Change is the nature of finitude. If we cry over change, we have clearly not understood its essential quality. The word “Mrityu” in Sanskrit actually means change, that change is the law of all matter. Death is the condition of the body with which we identify so strongly that we start believing in its permanence. The truth is that it had an expiry date stamped on it the day it appeared. The Lord says in the second chapter verses 11 and 12 of the Bhagavad Gita, that the wise do not worry over the inevitable law of nature. The bubbles, foam and waves are forms, and these forms destroy themselves in the ocean, the essence, the ocean, water, remains. You yourself are a bubble and are weeping for the impermanence of other bubbles! The wise never do that. Swami Chinmayanandaji used to ask, “What were you a hundred years before, and where are you a hundred years hence?” The Gita categorically promises that only matter changes and renews itself, but the great grand reality, the consciousness was never born and so never dies. The forms will die anyway, the essence always was, is and shall always be. The body was compared by Swamiji to a house rented by you, occupied by you, and then you assumed its ownership! You identify with the impermanent. Arjun in fact is grieving for his relatives even before trying to destroy them! Swamiji said, “Is there a fool who weeps every day that the sun has gone? We know that it will come again tomorrow, earlier than expected! Weeping for the gone is just as foolish.” He explained with the example of a promotion in the office, where you have to change the house because the surroundings are no longer fit for your station so you move from this house to a newer and better one.
Prarthna Saran, President, Chinmaya Mission, Delhi.
