P: There must be a way of learning how to die. To know how to die
is of tremendous importance to each one of us.
K: How do the traditionaliists and the professionals--by the
professonals I mean the gurus, the Sankaracaryas, the Adi
Sankaracayas, the yogis--answer this question?
P: Tradition divides life into various stages. There is brahmacaya,
a stage of celibacy when, as a student, the boy learns from a guru.
The second stage is that of grhastha, when a man gets married, has
children, seeks to accumulate wealth and so on. He also supports
the sannyasi and the children, and thereby supports society. In the
third stage, the vanaprastha, a man walks out of the pursuiit of
worldly things and faces the stage of preparation for the final stage
which is sannyasa, in which there is a giving up of name, home,
identity--a symbolic donning of the saffron robe.
There is also a belief that at the moment of death, all man's past
comes into forcus. If his karma, his actions within this life, have
been good, then the last thought which remains with him at the
time of death continues. That is carried over into the next life.
They also speak of the essential need for the mind to be quiet and
fully awake at the time of death for the quenching of karma.
K: Will a traditional man go through all this or, is it just a lot of
words?
P: Generally sir, the orthodox Hindu has the Gita chanted at the
time of death so that his mnd cuts itself away from the immediacy
of fear, of family, of wealth, etc. This does not answer my
question. How is the individual to learn how to die?
K: Take a leaf in the spring--how delicate it is, and yet it has the
extraordinary to stand the wind; in summer it matures; in
autumn it turns yellow; and then it dies. It is one of the most
beautiful things to see. The whole thing is a movement of beauty, a
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movement of the vulnerable. The leaf that is very, very tender,
becomes rich, takes shape, meets summer and, when autumn
comes, turns gold. There is never any sense of ugliness, never a
withering away in midsummer. It is a perpetual movement from
beauty to beauty. There is fullness in the spring leaf as well as in
the dying leaf. I do not know if you see that.
Why cannot man live and die that way? What is the thing that is
destroying him from the begining till the end? Look at a boy of
ten or twelve or thirteen--how whole manner and face change; he
is caught in a pattern.
How does one learn to live and die, not just learn to die? How
does one learn to live a life in which death is a part--in which the
ending, the dying, is an innate part of living?
P: How is dying an innate part of life? Dying is something in the
future, in time.
K: That is just it. We put death beyond the walls, beyond the
movement of life. It is something to avoid, to evade, not to think
about. The question is: What is living and what is dying? The two
must be together, not separate. Why have we separated the two?
P: Because death is a totally different experience from life; one
does not know death.
K: Is it? My question is: Why have we separated the two? Why is
there this vast gulf between the two? Why do human beings divide
the two?
P: Because, in death, that which is manifest become non-mani-
fest; because there is an essential mystery both in birth and in
death--an appearance and a disappearance.
K: Is that why we separate the two--the appearance of the child
and the disappearance of the old man? Is that the reason why man
has separated life from death? There is obviously a beginning and
an ending: I was born, I will die tomorrow. Why do I not accept
that?
P: Death involves the final cessation of the 'me'-- of all that I have
experienced.
page 51
K: Is that the reason for the inward division? That does not seem
to be the entire reason why man has divided life from death.
P: Is it beacause of fear?
K: Is it fear that makes me divide the living and the dying? Do I
know what living is and what dying is? Do I know the joy, the
pleasure that is life, and do I regard dying as the ending of that? Is
that the reason why we divide a movement which we call living--is it
living? Or is it merely a series of sorrows, pleasures, despairs? Is
that what we call living?
P: Why do you give it special meaning?
K: Is there any other form of living? This is the lot of every human
being. Man is afraid that everything he has identified himself with
will come to an end. So he wants a continuity of this thing called
life--never an ending. He wants a continuity of his sorrows, of his
pleasures, miseries, confusions, conflicts. He wants the same thing
to go on--that there never be an ending. And the ending of all
that he calls death. So now what is the mind doing in this?
The mind is confused; it is in conflict, in despair; it is caught in
pleasure, in sorrow. The mind calls that living and the mind does
not want it to come to an end because it does not know what would
happen if it ended. Therefore it is frightened of death.
I am asking myself: Is this living? Living must have quite a
different meaning than this.
P: Why? Why should it have a different meaning?
K: Living is fulfiment, frustration, and all that is going on. My
mind is used to that and has never questioned whether that is
living. My mind has never said to itself: Why do I call this living? is
it a habit?
P: I really do not understand your question.
K: After all, I must ask the question.
P: Why should I ask?
K: My life, from the I am born till I die, is one eternal
struggle.
page 52
P: Living is acting, seeing, being--the whole of that is there.
K: I see beauty--the sky, a lovely child. I also see conflict with my
child, with my neighbours; life is a movement in conflict and
pleasure.
P: Why should I question that? The mind questions only when
there is sorrow, when there is a lot of pain.
K: Why not ask when you have pleasure?
P: Sir, life is not a series of crises. Crises of pain are few; they are
rare occasions.
K: But I see this is happening in life. I see it happening and,
therefore, question this division of living and dying.
P: You do, but others do not. We see that there is division; it is a
fact to us.
K: At what level, at what depth, with what significance are you
making this statement? Of course it is a fact. I am born and i will
die. Then there is nothing more to be said.
P: It is not enough. The very fact that we have asked how to learn
to die--
K: I say learn also how to live. Then what happens? If learn how
to live, I also learn how to die. I want to learn how live. I want
to learn about sorrow, pleasure, pain, beauty. I learn. Because I
am learning about life I am learning about death. Learning is an
act of purification, and not the acquiring of knowledge. Learning is
purgation. I cannot learn if my mind is full. The mind must purge
itself to learn. Therefore the mind, when it wants to learn, has to
empty itself of everything that it has known; then it can learn.
So there is the living which we all know. There has to be first of
all a learning about this daily living. Now, is the mind capable not
of accumulating but of llearning? Without understanding what is im-
plied in the first act of learning, can it learn? What is implied?
When I do not know, then my mind, not knowing, is capable of
learning. Can the mind not know, so that it can learn about
living--in which there is sorrow, agony, confusion, struggle? Can
it come to it in a state of not-knowing, and so learn? Such a mind,
capable of learning about life, is also capable of learning about
death.
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What is important is not the learning about something. but the
act of learning. The mind can only learn when it does not know.
We approach life with knowledge of life, with knowledge of cause,
effect, karma. We come to life with the sense of the 'I know', with
conclusions and formulas. And with these we fill the mind. But I
do not know about death. I want to learn about death, but I
cannot. It is only when I know learning that I will understand
death. Death is the emptying of the mind of the knowledge which I
have accumulated.
P: There can learning about living in learning about death.
Deep down in human consciousness there is this nameless fear of
ceasing to be.
K: The nameless fear of not being. Being is knowing that I am this.
that I am happy, that I had a marellous time. In the same way I
want to know death. I do not want to learn. I want to know. I want
to know what it means to die.
P: So that I am free of fear.
K: If I do not know how to drive a car, I am frightened. The
moment I know, it is over. Similarly, my knowledge of death is in
terms of the past; knowledge is the past. Therefore I say: I must
know what it means to die, so that I can live. Do you see the game
you are playing with yourself, the game which the mind is playing
with itself?
The act of learning is different from the act of knowing. You
see, knowing is never in the active present; learning is always in
the active present. The learning about death--I really do not
know what that means. There is no theory, no speculation that will
satisfy me. I am going to find out, I am going to learn. There is no
theory, no conclusion, no hope, no speculation, but only the act of
learning; therefore there is no fear of death. To find out what it
means to die, learn.
In the same way, I really want to know what living is. So I must
come to living with a fresh mind, without the burden of knowl-
edge. The moment the mind acknowledges it knows absolutely
nothing, it is free to learn. Free to learn about the thing that I have
called living, and the thing that I have called death. I do not know
what they mean. Therefore there is living and dying all the time.
page 54
There is no death when the mind is completely free of the know:
the beliefs, the experiences, the conclusions, the knowlege, the
saying 'I-have-suffered', and so on.
Intellectually we have carved life out beautifully according to
our conditionning: To achieve God I must be celibate; I must help
the poor; I must take a vow of poverty. Death says: You cannot
touch me. But I want to touch death; I want to shape it into my
pattern. Death says: You cannot play tricks on me. But the mind is
used to tricks, used to carving somethng out of experience. Death
says: You cannot experence me. Death is an original experience,
in the sense that it is a state that I really do not know. I can invent
formulas about death--the last thought is that which manifests
itself; but they are other people's thoughts. I really do not know.
So I am starkly frightened. Can I now begin to learn about living
and, therefore, about dying?
So deny knowing--see what takes place. In that there is real
beauty, real love; in that the real thing takes place.
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