On death and existence

Everything that is born, exists, grows, slows, and dies.

Between birth and death, lies what we call life.

I, like many other people, believe in rebirth.

Then it can be said: everything that is dead, shall be born again.

So, then there is a period between death and the next birth.

We do not know much about that period.

If one believes in rebirth, one believes in cycles of life and death.

Is this a random process, or there are laws of these cycles?

 

In my country, there are seasonal worships.

A statue is made of clay and brought to life.

The statue becomes a deity, full of divine energy.

People stand in awe, emote, and rejoice.

They share food and dance together in happiness.

People recognize the presence of an energy higher than oneself that has descended among them.

And they become part of that energy.

Then the time comes for the energy to leave.

The statue becomes life-less.

It is usually immersed in water.

The clay goes back to earth.

It is all an amorphous state of existence for that clay, which was once the covering of a divine energy.

The year changes.

Time comes for the next worship.

Another statue is made from clay, brought to life, and divinised.

The cycle of life and death is a part of my culture.

 

There are many cycles.

Inside the cells, cycles of biochemical reactions generate energy from simple molecules coming from our food.

Oxygen from the air enter our body, helps produce energy, and is released as carbon dioxide.

The carbon dioxide is used by photosynthetic plants to produce food that we eat.

Plants also release oxygen.

Life, as we know, cannot exist without the oxygen - carbon dioxide cycle of nature.

 

Many human organs have their own cycles.

The heart beats 72 times each minute.

Each beat of the heart is based on electrical changes.

These cyclical changes (PQRST-PQRST-) can be seen on an ECG strip.

The SA node creates these cycles or rhythms of the heart.

There are cycles of mood swings.

Physiological and cultural cycles pervade our lives.

 

But cycles are prior to human.

In the sky, earth moves around itself, once every day, and around the sun, once every year.

When we did not know this, we were so scared of night.

Fear, in any form, is fear of the unknown.

Now, science has made us bolder, and we are no longer afraid of light-dark cycles.

We know that after day, there is night, and there is day after that.

The planets and stars move according to laws of physics.

Understanding this makes me stable in my thinking.

 

As if, I have been asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking “what is death?”, it may be asked:

What prevents me from giving my little self away to that great cycle of becoming and unbecoming, the great fire in which the present “me” is sacrificed only to become the “future self” – more radiant and complete?

This has been going on for ever.