become very fearful. Sometimes, when a person is dying, he falls into a coma and lies unconscious. We do not know what kind of fearful test this person is undergoing. He may be dreaming so many things, or he may be crying. He cannot express what is going on. Those who are very sinful especially die in that way.”
Srila Prabhupada’s book Teachings of Lord Kapila, the Son of Devahuti…./ TLK Vs 41 : PURPORT