The majority of people... hm, well, I should not say the "majority" because not all people are here right now. Actually the "majority" of people are in China. No, wait, the majority of people are dead! And we are all gonna die, we are going to be death for a much longer period of time than we are alive -
I don't know how all people from India die, but I do know, or at least sense that there is a different take on how death comes to them and how it happens. People "prepare" for it, rather than try to avoid it as we so skillfully do in the west, hooking ourselves to respirators and tubes. Again, not all people.
Consider these two stories, one from Srivatsa Ramaswami and one from Deepak Chopra. They deeply inspired me.
Ramaswami tells the very personal story of his mother's passing in Yoga for The Three Stages of Life
. She was sick and the doctors said that they probably would not be able to help her longer, so she asked to be taken home where she was surrounded by family.
Later that night she asked her son to bring the family's astrologer/priest to her. The astrologer in turn sent for a few Vedic pandits who were asked to sing the Mtyuumjaya mantra 1008 times, which they did and for about 45 minutes. When the time came, Ramaswami says:
"She opened her eyes and gazed at her favorite deity. She died with her gaze fixed on the divine picture. She was gone, separated from life -like a cucumber separates from the vine... Siva's favorite mantra was repeated several times as she passed away from life to the eternal"
Different, beautiful, accepting, surrendered. These are the words that come to mind when I read this story that brought tears to my eyes. The striking difference to how we attempt to cross the portal here being so different.
I cannot remember in which of his books I read the story of how Deepak Chopra's father died, but I found an account online. I do recall him saying, in that book, that he died while sited in meditation.
Chopra Senior died in 2001, I believe it was the day of the inauguration of Bush as president. Deepak flew to India right away, because being the first born male of the family, he had to bathe his fathers' body and anoint it with oil, then carry him to the funeral pyre, lit the fire and ensure his body was fully cremated. Then he had to crack the skull with a stick as is customary. In his words:
"While I was cremating him, about two hundred yards away there was a group of children who were using the draft of the cremation fire to fly their kite. I could see in this the play of life and death. the kite was like the symbol of the spirit soaring into the heavens."
I do not know if all people in India die like this, surrounded by family and with preparations so that their last thought is on the divine, or in meditation, my guess is probably not, but these two stories have gone a long way in my imagination and in perceiving death as ritual and ceremony rather than the end.
They say the last thought you have in your mind when you die influences the direction of your next one. I want to believe there is a next one, but I am not sure. I rather not come back and hope to be able to chant mantras on passing, but if I have to come back, perhaps I would like to be a very talented singer, someone with Beyonce's voice, or Christina Aguilera's voice and the talent of Michael Jackson. I am just putting it out there, nothing wrong with that. Hee hee.
When the time comes, may we all die well.
. She was sick and the doctors said that they probably would not be able to help her longer, so she asked to be taken home where she was surrounded by family. Later that night she asked her son to bring the family's astrologer/priest to her. The astrologer in turn sent for a few Vedic pandits who were asked to sing the Mtyuumjaya mantra 1008 times, which they did and for about 45 minutes. When the time came, Ramaswami says:
"She opened her eyes and gazed at her favorite deity. She died with her gaze fixed on the divine picture. She was gone, separated from life -like a cucumber separates from the vine... Siva's favorite mantra was repeated several times as she passed away from life to the eternal"
Different, beautiful, accepting, surrendered. These are the words that come to mind when I read this story that brought tears to my eyes. The striking difference to how we attempt to cross the portal here being so different.
I cannot remember in which of his books I read the story of how Deepak Chopra's father died, but I found an account online. I do recall him saying, in that book, that he died while sited in meditation.
Chopra Senior died in 2001, I believe it was the day of the inauguration of Bush as president. Deepak flew to India right away, because being the first born male of the family, he had to bathe his fathers' body and anoint it with oil, then carry him to the funeral pyre, lit the fire and ensure his body was fully cremated. Then he had to crack the skull with a stick as is customary. In his words:
"While I was cremating him, about two hundred yards away there was a group of children who were using the draft of the cremation fire to fly their kite. I could see in this the play of life and death. the kite was like the symbol of the spirit soaring into the heavens."
I do not know if all people in India die like this, surrounded by family and with preparations so that their last thought is on the divine, or in meditation, my guess is probably not, but these two stories have gone a long way in my imagination and in perceiving death as ritual and ceremony rather than the end.
They say the last thought you have in your mind when you die influences the direction of your next one. I want to believe there is a next one, but I am not sure. I rather not come back and hope to be able to chant mantras on passing, but if I have to come back, perhaps I would like to be a very talented singer, someone with Beyonce's voice, or Christina Aguilera's voice and the talent of Michael Jackson. I am just putting it out there, nothing wrong with that. Hee hee.
When the time comes, may we all die well.
Very insightful and thought-provoking post, Claudia. I have a friend who once shared with me how she witnessed both her parents' deaths (at different times and in different places). They faced death in diametrically opposite ways. When her mother was dying, her face was contorted with fear, and she was staring with terror at somebody that was supposedly in the other corner of the room (the grim reaper?).
ReplyDeleteHer father, on the other hand, was peacefully asleep when he passed. She was sitting beside him with her children, chanting Buddhist prayers, and she told me that at the moment he passed, they all saw this light leaving his body from his head to his feet. And when the light left completely, that was when they knew that he had passed, and that all that was left was the body-shell of what used to be him.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is: I don't think that Indians (or members of any particular group) are necessarily able to face death with more equanimity. I think it probably has something to do with the way individual people see and accept death in their lives.
I'd back up what Nobel says - not sure there's anything particularly unique about the calm Indian way of death you describe. Might be stating the obvious, but when you die and what of makes a huge difference. My mother, for example, died of cancer aged 50, and in a lot of pain. It's pretty hard to go out peacefully in those circumstances - not just the pain, but the psychological difficulty of thinking you've been cheated, that it's all unfair, and with a lot of regrets. Contrast the 80 year old who dies of 'old age' thinking they've had a good life.
ReplyDeleteHaving said all that, the Indian (Hindu) way of death/funerals is in some ways more honest. There's less reserve (a lot of wailing by the women in the house when the death occurs), and the funeral itself is of course out in the open, with the corpse burning where all can see it. That's for those that can afford the wood - others (the poor majority) get much less ceremony. (Have seen people burned using old tyres for example, which seems somehow less exotic.) It's also not exactly environmentally friendly - not a lot of wood anyway, and the Ganges in particular is full of unburned corpses (can't bury them in Hinduism, can't afford to burn them, so dump them in the river). These days they're trying to convert people to using gas crematoria - better for the environment, but still not great. The best means of burial is probably the Parsi/Tibetan Buddhist method - the corpse is fed to vultures. However, the Indians have poisoned their vultures, so that's under threat too.
I think the desire to avoid death will probably come to Indians too - their fatalistic attitude has some good sides, but it's also what helps them accept the deaths not just of themselves personally but millions of their countrymen from easily treatable diseases like dysentry and TB (and yes, they could afford to do something about this, if they wanted to).
Last thing, as an aside, my wife is a Hindu and according to her it's traditional to name the eldest son after a god, so that on death, the parents will say 'Oh XXX', calling out to their child, but also saying the name of god. Not sure if Gandhi's eldest son was called Ram, but of course he died saying 'He Ram' - 'Oh God'. As another aside, one of the best scenes in Indian cinema is I think the bit in Salaam Bombay where the street kids carry the dead body of the drug dealer through the streets, calling out 'Ram ka naam' - 'Satya hai' - 'The name of God' - 'Is truth'.
"When the time comes, may we all die well.
ReplyDeleteThis was a necessary post for us all!
Thank you for this!
Nobel, yes you are right, it is about the individual rather than the nationality, no arguing there... death is unpredictable as your two different accounts of what happened to your friend show. Guess death in itself is much more of a topic than even us, it is just too big. The one thing I will say is that learning about how the Indian culture treats death opened my mind to a new way of seeing it...
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, thanks for sharing that story that your wife told you. I think it was while I watched the movie Gandhi that for the first time I learned about the tradition of thinking about God at the time of death, and I did not know that this is the reason why a first born is usually named after a God, fascinating. Just like I was saying to Nobel, Indian culture changed my perspective on death, I am sure it is not always nice and comfy and pretty, it would not be logical to think it so, every area of the world has its own issues, and I appreciate you telling me about how the cremations happen in different areas.
Wild Magnolia, guess you are welcome? I guess it is necessary for me as it has been a year since my dad died, maybe that is why I have been thinking of it, and I don't know I just hope we all do... you know? die well, so yes, will own it, you are welcome :-)
To pass away while in meditation sounds pretty good to me. I hope to not be scared and full of regrets when the time comes.
ReplyDeleteThis post is important to me b/c for the first time I know someone who is dying angrily--yelling at the nurses, screaming to go home, going through long tirades of profanity--pretty scared I think. In my family, people have either died suddenly, or kind of passively or still believing they would "win the battle" and in denial. So this anger makes me think. Obviously, I want a good death, and perhaps everything in life we should do preparing for our death--some believe that whether we know it or not, life prepares us for our death--but then for us type As--I don't want to spend energy striving once again, striving for some ideal death. All of this is important to think about--hopefully my death will be small and quiet.
ReplyDeleteTara
Nice post Claudia. Check out this link for something similar: http://www.yogabones.org/aboutSP.html
ReplyDelete