Death, cultures – a peek.

Before I begin to engage for the first time in my writings about an inevitable life phase called death, I wish to look at first what life is. As I have recently stepped into one of the significant recognitions about life that is, ‘things are going to get worse before they get better’ (Rev. author, Neale Donald Walsch)… that in a way is enough about getting a bit close to the life’s experience, the last stage of a human birth that is called death! Again, those put together sound more like spirals of oxymoron!

Now I wish to share here the process of death as I have experienced in the world around me where I was born and brought up that is in South India. Living in the West now gives me the realization that there is much focus on the teachings about death and the process of dying. I also learn the many ways how the East and West are coming together. If wounds are a convenient way of relating because it is familiar, through being bred in the historical life cycles of the human civilization then the example is such that life experiences in Calcutta display a great deal of stress in comparison to the life experiences in a city like Los Angeles.

From the positive point of view, being human is a common area of relating the East and the West. Being human, that is the nature of the essence in each human, are common to the two sides of the globe. This aspect especially makes fluid an attempt into oneness, a sense much needed today.

That said, what about death – in the eastern practices and about which is found in the western spiritual teachings? Well and as I have said, something at a core is essentially one to begin with. What I find is being brought to light is that death and all that goes in and around that natural life stage is hidden in societies predominantly in the West. This is a contrast as to how it is experienced in societies that are predominantly eastern. So I thought it is worth to share what I have seen and experienced about death and that as a natural stage of life itself.

First of all, at the instances of the death and dying there is grief. It has to be also noted here that the family systems there were like that advocated by the revered Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh in his book, “Peace is every step”. He describes that grandparents live with their grandchildren and children are raised with not just parents around as in nuclear families of modern times (this to me now is both east and west!) but they are also with aunts, uncles and so on.

In these societies, death is a stage of both grieving as well as of celebration, literally. If we delve deep in any spiritual teachings or the faiths of the wisdom cultures – preserved through ages as well those that birthed anew in our present times – we are sure to learn and know why death is a celebration. As a sum of an understanding of it, it is in death there is (re)birth.

So the practices are that as much as death opens up grief as a void is created (as author and spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle puts it) in this process of form going into a dissolution, there are also holes present to celebrate life in the same circumstances of a happening of a death. These dual processes last during a variety of a naturally consistent period of time, from the time a person’s physical body is taken to be dead that ideally, I suspect correspond to the period that the experience of grief that surrounds the instance of the death.

The grief is allowed through the process of wails or cries for example, as a group of the women in the families far and near that have gathered; while the process of celebration begins simultaneously which is at once in complete surrender to the grieving that is taking place. The body of the dead is washed and decorated as if the person was when he/she was alive. Perhaps it brings memories of the life to the near ones and the grief become alive (and not buried only to come up later). The processions to the cremation ground are as celebratory as the Gods are celebrated in an enormous sense of openness during the respective festivities of honoring.

So on it goes and death and life goes on – not different from one to the other.

I suspect there are literatures elaborating the area of death and dying that is a subject as I see in western spiritual teachings. I hope what I have shared here opens the doors to the nature of life in death. and dying.

Another gift to humanity is Siva Baba’s teachings on death as the transformation of the physical body to light body. As it has been advocated that to live better one should ponder about the nature of death, I prefer now to contemplate about this transformation into light body, which the vedic literature and culture gives ample examples throughout history – like Aandaal (the Saint Teresa or the Krishna’s Mirabai, of South India ), Swami Ramalingam and Krishna Himself. “God is Light and It is Compassion”!