Art of Dying
“If you die before you die, then when you die, you don’t die.”
Memories, however beautiful they may seem, are a dead thing. And all we take ourselves to be the I is just memory.
One may argue that my body is not a memory. It is certainly true that the body functions with no memory and lives perfectly in the moment. The heart never seems to compare how I pumped blood yesterday with how I am doing today. The liver doesn’t crave for any particular food but just works on digesting whatever is passed on. And so with each organ. They just handle what they are meant to do in any given moment in the best possible way with a tremendous intelligence that is untouched by thought. And when the machinery gets worn out or abused long enough, they gracefully stop working too without any conception of death. But we have no idea of how the body functions in the actual sense except through what the physiologists tell us which is just memory. And then there is the all cultural input of what constitutes beauty which is again acquired memory. So our conception of ‘my body’ is entirely a construct of memory. Therefore it constantly results in comparison, goals, praying for longevity etc all of which the body doesn’t seem to care for one bit.
Our idea of ‘my mind’ is of course entirely a construct of memory. All it is, is a fictitious entity made up of opinions, ideas, images, knowledge, experiences all gathered up from the past and stored over time. And any identities associated with one’s race, religion, caste, color, creed, country etc. all belong to the mind which are just acquired memories. That’s why it always happens that one with enough persuasive skills is able to tap into one identity by always playing up an imagined version of a glorious past and blow it out of proportion while making other identities take a backseat and cause men to kill men for the sake of ideas.
So when we refer to the first person pronoun ‘I’, it only implies an identification with the body and the mind in their various avatars. Therefore there is the I that is nationalistic or linguistic, the I that is a family man or a bachelor, the I that is a student or a professional, the I that is healthy or sick etc. Underlying all of these various avatars is the basic superimposition of an idea stored in memory from the past as one’s own identity.
Because this superimposed identity for the me and the other plays an outsized role in all relationships, our energy goes only into sustaining and strengthening these identities as we relate with others in various ways. We are unable to pay attention to the act of relating itself.
This being the case, we look for a way out of this mess. But the paradox is that the very looking for a way out of the mess is based on an idea that there is an individual entity in there who can be free of this mess and supposedly live in an ‘enlightened’ or ‘realized’ manner. It is only another trick conceived and dangled by thought in front of us to perpetuate itself. This very idea is again an image from the past and therefore continues the same neurosis in a different form by creating an image of a seeker who is then practicing various techniques and methods, gathering more and more knowledge all in an effort to attain another image from the past and ‘become’ an enlightened being. But any process of becoming through time is always temporary and when the underlying cause of the becoming wears out, the effect ceases to be. This is the reason Adi Shankara emphatically states that any amount of karma (action) however pious can never result in freedom, jnana (direct realization) alone is the way.
So what is this direct realization? Death. Not the physical killing of the body, which only continues the same mess in a different form. Instead it is dying to the past.
It is dying to all the memories that are built up as images and cloud over the simple presence of being that makes all actions possible.
It is dying to all outgoing interests such as politics, economics, social activism, art, entertainment etc.
It is dying not only to the so-called worldly images, but also to all the so-called religious or spiritual images.
It is dying to all methods and techniques.
It is dying to all insights and understanding.
It is dying to any imagined state of freedom.
It is dying to all intents and desires including the desire for liberation.
It is dying to making a mechanical practice out of any teaching such as self-inquiry, complete attention, surrender etc.
It is simply to be extremely alert and instantly deny the past, no matter in what form it rises.
Then the body continues with its own tremendous intelligence, now unburdened by thought created psychosomatic troubles. The transactional memory necessary to recognize people, places and things continues to work perfectly as they are. Thought falls into its place in order to function sanely and intelligently for what it is meant to — handling other products of thought such as cars, computers, medicine and other functional aspects of living.
Therefore what we need to learn is the art of dying each moment. There is no need then for any art of living which would be only another borrowed idea from the past. When the art of dying is learned, living takes care of itself in the most harmonious manner.
And all conceptualization of meditation or surrender stops and true meditation or surrender begins, which is to just be.
