Death is beautiful

A dear friend of mine who is a doctor was talking to me few days back and the discussion of death came up. She closed the discussion by saying, "I don't want to talk about death." I wondered, if we can talk about life, why can't we talk about death? Is death such a bad thing?

If death is a bad thing, why do we die everyday? When someone sheds his old personality and gains a new one, it's death of an old personality and birth of a new one. We keep on changing every moment and every moment is thus death of an old self and birth of a new one. Physically, cells keep on dying and new cells keep on getting born, replacing the old ones. This planet is limited in size, so we, humans, a type of organism (although highly developed) need to get replaced too. Some die young, some die old, nevertheless they form a space for the new one.

This death too is followed by birth. Rebirth is a phenomenon accepted by all oriental religions. Dr. Brian Weiss, author of Many Lives, Many Masters, also accepts the truth of rebirth. Soul never dies, he says, it keeps on changing the physical body like we change clothes. Bhagvad Gita mentions the same. Death is not an end, it's a beginning of another beginning. There is no shame in talking about death. I am not talking about the west as Western religions do not accept rebirth. Christianity has its own issues with acceptance. It took hundreds of years for Christianity to accept that Sun is at the centre of the solar system and Earth revolves around it. When the first Railway was built (Stockton and Darlington Railway), Church opposed it saying that the train carries you to hell and devil drives it. Some people got frightened while others got the opportunity to ride the first train. I wonder how many years will Church take to accept the concept of rebirth.

Zen goes to the extent of saying that death is the most beautiful experience in one's whole lifetime and it should not be missed. Some people get so scared of death that they die in unconscious state or while sleeping. They certainly miss the beauty of it. It happens in an instant which is not an instant. It transgresses beyond time. Those who see someone dying see death through their own eyes, through their own perception, they don't know how much the dead is enjoying!

The whole universe
shatters into a hundred pieces.
In the great death
there is no heaven, no earth.

Once body and mind have turned over
there is only this to say:

Past mind cannot be grasped,
present mind cannot be grasped,
future mind cannot be grasped.

- Zen Master Dogen Zenji, 1200 - 1253

I am talking as if I have died many times. Indeed, I have died many times. We'll continue to die and be born until the cycle of life and death goes. There can not be a melody without pauses. The music of life is not possible without the pause of death. If life is beautiful, death is ought to be beautiful because life and death are not separate, but are entwined like a continuous string. You may smile at life, you may cry over death, but the music being played on this string won't stop.