It is difficult to disregard life and go to certain death.
Gautama Buddha

Even when death is coming, then too it is difficult to disregard life; even when death has become certain. In fact, death is the only certainty. Everything else is uncertain. Everything else may happen, may not happen, everything else is accidental. Death is absolutely certain. The day you were born, death became certain. With the very birth, only one thing has become absolutely certain — that you will die.

Death is certain. You may know it or you may not know it; you may look at it, you may not look at it — but death is certain. Still, even with so much certainty, one is afraid to go into it; one clings with uncertain life, with dreamlike life. Death seems to be more real than whatsoever you call your life.

Buddha says it is difficult to accept death and move into death, and it is difficult to disregard so-called life. But a man of understanding starts disregarding life and regarding death. He respects death more because death is more certain, must be more part of reality than so-called life — because the so-called life is just like dreaming.

You have lived for thirty or forty or fifty years. Now look back, think retrospectively. What has happened in these years? Was it real or just a long dream? Can you make any difference … if it was real or a dream? How will you distinguish? Maybe you have dreamed all. Maybe it was just an idea in your mind. What proof have you got that it was real? What is left in your hand? Nothing … emptiness. And you call it life? And only emptiness results out of it? Buddha says, better call it death. Now look into death — maybe there is real life. It is difficult, but a person who becomes interested in death, intrigued by death, the phenomenon of death, becomes a different type of person.

The people who cling to the bank are the people who think this life is all. The people who try to understand, penetrate deeply into the life, become aware that this is not the real thing. Then they take a jump into the river which is going somewhere else — towards death.

Meditation is an effort to die voluntarily. And in deep meditation one dies. In deep meditation, the so-called life disappears and for the first time you encounter death. That experience of encountering death makes you deathless. Suddenly you transcend death. Suddenly you know — that which is going to die is not you. All that can die, you are not. You are neither your body nor your mind nor your self. You are simply pure space — which is never born and never dies.

People talk about death very rarely. Even if they talk about it, they talk very reluctantly. Even if they are forced to talk about it, they feel embarrassed — even people who believe that the soul never dies, even people who believe that after death a person goes to the eternal god, to the paradise.

In his Unpopular Essays, Bertrand Russell has a telling anecdote. ”FWH Myers, whom spiritualism had converted to belief in a future life, questioned a woman who had lately lost her daughter as to what she supposed has become of her soul. The mother replied, ‘Ah, well, I suppose she is enjoying eternal bliss, but I wish you would not talk about such unpleasant subjects.”’

Now if really she is enjoying eternal bliss, then why is this subject unpleasant? One should be happy to talk about it. In fact it is unpleasant to talk about it, and just to hide the unpleasantness, one has invented many theories, beliefs, that after death one goes to eternal heaven. Everybody has to somehow convince himself that he will not die.

Buddha’s teaching is that you have to accept the fact that you will die. Not only that — that all that you think you are, absolutely, in toto, is going to die. Buddha is very stern about it. If you ask Mahavir, he will say that body will die, mind will die, but your soul? — no, your soul will remain. Now there is some protection. We can think, ‘Okay, the body will die. We would like it not to die, but we can accept. Body is not me.’ In India you can find many monks, sadhus, just contemplating: ‘I am not the body. I am not the body. I am the soul eternal.’ Now, what are they doing? If they really know that they are the soul eternal, then why this constant repetition? Who are they trying to befool? Why this constant repetition that ‘I am not the body’? If you are not, you are not — finished.

No, they don’t believe really; they are trying to autohypnotize themselves. ‘I am not the body.’ Repeating it continuously for many years, they may come to an autosuggestion that ‘I am not the body’, but that is not going to be their experience. It will remain just an autosuggestion. They have befooled themselves, they have fallen into a delusion. And then they are saying, ‘I am the eternal soul — infinite, satchidananda — true, always true, existential, always existential, blissful, always blissful. They are fighting with death and they are trying to find some place where they can hide against death.

Buddha’s approach is totally different. He says there is no place to hide. You have to go headlong into it. And Buddha says your body will die, your mind will die, your so-called soul will die — everything, in toto. You are going to die. Nothing is going to remain.

This is very very difficult to even conceive. But Buddha says, if you can conceive this, and if you are ready for this, only then you will be able to know that innermost space which is beyond time and space. But remember — you don’t know that space at all, so it has nothing to do with you. Whatsoever is your identity is going to die completely and that which is going to remain has nothing to do with you.

So Buddha says don’t ask about that. Because you are such rationalizing animals, such tricky fellows, that if Buddha says, ‘Yes, there is an inner space which will remain,’ you say, ‘Okay, that’s what I call my soul.’ Again you are back in the old trap. ‘So, I am going to survive. Nothing to be afraid of.’ You will find some identity with that inner space. Buddha keeps completely quiet. He must have been tempted many times to talk about it. It is very difficult to keep secrets when you know — but Buddha has kept it.