Death Spares No One
Someone I know told me that a famous young person, who was in every way healthy and fit, cheerful and positive about life, recently succumbed to an illness in spite of a formidable struggle, which ultimately took his life, so that his wife, whom he had married but a few days before, was widowed. My friend, like everyone else who was astounded by the news, expressed deep regret at the nature of life. My response to him was: Birth and death, as Adi Shankaracharya has said --- punarapi jananam, punarapi maranam (born again, dying again) --- are ineluctable. They occur without our consent and may arise for the most unexpected of reasons. Whether it be cancer or even a common cold, anything may become the occasion for the life force to depart from us. Death is no respecter of health or vigour; neither does it discriminate between the virtuous and the wicked, between a higher form of life such as the human and a lower existence such as a unicellular organism. What, then, remains to us but t...
