I Decided to Die

This story is about my death. The death I experienced with my senses alive. The death I decided to embrace myself.

I came to know about this meditation from ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People’- that famous best-seller, self-help book (although it used to be practiced by Buddhists, and was known as Marananusati). The method is very simple. You just lie down, and start imagining that you are dead, and are lying on pyres. You are on the verge of being burnt, and there are people surrounding you. They are the same people you have loved all over your life- your father, mother, brother, sister, friends, lover and others. Then you start thinking about the worth and meaning of your life.

Well, I did it for the first time when I was doing my graduation. It was a summer noon, and I had nothing else to do. So, I decided to do it. I switched off all lights, lied down and started thinking that I’m dead. For five minutes nothing happened. I was deliberately trying to imagine things which (I hope) were still decades away from me. Then something happened. The imagination started getting alive, and began taking over me. I could really feel as if I was dead. Then I saw people around me. I can’t tell you how I felt that time. I saw my shattered father, fainted ma, weeping brother, unconscious sister, depressed friends (every intimate friend I had had since my nursery days) and other relatives deeply in shock. Then I started weeping. I don’t think I have ever wept like that, before or after.

So, after the rona-dhona for nearly 15 minutes, I began coming back to normal. That moment was so peaceful. I felt like some burden has just got off my body, and I had become immensely light. In that moment of deep peace, I started introspection and evaluation of the life I had lived till date.

There were surprising revelations waiting for me. I started thinking about the joyful moments I had. Surprisingly, the simplest moments were coincidentally also the most ecstatic ones- like having heart to heart talk with my friends, going down the hill to take bath (my school was on a beautiful hill), eating bhoonja at hostel, enjoying pakoda with my family members, reading some absorbing book, drawing cartoons and, sometimes, just sitting and thinking. There was something common in all of them. I didn’t have to slog hard to get these moments. They were free, easily available, simple and just hilarious. Maybe I didn’t pay attention to them while I was having them. I was actually busy paying attention to those boring textbooks to get higher marks in exams to ‘prove myself to others’. But this act of ‘proving myself’ didn’t show its head when I was experiencing the final moment. Probably because it didn’t matter that much in the real sense of term. At least not as much as I thought.

Life is strange. The best things of life pop up at the most unexpected moments, and not because of meticulous planning and hard work, but because of serendipity. We go after silly ambitions hoping that they would give us the satisfaction and pleasure we are looking for. Then we go after money making the whole life lose its balance only to find out later that it was not worth it. Still we don’t try to face the facts and go on living as we’ve been doing since Big Bang.

But there is a solution. Maybe sometimes we should take some time out of the hectic schedule to think, discover what really matters. We should rethink about the priorities we haven’t chosen but have been hypnotized by others to choose. Or, we should just decide to die, at least once. Trust me, it works.