A Takeaway for 2021: Die Before Dying
My Dear Upbuild Community,
I wrote to you last year that my focused endeavor would be to let go of the results in life, just as Krsna instructs Arjuna to do in the landmark sacred text, The Bhagavad-Gita. That has been a phenomenal challenge. With so many ups and downs, progress on the path looks more to me like the spastic upward curve of a seismograph than a simple straight line to perfection.
In spite of the difficulties, I know this process of ‘let go and let God’ works. And there have been many indicators that encourage me to move forward. I regularly have moments where I think this is divine magic and that a benevolent force is looking out for me. I regularly gain crucial realizations that I cherish. I regularly gain blessings that I can feel are powering me. And I regularly have the opportunity to serve others in deeply meaningful ways that are beyond me. So in looking back at another chaotic year, for the world, and for this Hari Prasada, I want to focus on one jewel (with four faces) to carry forward into the new chapters ahead.
The cornerstone of what I want to share with you is that I’m going to die. Some of you may be shocked and terribly concerned by this statement. Others may think I’m merely stating the obvious. To all, I must express, I’m okay, but this is a reality we don’t give proper time and attention to. Thankfully, I’m healthy and have no reason to believe I will die prematurely. But death is almost always premature, even if it’s in the furthest human reaches of old age. Stated simply, no one wants to die, ever, unless life is too much suffering that death is the lesser of two evils. The tragedy here is that we never then see what life could be and how it extends beyond the death of our body.
The great king of Vedic times and elder brother to Arjuna from the Gita, Yudhisthira, was once asked: What is the greatest wonder in all existence?
His response: We all will die, and yet everyone acts as if that day will never come.
This is what Ernest Becker so aptly exposed as “The Denial of Death.” If we did truly understand and face this phenomenon of death, we could never live the way that we do. Each moment would be far too precious and the core of us – who we really are – would be our foremost preoccupation.
In our Remembering Who We Are weekly gathering, we heard from my guru, Sacinandana Swami, about what it was like to be On the Brink of Death (as the series is called), many times over. The experience of a life-force bigger than death endowed him with the most powerful conviction in the existence of the soul.
The experience of his soul, undying, and capable of rising into the air over an operating table where his bleeding body lay, only to cross through walls and perceive the rest of the hospital, was just a tiny striking glimpse of what this means. He later verified both with his fellow monk friend sitting outside in the waiting room, as well as the surgeon performing the procedure, that everything he had seen and heard while outside the body defying the laws of physics, was indeed true. When he presented this account at a scientific conference in Germany, an esteemed doctor thanked him for making his job easy by providing top-notch first-hand experience for any skeptics of how we can exist separate from the body.
In the same Remembering Who We Are program, we went on to follow the thread around death into the writings of another self-realized soul – Bhakti Tirtha Swami. In his book, The Beggar IV: Die Before Dying, which we continue to study in these sessions, Bhakti Tirtha Swami notes that there is a spiritual technology that allows us to “die a glorious death.” And if we get that right, it can only mean we have lived a glorious life. In other words, we don’t have a beautiful and successful departure from this world into the life of the soul unless we’ve properly prepared.
That’s Krsna’s main lesson in The Bhagavad-Gita. In Chapter 8, he explains to Arjuna and to all of us that the purpose of life is to pass the final exam of death. If we study and train well, we’ll have no problem at all.
Since the age of 33, I started to realize more tangibly that I will die. Before that, my finite years on the planet felt infinite. That is the illusion we generally like to live in. For these last several years, it’s been starting to cave for me. I imagine my death, morbid as it sounds. My guru has taught me this. There must be preparation.
Although I know it’s only a gateway, I fear my death. For those who think biologically and not spiritually but believe that death is not to be feared because it is only natural, that is nice in theory. In practice, we have infinite longings and infinite fears. Death is the heaviest block to all our longings and the very culmination of all our fears. It is the symbolic representation of everything that gives us anxiety and that we wish to avoid and suppress. And so I still fear. But turning away from this is not the recipe for success in death.
Rather, Bhakti Tirtha Swami offers us the spiritual technology for a glorious death. With my mom, Dr. Tzipi Weiss’s inspiration, we’ve distilled this technology into four branches:
Prioritization
Preventing Offenses
Forgiveness
Sanga (connection)
I would love to one day write separately about each, just as we’ve been processing each of them deeply in Remembering Who We Are. But for this moment I will just say a word about each branch that sets us clearly on course for a glorious death.
Prioritization - We must prioritize the Big Rocks, as Stephen Covey would say, as I often like to share thanks to him, and as my guru expressed to me very intensely this year. We will be pulled in all directions by this world, and especially by our wild hearts and minds filled with desires and distractions. If we don’t put the Big Rocks in first, we will wind up with so many regrets, fears, and pains that are needless. The practices that open up connection with the soul such as mantra meditation, prayer, reading of sacred texts, and coming together for spiritual growth are the most powerful tools that I know at our disposal. May they never get lost in the shuffle. May we never neglect the calling within that competes with all the noise of this world.
Preventing Offenses - We all have urges that, if acted upon, cause us to disrespect others, ourselves, and our practices, as well as the services we do. We regularly experience the impulses of reactivity, defensiveness, hurt, desire to retaliate, and we sometimes move too quickly, neglecting to give proper care to what we’re doing or who we’re with. As long as we act on the impulse to disrespect, we cheat ourselves from growth. We distort the sanctity of our connection with ourselves and each other. Being attentive, caring, and genuinely wishing the best for everyone, even when there’s a need to be strong or set firm boundaries, is critical for our own spiritual well-being. When we come from a selfish place, an entitled place, a reactive, what to speak of retaliatory place, no good comes. If we behave thoughtlessly and carelessly in our practices and services, no good comes. It’s only with deep respect by understanding with spiritual vision that everyone is a soul and everyone is worthy of love that we do justice to reality. And we always want to be as mindful and heartfelt as possible as we offer our spiritual practices and our service to others. We want to act with this pure understanding always, and try our best to take responsibility for any shortcomings that stand in our way.
Forgiveness - People will let us down. Circumstances will push us over the edge. We will feel unfairly treated. This is inevitable. It’s in the DNA of material existence. It’s part of the karma we all come with and must learn from. We all have done things that afford us a reaction that we’re meant to learn from. That’s our karma. If we take out our frustration on others or hold it inside begrudgingly, we only hurt ourselves. Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the soul from the prison of self-righteous expectation. People are not here to meet our needs and abide by our conceptions. They need our compassion and forgiveness, even if again, strong boundaries are required to flourish and not enable another. But more than anything, we need for ourselves to not hold hatred or resentment in our hearts. That chokes us. The heart suffocates without forgiveness.
Sanga - All our learning, inspiration, and support on this path to the real self depends on sanga, or the company we keep. Particularly, it means those who walk this path with us and can help us on our way. It’s the loving relationships that nourish us and set an example, mirror us, provoke us to rise to greater heights of being, and allow us to gain realizations. We need people to receive us as we are and to show us what is possible in living by spiritual principles. Nothing has been or continues to be more impactful for me personally than this understanding of sanga. The people we surround ourselves with have the biggest influence on who we are currently. If we become intentional and find ways of connecting with those who push us beyond our comfort zone and care about us with heart and soul, as my guru says - miracles will happen. So making time to show our love for such sincere souls and receive their love for us could not be more pivotal.
When we’re on our deathbeds, there are common worries that have been documented in studies and by end of life caretakers. Having prioritized superficially, created harm, failed to forgive, and lost out on pure love, are some of the heaviest worries. If we think of these now – doing a pre-mortem, no pun intended – and steer toward strong spiritual investment in each of these areas, we not only prevent a painful death, but we imbue our life with maximum meaning.
What is it to die before dying? It means we voluntarily let the ego die before we’re forced to let go of it in death. We give up all temporal identifications with our mind and body. We give up all the possessiveness towards this life. We think of who we really are in eternity – a selfless, loving servant of all living beings, divinely connected. This happiness knows no bounds. It is full freedom. And it makes death not only a cakewalk when it’s the most formidable misery of all miseries, but it makes it glorious. It becomes our portal to a sublimity of the soul we can’t imagine.
Bhakti Tirtha Swami departed at 55 with vicious melanoma. In his last days, his leg amputated and in excruciating pain, he said: It doesn’t get any better than this. I wouldn’t trade my position with anyone in the world. He’d done what he’d set out to do. He died before dying and lived as the soul.
When my hero who first inspired me to take up this path, Soren Kierkegaard, passed from this world in 1855, he lit up the room. His nephew, who was six years old at the time, remembered it decades later as the most significant event in his life. At the moment of exiting his body, Kierkegaard had a smile on his face that was truly glorious. For he had mastered his life. He focused on dying before dying. And the glory of his death spoke for itself. Everything he lived for – all his spiritual principles and teachings, in spite of his many struggles, paid off. Though centuries too late to have been there myself, I never forget this scene. I always keep it close to my heart as I imagine my own death.
So my ardent intention to take away from 2021 into the future is the acknowledgement of my death, the commitment to die before dying, and the investment in the four branches of spiritual technology that will help me make my death and my life glorious, by divine grace and the grace of my teachers. I pray so much the same for you.
We don’t know how much time we have. Kierkegaard left this world at 42. My own 37 years have gone by like it was nothing. Another 37 is just around the corner if I’m given them. Time is always too short. Please take this life seriously and please take this death seriously. If we do both, with the understanding that we are indeed souls, and we feed our souls by this spiritual technology, all of our struggles become meaningful. Don’t forget to prioritize, prevent offenses, forgive, and seek loving sanga. Then the happy ending of this life will become the best new beginning there is.