Okay, so I’m still stuck on the topic of reincarnation, but it’s really one of the central themes of Hinduism, so cut me a little slack.
Death is something we all do our best to avoid. Unless they’re suicidal, nobody wants to die. And even suicidal people really just want life to get better.
We accept that death is a part of living, but, in general, we don’t like it. We even tend to do whatever we can to keep ourselves from thinking about it, focusing instead on all the minutiae of our daily lives, as if not dwelling on death will somehow postpone or even eliminate the inevitable.
Hinduism says we’re going about this death thing all wrong.
Hindus refer to death as mahaprafthana, the “period of great departure.” In Hinduism, death is not something to be feared or avoided. Instead, a Hindu welcomes death as a new way to experience personal growth.
We die when our souls outgrow the bodies that house them. The Bhagavad Gita says:
Worn-out garments
Are shed by the body;
Worn-out bodies
Are shed by the dweller.
To Hindus, dying is no more terrifying than changing your clothes—something a lot of women do several times a day, especially when they have a date.
In fact, Hinduism tells us that death isn’t something that happens to us only at the end of life (or at the end of each of our lives). We’re dying every moment of every day we live. We just don’t realize it, because we don’t pay enough attention to notice that, as each moment passes, it’s gone forever. And we don’t notice the “death” of the moments of our lives because we’re still here. It’s the same, Hindus believe, with our own real death—our soul is still there. It’s just moving on.
Whew. That was kind of deep and serious. I’m kind of tempted to make an inappropriate fart joke just to lighten the mood, but I’ll restrain myself. For now.
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