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Death Is a Celebration - Vol 1

A Small Story:

Once, in USA, a young lady asked the great Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda*

'What is life?' Swami Vivekananda said, 'Come with me to Bharat. I will teach you.'

She asked, 'What will you teach me?' He said, 'I will teach you how to die.'

The question is about life but the answer is about death! It seems strange! What Swami Vivekananda* is saying is that if you know the secret of death, the quality of your life will be different. Your very understanding and attitude towards everything will change. We can actually use our lives to prepare for death. We do not have to wait for the pain of seeing someone's death or the shock of being faced with a critical illness to force us to look into the meaning of life.

The very word 'death' creates agony and fear. Even talking about it is considered of inauspicious as we may invite it by even mentioning it. Death is seen as an enemy. We paint death as a villain, never as a hero. The idea of death is always approached with negativity. We feel death takes away everything from us. What ever we want, whatever we enjoy, whatever we have, everything is just taken by force from us

So most of us live either in denial of death or in fear of it. We think, 'why should we think about it now? We will handle it when it arrives.' Some how we always want to escape from death, Our concern for unfulfillment is rooted in our fear of death.

It is a primal fear, that of the unknown our actions in this life are for the most part driven by the desire to be in a better place after death or the fear not to be in a worst place after death. This fear of leaving the body and mind has existed through the ages.

  • What does the word death create?
  • Why death is painted in black?
  • We approach the idea of death with what?
  • What we feel about death?
  • Which is rooted in our fear of death?
  • Which is a primal fear?
  • Which desire drives our actions in life?
  • Which fear drives our actions in life?

MATERIALS NEEDED

  • 1. Paper
  • 2. Permanent marker
  • 3. Impermanent marker (washable marker).

PROCEDURE

Encourage the children to draw any picture with permanent marker on the plain sheet and now ask them to draw the same picture with impermanent marker and ask them to use ink eraser and erase the pictures and see the difference. ```

INFERENCE

The picture drawn with permanent marker cannot be erased with ink eraser but the picture drawn with impermanent marker can be easily erased with ink eraser. Connect them to the fact that soul is eternal and that it cannot be erased or destroyed while the body is perishable

MATERIALS NEEDED

  • 1. Poster colors
  • 2. Plain sheet
  • 3. Pencil
  • 4. Crayon

PROCEDURE

Encourage the children to do the drawing in the paper and paint it with poster colors. Ask them to dry the painting and tear each of their painting. Now ask each child to share and interchange part of their painting with the other child and form a new collage. Encourage each child to explain what they interpret from the new collage. Ask them to discuss how was this change in the painting was perceived by them.

INFERENCE

We are afraid of death because instinctively we resist change and death is an abrupt change in life.

Why is the whole of humanity struggling against, one thing, the only thing that it is a certainty in all our lives. We are afraid because instinctively we resist change and death is an abrupt change in life. Man thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present. We are afraid because we do not know who we are. We hold an identity of ourselves inside us, based on our family, relationships, job, wealth, social image.

Death removes this very identity foundation on which our identity is built, so we feel death snatches everything that is ours. Our understanding about death or rather misunderstanding about death, makes death a fearful, frightening experience. The man who resists death dies even while he lives. Losing anything is a form of death. Losing your comfortable life is one form of death.

Every part of your body i.e. connected to someone or the other. Your being is not an individual being. It is not a love, separate, as your think. We are all interlinked. That is why we undergo terrible suffering when we lose someone or something. All that we understand of death is that it is anti-life. Again because of our fear we think too much about death.

In the mystery of death lies the answer to life. If you know the secret of death, the quality of your life will be different. Your very understanding and attitude towards everything will change. We can actually use our lives to prepare for death. Death is not a mere incident at the end of your life. It is a profound knowing. If you know how the die, you know how to live. Living and leaving are new sides of the same thing.

  • Which is certainty in all our lives?
  • Which is the abrupt change in life?
  • Which makes us incapable of living in the present?
  • What removes the identity foundation?
  • Which makes death a powerful experience?
  • What is death?
  • Is your being an individual one?.

Part 2: Death Is a Celebration